#20 You Were Never Unworthy: Reclaiming Self-Love with Gissele Taraba

In this deeply reflective episode, Luke sits down with author, teacher, and compassion advocate Gissele Taraba to unpack the layers of conditioning that shape our self-worth, and how to break free from them.

From the relentless pressure to achieve, to the silent scripts we absorb in childhood, this conversation dives into what it truly means to feel worthy, loved, and enough, just as we are. Gissele shares powerful insights from her book Reimagining Work, as well as her upcoming documentary on how compassion can transform even the most extreme conflict.

They explore the ways we talk to ourselves, why our culture rewards burnout, and how learning to meditate, feel, and forgive can help us rewrite the story we've been handed. Luke also opens up about his own battle with overachievement and unworthiness, making this a vulnerable and empowering episode that will hit home for many.

Key Takeaways:

• How childhood conditioning wires us to seek worth externally

• Why even billionaires don’t feel “enough”

• What happens when we finally stop overworking for validation

• Practical strategies to interrupt spirals of self-doubt

• The truth about narcissism vs. healthy self-love

• Why boys are conditioned to suppress emotion, and the damage it causes

• Meditation, the “void,” and finding safety within

• Healing through curiosity, not shame

• How compassion transformed a white supremacist, and can heal the world

Guest Bio: 

Gissele Taraba is a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, professor, and founder of the Love and Compassion Podcast, which reaches listeners in over 45 countries. She’s currently producing a documentary titled Courage to Love: The Power of Compassion, highlighting stories of people who have chosen forgiveness in the face of deep pain.

Originally from Lima, Peru and now based in Canada, Gissele holds master’s degrees in Epidemiology and Social Work, and has spent over 20 years in nonprofit leadership. Her first book, Reimagining Work, explores how to create a more loving and spiritually aligned life. She’s now co-authoring Reimagining Education with her daughter, challenging how our current school system prepares children for a rapidly changing world.

ABOUT CURIOUS AF PODCAST

Curious AF is the evolution of what started as The Hard Stuff Podcast. Initially focused on guests who’d done hard things—ultra marathons, building businesses, overcoming personal challenges—it’s now becoming a broader platform to explore anything and everything I’m genuinely curious about.
The new direction is more personal and wide-ranging. I want it to feel like a space where I can follow my curiosity and have real conversations with people who inspire, challenge, or fascinate me.

For further information, contact:
Podcast Host - Luke Biermann
General Inquiries: hello@curiousaf.com.au
Instagram: @curiousaf.podcast

Transcript

Luke: Giselle, thanks for coming on the show.

Gissele: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Luke: No worries. So I'm about halfway through your book, re-Imagining work. I'm really enjoying it. It, it's not exactly what I expected, right. It, I thought it was gonna be more about the workplace and stuff like that. And it tends to be a lot about spirituality, worthiness, self-love, self-worth, which is great.

I guess the part that I, I really resonated with was the, the, the stuff around worthiness. I'll just tell you a bit about my own story. for the majority of my life, I've really, I guess, thought that I'm not good enough, thought that I'm not worthy, and that's led to a lot of, I guess, overworking obsession with achievement.

And I got to a point recently where I realized. I keep hitting my goals and nothing changes on like, the happiness spectrum, I guess you could say. and rather than just [00:01:00] like aimlessly continuing to go, okay, well, once I get here, I'll be happy. I, I, I realize, I think I need to turn this light on myself and, and really inspect the way that I talk to myself and, and treat myself.

Because basically, I mean, I talk my, talk to myself and treat myself like I would never treat anybody else. So I, I wanted to start by asking where does the I guess the, the need for worthiness or the, the lack of self-worth, where, where does that usually come from?

Gissele: That's a great question. I wanna start with, this is not the book I thought I was writing. Let's just put it out there. I was really interested in compassion in the workplace. I was trying to implement compassion in the child welfare system at the time, and didn't see a lot of the discussions on the, the how, like the, the specific aspects of compassion in like, you know, listening and speaking so and so, and those elements are in the book.

But as I was writing it, what came through really was [00:02:00] the need for us to really look at ourselves and the reasons why we attract certain workplaces. The reason. Is why we allow certain things to happen to us in terms of like even how much we allow ourselves to achieve. And as I started peeling back the onion of my experience with, you know, like my achievement in how I define my worth, we are taught to define our worth externally.

We are taught to define our value externally. And as a person who, her for her achievement was everything. It was the way I got out of a, a house where I had experienced trauma. It was the way that I sort of like saw myself as valuable when I didn't feel that I was attractive or good enough, like beauty wise.

So for me, no, nobody could take. My achievement, my education, and how much I had climbed up the, the ladder. Nobody could take that away from me [00:03:00] until I had to leave it. I no longer fit that system, and I needed to redefine how I wanted to work in the future and what success looked like and for me. W We as children are conditioned, and I'm using the word condition on purpose.

We are conditioned to look outside of ourselves for worth, for guidance, for love, for approval. And it starts with our parents who, and they were parented by people who, who taught them that. And then when you go to the school system that's taught to continue, there's a right answer and a wrong answer. And you're supposed to do things specifically a specific way.

And you are taught not to look inward. Everything is outward. People, you're supposed to follow what they tell you. And so we become really, really separated from ourselves and we stop looking at ourselves and asking ourselves. What do we really want out of life? We [00:04:00] start to get conditioned as to the things we should want.

We should want to get married. We should want to have a mansion. We should want to be millionaires. We should want to do all of these things. And this has created the world we currently have. What we're not doing as parents, as educators, is teaching children that they're inherently worthy, even if they don't achieve anything, even if they don't do anything other than exist.

And fundamentally, we are worthy just because we exist. But that's not what's taught. And so the more that we try to achieve things externally, the more unhappiness we will feel because it's like we're trying to fill it up with the wrong thing. I'll give you a perfect example. Greed is just a fear of lack and, and an issue of worthiness.

People say to themselves, oh my God, I can't believe these [00:05:00] billionaires, you know, isn't 500 million enough. No, it's not, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to fill a hole with money that can't be filled with money. It can only be filled with our own self-love and self-compassion, our own understanding that we're inherently worthy.

We don't have to earn it the same way as Louise says or used to say, we don't earn the right to breathe. It's just naturally there. We don't have to do these things. We are inherently worthy just because we're alive and being alive is a miracle in itself, which we don't often acknowledge. So we are conditioned by our parents who were conditioned by other people, and in the school system that criticism is a good motivator and it's not.

We are taught that pushing ourselves beyond our expectations and doing things we don't want to do, like stuff in the school [00:06:00] system, is the key for us to achieve. And so you are just doing what you were conditioned to do. You are just doing what you were programmed to do, to look outside of yourself, to value things you don't like.

So a return to ourselves is an unlearning. It's a, it's a, it's a deprogramming. And I, and, and I'm not judging the school system or our parents. We were doing the best we could with the level of consciousness we had, but now it's a time to do something different. And I love what you said, you know, like, you acknowledge the fact that you are, you can be very critical of yourself.

If you wouldn't talk to your best friend the way you talk about to yourself, then, then that's what you need to focus on and change. But we have been conditioned, and unfortunately that's kind of where we are. I was not aware that I had issues of worth. That's, that was the tricky part because I wasn't the kind of person that said I hated myself.

I didn't, I didn't do self harm. I didn't do any of that stuff in a very covert [00:07:00] way. How I did it was that I limited my ability to live my dreams. And as I was meditating one day, I was like, you know, I was so frustrated with myself. I'm like, why can't I make this happen? I, you know, I do all of these great things and, and I remember just sitting in silence and saying, okay, I gotta listen to myself.

