Dr. Kelly Flanagan is a clinical psychologist whose writing and speaking have resulted in an appearance on the TODAY Show, as well as features in publications including Reader’s Digest and Success Magazine. He’s no stranger to Follow Your Curiosity, having been on the show twice before to discuss his first book, Loveable, and his first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell.
He chose to write his forthcoming non-fiction book with input from his online community, and the result is The Road Less Triggered: Turning Conflict into Connection with a Single Choice, which will be released on March 3.
Kelly talks with me about how he chose to include others in his process and how it influenced the book, why we keep hearing so much about regulating the nervous system, what it means to be open-hearted (and how to tell if your heart is closing), and more.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction.
04:41 Community input shaped the book’s content and direction.
09:35 Feedback engagement valued more than just positive or negative notes.
14:13 Embracing vulnerability and doubt as growth opportunities in writing.
19:22 Walking and voice recording spark creativity and problem-solving.
24:13 Conversation and real-life application deepened the book’s insights.
29:19 Open-heartedness means accepting reality fully, not being a doormat.
34:46 Noticing and reopening a closed heart is a daily practice.
39:46 Nervous system dysregulation is widespread and fueled by social media.
44:30 Catching body’s early warning signs helps stop defensive behavior.
49:59 We intuitively know open versus closed heart through bodily sensations.
54:38 Creativity requires reconnecting with body wisdom and staying open-hearted.
Show Links: Dr. Kelly Flanagan
Kelly’s website
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Transcript: Dr. Kelly Flanagan
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Dr. Kelly Flanagan is a clinical psychologist whose writing and speaking have resulted in an appearance on the Today Show, as well as features in publications, including Reader’s Digest and Success Magazine. He is no stranger to finding Follow Your Curiosity, having been on the show twice before to discuss his first book, Loveable, and his first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. He chose to write his forthcoming nonfiction book with input from his online community, and the result is The Road Less Triggered: Turning Conflict into Connection with a Single Choice, which will be released on March 3rd.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:52]:
Kelly talks with me about how he chose to include others in his process and how it influenced the book, why we keep hearing so much about regulating the nervous system, what it means to be open-hearted, and how to tell if your heart is closing, and more. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Kelly Flanagan. Kelly, welcome back to Follow Your Curiosity.
Kelly Flanagan [00:01:14]:
Nancy, it’s so good to be here.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:16]:
You are the first person to be on this show 3 times.
Kelly Flanagan [00:01:20]:
Ooh, on SNL. 5 times you get a special jacket.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:25]:
Yeah, I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.
Kelly Flanagan [00:01:27]:
Okay, fair, fair enough. Well, it’s quite an honor to be here for the 3rd time. That’s a hat trick in sports terminology, right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:33]:
There you go. That works. And it’s the 2nd time that you’re— that we’re talking on my birthday, which is still mind-blowing to me. But happy birthday to me.
Kelly Flanagan [00:01:41]:
That is wild. That is wild. Yes, I’ll never forget it now. Now, now, 2 times are a charm. That’s amazing. Uh, it’s so good to be here on your birthday.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:50]:
Well, for everybody who has not heard Kelly on this show before, you can hear his whole backstory and everything on the first two shows. So we’re going to skip that for today. And we’re going to get into how Kelly has written his new book that will be out on March 3rd. I have that right?
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:09]:
You got it. Yes. I got it. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:12]:
Because shortly after we talked the last time, I think you started this new book, and you did something I had never seen anyone do before, which was decide that you were going to write it in public.
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:24]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:24]:
And what I recall was that at least for a while you were sending out— Yeah. —drafts of chapters and asking for people’s feedback. And I don’t remember how long that lasted, but that’s, that’s part of why I wanted to see, you know, what gave you the idea to do that in the first place?
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:43]:
Well, good question. I, at that point, was feeling like I was as much interested in building community as I was in creating, y’know, another book. I wanted those two things to go hand in hand. And I— it’s always sort of shocked me that in the traditional publishing space, there’s so little crowdsourcing of the material. They don’t do any polling around,, you know, book covers or titles or even content. You know, it’s, it’s one author sitting alone in his lonely little room writing terrified, and then lots of great editors, and then a bunch of people who hope it’ll work. And I just— the, the, the tribe that I have on Substack, the community that we’ve built over the years of 15,000 strong and 300, like, core members is they contain so much wisdom. And I was just like, I, I’m not gonna let this wisdom go to waste this time around.
Kelly Flanagan [00:03:45]:
So I wanted to write the book in collaboration with our community. And, and it— that lasted about, I think that, that phase of it lasted about 8 months until I got clear enough on the concept of the book that I could start pitching it to publishers, at which point sort of went silent on the book front as it, as it evolved through that season of, you know, pitch meetings and feedback and, uh, conceptualizing and that sort of thing. And then once, once we got the concept fully locked in through that process, then I basically brought the concept back to our tribe and, uh, and monthly have been meeting with them for now over a year and a half. And, uh, you’ve been there for some of those meetings and just basically presenting the rough draft of this final concept and then just sort of getting to gather all this incredible wisdom. So, um, our community has really ultimately shaped this book in a powerful way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:41]:
Yeah. And, and you, you not only get that, that input through the Substack posts, but I’m curious because in those meetings, you read something out loud, present it with slides and the whole thing for a good 20 or 30 minutes usually. Mm-hmm. How has hearing yourself read it I have to think that’s made a huge difference on top of the input from everybody else.
Kelly Flanagan [00:05:12]:
That is a very wise observation. So, um, I mean, first of all, there’s taking what you wrote and having it on paper and then translating it into like a PowerPoint presentation and thinking about how you’re going to say it in the, in the live, you know, Zoom call. And it would change dramatically even in that, like I would say something out loud and like cringe, like, oh my gosh, that’s, that’s so cheesy. Even for me, I can’t, I never, I will never be able to say that out loud without cringing. Um, so how do I say the same thing in a way that is simpler and clearer and less flowery, for instance? And so it would change in that way. And then we’d come to the point of presenting it. And, uh, you know, I have a fabulous assistant, Ro, who is, is sort of helping in those meetings. And she— because I’m sort of involved in presenting, she’s sort of tracking the energy level in the chat.
Kelly Flanagan [00:06:03]:
She’s tracking, uh, you know, when people lean into their cameras versus sit back and sort of scrunch their foreheads, you know. So And so she, she was helping me sort of gauge the, the sort of the implicit reaction. Like, this is where, you know, that, that part, that was really helpful to people. This part’s really confusing. You’re gonna have to clean that up. Uh, and then we’d always have, you know, 20 minutes for discussion. Mm-hmm. And you can see in that discussion where the energy gathered and the curiosity.
Kelly Flanagan [00:06:28]:
Uh, and so yeah, like, I probably, probably most of what made it into the book actually came out of those meetings rather than what I brought into those meetings, which is just so exciting to me. It’s like it’s been field tested with all these incredible folks. And so we know every piece of content in the book is super helpful. Wow. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:52]:
Excited. That’s funny. When you’re in those meetings, you don’t realize that you’re kind of being observed
Kelly Flanagan [00:06:58]:
for all that time. I know, no. I’m going to make everybody self-conscious. Um, yeah, the— one of the wonderful things about having Ro be my facilitator, she’s also a spiritual director, you know, so she’s just super in tune with people and the energy of things. And, um, and so she’s, she’s a great resource in that regard. Um, and it’s just that when I’m reading, it’s all unilateral, you know. I’m— when I’m presenting on Zoom now, when I’m out in front of a crowd in an auditorium or, you know, whatever, then it’s a reciprocal experience. I can feel the energy coming back at me, but Ro has to be that for me when I’m on a— on a sort of unilateral Zoom like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:36]:
[Speaker:LULU] Yeah, that makes sense.
Kelly Flanagan [00:07:37]:
[Speaker:JAD] Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:37]:
[Speaker:LULU] But I’m also thinking, now that I’m kind of thinking back over being on those calls and what was sent out in the very first days— [Speaker:JAD] Yeah. [Speaker:LULU] —you know, I remember, like, I’m guessing it was the first chapter that you sent out, but it’s been a while, so I don’t remember. But, you know, people really digging into not just this part isn’t clear or do you want to say this this way as opposed to this way, but, but even getting into really nitty-gritty proofreading and copyediting stuff. And I had wondered when, when I first saw that, I thought that could be way too much for right now, you know, especially if it’s, you know, Susie thinks that you shouldn’t have a comma here and Tom says, “Yes, you need the comma there.” You know, that can be such a minefield when you’re starting a project to get feedback on that level.
Kelly Flanagan [00:08:39]:
How was that? Yeah, well, it’s a— it’s another good observation. Yeah, it’s, um, when you invite thousands of people into your writing process, you’re inviting a lot of different perspectives. And you’re right, like, um, a lot of people don’t know that you know, you go through a dozen revisions of your manuscript before your editor ever sees it. Then they do a round of macro edits, um, and then it’s another round of, uh, copy edits, and then it’s a round of proofreading. So you’ve got people giving you proofreading feedback, you know, out of their, um, best intentions when that’s sort of for further down the road. But, but what was so encouraging to me as an author, I— it didn’t matter if the feedback was negative or positive, if it was sort of like really about minutia or big ideas, it was the engagement. It was the engagement with the content. I mean, for an author to not feel lonely in the creative process is such a gift, and that’s a gift that those folks were giving to me at that point.
Kelly Flanagan [00:09:35]:
And to answer your sort of implicit question, all of that content from those first 8 months that I thought was sort of the first chapter of the book and the premise, if, if a keen eye will, will notice when the book comes out here, it’s actually most of that got distilled down into the second chapter of the book. Wow. Everything else. So like, what I thought was the whole point of the book was just the second piece of the process that I lay out in this book.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:02]:
It would be so interesting if we could see into the parallel world where you didn’t do it this way and wrote it on your own and see what book you ended up with there versus the book you ended up with here. Yes.
Kelly Flanagan [00:10:17]:
I— it’s inconceivable to me And it’s hard for me to think about going back. And I, I think there is a kind of book in which I’d want to go back and write it completely on my own, but it’s hard to imagine going back to writing a book like this completely on my own. I mean, I have a general sense of what it would be, and it would be a different book. I’d be a different person. Yeah. Right? Like, the way the process shaped me as an author and as a person. Um, I’d be showing up to my family differently. It’s just wild.
Kelly Flanagan [00:10:50]:
So, um, yeah, it takes a village. In some cases, and this time it really did.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:55]:
Yeah. It’s fascinating to me though when you say that the engagement was more important to you than the positive feedback or the negative feedback because that is a hard thing for most people to navigate. Mm-hmm. And, you know, especially with a new project. Mm-hmm. You can really end up all up in your head and convinced that this was a dumb idea and— Right. —I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m gonna, you know, go play basketball
Kelly Flanagan [00:11:24]:
Ah, that’s so good. Well, and for those of you who are listening to this conversation for the first time, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to the— I think probably the first one we had about Loveable, would be my guess. And, uh, my first book, Loveable, uh, was mostly written just in a room by myself. And, and that book was really about the experience of shame, which is what you’re getting at. Like, to have people giving you all this different feedback and critique and so on, like, that could really hook into your shame, like your belief that you’re not good enough, and really stir that up. Right. And, uh, you know, I have those moments for sure. I’ve had one today.
Kelly Flanagan [00:12:03]:
But generally speaking, for me in the 7 to 8 years since, since Loveable was published, what I’ve discovered is that there’s sort of a layer of pain underneath my shame. And that layer of pain underneath my shame is loneliness. And that actually my shame arose. Out of my own effort to explain my loneliness, right? Like, I feel alone and separate and disconnected, and I wonder why that is. And then like 6 or 7-year-old me was like, it must be me, I must be the problem, right? There must be something wrong with me, and my shame is born, right? But really, that shame was just my effort to explain why it felt so lonely in here. And, uh, so sure, maybe some of that feedback early in the process hooked into my shame here and there, but much more frequently it was a for the loneliness, right? Uh, way more of a gift that, you know, than a, a curse in that sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:01]:
[Speaker:TARA_WEST] That is so interesting. [Speaker:CHRIS_BREMER] Yeah. [Speaker:TARA_WEST] Yeah. I mean, and that’s clearly enough to outweigh the confusion of conflicting feedback and, you know, which is the other thing that, that kind of, as a creativity coach, would sort of make me go, be really careful who you’re going to share that with right now. Til you can— til you have enough that you know where you are so that you can take that feedback in the best possible way. And yet you just jumped right in.
Kelly Flanagan [00:13:34]:
Well, you’re offering very wise guidance. I’m hearing my, my literary agent who’s sort of a— she’s a content-oriented agent. She helps— she’s helped me to sort of shape all of my books as well. So I haven’t been totally alone, but, uh, she had some similar reservations about like, you know, like, go easy on yourself. Don’t take it too seriously. Are you sure you want to do this? Uh, and yeah, I would just say overall it was an incredible, uh, incredible win. Um, the moments in which it caused me to doubt myself were, you know, those are opportunities. Uh, and I talk about it a little bit in this next book, uh, The Road Less Triggered.
Kelly Flanagan [00:14:13]:
Those are opportunities to hold space for the part of you that is doubting itself. Mm-hmm. This part of you that is carrying your shame, that 6 or 7-year-old little boy in me, for instance, who’s like, uh-oh, maybe I’m the problem, right? And those are opportunities to go, oh dude, like these people just care about you and they want to see this be the best thing that it can. And I get how you could second guess yourself on this, but, uh, we’re, we’re in really, we’re really in good shape here, you know, and sort of coach that. That, that insecure part of you through it. So there was some coaching that happened early on. But I, again, I think they were opportunities, you know, not, not, you know, necessarily trials.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:56]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I just have to say, since you mentioned Loveable, if anybody’s listening to this and has not read Loveable, I love Loveable. I have read it twice. I’ve actually been thinking I should sit down and read it again because it’s been a while. It is just such a beautiful and affirming and, and just— it’s like, you know, if a book could give you a nice warm hug and a cup of cocoa, that’s what Loveable is, at least in my experience. So if you haven’t read it, go check it out, or at the very least listen to our first conversation.
Kelly Flanagan [00:15:31]:
Well, and I hope listeners, like, hear humility, not narcissism, in this, but I I do the same thing. There are moments where I start to doubt my own sense of creative calling and my own worthiness. And I’ll, I’ll go— I’ll be like, didn’t I write about this in Loveable? And I’ll go back and read it. And it feels so— and it did, it felt— I mean, that was a book that was written entirely on my own in 3 months in the middle of one of the biggest transitions in my life. And it just sort of flowed out of me. And, uh, and so it does feel like those words were given to me rather than coming coming from me. And, and, uh, so I’ll go back and read them now and be like, ah, yeah, I needed to be reminded of that. So, um, yes, I would encourage anyone who needs a little bit of reminder that they’re, they’re worthy, they belong, and, and they matter, you know, go check out Loveable.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:19]:
Well, and that’s so interesting when you’re saying that you go back and, and look at it too, because I feel like sometimes I think we all have so much wisdom that we don’t recognize because when we are in ourselves, it’s this jumble of, “I don’t know what to do. Should I do this or should I do that? And if I do this, this will probably happen. And if I do this, this other thing will happen. And then there’s this other thing where I have no idea what’ll happen and ah!” And yet, when we’re talking to somebody else, these things come out of us. I mean, I have heard this in my own experience, you know, where I’m like, “Whoa, that was really smart what I just said. And I don’t know where that came from, but wow.” You know, and I go back and I’ll, you know, look at an old text conversation or an old email, you know, stumbling around in my inbox and land on something by accident and just
Kelly Flanagan [00:17:10]:
go, “Whoa, where did I get that?” That’s a great creative hack, by the way, is just be watching for what you say in conversation, whether it’s email or, you know, and yeah, be watching for the wisdom that pops out of you because it will, it will in those moments, especially it feels like it sort of came through you rather than from you. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s that, that moment from when I was a kid and I’d be reading something and it’d be, you know, so-and-so heard themselves saying, I’m like, what the heck does that mean? And then you hear it when you’ve got words that you don’t know where they came from coming out of your— like, that’s, that’s what they meant.