I gotta go inward. 'cause all of the answers are within, I believe each of us has a seat within ourselves that has all of the information we need and all of the, the resources in, in all of the, the, the names of people that are gonna help us on this journey in the best possible capacity. So I decided to go inward and, and ask myself, okay, so what's really going on?

And I heard in a very distinct voice, I don't feel I'm worthy to live all my dreams. And I'm like, where did that come from? Like who's saying that? But when I looked at my life, it was true. It was true. It was always, always capped. And so I,

Luke: can I ask what you mean by worthy there is that I don't deserve [00:08:00] to, I'm not good enough. What exactly

Gissele: all of it. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Great question. So I had this because I dug deeper. I was like, okay, so what does that mean? And curiosity, like you're asking is phenomenal. if you are able to examine your thinking without judgment, you get the answers. So the first thing that came up when I asked that question was, why would you be able to live your dreams when your parents, your grandparents, and your ancestors weren't able to?

You are not special. Why they didn't live their dreams. They lived in misery. They faced child abuse, they faced poverty. Why you? So there was an element of not deservability that I that or, or not feeling deserving to do something that all of my people hadn't been able to do. And so I really had to examine that and say, well, I can be the first and I can show them the way.

I can show [00:09:00] them that living our dreams is the key to the path. The other one was that I hadn't realized that I had internalized some messagings as a child as my fault. So there are things that happened to me in my childhood that had nothing to do with me, that had to do with my parents' limiting beliefs that my, my parents' needs that weren't addressed.

But children, because they're so self-focused as a survival mechanism, right? Like they, they only really in the beginning have their world. They don't see first they're completely connected with their parent, with their mother in particular. And then they become, oh, I'm a separate being interesting. And then it becomes all about them.

And so it's really hard for them to go, oh, my parent hit me. Oh, my parent wasn't able to be there for me emotionally because they weren't parented or because they got, didn't get their needs met. Your immediate, as a kid, your solution is, it's my fault. I'm not worthy to [00:10:00] receive their love or attention.

I must not be good enough. I must not be worthy to, for them to see me, for them to give me voice and participation. And so those sorts of stories, kids weave even something I've spoken to people, even something as innocuous as you not getting your favorite toy at Christmas, something you really, really desired.

Sometimes kids internalize that as I didn't receive it because I wasn't worthy to receive it. They're not gonna think, my parents may not have money and may have been too embarrassed to tell me or didn't wanna worry me. And so I had to really unpack those beliefs as merely beliefs that then created an identity of someone that couldn't lift her dreams. And so the first thing I really started with was how I spoke to myself. And again, I was, I was not like a covert, I hate you, you're a terrible person, whatever. But, but I was acting in the same way. I just didn't use that [00:11:00] strategy. So that strategy isn't wrong. It's, it's just what it is. And so I really had to focus on.

How am I treating myself? What thoughts am I allowing to live in my head space? And what thoughts am I allowing to dictate how I feel? So because I grew up with PE people that were fairly traumatized, I had a fairly negative perspective. Everything was negative. It was very reactive. I couldn't trust anyone.

And so I had to kinda reprogram my brain to think differently and I had to create some space. And that's why I love meditation. I absolutely love it. I do it every day and when I don't do it, I find that, you know, I miss it. Meditation helps you. Yeah, meditation helps you get space in between your thoughts so that then you can choose your thoughts and take your power back.

Whereas before, I would let my thoughts dictate, 'cause a thought would happen, and then an a very strong emotion. And then what happens is the downward spiral. Have you been in a downward spiral as [00:12:00] a person? You used to have really bad anxiety. It's awful. You have a negative

Luke: of my life. Yeah.

Gissele: Yeah. So you have a negative thought that feeds a negative emotion, that draws another negative thought and another negative emotion.

And then once you're in the spiral, It can feel very hard to get yourself out. But a great strategy to do that is like, if you're having a hard time controlling your mind and saying, you know what, that's not true. I'm gonna choose my next thoughts and then choose to align the emotion with it.

If you can't get control of your mind, exercise your body, move your body, do a practice, because it's really hard to control both the mind and the body when it's tense, when you're in a downward slope downward slope. But if you. Manage one of those things. So manage your body exercise. Do like a movement thing that forces your body to, to believe it's safe because no person in danger is gonna sit there, well, I'm just gonna go to the gym here while I get chased by a bear.

No, you are the fact that you're taking time out to [00:13:00] exercise signals to the body that it's safe, or if you're gonna do Qigong or do something else. And so that makes, helps the body relax. And then the mind is easier to, to take control. And so I had to learn how to really pick my thoughts and not allow my thoughts to create negative experiences for me and scare me to death, like scare myself into, to not living my biggest, boldest dream.

Luke: I, I just have to say, I feel like a lot of this,

Gissele: Yeah. Yeah.

Luke: I feel like you're talking directly to me with a lot of this. I mean, this is a lot of the stuff I've struggled with my whole life and I've kind of developed a routine and, and habits that I know I need to do on a daily basis just to feel normal. Right? And on the top of that list is meditate and train.

So there are two things that I do every day. I'm probably not as able to explain why that helps as much as you, but I, I just through trial and error, know that's what I need to do to kind of feel, okay, so.

Gissele: yeah. And even if you're not able to explain why your trial and [00:14:00] error is your inner compass that was telling you this is what's going to work. So this is why it's so important for us to go back inward and listen to our inner compass and create some space between, because a lot of us in, in, in the book, I talk about identity.

And it's so funny. I've had these experiences in my life where it's the thought that creates sort of an alignment. And when you're in the energy of something that sort of attracts it. So abundance isn't about. Making money, like working. It's an energy, it's an energy of freedom. It's an energy of openness.

I have been in a very secure, high paying job and not made as much money as I did, for example, when I was not doing anything or doing something different. And in my mind that doesn't compute, but my energy has been different. And so that enabled me to attract different things that I had worked for years to I, [00:15:00] well, I, I wanted to be a professor for a very long time and, you know, I was, I had applied and I kind of never worked.

And when I shifted my energy. It sort of landed in my lap. I was sort of like, oh, this is interesting. Like just sort of came to me and I didn't even have to interview for it. It just sort of came and I appli. I said, oh, you know, I'll just put my resume in and whatever. And then it was mine. And so it really is about becoming aware of the stories we're telling ourselves, the beliefs and then the accompanying emotions.

'cause everything is a thought. We were once a thought in God's source universe before we came to be. We were a thought. And if you don't believe that, that's okay. You were, your parents thought before you came into this incarnation. Even if you don't believe in God source universe, you were thought, they thought of a baby, they thought of a name, they thought of a whatever.

And then you came into being. So everything starts with a thought. Sometimes it feels like you don't notice a [00:16:00] thought. You go straight to the emotion. But before you even had an emotion, you had a thought. And so taking the time out to be aware of what you are thinking and how you're speaking to yourself and how you're limiting your life really is the key to starting on the journey to really living your dreams.

And, and the reason why loving ourselves and being compassionate to ourselves is so important is because you need a lot of love and compassion for yourself the journey is not linear. It's like this, right? Like you take two step forward and you think you're on the right path, and something triggers you or something happens and you're down here feeling like crap and thinking, I don't know if I can do this. And that is where the love for yourself, the compassion for yourself says And you will remember that other time when you didn't feel you could do it. Remember that time we got this? Just take [00:17:00] one little step. And what I've seen in this world, in, in some of the work that I do now in terms of really sharing stories of love and compassion and how impactful that is, is because what I've observed and experienced personally is the more love I have for myself and fill my bucket from the inside, the more love I have to spill all to other people.