Kelly Flanagan [00:17:43]:
That’s honestly, I don’t know if we’ve, I’ve ever said this, but like, that’s the thing I enjoy most about being an interviewee on a podcast like this is the way something— some sort of wisdom or insight will get co-created in the conversation and go, “Oh man, like how much is in this next book of mine that was just said out loud in those community calls, right?” That never would have come through if that conversation hadn’t been happening. So I, I think, I think conversations themselves are co-creative events, and we just sort of need to make sure we’re bearing witness to them.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:20]:
[Speaker:TSC] I think that is very true. And I’ve also noticed in the last year You know, if I sit down to write something and I’ve just got too much in my head, or I know it has to be really simple and I don’t know how I’m gonna make it simple, I have actually started picking up my phone and talking into my voice recorder. [Speaker:NICK] Perfect. [Speaker:KRISTI] Because I know that what’s gonna come out of me that way will be more simple and streamlined in all likelihood than if I sit down and get all writer-y about it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:18:52]:
100%. I was actually just doing that before this call. I was just into my notes app, you know, about something that I’m working on and some stuff was coming out. I was like, oh man, that would’ve never come out through my fingertips. Um, yeah. And if for me, if I can also be walking and doing that, like there’s something about the body in motion that sort of gets some sort of creative pump flowing. And, uh, I remember in writing Loveable in particular, every time I’d get stuck in sitting at the desk, I’d just get up and go for a walk around the block and, and dictate out loud and something would get unstuck very quickly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:22]:
Yeah, you know, writers have been talking about the power of walking for centuries. Mm-hmm. And it’s still just as true now as it was then. There is something magical that happens between moving and the change of scene and whatever you see in that change of scene and whatever.
Kelly Flanagan [00:19:42]:
Yeah. There have been a handful of times where I’m not even out the driveway, you know, and I’m like, “Oh!” I turn around and I run in and I, you know, capture what— just got unstuck on the way to the end of the driveway. So, yeah, it’s powerful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:54]:
That was the reason I first bought a voice recorder attachment for my iPod before we had these phones in our pockets. Yeah. Because I thought, “I need a way to record this stuff while I’m driving without, you know, crashing my car.”
Kelly Flanagan [00:20:08]:
You were doing that early on. You were an early adopter of the,
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:11]:
of the voice recorder.
Kelly Flanagan [00:20:12]:
Apparently. Uh-huh.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:13]:
Yep. Yeah, because I would be driving along somewhere, and all of a sudden, one of my characters would start talking to me, and I’d be like, “You realize this is not the opportuni—” moment. I am not in a place where I can do something with this information right now. And I’m gonna forget it by the time I get home.
Kelly Flanagan [00:20:29]:
And so— Is that where they really start talking? Like driving, the shower?
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:32]:
Driving, in the shower. Every good idea comes out of the shower.
Kelly Flanagan [00:20:36]:
Hey, isn’t that something? Yeah, they’re like, “Oh, you’ve got space for me now. Okay, I’ll talk to you.”
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:41]:
Yeah, right? Your left brain is occupied with the other thing. And at least that’s, that’s my theory. I think I’ve heard other people say that too, so I don’t know. But But yeah, it’s like, you had to pick right now. I’m glad you’re here, but you had to pick this
Kelly Flanagan [00:21:01]:
moment.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:01]:
Hmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:21:02]:
Yeah. Something you said earlier about, you know, creatives getting stuck between options, uh, ties directly to one of the most— to me, the most exciting concepts about this next book that I wrote, Less Triggered. And I, I’ve been using this hack and I think creatives will find it particularly helpful. What I’ve discovered is that we often think we’re trying to make decisions on a single plane. And, and so, should I work on this book today, or should I work on this project today? And, uh, and so, like, it’s an either-or sort of dimension. And what I’ve been doing with any decision that I’m making is I just overlay another dimension right on that, and it’s the dimension of open-heartedness versus closed-heartedness. So it’s not, do I do I work on A or B today? It’s, do I work on A open-heartedly, or do I work on A with a closed heart? Do I work on B open-heartedly, or do I work on B with a closed heart? And what you’ll often see, especially for creatives who are trying to make decisions, is that their heart can be open to one of those decisions but not the other. And that’s the way then to go, um, is which direction does my heart open up to in this moment? And really what we’re describing there is following your intuition.
Kelly Flanagan [00:22:15]:
You know, basically. Yeah. Uh, but just adding, the decision is not, what am I going to do? But what can I do with an open heart today? And if I did, how would I do it? So for what it’s worth, that’s, that’s a hack that has arisen out of this new project that’s been serving my creativity.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:30]:
I’m curious because I’ll often tell people, you know, you’ve got 3 different things that you want to work on, but you don’t know which one to do today, which one is calling to you, which one pulls you in that you have the energy for. Yeah, go use the energy for that instead of trying to fake it with the other ones. Yeah. How much do you think that is an overlap with what you just described?
Kelly Flanagan [00:22:53]:
Yeah, I think calling to you, that, that sense of, of being called to it, of your energy gathering around it, of your joy sort of percolating a little bit at the idea of it. Like, I think all of those things— energy joy, enthusiasm, intuition, excitement are all things that sort of flow through us when our hearts open. So when something naturally opens our heart, it opens up and those experiences start to flow through. So I think those— I think, I think they’re all sort of fit together as a bundle for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:27]:
Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:23:28]:
Okay.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:29]:
Yep, that’s, that’s how it sounded to me.
Kelly Flanagan [00:23:32]:
So I think, I think you’re right on. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:35]:
[Speaker:Tippett] Yeah. Before we get more into the book, I do want to just kind of mention, see what you think about— you know, when we were talking about how people were responding to those early drafts in print, I think that there was, you know, on the Zoom calls, it’s a very different thing because— and maybe because you’re more asking for people’s questions and comments than their actual feedback. But I’m kind of not surprised that you got so much more value out of that because it was more like a conversation about the topic. Is that how it seemed to you?
Kelly Flanagan [00:24:13]:
[Speaker:CB] Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I, I wanted it to be a conversation about the specific topic for the chapter that I was presenting, um, but not just a conversation about the ideas, but a conversation about like, how does this apply to your life? You know, what are the situations in which you can feel these concepts come alive, and in what situations are they helpful versus not helpful. So that to me was the, the willingness of the participants to be vulnerable about how it intersected with their own lives and situations was what made those, those conversations really powerful. You know, it was those, those moments around, this is happening with my, you know, so-and-so, and I’m not quite sure how it would apply to that. Those conversations really generated some powerful creativity.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:58]:
So if you do your next book this way, are you still gonna put drafts out for everybody to read, or are you mostly going to focus on the Zoom thing, or some other combination?
Kelly Flanagan [00:25:10]:
That’s a good question. Uh, so this is interesting. Uh, I have— I’ve published 3 previous books, and every time I have finished the main draft, you know, not the rough draft, but— and not the final draft, but like, okay, it’s pretty much locked in the solid draft, we’ll call it. Every time I finish the solid draft for those other books, I’ve started working on the next one. And people will say, well, hold on, there was— there’s gonna be 3 years between these 2 books. Well, that’s because I wrote another book in between that I’m not publishing yet, right? So I like, um, it’s the second novel that I have not, um, published. But I, in fact, going back to that concept of what opens your heart, whereas you’re, you know, over the last Christmas break, I, I had all this time where I was supposed be working on this current nonfiction book, and I— yet I had this like second novel in the drawer that was just dying to be edited. And I noticed that like I had joy when I thought about that, and I had desolation when I thought about working on this, this new book.
Kelly Flanagan [00:26:11]:
So I went back and I just edited the second novel that is, you know, who knows if it’ll ever even be published. Uh, so I do think that is a useful tool for guiding us moment to moment. It was just for a couple weeks, and then I went back, and then my joy was there for this, this new project. So I have historically always started to work on the next project. That hasn’t happened this time, which is really interesting to me. There’s a sense that I— and it’s a, it’s an intuitive sense, it doesn’t feel like a blockage or anything— that I want to camp out here for a while. So it’s like hard to even like think about the next project yet. Um, a couple people have mentioned that to me and it’s like, I, I’m not ready for that yet, um, and I don’t know why that is, but I’m gonna sort of trust that there’s a reason I want to camp out here for a while, and there must be more to create in this space is all I can think of, and I haven’t seen it yet.
Kelly Flanagan [00:27:12]:
So, so for right now, I’m not sure, um, and the only thing that would keep me from The only thing that would cause me to do it differently next time is that I’m not sure how totally fair it was to readers to like just be throwing out chapters there where I didn’t even have an official concept, you know, and people get excited about that and then it just sort of goes off the radar for a while. I’m not sure how that fair that is. I might wait till it’s a little more locked in to start workshopping it with, with our community, but, um, But we’ll see. I’m not sure what— I’m not sure what the next thing is even yet.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:50]:
So— You may come up with some— some new thing between now and then.
Kelly Flanagan [00:27:54]:
Yeah. Do something.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. So since you’ve mentioned the, you know, the openheartedness in terms of following that to figure out what you want to work on, I would love for you to give us an explanation of exactly what that means for people who have never really heard that or thought about it before.
Kelly Flanagan [00:28:13]:
Open-heartedness. Yeah. Uh, th— this is a great example, ’cause now I’m immediately thinking back to the first community conversation we had. ‘Cause you, you, you follow our open-heartedness, the concept and the practice of it, all the way to its conclusion, and you know how beautiful and wonderful and good it is. But you lay that out to somebody for the first time, and you start to get reactions, right? And one of the most common reactions I got was the sense that, like, open-heartedness leaves you entirely weak and vulnerable. You could become a doormat without boundaries, you know, and, and really sort of that like tense— that tightening, basically closing your heart to the concept of open-heartedness, right? And so, right, irony alert. I realized I had to get much clearer about what I meant by open-heartedness. And one of the things I will almost always say at the outset of the conversation is, let’s be clear, openheartedness doesn’t make your boundaries weaker, it makes them wiser, right? Like, I think that need— that reassurance needs to be put out there right out front.
Kelly Flanagan [00:29:19]:
I don’t know if I can remember the, the actual pithy definition off my head, but let’s see if I can try. Openheartedness is the willingness to be fully present to what’s happening right now as it is without changing anything at all, even when it’s not going the way you want it to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:42]:
Yeah, that’s, that’s the thing where it’s
Kelly Flanagan [00:29:43]:
like— I know, just hearing you say
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:45]:
that again, it’s like, how?
Kelly Flanagan [00:29:49]:
And, and what I want to be clear with people about is it doesn’t mean you’re not going to act on that thing in the next moment, okay? Um, but fully experiencing what’s going on so that you can act more wisely in the next moment, right? You’re opening your heart to the way that this is and being fully present to it. Uh, and what we discover is that we’re walking around most of our lives with our hearts relatively closed to most of what’s happening. Uh, and because of that, we’re losing access to our greatest wisdom about how to show up in any given moment. Uh, so this is really about learning how to show up wisely, calmly, uh, untriggered and connected. In any given moment to show up to that moment or that person in front of you with all of your best stuff. And for me, the way that started out— can I share how that started out? Yeah, please. Yeah. Um, so I think probably everybody still remembers COVID, don’t we? Like, COVID, that little, that little blip.
Kelly Flanagan [00:30:46]:
Uh, well, COVID was a rough year for me in a, in a variety of ways. It started out before COVID with, uh, losing, my business partnership, uh, and my best friendship with my business partner. Then COVID hit and my wife and I suddenly had to— we were both running outpatient mental health practices at that point. I owned mine, she doesn’t own hers. And overnight we were tasked with having to turn it into a telehealth practice, which just like a day before was illegal. You weren’t allowed to do telehealth through insurance, right? So now we’re like, so there’s no infrastructure for this. Like it was illegal. And so we had to build the infrastructure, we had to build the business structure, and then we had to implement it within like weeks.
Kelly Flanagan [00:31:27]:
In order to serve our clientele and to make sure that our therapists were getting paid. And it was incredibly stressful. Meanwhile, the kids are now schooling at home. You know, we’ve got kids in early high school all the way down to late elementary school. They’re becoming zombies, man. They’re just like becoming addicted to the screens by the minute. And, um, in the middle of all that, my wife convinced me, hey, all the public pools are shutting down for the summer. Can we finally get that above-ground pool I’ve been wanting? I’m like, okay, uh, we get it installed.
Kelly Flanagan [00:32:01]:
She’s filling it up on a Sunday. She hangs the hose over the edge of the pool and then puts a rock on it to hold it there. The rock wasn’t heavy enough, and so we let it go for hours. Yeah, we walk out like hours later and the backyard is like a lake and there’s nothing in the pool. And I got triggered. I lost my stuff and I was like, anything I say or do right now is going to be a disaster, so I’m just going to blow off all this anger on a bike ride, right? Uh, not the smartest thing to do, driving 35 miles per hour on a bike when you’re angry and not making good decisions. And anyways, I, I went over the handlebars, broke my collarbone in two places on an asphalt road. It never healed.
Kelly Flanagan [00:32:39]:
Um, I’ve got two hinges in that collarbone. They’re called fibrous non-union fractures, I think, or something like that. Anyways, I get to the end of 2020 and I’m completely out of shape, uh, and you know, it’s long recovery from the collarbone thing. I’ve been drinking COVID wine to stay sane, you know. Um, I That’s a technical term, COVID wine. But, uh, so anyways, I get to the end of that year and I’m like, New Year’s Eve, I’m thinking about what am I gonna do to get my body in shape? And I’m looking at all these New Year’s resolutions while I’m listening to an audiobook in the background. And the author says in the middle of that, um, do not let anything in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it. Do not let anything in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:33:23]:
And it sort of broke through all my thoughts and static and And I just heard that you’re, you’re in this situation right now that you’re in, not because of what’s been happening, but because of how you’ve been reacting to it. You’re reacting with a closed heart to everything, and it’s creating immeasurable suffering for you. And so I went into 2021 with a New Year’s resolution that was not about my physical heart, but my spiritual, emotional heart. And it was moment to moment, I’ll try to notice my heart closing and open it back up. I try to notice my heart closing and open it back up. And, uh, and here we are years later, and it is really my singular spiritual practice. It is, it is what I’m doing moment to moment, is noticing my heart closing and trying to open it back up. Well, at first I couldn’t do it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:34:12]:
I mean, it was wild. I, I can will most things, right? I could will us to make that transition to an online telehealth practice. I couldn’t will myself to, to be less triggered and to keep my heart open and to stay present to the situation. Um, and so I started exploring all of like the world’s wisdom traditions and, you know, spiritual literal literature, psychological literature. There’s no— everyone agreed you should keep your heart open. Like, that’s, that’s, that’s how you will show up best to your life. No one would talk about how to do it. Even the, the audiobook I was listening to, he just kept saying the way you do it is to just relax and release.