And one of the things I, that I experienced that I did not expect was the more I loved myself and fill my cup. The less I needed to change people or felt like they needed to act differently, they had no power over me anymore. Their behavior didn't impact how I felt about myself and my life anymore. And so if you have a whole bunch of people in the world who are loving themselves, who understand they're enough and they're worthy, there is no need for war.

There is no need for conflict. There is no need to control other people. And in the book I talk about the true definition of power, which is, you know, the power, the idea of power that we've been taught is power [00:18:00] over or force. That's not true power. I've seen truly powerful people that they radiate this love.

They have a love for humanity and they're not impacted by the behavior of others, by the conflict of others, by how much. Even if people take things away from them, they're like, okay, I can always make more. I'm good. You have it because I love you, and if you need to take that, okay, that's a different level of power.

And the ability to be able to to love themselves and love other people and see their best, that is transformative. That's transformative, and that's my greatest wish for all of us. My greatest wish is that we could understand how amazing and beautiful we are and how inherently worthy and how we've just been.

We've been bamboozled. Basically people we've been bamboozling is ourselves.

Luke: So I wanna go back. I mean, speaking about the whole being bamboozled, a lot of this, I, I think you [00:19:00] said is linked to, I guess, educational system, parenting style, stuff like that. Wh why do you think this has kind of initially happened? Is it, is it basically a, is it a productivity hack gone wrong? Is that the idea that we think we'll get more done and, and I guess achieve more in society?

What, what happened, what went wrong?

Gissele: Yeah, it, well, by no means can I, do I believe that? I can answer that, but but this is, this is my belief, okay? So I do believe that we are all God source energy, which means that everything is the divine, everything is God source. Everything is like, nothing can be outside of it, right? So God, source energy wanted to experience itself of not outside of itself, but within itself.

'cause when you are all that is. You can't know yourself outside of that. Right? And so I believe that we were all created so that all that is could experience itself and that we were given the same sort of, because God, all there is [00:20:00] is all that is. We have the same abilities. That all that is on source has.

And so I think somewhere along the way, like before we were very connected to each other, to ourselves I've had experiences of telepathy, which are, it's very weird. It's very, very strange to hear people's thoughts because you're like I don't know this person, but I'm hearing all of these things.

And so I think that's our natural state. But I think what happened to, to the, the beings that we are is that we became further and further and further away from who ourselves and who we truly are. And if you look at the history of human beings, when you look at like indigenous tribes, even like African tribes, you know, like the Egyptians were black.

Like they were black, right? Because think of it, if you've ever been to Egypt, it's so hot out there. They had to be right? And so you have all of these groups that were connected in community and connected to. Nature and connected to [00:21:00] ancestors, and that's how we really are. Or, or were. And then you had groups who became colonizers.

This isn't just white people. There were colonizers that were, you know, like Latin American. There were colonizers that were, you know, like Genis Khan, like there's these colonizers. Didn't feel like they had enough, so they had to go and take more. This goes back to the greed conversation we were having about like when you try to fill that hole with other stuff, it's never going to be enough.

Your achievement, Luke, is never gonna be enough because you're trying to fill that hole of your own lack of love and your own lack of worth with external things. That's why millionaires, billionaires, people that are super successful celebrities, not happy, why they've achieved their fame. Why? Because they're trying to fill a hole that can't be filled except by their own love and compassion.

So you had these colonizers that were going around and taking these individuals, [00:22:00] destroying these communities, putting the people in residential schools, you know, do slavery, all of those things. And if you look at, at least in North America. It was the rise of the individual, right? The, the, the individual, the self-made man, which is, I'm gonna be honest, a lie that people told themselves. Because all those self-made people had people that worked underneath them that helped them build companies. 'cause if they had done everything themselves, they would've had to ship everything.

They would've had to do everything themselves like they would ly have had. So they, there was a whole bunch of people that believed in their vision and helped them. But we had, we've kind of listened to this whole self-made man belief and out came the rise of individualism and we became very lonely, very disconnected, very lots of mental health, no connection to nature, no connection to ancestors.

All of these things have hindered us and made us feel as [00:23:00] if we don't know who we really are. We feel so alone and disconnected because the world that we have created doesn't work. It's not who we are. We're meant to live in community. We're meant to live in partnership. We're meant to live in connection with nature and especially in nature with, in connection with ourselves.

I've worked with people where, like one of my questions for them was, what's your like, biggest, boldest dream? Like, like, let's, let's visualize what's your biggest, boldest dream? And they can't tell me. tell me. And in conversation, I found out that when they were young, they were mocked by their parents because, you know, like their parents believed, no, you should do this or that profession.

And so they learned to not tell themselves or allow themselves to have dreams because they don't wanna be shamed. And so we become so disconnected with ourselves that we don't longer know ourselves. And so this journey I feel that we're on is us coming back to ourselves, to each [00:24:00] other, to see each other as brothers and sisters to ourselves, to understand how truly powerful we are.

We're not, I don't believe that we are these small beings that are so fragile that at any moment we could get a disease or all of these things that are just gonna impinge on us and then we're gonna die. I don't think that that's like, honestly, look, it doesn't make sense in my head because where did we come from? How is this even, how is this world even made? The fact that we, I, I recently kind of really bruised my toe, almost broke it. It was really painful. And very soon after I saw that my, my toe was bruising. That's my body's way of healing it. So how could we believe that the body can heal toes and scars in cuts, but not other health issues?

It doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Yeah.

Luke: So I wanna take this, I guess, to a practical level. So, like I said, I mean, the majority of my life I've really struggled with worthiness issues, and that's led [00:25:00] to a lot of, I guess the two major issues that that's led to is I guess work holism and alcoholism. Like, and a lot of it is just due to obsessing over yeah, needing to prove myself to the world.

I, I think what I told myself, e even if this is slightly subconsciously, is if, if I don't achieve, if I don't add value, if, if people don't see me as able to do things that other people aren't able to do, that I, I, I guess I won't be loved. And, and some of the self-talk around that I guess for the majority of my life has been quite brutal.

And, and I almost don't think internally I deserve to have a good life. How do I unwind a lot of this stuff? Right? So again, where I'm currently at is a, a long time. I thought if I'd, I'd built a business and, and got wealthy, all of my problems would, would dissipate, right? And then just through meeting those gold posts time after time, I got to the point where, I'm never gonna [00:26:00] fill this hole.

Okay? So, so how do I actually on a practical level, start turning the ship around?

Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great question. Well, the, I, I wanna say a few things before we could talk about that. The first thing is, is I think we do our boys a huge disservice as a society because we don't allow boys normally to feel their full range of feelings. What I mean is, is that most boys are taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion, and sex is the only way to closeness so many boys who just wanna be hugged and nurtured and loved and seen. feel they only can get that through sexual contact. And boys are not nurtured to cry, to feel excitement, to feel all the full range of emotions that make human beings human and crying is an [00:27:00] important emotion. It actually, I don't, I don't remember what research I was looking at, but they were talking about how most difficult emotions, like the thought and emotion process is actually quite quick.

It only goes through like 19. Like it's only like a few minutes. Like you have a thought, you have an emotion, and if you allow it, allow yourself to feel the fullness of the emotion. It'll work through you. But we have been taught to suppress and keep in. And so what you're doing is you're holding onto all of those difficult emotions that you haven't enabled yourself to process, including heartbreak, heart, feelings, loss, all of those things that as a kid, had you been allowed to, to experience those difficult emotions?

Right. Like crying and having a tantrum. Tantrums are fine. Tantrums are fine. The kids, if you actually watch little kids, what I mean is they will have a difficult emotion. They will, they'll blow [00:28:00] up and then they'll get over it. They'll move on

Luke: Can I,

Gissele: you are there as a nurturing pair. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Luke: Okay. Lemme, I'm just, I wanna tell you about experience hard recently because it does relate to this. So, before I started reading your book, the last book I read was the Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. I'm coming up to 

Gissele: nice. 