Kelly Flanagan [00:34:49]:
And I was like, I was like, it’s not— it’s not working for me in the moment. As if that should be that easy, right? And so I was like, okay, I guess if there’s going to be a curriculum for open-heartedness, I’m gonna have to write it. And that’s ultimately what this, this book turned into, is the, the process that you can go through to learn to keep your heart open in any moment that you’re triggered, so you can show up with your wisest stuff rather than your most
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:16]:
dysregulated stuff. Yeah, I think that that’s also why so many people are like, what the heck does that even mean? Yeah. You know, because that’s not— it’s not how our society operates, especially these days.
Kelly Flanagan [00:35:30]:
Yeah, you notice that people are a bit on a hair trigger. Uh-huh. And, and there’s even— I mean, we live in a world where social media algorithms actually validate being triggered. Yes. You know, it’s the, the algorithms actually depend upon you being dysregulated, um, and responding defensively to everything in order to keep your attention and to create online interaction. And so we’re at a point now where that’s almost become normalized, and we wonder why culture and society and civilization is breaking down. It’s because you can’t be dysregulated and connected at the same time. Right? Um, culture depends upon shared human connection.
Kelly Flanagan [00:36:13]:
And so if we’re dysregulated, it has to start with taking ownership of that moment where we’re getting dysregulated and learning how to calm our nervous system so that we can reengage with what’s really happening in the moment. Uh, so in that moment, we get triggered, our heart shuts down, no connection is possible at that point. Only conflict can stem from that moment, and we have to take ownership of that moment to do something differently.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like too, there’s so much conversation about nervous system regulation these days. There is.
Kelly Flanagan [00:36:46]:
Yeah, there is. I— the way I see that is that we’re, we’re sort of making a leap forward, I think, in human consciousness. You see it everywhere. You see everywhere this discussion of nervous system regulation, triggers, trauma, uh, you see an increased awareness that— think about it like this, uh, our nervous system is a good thing. It’s specifically designed to be triggered, to shut off our higher mind and our thinking and our wisest decisions, to respond and react immediately, right? So that’s a good thing. It’s why we’re here. Like, we wouldn’t have made it this far without it. Problem is, it’s specifically designed— it’s only supposed to fire up when you’re being existentially threatened, like when your life— when you’re in mortal danger.
Kelly Flanagan [00:37:37]:
It’s only supposed to fire when the tiger on the Serengeti is staring you down, right? That’s when it’s supposed to fire. Uh, and for most of us now, it’s firing all the time in every situation. So we are naturally behaving as if our life is being threatened I just wrote a post about that this week. Like, you know, your, your wife says, hey, can you pick up bananas from the store on the way home? Right? And so you go to the store on the way home and you’ve got the kids and you remember when you’re there that you’re supposed to get milk and, and, uh, the kid pulls the other kid’s hair and everybody’s screaming. So you grab the milk and you run out of the store and you get home and your wife’s like, where are the bananas? And your nervous system gets triggered. Yeah. Right? You get— you, you can feel it, that flip in the stomach, that tightening, like at the— in the sternum, the little tightness in your chest. Your nervous system is getting triggered.
Kelly Flanagan [00:38:25]:
As if you’re about to be devoured by a tiger, right? And I think there’s an increasing awareness and consciousness across sort of the human project that, uh, we need to reverse that trend. Uh, we need to return the nervous system to its rightful place, which is to keep us alive in situations that pose mortal danger, and everywhere else, it’s not serving us well. So we have to take responsibility for that and get our higher minds back online.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:52]:
Yeah, that feels so gargantuan when I hear you say that, you know, because there are so many of us and it’s so easy to be triggered over the stupidest things. And I know for me, you know, if it, if it happens, especially, and I think, I think this is both the best and worst example, probably, you know, in an online conversation. So it’s somebody you’ve never met before, in all likelihood. And they say something and they imply something about you that isn’t true, and immediately, you know, that urge to just let loose with, you know, “You don’t even know me and how dare you say,” you know, whatever, you know, all the different variations on that. It is really, really, really hard. Even when that angel on your shoulder is trying to pull you back, to
Kelly Flanagan [00:39:50]:
listen to the angel on your shoulder? Yeah, that, that you literally can’t. Like, that, that angel on your shoulder, um, when your nervous system is triggered, it’s telling your entire being that you’re in mortal danger. So to listen to an angel on your shoulder going, oh, they’re fine, you know, don’t react this way, settle down— that angel’s absurd. Uh, your nervous system’s like, that— we’re not listening to that, that’s absurdity. And so in order to listen to that angel on your shoulder, you have to get the nervous system unregulated. You have to get your response under control. That’s why the first part of the process that I talk about in the book is get calm, right? A 3-step process where you start to put your body to work for you rather than against you, and you start to actually learn the really early subtle warning signs. Like, by the time you get triggered on— in that Facebook feed, if you’re really paying attention to that, your body, you’ll notice that you started scrolling and you were already sort of slightly dysregulated, right? If you can notice it at that point, you’ve given yourself a window of time where you could begin to observe all of the ways you may act out defensively and aggressively, and you have some opportunity to, before the nervous system is telling you you’re in mortal danger completely, you have some time to decide, is that how I want to show up today? Do I want to show up defensively and aggressively? Is that going to feel good at the end of the day for me? Am I going to feel like I accomplished something at the end of the day? Probably not.
Kelly Flanagan [00:41:15]:
Probably not. Uh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna feel even more frazzled. So you have that opportunity then to get that under control and then to actually kind of come to the source of the dysregulation, your own nervous system. And get it, get it regulated before you engage with anybody. This is one of the most important principles that we talk about in the book is you calm yourself before you connect yourself. Any attempt to connect yourself in order to calm yourself is gonna go haywire. Uh, and so go ahead and create that powerful pause to calm yourself before you connect yourself. And if you can’t calm yourself first, don’t bother trying to connect.
Kelly Flanagan [00:41:48]:
It’ll just turn
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:51]:
into conflict. That also sounds so easy, Kelly,
Kelly Flanagan [00:41:56]:
and yet— and it takes some practice. It takes some practice. You know, I, candidly, uh, I started practicing openheartedness, which starts with nervous system regulation, at the beginning of 2021. And we were sitting down at the end of 2021 to talk about our family’s sort of vision for the next year and the thing we wanted to practice together. And we’d just gotten back from a Christmas trip to Mexico, uh, and my wife said, hey, why don’t you tell the kids about what you’ve been practicing all year? She’s talking about openheartedness. So I told the kids about it, and, and I won’t give you all the backstory on this, but I am notoriously an anxious, traumatized traveler. Like, I do not handle stress in transit well at all. And, but I’ve been practicing for a year.
Kelly Flanagan [00:42:44]:
I’ve been practicing openheartedness. I’ve been practicing that. And so I tell the kids about about it. And my 12-year-old daughter at the time, she looks at me and she says, huh, that must be why every time something went wrong on the way to Mexico, I looked at you and felt calm. Ooh, it makes me tearful just talking about it right now. That the promise of open-heartedness is becoming the soothed nervous system that soothes nervous systems, the calm soul that calms souls, you know, the open heart that opens hearts, that You, you don’t— I like to say that you don’t have power over people, but you have power around people, right? The presence with which you show up impacts and influences the people around you. Um, and that was such a tangible reinforcement of that when she looked at me and said that, because I’m not the guy you typically look at in the airport to feel calm, right? But just a year of practicing this, and all of a sudden I wasn’t just changing me. I mean, I was changing the energy and the safety of our family system as we move through the world.
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:45]:
So, um, you’re right, it doesn’t happen overnight, um, but when it does happen, it has tremendous power and it’s all worth it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:53]:
This feels to me like one of those things— I can’t remember what, what it was that popped into my head not long ago— where it was like, oh yeah, I never did that thing that I wanted to do because it felt like it was going to take forever. But if I’d started 3 months ago
Kelly Flanagan [00:44:08]:
3 months in by now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:10]:
Uh, yeah. You know, like, this feels like that kind of thing where you just like, it’s gonna take forever and it’s not gonna feel like I’m doing anything for a while. And yet, you know, if you don’t do it, you’re gonna look back and go, huh, where would I be now if I had actually started that thing anyway?
Kelly Flanagan [00:44:24]:
It’s that old, like, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:28]:
Is now. Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:44:30]:
Yeah. But what I will say, and, and to simplify it for everybody, cuz we could start to talk about the nervous system and, you know, existential threats, keep in mind, you just have to start where I started. Moment to moment, I’ll notice my heart closing and try to open it back up. And I will tell you that if you practice that for one day, relatively consistently for a day, your consciousness will already be transforming. You’ll be, you’ll be just going through your day and going, oh, heart closed there, right? Could feel it in my chest. Oh, wow. I’ve, I, that’s really strange. I didn’t think my heart closed right before I picked my daughter up for school, but as she was getting in the car, I felt it tightening.
Kelly Flanagan [00:45:06]:
Oh, that’s interesting. I wonder what that’s about. Um, and I’ll tell you, for me, it’s because I ask about her day and she says good, and I want to tear my hair out, whatever’s left of it, you know, like, but like,
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:17]:
my 13-year-old nephew is like that. We’ve made it a joke between the two of us now.
Kelly Flanagan [00:45:20]:
But yeah, yeah, well, and then when I— so my heart closes, you know, I get the ‘it was fine’ answer, and then I start to do all the controlling things you do, right, when your heart is closed, instead of staying open-hearted and really trying to be in connection rather than in control. And then things actually start to change. Ironically. So all of that to say, moment to moment, I’ll notice my heart closing and try to open it back up. It’s that simple. And, and change will start to flow actually very quickly just from that awareness. Um, and boy, if you have somebody that like you’re reading through this book with and you can actually say— they know what you’re talking about when you say my heart just closed— and you can say that, oh my goodness, I just noticed my heart close when you said that. The confession of a closing heart is the beginning of opening it, right? So as soon as you say, oh, my heart just closed, all of a sudden it’s more open, right? And the other person’s like, I sense that it was closing, and usually you do X, Y, and Z, and this is way more pleasant than X, Y, and Z.
Kelly Flanagan [00:46:22]:
And all of a sudden you’re more connected, just acknowledging that your heart was tempted to close there. So the, the change actually, um, —can some of the most reinforcing and exciting changes actually come really quickly and powerfully. What you discover then, as that starts to happen, is that there’s a few moments that are actually going to require a lot more work on that nervous system. And those moments that, you know, most of us try to avoid those moments in life, or we sort of did detest those moments because they feel like stuck, triggered moments that we can’t get over. But as you enter into this process of becoming less triggered, you actually start to see those moments as X’s on a treasure map. Map where you’re like, oh, I’ve only got a few X’s on my treasure map actually, where I, I really can’t get unstuck from this trigger. But if I dig into that moment, there’s tremendous treasure for my personal and emotional and relational growth. So the changes will come quickly, and then the deep change will come over time.
Kelly Flanagan [00:47:19]:
Interesting. Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:19]:
You know, as, as I’m listening to you and you’re talking about things like tightness and control versus connection, I’m wondering, you know, cause I’m sure that plenty of people are listening to this going, How in the heck am I supposed to know the difference? I mean, aside from I want to rip this guy’s head off, that’s pretty obvious.
Kelly Flanagan [00:47:38]:
How do we tell? Well, so what’s interesting is actually my earliest introduction to the concept of openheartedness and closeheartedness was, um, about 18 months before that New Year’s resolution, except I just totally— like, like many of the listeners today will do is they’ll, they’ll put it off until they absolutely need it, right? Um, But it was— I was co-facilitating a couples retreat, and my co-facilitator, uh, asked the couples to turn their chairs to face each other, knees touching, eyes locked. And then she said, uh, all right, on the count of 3, do exactly what I say. 1, 2, 3. Close your hearts to each other. Keep the other person out. Think about the ways that they’ve hurt you. Think about the ways you need to defend yourself against them. Think about all the things you resent.
Kelly Flanagan [00:48:25]:
Think about all of the, the things that you can’t forgive. Keep them out, don’t let them in. 1, 2, 3, open your hearts to each other. Think about why you married this person in the first place. Think about all the things you’re grateful for that are in your life that wouldn’t be possible without them. Think about the times they’ve been kind to you. Think about your desire to be in deeper connection with them. One, two, three, close your hearts to each other.
Kelly Flanagan [00:48:56]:
And then she did this like a number of times, and, and so then she brought everybody together after maybe 10 minutes of that, and she said, okay, so what was it like when your hearts were closed to each other? And what was interesting is that everybody sort of intuitively knew, right? We know when we’re entering into protection mode in our mind and spirit and body, we know what that feels like in there. And when we’re in connection mode, we also know what that feels like. I mean, 10 out of 10 connection mode is the day you fell in love, right? Or the day you decided to get married, or the day you got married. And 10 out of 10 protection mode is like, I’m not sure, I want to cut this person out of my life forever, right? Um, my wife, God bless her, recently after a recent bike ride, she’s so frustrated with the way that it went and how I, uh, rode along with her. She pulls in the garage, I’m never riding with you ever again, right? That’s a death protection mode. We all know what that feels like. Um, but what they said, and what is really important, is, is how bodily it is, right? Waist to your temples, that’s where you’ll feel your heart closing in your body. No one’s ever said like, my heart closed and my toes cramped.
Kelly Flanagan [00:49:59]:
Like, it’s not in that space in the body, right? You, you feel the— you do feel the flip of the stomach and the tightness in the chest, or the tension in the jaw, or the throbbing in the temples. You, you feel those sort of physiological signs that go along with and all the defensive thoughts that start to kick in on the heels of that. Um, whereas they— all the couples agreed on the same thing. They, you know, an open heart, they felt like that sort of warm, like, endorphin adrenaline feeling of relaxation that comes after a good run. They felt gratitude, they felt affection, they felt tenderness, they felt safety, right? Like all of those sorts of things. So the signature of open-heartedness and closed-heartedness in our thoughts, bodies, and actions I think we sort of all intuitively know what it is. We just don’t have a, a label to give to it. But what was really interesting about that day was, uh, what she said next.
Kelly Flanagan [00:50:52]:
She goes, yeah, I knew you would sort of know what open-heartedness and closed-heartedness feel like. What you didn’t realize prior to today is that you had a choice. Yeah, moment to moment, you had a choice. And what happens is we think that when X, Y, and Z happens, our heart’s automatically closed. And when A, B, and C happens, our hearts automatically open. But the reality is there’s just a very, very tiny window in there in which we’re actually making a choice to open or close to those things. Now, when our heart— when A, B, and C happens and our heart opens, it doesn’t feel like— it just feels natural, right? Like, the Cubs won last night, they extended their, you know, like, that kind of thing. Okay, then I celebrate the team’s win, my heart’s open.
Kelly Flanagan [00:51:33]:
Um, but think about if you’re in a different mood and the Cubs one, right? And all of a sudden, it’s like you choose not to open your heart to that. You’re really upset because your ex-girlfriend is a Cubs fan, and now you hate them. You know, like, you’re, you’re making— in the same situations, you’re making some choices to close or open. And, uh, and so this is a very, very empowering sort of idea, which is that, whoa, there is a little window in which I am choosing to close my heart. And by the way, when our heart’s closed, we’re miserable all the time. Um, there’s nothing fun about having your heart closed, and I’m choosing that in order to stay safe, in order to sort of show up defended and protected. I’m choosing misery, and there’s a window that I could start to expand and make a different choice and choose to show up open-heartedly and choose to show up with joy and enthusiasm and tenderness and compassion and curiosity. So that’s what— that’s hopefully what this book is going to offer for people.