Luke: year. Yeah, I'm coming up to one year sober in, in a few weeks, and.

I found myself like, so basically the start of the book is she goes through some of the situations that she got herself into when she was in her active addiction. And as I was listening to it, I was resonating with it and I could feel my emotions come out. I could feel myself wanting to cry and I could feel myself wanting to break down.

And my reaction to that was, I've gotta turn this book off and go do something else. Right. So, so that, that was my reaction and like, because I was like not allowing myself to accept that, was that the wrong thing to do? Is that where you're going here?

Gissele: So, so, so there's no right and wrong. Let's, let's start there. [00:29:00] Right? So what was coming up for you in that moment was an opportunity to release I, so whatever that was helping you 'cause. Again, sometimes I feel like this world is a little topsy-turvy, and sometimes I, and there's, I, for me, there's a little bit of a struggle for that.

What I mean is, is that, you know, we villainize people for having addictions. Addictions is a symptom. It's, it's a coping mechanism. It's not the problem. The problem is what led to the addictions, but we villainize people as weak because they're trying to cope the best way that they can in a world that doesn't help you.

So for you in the, in that moment, there's no right or wrong. So when something gets triggered in us, right? If you allowed yourself to have cried and, and allowed yourself to, to, it probably would've been a very powerful release that would've helped you kind of unleash some of the bottled up emotions. But compassion says.

That we [00:30:00] have to titrate that, because sometimes that can feel so overwhelming. It feels like it feels very frightening. It can feel like you're gonna die. Like your mind tells you. I've been there. I've been where the point where you're like, oh, I have to feel these really difficult emotions of this trauma experience.

But your mind tells you if you feel it, you're gonna die. It doesn't feel good. You're not gonna die, and you have to learn and you're not really gonna die. But you have to learn to sort of titrate and go, okay, so maybe that day wasn't the day to be able to do that. But if you say, tomorrow I'm gonna pick this up and I'm gonna try again, that's totally okay, because that that emotion is waiting to be released.

And if you have the courage to be able to do that, you can do it. Sometimes the mind will fight you on it. And this by no means is this your fault, Luke, you've been conditioned to suppress those emotions. You've been taught that only certain emotions are okay and other emotions are not. [00:31:00] So going back to the kid, kids naturally have big emotions and if we allow them to feel it and show up as a safe space parent and hold them in that difficult emotion, it passes quick and they move on with their lives.

They don't even think about it anymore. It's, it's a moment of like, its a parent holding space. I wasn't allowed to experience my difficult emotions because my parents couldn't hold them. They couldn't cope with them, so they tried to suppress it. Don't have difficult feelings. Always be agreeable, always be acceptable.

Always do this. I can't hold space for your emotions. And I internalized that. I thought it was my fault. Then when I became older, I realized, ah, they didn't have any capacity to hold difficult emotions. This is why, again, we have the world that we do. We can't have difficult conversations. People really struggle.

This is why we have the cancel culture. Oh, I'll just cancel you. I don't have to listen to you. But the key to coming together and [00:32:00] coming closer is having difficult conversations and being able to sit there with your difficult feelings so that you can come closer to one another. So you can then actually sort of, instead of pushing further apart, come closer together.

Right? And actually having difficult conversations. I've had numerous with my children as well. It bonds us closer. We were able to overcome, forgive each other, all of those things. But again, you're not taught that So. I would encourage you if you can, to pick up that book again and go back that place and see and allow and allow yourself to explore some of those difficult emotions because they want to come out to be seen and to be released, which is the most important part.

So going back to your question of how do I start? The first thing is, when you have those difficult emotions, allow yourself to feel them. But the, where the, the, the compassion comes in is if it feels too [00:33:00] overwhelming. 'cause there, there is a safe zone, right? Like everybody has their comfort zone, right? And over here, right outside of it is the growth zone.

Right. But beyond that is the danger zone, which means if you go from safety to danger zone, you will not be able to release those emotions. That's too much. But if you allow yourself to just go a little bit and say, I'm gonna allow myself to feel this a little bit, and then when I get to my danger zone, I'm gonna go hit the gym, or I'm gonna go do workout, or I'm gonna go listen to this different podcast or whatever.

So allow yourself to start dipping into your growth zone. So that would be the first thing. Yeah.

Luke: It, it's funny 'cause I use that same analogy with, I guess when I'm coaching staff and stuff like that, right? Like with sales, there's, you know, there's the comfort zone, the growth zone, I guess I call it the trauma zone, but I like the, the danger zone as well. So I've used that analogy a lot, but I've never actually turned that around and used it on myself.

So, yeah, [00:34:00] it's, it's interesting.

Gissele: yeah, yeah. The second thing would be, as a starting point, is. One of the beautiful things about compassion is without judgment. So start to just observe the thoughts you're having, how you're speaking to yourself. Just start there. So start to really observe. You can take half an hour, you can take 20 minutes.

Just start to observe the thoughts that you're saying to yourself, especially when you are, you know, negative thinking or saying things, right? Just observe it and then you can also write them down and then later on you can look and say, is this really true? No, it's not true. Look, as a wonderful man, he's very successful.

He's done all these things, he's survival, all of these things. And so you can start to actually flip the script on some of those beliefs, right? And starting to change some of those thoughts will start to, Cultivate? Warm feelings in your heart, and I would also invite you to do some meditations that actually help you.

There's [00:35:00] lots of free stuff on compassion. Like there's the, you know, the, the self-compassion break, which is like, you know, one of my favorite questions to ask is, I need in this moment? So if I'm really struggling with something, I'll go and ask myself even, or I'm struggling with someone, what do I need in this moment?

Okay, I need validation because this person is really triggering me and they're saying some nasty things and, and I don't really, it's making me feel unvalued. So we're devalued. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give myself some validation. I'm worthy even if this person doesn't see it. If it doesn't negate it, my perspective is also worthy, so I'm gonna share it even if they don't wanna hear it.

And so I'll give myself what I need in those moments. Instead of looking for someone out there to give me what I need, I can tap into my inner resource. And the best piece of advice I can give you, Luke, is you actually have within your heart the map. Through to [00:36:00] your, to your dream in terms of you loving yourself fully the same way that you knew to, you know, like use the exercise and try all those different things.

Try different things and allow your heart to tell you what the path is. You have it in you like, it's like a seed in your heart. So water that seed go inward and say, okay, what's my next step? And then you will be guided to read something, to talk to someone, to try different practice, to follow someone, or to just do something for yourself.

And step by step by step, you will take yourself there. I'm always hesitant to give people like, this is the path to take. Like do this or do that. Like, you can try different things, but only you, there's only just you, Luke. You are the only you in this whole wide world, not even twins. Twins aren't exactly truly identical.

And so the path that you are going to take is uniquely yours. Some things will resonate with you and do that. More of [00:37:00] that, the things that don't resonate with you, discard, but in your heart is the path. If you are willing to quiet your mind and just say, okay, I'm willing to love myself. I don't know how, I don't know when, but I'm willing.

And that's enough for the universe to start to show you different things that you can do. And the willingness really is like the, the, the thing you just tell you, you're willing because many people aren't willing. And that's, that's what I say to my kids. That's what I say, the people I work with, all of that stuff.

I say the starting point is always just to be willing, be willing to say, I'm willing to love myself more today than I did yesterday, but I don't know how. Show me the path. And let it go.