Kelly Flanagan [00:52:30]:
And I do think that’s the thing that starts to change really quickly, is you see your window. Oh, there’s my window. I was just about to choose it. Oh, there’s my window. I did choose it. And you start to expand that window a little bit and realize you’ve got a choice. And now all you’ve got to figure out how to do is make the choice you actually want to make as often as possible. Then, then that’s when things go
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:55]:
deeper. Wow. It’s, it’s so interesting to me because I think, you know, we have all of these body sensations that we’ve kind of been taught to ignore. And so much of this seems to be, you know, how, how your chest feels, how that tightness, that flip in your stomach and all of that, that, that a lot of us just don’t even think to notice. It’s just kind of like background noise. Yeah. So, you know, I feel like the first thing you have to do is start paying attention to that kind of stuff. I mean, obviously when you want to rip the guy’s head off, it’s pretty obvious.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:32]:
But in other circumstances, not so much until you get used to looking for it, I think.
Kelly Flanagan [00:53:38]:
Yeah, in the book I share some scientific data that shows that by the time we’re acting, behaving in a close-hearted, defensive, protective way, um, the cat’s sort of out of the bag, right? Like, it’s— now you’ve got it, you’re rupturing things, you’ve got repair to do, or, you know. But there’s some data that shows that if you use your body’s early warning signs that your heart’s about to close, you get an 80% an earlier warning that your heart is about to close, 80% more than behavioral warnings give you. And so, yeah, that subtle attunement to the ebbs and flows of your body, I mean, it can expand the size of that window of choice by 80%, which is no, no small thing. Like, there’s a lot you can do with 80% more space to choose.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:20]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I— it just is returning me to the philosophy that I have that, you know, having that sense trained out of us, you know, that everything in life happens between the neck and the top of the head, is such a huge
Kelly Flanagan [00:54:38]:
disservice to us all. That’s right. Yeah, we— the, the last 300 to 400 years have really focused on us on the magnificence of cognition, which is— it is magnificent, right? The human mind that can think and plan, organize, control, manipulate. I mean, it’s incredible. But that those last 300, 400 years have for the most part detached us from the wisdom of our bodies. In fact, they’ve sort of caused us to think of our bodies as the problem. Yeah, like when you have that tightness in your chest, you think that’s, that’s the problem, is my— it’s kind of got some sort of stress or anxiety here. And then what you do is you project that problem, you go, you caused that.
Kelly Flanagan [00:55:22]:
And so to get rid of this in here, I’ve got to get you to change what you’re doing out there. Um, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never actually been able to get to change anything about anybody else in my whole life, my children included, right? So this is really a recapturing of a more ancient sort of knowing that our bodies are our friends. Um, they’re our messengers, and if we’re attuned to them, they can, um, they can really serve us well. I mean, to get back to creativity, I, I mean, I’ve come to the point where I think writer’s block is just a closed heart, right? Interesting, right? That you’re sitting— I mean, if you think about it, creativity flows up from this deep, soulful, creative place in us, um, if depending on who you are, potentially through the soul from a different dimension, right? And when you close your heart, you’re blocking that flow. And when you sit down at a blank page you know, and your nervous system starts to act like it’s facing a tiger, and you go, uh-oh, like, what if I don’t have anything meaningful to say? Or what if I do and nobody cares? And which, by the way, you’re back into the loneliness stuff, you know, and the worthiness stuff again. Then your, your heart starts to close to this present moment of sitting here with a blank page, and now you’re disconnected from your creativity And now all of a sudden it seems true, I don’t have anything to say. Um, when in reality the question in this moment is, can you open your heart in the presence of a blank page? And if you can, the creativity will flow. It’s, it’s as close to a law as, as you can get.
Kelly Flanagan [00:57:05]:
If your heart’s open, words will come. If your heart’s closed, it’s very hard for them to come. Or the words that— we’ve all had that, to actually put words on the page with a closed heart, it’s just torturous, isn’t it? It’s like this clunky stuff and you’re just trying to fight through it. But sometimes that’s the way to get it open, right? Is, oh, my heart’s closed and this is clunky writing today, but I’m going to keep going. And all of a sudden, oh, that— and then you’re like, oh, I can write, and your heart starts to open. So that’s, to me, this, this process of open-heartedness is also essential to the creative act as well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:39]:
That makes a lot of sense to me, you know. I mean, It— what you just said goes back to that whole idea that if you have no idea what to write, just write, “I don’t know what to write.” You know, write whatever crap pops into your head, get it out, and eventually you will get past it and get to something that’s, that’s worthwhile. But also, just this morning, I saw a quote from Margaret Atwood that I’m probably not gonna get completely right, that basically said, you know, if, if you’re having trouble starting writing, you’re afraid of something. Something, which I think is a different way of saying what you just said. I mean, it, it makes sense to me if you are scared, if you are, you know, worried that you won’t be good enough, which is still being scared, you know, any of that, all of those voices in your head are just, you know, essentially standing there with little sticks beating on you and you can’t— Yes. You can’t get anything out of that.
Kelly Flanagan [00:58:35]:
And in the same way that we said earlier that when you’re in an interaction with somebody and you feel your heart start to close, that one of the first steps to opening is confessing it. You can confess your closed heart to the page. I’m afraid no one will like this. Um, I’m afraid my mom and dad will never really be proud of me, which is every author. Um, I’m a, you know, like, I’m a, I’m, I’m scared that I’ll lose my audience if I write— it didn’t use accomplished authors, right? I’m scared I’ll lose my audience if I pivot to this content today. Yeah, as you start to name what you’re scared of, you know, as soon as you start to name what you’re closed about, all of a sudden you’re writing. Yeah, so a lot of my writing sessions just begin with all the reasons I’m, you know, afraid to, to write, and then it gets going. That’s how you get the
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:27]:
heart open. That’s such a beautiful distillation of that whole process. You know, it’s one thing for me to sit here and say, are you afraid of this? What’s this going on? What’s all that But, but that’s just like one-stop advice.
Kelly Flanagan [00:59:42]:
Yeah. Easier said than done to fix into those shadows though, and all the things we’re afraid of. Like, I think there’s a part of us that would just rather think we have writer’s block than we’ve got— Yeah. Things we’re afraid of that we need to confess.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:54]:
It’s not me. My muse has taken off and gone on vacation to Tahiti, and it’s not my fault.
Kelly Flanagan [01:00:02]:
Oh my gosh, that’s so true. Like, think about that it— I just said, when you start to get anxious in here, you blame the person who’s in front of you, right? We start to get writer’s block and we blame the muse. The muse left. And it’s like, no, she’s here. She’s just waiting for you to open.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:16]:
Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [01:00:20]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:20]:
Yeah. Uh, I think that’s so true of so many people in so many different situations, whether they’re creative or not, is that, you know, you’ve always have access to that part of yourself, to that body wisdom that I have certainly learned over the years when I remember to pay attention to it, is almost always smarter than my brain. To that, that creative part of yourself and that, that openness that it’s so easy to fall for that illusion that it’s not there.