Luke: So a lot of that felt like it. Lean leaned towards, I guess, awareness and, and intentionality. Which, which, which takes me to the next thing I wanted to talk about. I mean, how does, well, first of all, I think a lot of people get this confused. Do do you have a definition that you like to use for [00:38:00] mindfulness?

Gissele: Yes. Yeah.

Luke: Because I, yeah, I, I think that word gets thrown around a lot, but realistically, I don't think a lot of people really know, understand what it means.

Gissele: yeah, and it, the confusing part, it's, it's mindness, right? Like it says, it's mindful, so if you think of, your mind is full, right? For me, mindfulness really is present moment awareness. Just, and what I mean by present moment awareness is like right now. Like now. Now, meaning a lot of the times, the things that we're worried about or that we're telling ourselves aren't happening in the moment.

And for me in my journey, feeling safe has been the number one thing that I have needed to learn. And so in this moment, I'm safe in this moment. I'm loved in this moment. I have everything I need. And so present moment awareness reminds us that we have power. Our power is only in the present. In the present.

We don't have any [00:39:00] power in the past. It's already gone. We don't have any power in the future in terms of like, I mean, there's one possible future of many possible potential futures, but we don't have any power there, right? Because hasn't happened. Our power is only just now. This now and in this now, the majority of things that we fret about or think that we're not worthy or acceptable aren't happening.

And so going back to our present moment, whichever way that is, whether it be meditation, some people don't enjoy meditation. That's okay. You can paint, you can do things that keep you in the present moment. You can go for a nature walk. There's different things that you can do to bring you to your present moment, which is your center of power.

We disempower ourselves when we go to the future or go to the past or go to the future. And for me, having had gone through anxiety, anxiety is too much future, depression is too much past. So really in the present [00:40:00] moment is where I am most safe, where I am most powerful, and really where I can then start to choose.

What I'm going to experience, and I say that consciously, I've learned that everything is a lens, like everything is perception. Have you ever had like a conversation with someone and you experience the same thing and they, they come at, at it from an ex completely different experience.

You're like, did we both attend a different event, right, like did or we at a different meeting? What happened? It was because each of you chose to focus your lens in different things. Somebody could have had the lens of a positive experience, and so everything got colored from that lens and somebody had the, the, a lens of lack and saw everything from that perspective.

What you're trying to do is you're trying to change your lens. And some people believe that your higher self or higher awareness is just a greater lens. So it's just a broader lens, a bigger lens that enables you to say, okay, I'm seeing this from my human ego [00:41:00] self and I change my lens. I may not know how to, but I'm willing, I'm willing to be open to see this from a broader perspective.

How do I change my lens? And I have found that when I use that strategy, I see things I hadn't seen before. Things were there that were always there, but I never saw them because I was looking at, from at it, from a place of lack. It actually reminds me of my children when I say them. Hey, can you, like, they all ask, ask me, mom, where are my socks?

Where are my socks? Right? And I'm like, I'll go there. And I'm like, this is exactly where I told you they were. Well, we didn't see them. Of course you didn't see them. You were with the lens of, I can't find it. I can't find it, I can't find it. So the, the sock literally could have jumped out in front of you and you weren't gonna see that.

Whereas I came in with the lens of, it's there, I'm gonna see it, it's there. And so I came and went, okay, there's a sock. Right? It's about really changing our lens to see how worthy, how beautiful, how powerful we really are.

Luke: So I wanna, I wanna ask how [00:42:00] then meditation fits into this. And I, and I'll tell you what it does for me. So I've been meditating fairly solidly, or consistently for about five years now. I, I, I do every day. And, and what it's allowed me to do, me. Is there, I guess there's that saying between stimulus and response, there is a gap, and it allows me to find that gap and not get dragged into an emotional place where I don't want to be.

The, the other thing that allows me to do is when I am, we, we spoke before about spiraling. When, when I, I mean I, I have a quite a stressful, you know, life, job, all that stuff. When I, when I catch myself spiraling or catastrophizing, I'm able to identify that I'm talking myself into this and then be like, is this actually, I guess practically useful?

And I'm able to actually talk myself back out of it. I mean, that, that's what I get out of mindfulness meditation. So yeah. I guess then my next [00:43:00] question is how does meditation fit into this?

Gissele: Yeah. I just wanted to comment on something you said because I don't want the audience to miss it.

Luke: Sure.

Gissele: which is, you said, I realize I'm talking myself into this. And that is so, so powerful. I want the audience to understand that because there's so many things that we accept in a very passive way, including our negative thoughts.

Our mind is sort of like the risk advisor. Like you know when you have a company, you have the CEO, and then you have all of the people, right? And so the risk advisor is like one of the people, right? And the CEO goes to the risk advisor and says, Hey, what do you think of this plan? And the risk advisor says, well, this could be a possible lawsuit, or this bad thing could happen.

And then you go, oh, okay, thanks. I'm just gonna keep it in mind. With all of the other feedback I've received. Anxiety is when the risk advisor is, the CEO literally sees everything as a risk. Everything is a danger, everything is a risk. And so what you're doing is you're taking your power back from that risk advisor.

You're saying, you know what? [00:44:00] I have a choice and there is a space where I can make that choice. And we allow ourselves to talk ourselves into many different things and accept passively living from a place of lack. We accept that belief, having to grind it out to succeed. We accept that belief feeling like we're not good enough.

We accept that belief. Having to look outside of yourself for your loving and compassion. We accept that belief. There's no jobs. We accept that belief. We don't have enough. We accept that belief. So these are all things we've been accepting. These people are our enemies. We accept that belief. We have to go to war.

We accept that belief. And so choosing not to accept these beliefs and taking your power back, I think is really, really important. So I wanted, I wanted to mention that. I sort of came onto meditation in a very surprising way. I'd sort of dabbled with it before, but if you don't mind, I'll share this story.

So, my husband, my [00:45:00] husband and my sister-in-law were doing these classes on metaphysics with this lady who was doing you know, she, you know, she did a lot of healing and did meditations and all that stuff. But this is before way, way before I, I even knew what it was. I was very research-based, very evidence-based, and that was what my degree was in.

I had completed a master. I, I always needed evidence for everything. And so I decided to join this class. 'cause I'm like, I don't know what my husband's doing. Like, what is this metaphysical nonsense? Let me just go see. 'cause he, he kept inviting me. So I went just to humor him, basically. So she decides that we're all gonna do a meditation.

And I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, okay, well I'm just gonna try this. I'm gonna close my eyes and right. And she told us to go somewhere. Like, you know, she's like, well, you know, like as still travel or project or whatever this place and I'm closing my eyes and I'm literally in a void. Like it's really literally like a nothing, nothing, nothing.

And there was a level of peace as a person that had horrible anxiety and [00:46:00] had trauma and all these trust issues. There was a level of peace I had never encountered. I was just being, there was, I was, my body wasn't there, it was just my consciousness. And I was there and it was just amazing. I was just sitting there in bliss basically.

And I heard somebody say, 'cause I didn't know where I was. You have to come back now. And I'm like. Nope, I have never let encountered this level of peace. I can't go back there. I can't go back to the anxiety. I can't go back to the fear. I can't go back to the lack of trust. I just can't do it. And they said, you have to come back.

You have to come back. You have children, you have to come back. This one, my kids were very little and and I'm like, no, And they're like, you have to come back. You have to come back. Anyways, I didn't know if this was real or not. So I am, I'm in this class. I open up my eyes, the whole class is staring at me, like literally staring.

And the teacher goes, oh, you didn't wanna come back? And I was like, what? Like, is this real? [00:47:00] So I go home, my husband and I go home. The babysitter's freaking out because my daughter, who was very, very young at the time, kept saying, mommy's not coming back, mommy's not coming back. I was like, holy mackerel. I don't know if I wanna ever go back that deep again.

But I started to explore that there was more to this, that there was more to this. And, and like you, it gave me space between those negative thoughts. It gave me a break from that story, that identity of the fearful person, the identity of the person with anxiety, the identity of the, of the not trusting person, the person who had been betrayed, the person who had been abused, the person who had been hurt.

It, it enabled me to have some space and allowed me, and has allowed me to tap into, there's like a joy and happiness in those spaces. Now I like to do different meditations. I'll do free ones. I'll do Dr. Joe Dispenza. I don't know if you know him. We love Dr.

Joe. 

Luke: I've done his walking meditations. They're great.

Gissele: Yeah. And so what I [00:48:00] like about some of his is that he wants you to tap in and he's not the only one.

There are many meditations that tell you like, go to that void. I don't, if I hadn't had that experience, I would probably think it was weird. Go to that void and from that space, feel love, feel compassion, feel free. And again, I do many different meditations. Sometimes I don't do a guided at all. I'll just sit in silence.

Luke: But, but what is that void? Is that a, is that a relief?

Gissele: to be honest, I don't know. so what Dr. Joe says and what I've heard other metaphysical teachers, 'cause I've studied that since that time, is that it's just that everything is consciousness. So this God source universe that we talk about is just consciousness. It's just conscious awareness. And so it's us just. Not identifying. So let's go back to lenses. It's a different lens basically. So instead of it being the lens of the human, the the 3D, that I'm just this body who's weak and going around and eventually I'm just gonna die. It's almost like you take off that lens and you open up to [00:49:00] a wider lens of just being consciousness.

And this is what people say when they have like the NDEs, like when they say they cross over 'cause their body technically is dead. But they're saying like, they had all these amazing experiences. I think it's just a different lens. I think it's just per perceiving something else beyond. And so it's what people call consciousness, right?

So Dr. Joe talks about like going to that doc, that consciousness and from that space feeling joy and love and tapping into those feelings. and Growing up in a very unsafe environment. I never felt physically safe or emotionally safe. My parents were not safe spaces and unfortunately they also didn't have safe spaces.

Luke, I never thought that I would feel safe in my body, but through meditation I have found there's like an inner little space where it's totally my safety net. Like stuff could be happening on the outside and wait. If you feel safe on the inside, you can just maneuver all of that other outside stuff.

And [00:50:00] it's the same with love. You can have nothing on the outside, but feel full of love and gratitude for yourself in life and you, that stuff doesn't bother you. You'll be like, oh, I'll just rebuild. And so it's an immense power that all of us are being guided to go back to the 3D reality that we give so much credit. It's all about change. Everything changes, right? You grow older, you know, you, even the bad times change, which is great, great news. So if anybody's struggling, the bad times change, but so do the good times. That that's, it's true. Everything is a flow in, in sort of this reality. But when you find that inner peace and that inner power, that stability, that, that inner love, that doesn't change.

It's not waving and waxing. It doesn't. Once you tap in and you can continue to go and tap in, that gives you that stability to be able to navigate those waters, if you may.

Luke: Awesome. So I changed gears a little. What, what are some of the most common [00:51:00] myths around compassion and self love?

Gissele: I would say that it's indulgent. So my mom and I actually were having a conversation about this just this weekend. She was telling me how, as a kid she was told that it was inappropriate for you to look at yourself too much in the mirror.

So sit with that so that, so, so some of the biggest, and this is kind of one of my favorite topics, some of the, the biggest myths that people talk about is that compassion is selfish or narcissistic, or self loving yourself is narcissistic.

That is pure bs. Let's talk about the origin of the word narcissistic. Okay. So there was this God called narcissist. So it was a Greek mythology. This Greek mythological ga God that fell in love with its own reflection. So he saw his own reflection, fell in love with it, and I think either he drowned or he died because he was miserable 'cause he couldn't be with him with that reflection.

Okay, so people attribute that to loving yourself. You are looking at yourself too [00:52:00] much in the mirror. You're loving yourself too much. Hud Narcissus realize that he was always with the being he loved the most had he realized that he was already it, that he fell in love with a reflection, not himself.

Then he would've realized that he didn't have to be miserable. Right, because he was always with himself, right? He fell in love with a reflection and image, which was not real. That's what caused misery. So people attribute self-love and self-compassion is narcissistic. That the more you love yourself, that you're gonna be ego-centric.

Some of the most egocentric people that I know, some of them what people who have behaviors that are narcissistic do not love themselves. When you truly love yourself, you do not need other people to love you. Your your cup overflows so much. It's not that you don't want it. Everybody loves love and to be loved, but you no longer need it.

Do you underst what I mean? Have you ever been in a situation where you get something but you no longer [00:53:00] need it? You're like, ah, I can let it go, and it just comes to you. It's the same way when your heart is so full of love. You no longer need the love of others. You don't need to control their behavior.

You don't need to change it. You are just so full of love that it flows out of you. People who who have narcissistic behavior need to control other people so they can be loved, so that they can have attention. It comes from the outside, so anyone who's trying to do something from the outside does not love themselves.

It's not true self-love. The other thing is, going back to our conversation previous about, about criticism, is that people think that if you love yourself or are compassionate to yourself, you won't be motivated. That's, it's so not true. In fact, self-criticism, it's like a love diminishing returns in the beginning.

You can motivate yourself right in the beginning. You, it's, it's a little bit, and you can motivate yourself by criticism, but you hit a plateau and then there's a. Heart, like a really harsh decline.[00:54:00]

Luke: Did, did I?

Gissele: there's, yeah. Yeah.

Luke: to interrupt, but this was a huge one for me, right? For, for so long I had a fear that if I start thinking I'm enough and I start thinking I like myself, that my business will stop growing and I'll stop having a drive towards success. So I just really resonated with that.

Gissele: yeah. And so interestingly, it actually limits you because what happens is that you eventually burn out, right? So the majority, it's so funny, we have these stories in society about how people, you know, like they're, so, we kind of idolize all those people that, oh, you know, like they burn through and then they, you know, they work through, but then they, they succeeded at the end, right?

You see it in a lot of different professions, like, you know, like becoming a chef or, you know, like in, in particular sports or whatever.

Luke: Business is

Gissele: they don't tell you is, yeah, but they don't tell you is the majority of people that burnt out that didn't make it. So we look at the one-off and we're like, oh, look at how successful they were.

But the majority of [00:55:00] people burnt out. The majority of people had mental health issues. Right. The thing about compassion and self-love is that it motivates you in a different way, and it's actually more sustainable. It motivates you because you then do it out of your passions. You do it out of joy, not because you want to.

Get something, but because you're living your dream, because you're doing it because there's something within you that wants to express itself and wants to show it to the world. Like JK Rowland, even though she's unpopular with the whole Harry Potter thing, but Harry Potter, like books like that. You know, people that have been successful that were just, they, they like, they didn't think in terms of like, I'm gonna do this to be successful.

They're sharing their greatest passion with the world. And then it attracted many people because it's has a magnetizing effect. So compassion doesn't mean that you just kind of left yourself off the hook. In fact, you want to live your [00:56:00] dreams more and it helps you get there because it helps you navigate those difficult waters.

Luke: Yeah, it sounds a bit like you're speaking about authenticity and I mean, I think AU authenticity is inherently a, a attractive to others. 

Gissele: Yeah. So think about it like, I think Rene Brown was the one that said that the opposite of belonging

Luke: talking about.

Gissele: yeah. I think it's the opposite of, of like, belonging is actually like trying to fit in or something like that. Like, 'cause it's true. When you want to be loved you think it has to happen externally, you'll change who you are to fit in and belonging is such a strong need, right?