Kelly Flanagan [01:00:53]:
I— so I wrote about this in Loveable in the, in the third part of the book on purpose, and I didn’t have this language to put to it at that point, but, you know, basically I say something like, when people tell me they don’t know what they want to do next with their life, I’ve quit believing them. Like, basically they know, they’re just scared to admit it to themselves. And, and basically what we’re saying is their hearts are closing to the prospect of what they know they want to do next. And if they can get their hearts open to that, it’s an interesting experience because it doesn’t become less daunting to the mind, but somehow it becomes more peaceful to soul, right? Like, so that somehow the mind can be daunted and the soul can be at peace all at once if your heart’s open to, to where you know you want to go. So yeah, I, I try not to, even in my own life, but certainly not in the lives of the people I help, spend too much time in that mental, what do I want to do next? Try to spend it more in the, what scares you about what you know you want to do next? Kind
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:58]:
of thing.
Kelly Flanagan [01:02:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. For me, it’s— for me, it’s like, because I mean, for me, it’s always, well, what I want to do next is usually a little weird. And I’m pretty sure not a lot of people are interested in weird. And so now I’m back to that lonely thing, right? No one will be interested. But then to go, yeah, but that’s, that’s sort of what you feel called to. That’s what your intuition is leading you into, and everything else will be fraudulent. Vigilant.
Kelly Flanagan [01:02:27]:
Okay, well, we’re gonna go do that and, and be daunted by the loneliness of it if that’s how it turns out.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:33]:
Yeah. And I think in a lot of cases that I don’t know what I want to do is— I know what I would do in a perfect world, but I’ve been told my whole life that that’s not acceptable or not realistic or can’t be done. And therefore, it’s easier to shove it down. I think you have in Loveable that metaphor of trying to hold the beach ball under the water, you know. Right. And it’s easier to shove it down than it is to admit it to myself and have to live with the that I’m pretty sure I’m going to be judged, it’s going to be really hard, my family may just decide that I’ve completely lost my mind, you know, what— whatever it is, than to actually go and, and look at it and say, okay, is there some way that I can at least try to do this for a little while and see what happens?
Kelly Flanagan [01:03:18]:
I think that’s the brilliance of that, that question, uh, what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail, right? Because then, then you, then you can project whatever your version of failure is onto that and go— it’s starts to become clear pretty quickly. Like, you see people go, I know what I’d do if I knew it wouldn’t fail. Yeah, okay, you do know what you want to do. It’s the fear of failure that’s getting
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:39]:
in the way,
Kelly Flanagan [01:03:43]:
right? Right. Yeah. And also having to pay the bills. It’s such an inconvenient reality. It’s such an inconvenient reality. It really is. Oh, but we try to open our hearts to that reality —well.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:59]:
Yeah. Because if you don’t, you can’t figure
Kelly Flanagan [01:04:01]:
out how you might still manage to do that. Exactly. Exactly. Like, you’ll figure out your most creative, wisest way to pay the bills and do what you love if your heart’s open, for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [01:04:14]:
Yep.
Kelly Flanagan [01:04:14]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:04:14]:
Well, I think that this is a great place to leave this conversation and to remind people that they can get your book on March 3rd. And I think you mentioned there were bonuses for that.
Kelly Flanagan [01:04:25]:
Yeah, we have some incredible bonuses. So if you go to lesstriggered.com, lesstriggered.com, uh, and order the book, first of all, you won’t have to wait till March 3rd. Uh, you’ll be able to download the intro to the book today and you’ll get to experience that shift in consciousness that happens right away as you read the introduction. So I’m excited for you to be able to go get that immediately. Um, you also get to download a 90-minute masterclass on the book and on the process of becoming less triggered so that you’ll be able to sort of take what we did today and go way deeper really quickly before you get the book. And then you get a 6-month free paid subscription to our online community, The Less Triggered Tribe, on Substack. So that’s a huge value, and I would encourage people to, to go out and take advantage of that. And we’ll see you on Substack at The Less Triggered Tribe.
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:13]:
And it’s a great community. And the, the Zoom sessions are fantastic if you can make them.
Kelly Flanagan [01:05:19]:
So they’re amazing, aren’t they? I, I, I love the Fridays where we have a Zoom session because I always go into the weekend more centered. More calm, more open-hearted. So, uh, yeah, we’d love to have folks be a part of that.
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:32]:
All right, well, we’ll have all the links for that in the show notes,
Kelly Flanagan [01:05:36]:
and March 3rd, get the book. Okay, can I ask a question?
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:42]:
Yeah. Oh, here we go. You asked me a question last time. Did I? Yes,
Kelly Flanagan [01:05:48]:
you did. Ah, um, so this is, uh, this is just about your I’m just gonna throw this at you. On your birthday, what do you give to yourself on your birthday? I just had this conversation. My 21-year-old, he took 2 days off around his birthday from work. It was like first, like, sort of adult birthday. And he was like, it was miserable. I just sat around and it’s no one else’s birthday. So they’re all just working.
Kelly Flanagan [01:06:09]:
And so like you have to learn over the course of your life, like, how do you like to do your birthday? Do you have anything special you like
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:14]:
to do for your birthday? Well, I used to try to do my birthday for the entire month of October. Ooh. And in recent years, It’s kind of fallen away from me a little bit. And, you know, I was only reminded of that a couple days ago and I was like, “Oh yeah, I could just play for the whole month of October.” Um, I love that. There, there is a bakery down the street from me that only has pumpkin pie bars in October. So I will undoubtedly, probably not today, go and get one of them at some point.
Kelly Flanagan [01:06:49]:
Nice.
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:50]:
Nice. Nice. And, you know, I think usually on my birthday itself, I don’t go to work. I don’t— you know, it’s like, nope, this is my day. I am not letting anybody— I’m not giving anybody the opportunity to make my day miserable.
Kelly Flanagan [01:07:04]:
I feel very honored.
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:05]:
I feel very honored. Yes. I’m, I’m always happy to talk to you on my birthday, Kelly. But, uh, you know, try to get together with some friends, maybe watch that movie that I’ve been putting off for however long because it’s on my list, and then I look and it’s too late at night, and so I think I’ll do it the next night.
Kelly Flanagan [01:07:22]:
You know, stuff like that. I love it. So, so you have this brilliant insight that you don’t have to restrict your birthday to your birthday. Why not make it a birthday month, right? Yeah. Which, once you break the initial one-day rule, like, you can break that rule. Like, every day could— to, to everybody listening, what is one thing you could do for yourself today as if it’s your day. And then tomorrow, ask yourself the same thing. That’s— I mean, that’s a way to open your heart, right? Like, to actually— oh yeah, to what you want and what you long for, and to actually give yourself a little bit of something every day.
Kelly Flanagan [01:07:55]:
Um, if what you want is a Lamborghini, that’s not going to work out. But, you know, like, if what you want is a 15-minute walk and stillness, or an ice cream icone, or whatever— anyways, so I, I love that, and I, I’m gonna practice that myself this weekend.
Nancy Norbeck [01:08:10]:
Yeah. Yeah, I, I think all-month birthday is a great idea. I have a friend who actually plans out events for the entire month of her birthday. Ah, that’s so cool. Which I think is great too, but I’ve never been quite that ambitious.
Kelly Flanagan [01:08:22]:
Well, thank you for allowing me to be a part of yours today.
Nancy Norbeck [01:08:24]:
It’s— it is quite— Oh, always. You’re always welcome. All right.
Kelly Flanagan [01:08:30]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [01:08:30]:
This was a great conversation.
Kelly Flanagan [01:08:32]:
Good to be with ya.
Nancy Norbeck [01:08:34]:
You too. That’s this week’s show. I am so grateful to Kelly Flanagan for joining me again and to you for listening. Kelly’s links are in the show notes, and The Road Less Triggered is available for preorder for release on March 3rd. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There is a link in the podcast app, and it is super easy, and it really, really makes a difference. If you’ve enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thank you so much.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:01]:
If you’re tired of thinking about answering a creative call but never actually do doing it. Come join me for an hour and start feeling like yourself again. The Follow Your Curiosity Creativity Circle is a safe, welcoming, and encouraging environment where we send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way. You can find it at the link in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:42]:
It really helps me reach new listeners.