People will do anything to belong, including violate their own values. It's so scary for people to feel alone that they will do anything to belong and sometimes not be authentic to themselves. But what they don't realize is that the more authentic they are, the more they attract their tribe, the more that they are.[00:57:00]

Yeah,

Luke: I, well, I get, I feel like you're talking directly with me, right? Like, it's like, I will go back to kind of my alcoholism. A lot of that stemmed from me being, I, I guess, a quite anxiety ridden child. And when I found drinking and partying, it, it allowed me to, I, I, I guess, find a circle that I belonged in.

Right. Making a, you know, and yeah, the, the, the irony is since I've gotten sober, I've made so much more deep and authentic connections than I ever have been able to get to, to, to make prior, so

Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. 'cause it, it raised an important thought in my head, which is when you look at extremist groups, and so, you know, that's one of the things I'm interested in that extremism, when you look at extremist groups, and I, I was speaking to somebody who was a, a former white supremacist, and he talked about how

Luke: this is literally my next question.

Gissele: Yeah.

So

Luke: talking about Tony [00:58:00] Mciya? Is

Gissele: yeah. Meier. Yeah. I love Tony. And so he was talking about, and, and I've also seen this in other members too. Other people that I've spoken to, those extremist groups use the language of belonging. They use the language of family and togetherness and support and even compassion. They co-opt it.

Luke: so so they use that language for people that don't feel like they fit, so that they're like, you belong here. Let's spread hate, but you belong with us, so you'll do anything that we agreed to, and people will do anything to not feel alone.

so, so the last person I had on the podcast, I haven't released it yet. He's he was a heroin addict kind of a gangster, stuff like that, right? and he spoke about exactly the same thing. He, he, he was an immigrant. His parents were an immigrant. They didn't speak English in the household. They were going through their own battles.

He was the only non-white in his school. And what he found a sense of belonging was, was [00:59:00] I guess what he calls the streets, right? So other immigrants in Australia you know, there's a lot of immigrants from Asian countries Pacific Islanders, stuff like that. And he found I guess a sense of belonging within these communities.

And that led him to a life of heroin addiction, violence and, and stuff like that. And it sounds like you're speaking exactly. The same thing about these white supremacy communities. It did, it just really resonated with me. He was speaking in exactly the same way.

Gissele: it reminded me of that African saying about how, you know, the child who is the child who is not loved will burn the village down to feel its warmth. Right.

Luke: Oh wow.

Gissele: it's sort of like that, that, yeah. I can't, I don't know the exact wording.

I wish I could find it. But it's, it's sort of along the same lines. Let me see if I can find it. There we go. The child who's not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Luke: Wow.

Gissele: And I think that's very powerful. I think, I [01:00:00] think it's true that

we seek to be loved and to be accepted.

Luke: I had that

Gissele: Yeah.

Luke: when I was 20, by the way. Yeah. I was very much like burn the world down 'cause nobody cares about me. Yeah.

Gissele: Absolutely. And this is where. Parents, individuals, it's our responsibility to tap into our own love for ourselves first and then for others, and, and even for our enemies, for even those people that we struggle with. Because punishment, isolation, separation only leads to the world we currently have, whereas forgiveness and compassion actually brings us closer together and makes us feel less alone.

And the reason because I, I start off with self-love, usually people don't like to start there. Is because what I have found in my experience is when I gave to the people in my life and I didn't feel like it, or I didn't have it right, like I felt like my bucket was empty, I became resentful. I. did things I didn't want to do.

[01:01:00] I said yes when I meant no, but when I took time to fill my cup and loved myself enough to have strong boundaries, to be able to say, I'm sorry, I can't do that now, a no to you is a yes to myself in this moment, but I can't do this other thing. Instead, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, my relationship conflicts eased.

I was able to really have better relationships with everyone in my life because again, I wasn't trying to control them or get them to do things and manipulate them and, and live a life of resistance. And so I think each of our responsibility to love and have compassion for ourselves and others, and also to live our dreams, to live our biggest, boldest dreams.

The reason being is because when you are living your dreams, you are like a beacon and a magnet, and you show other people that they can do it. And when you're living your dreams, you don't need to oppress other people to be successful. You don't need to put power over or force yourself on people. [01:02:00] You're just living your best life.

And so each of us are responsible for working to get ourselves there. And so I think that's really our only job and everything flows out from that space. When you feel full, when you feel you have enough. And going back to what we were saying about like the how that fear of, if I stop thinking this is enough, am I, am I just gonna kind of. You know, diminish my success. Financial abundance. It's actually the other way. The more you feel you have enough, the more the universe goes, oh, okay, yeah, she feels she has enough. So here's more than enough. Here's more than enough. Here's like when you feel like, oh, I have, I always have more than enough.

That's all good. It kind of brings you more, but when you feel like, I don't have enough, I don't have enough, I don't have enough, you could make a million and still it's not gonna feel like it's enough because that's the, the feeling. You're, you're looking at it from a place of lack. And so it's interesting how the universe works that way.

It works by opposites. I was telling someone else I did like [01:03:00] a 28 day, I think it's like get rid of 21 things for 28 days. Like just throw things out, like get rid of everything. So the universe doesn't like a vacuum. So at the end of that 28 days, I felt amazing 'cause I'd cleared out so many things and. By the end of that 28 days, I started to get a whole bunch of free stuff. I had gotten rid of so many books. I ended up with more books than I had gotten rid of. I got rid of shoes. People gave me brand new and almost brand new shoes. I'm like, how does this happen? It's 'cause you're creating space, you're creating opportunity.

Luke: I would love to hear more about your, your time with Tony and, and any lessons learned from that experience.

Gissele: Yeah, for sure. So Tony was fantastic. So he wrote a book I think it was Life Beyond Hate or Life After Hate.

Um, so 

Luke: that. Yeah, I, I checked

Gissele: yeah, so, so he, he had experiences in childhood that made him think he wasn't good enough.

And so, again, because of his need to belong, he started to hang out with [01:04:00] people that started to do again who, because they, they had hate for themselves and their heart. They started to express it out. And so he was actually quite a high member of White supremacist of the white supremacy group in Canada.

He actually helped establish a lot of their communication 'cause they use a lot of underground communication. And and so, you know, he was into spreading hate and then he was a Holocaust denier and so on. And I asked him, I said, you know what, what flipped things for you? Like, what started the journey?

And the first thing that he said was the love of his children. So the unconditional love of his children, that joy that, you know, in hi, in hi in their eyes. He wasn't a white supremacist. He had hurt people. He was just their dad and they loved him unconditionally. So that started, that reignited, that spark of love within him because he had a lot of shame and guilt over what he did.

One of the things we talked about was there's a reason why human beings have to dehumanize other human beings [01:05:00] before they oppress 'em, right? If you actually look at the Holocaust. The Jews were called ghetto rats, right? Black people have been called less than human. Why? Because we have an inherent sort of programming that prevents us from oppressing one another.

So that's why we have to make each other less than human to justify it. So Tony had a lot of shame and guilt in his heart, which he was just oppressing because he was justifying at his head his need to belong was so strong. And so his children ignited that spark of of love within him. And then he decided that he was kind of done with his life.

He wanted a better life for his kids. And so he went to see a therapist called Dove Baron, and he didn't know this at the time, but Dove was Jewish. He is Jewish, so as he as Dove is helping him with his therapy, you know, Tony. Divulges finally that he was a white supremacist. And Dove starts to [01:06:00] laugh, right?

And then Tony's like, oh, you know, like what gives? And he's like, I'm Jewish. And that made Tony feel really crappy because he's like, oh my God, he's a Jewish person. And Dove had nothing but forgiveness and love for Tony, right? And so that made Tony think, how could you love me if I have done so many things to hurt your people? Right? How? How could you do that? And so that started his journey in trying to understand that this hate is fabricated, it's based on fear, it's based on ignorance. And so the more we come closer together to get curious about one another, the more we will realize that.

There's more that unite us than divides us. Another great example that of a person I'm, I'm definitely working on getting on my podcast and on my documentary is Daryl Davis. Have you heard of him?

Luke: I have, yeah. I dunno where I've seen him, but I, I've either watched a documentary or I've. Seen him on a few podcasts is really interesting.

Gissele: Yeah. I think he was, he was on a few podcasts. I think he had his, [01:07:00] I don't know if he has his own documentary. And so he was, he's black jazz musician, for those of you who don't know who he is. And he, since he was little, he wanted to understand racism after he experienced an act of racism as a kid.

And he was like, why do people hate me? Like, why do these people hate me when they don't even know me? So he became this amazing, popular jazz musician, and he started to go to KK rallies and he started to talk to like KK leaders and say, why do you hate me when you don't even know me? And his goal wasn't to change them, it was to understand them.

And he got over 200 of them to leave the clan just through dialogue. And it is really that understanding of sometimes the fears that we have are not based on anything real or anything concrete. It's just based on fear. And it's based on what somebody else tells us, what we accept from other people, somebody else's thoughts and beliefs.

And so the willingness, the courage to be [01:08:00] able to be curious, like this podcast says, the, the courage to be curious, the, the courage to be willing to love, I think is really important.

Luke: So I'm very uh, I'm conscious of your, your, your time. Giselle. I I just wanted to briefly dive into your current project and your documentary. What, what's that about? What's the main message and what are you trying to achieve there?

Gissele: Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is one of those situations where I never thought I'd be doing this. I really honestly thought I was going to be working in the child welfare system forever and, and, you know, do my compassion work there, and then that was it. But it seems like universe has a bigger plan or a different plan for me.

I wouldn't say bigger, but just different plan. And so I, I was talking to this woman who had done, had brought compassion into the prison system, and I was trying, I was picking her brain because I was, at the time, aiming to bring compassion into the child protection system. Right? There's so much trauma that is in the child welfare system and then sometimes the work actually retraumatizes the children. So I was trying to [01:09:00] figure out how do we work in a way that can be healing and bring families together and bring healing for the kids and the parents and so on. And so she talked to me for like two hours.

Her name is Lara Naton. And something within me literally said, ask her about the book. So I was like, okay. So I'm like, Hey, do you have a book? And she's like, yes, I do. Didn't tell me much about it other than the title. And then, you know, we closed up. I said, thank you very much. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna get this book as a thank you to her.

She spoke to me for two hours out of her own time, like didn't get anything out of it other than the information I got to bring back to my work. I read this book, Luke, this book. So she was on release on vacation and she asked God, source universe for the most extraordinary love story. Very soon after she gets kidnapped and assaulted and taken deep into the jungle and is about to get murdered, she did the only thing that she could do, which was deciding to have compassion and love for the [01:10:00] person in front of her and see his humanity so that he could begin to see hers.

And that's exactly what she did. She got curious about him. She started to see him as a person. She got wanted to know more about him, and slowly he went from a person who was about to murder her, like literally was about to murder her because he didn't wanna go to jail to someone who started to care about her.

'cause he pretended he was her cab driver. That's how he managed to get her. He drove her back to her hotel because, and he told her, I want you to be safe. I don't want you to be hard. It doesn't make any sense considering he's the one that harmed her, right. And took her to the jungle and was about to murder her.

But how she describes it is that they got through the other side of that all that hurt through love and compassion. And so that got me to be interested in other stories where people had used love to transform that conflict. And one of the things, you know, I, I read growing up with Martin Luther King's [01:11:00] work in terms of, you know, you have to, you know, love is the only thing that can turn an enemy into a friend.

And, you know, Nelson Mandela's work and the work of like, you know, when you look at the Bible, Jesus talking about turn the other cheek. And so all of these spiritual teachers have talked about how love is the way to transform hate and, and fear. Right, but where is the evidence, the proof in the pudding, right?

Like, sort of, right? Because we see these people as these spiritual amazing beings, but we're like, well, how can regular people do this? Right? And so I started to investigate these stories, extraordinary stories. I have another woman who's a good friend of mine who chose to forgive her son's killer and help him that transformed him.

And he is now like, he is, like he's, he's, he helps the other inmates. Like he, he said that her forgiveness and her love completely changed him. I mean, he's still serving time for killing her son, right? And that wasn't anything that Ru Kai did. That was just [01:12:00] the the, the justice system said, you gotta go to jail.

You did it, you admitted it. But Ru Kai didn't want him to go to jail. She wanted to help him. And she says her true, the true enemy is trauma. And so she works towards to helping people like the kid. And so I have all of these extraordinary stories of people that have used love and compassion to transform and outcome.

I see circumstances and I think of it sort of like the Jedi move. Have you seen like the Star Wars? You know how they always talk about that, that love was the way, but the problem is sort of like a half truth because they still use the same, they use violence, they still use the same, they killed people.

They still use the same strategies as the other side. But there's a nugget of truth there in that I do believe that love has the power to transform. And when I have come at people, even people I struggled with, with true unconditional love, like no expectation for them to change, no expectation of anything like that.

They do change, they transform how [01:13:00] they behave about like how they behave towards me. And they'll even, like, I've had a circumstances where people divulge things and you're like I don't wanna lower with the stuff that you did. Like that's not, I'm just coming to you with the, the greatest amount of love that I have in this moment.

Like, my intention isn't to do so. I do believe this, love has this power to transform. And so I have stories throughout the world, including an organization out of Africa that brings people on both sides of the genocide to come together and to teach young children and how they've been able to bring them together in reconciliation.

It's like incredible. And so I wanted to show people that the things that we've been doing, the punishment, the isolation, all that stuff doesn't work. It really doesn't work, right? It doesn't, the recidivism rate of people that are in jail, it's, it's high. Like they come back to jail because we're asking them to do something extraordinary.

We asking them to [01:14:00] become loving and compassionate people, but surround them with other people with the same energy, beliefs and traumas, right? And so if, if this is truly the way, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandala and all these spiritual teachers, you know, like you got Gandhi, you've got, you know, you had Jesus, all of these incredible people said that this is the way.

My desire is that my documentary is going to be illustrating that, that it is true. And the how, how do we do this? What is the starting point? How can we even get to that point where we could truly love one another? And so that is the purpose of the documentary. And so I I have a team of researchers that are working with me as well as all the people that have these extraordinary stories to tell.

Right now we're working towards getting funding. The majority of our funders were to be the us. But now there seems to be this thing about Canada and the US so we're having to find funding somewhere else. But yeah, but we're in the process of acquiring funding, [01:15:00] so yeah.

Luke: What, Giselle, what a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find more about your work?

Gissele: Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on the podcast. This was a, a really great conversation and I look forward to hearing you. that you're going on your journey towards self love, which is amazing. So I my center's called My Tree Center and I have the, it's M-A-I-T-R-I-C-E-N-T-R e.com.

I have a podcast called Love and Compassion, which is l and I am currently working on our documentary as well as, yeah, I'm actually writing a second book re-Imagining Education for the reasons we talked about. I'm actually co-writing it with my daughter because it's interesting her perspective and my perspective on education and I see a lot of the same things that you and I talked about that still exist today.

And we are talking about how can we reimagine systems that enable us to flourish the most, that create flourishing citizens. And that's what we're currently doing. So thank you very much.

Luke: Awesome. Thanks so much gi. [01:16:00]