Exploring the Book Optimal Illusions | 5min snip from Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Speaker 2
So what advice, well maybe not advice, what would you like people to know about, you know, if someone here is listening and they have a really strong intellectual manager, not to say all accountants have a strong intellectual manager, but it can go hand in hand. What would you want them to know if they're like, you know what, my intellectual manager served me well up to this point in my life, but I'm not well. I recognize that I'm not well. I recognize maybe I'm not connected. What would you want them to know about this process?
Speaker 1
Well, your intellectual managers, they don't want to hear that they're wrong. They don't like that. Mine certainly doesn't hate that. She hates that. How would I phrase that? There's knowledge out there. There's knowledge in the universe. There's knowledge, there's things that we can experience that don't translate well through the neocortex. We've got the neocortex is the newest part of our brain. And just because it's something a little older, a little deeper, doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or not true. It can be really scary for intellectual, those intellectual managers. They want to know, you know, they want to know, and they've been trained and rewarded to know the facts. Things that can be written down, the numbers, the letters, the words. But there's so much deeper knowledge than that. And if those managers can just, they don't have to let go of the reins, but open themselves up to other kinds of knowledge. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's not being wrong. It's not being wrong. It's other kinds of knowledge that our culture has not valued and has not taught. And quite frankly, a lot of people in our culture don't understand even, even though they're doing it, you know, even though they're tasting vanilla.
Speaker 2
Right. Well, and I think that the goal, like you said, the goal is to tell the intellectual managers that they're wrong necessarily because when you... frankly, there's a physiological response that happens, right? When you tell the intellectual manager it's wrong and it needs to get out of the way so that you can get deeper to those exiles, then you start to activate firefighters, parts of-
Speaker 1
I assume your audience must have, you've already done an episode on all this. Yes, we've talked about
Speaker 2
these theories, right? And just as a reminder, we have managers which are generally the parts of ourselves that interact with the world. A stronger being an intellectual man. What are some examples of managers, intellectual managers? I think... Oh,
Speaker 1
caretakers. There's all sorts of...
Speaker 2
Fawning, people pleasing is a manager, right? Just kind of what we interact with that outside world. And then we have...
Speaker 1
It's plural mind people. That's a whole other topic, but yeah, plurality of mind. So you've got these parts that step forward and do most of the interacting with the world on a surface level because that's what's been working for us. And for you and I, it was intellectual, an intellectual manager.
Speaker 2
And I think for most of my audience, we're executives, we're entrepreneurs, we're type-A, high-functioning, go get it done type of people. Less, maybe a little, maybe not less creative, but less, a little bit more rigid, right? In terms of wanting to know the answers, wanting to move forward, wanting to progress. And then there's other parts of self which we call our exiles, right? And those are the, those are, to me, those are kind of the childlike pieces of us, right? The more vulnerable pieces. Is that a fair way to describe it? Yes.
Speaker 1
So you're speaking in the language of internal family systems, which Richard Schwartz, find him, read his books. It's great stuff. Yeah. So according to his system of plural mind, and there are many systems out there, you've got your exiles, your firefighters, and your managers. Did I get them all? I should have brushed up on Richard before I came. No, I think you're right. But yeah, you've got the managers who are the ones who are doing all the daily tasks. They're the ones that we think of as ourselves. Well, they're all part of ourselves. But yeah, they're the ones that are, like you said, interacting with people and they're the ones who are going to work. And firefighters are the ones that come up when we're threatened. whatever the manager is doing is not working. A Pops a firefighter. And both of those parts are protecting the exiles. And the exiles, they typically are a younger part that was in some kind of situation that they were not... Safe. That they weren't safe. Or in control. They weren't safer in control and you know kids are largely not safe and in control. So what was the question?
Speaker 2
We were talking about kind of the intellectual managers and when we tell them they're wrong and to get out of the way that activates those firefighters. And then once the firefighters become activated, there's a very real physiological response, right? A stress response, a fight or flight response. And so in those states of fight and flight, all sorts of things happen in our bodies. All sorts of physiological changes happen in our bodies. One of which is our, I feel like our managers, you know, our intellectual managers begin to, they always think that they're right, right? But they feel even more emboldened. I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, and I'm rational, right? Even though all these other triggers are starting to happen, we start to believe that our thought process is entirely rational and it must be everyone else and the rest of the world that's having this big problem. Oh,
Speaker 1
oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If only this would change or that would change, then I wouldn't feel like...if X would change, then I wouldn't feel like Y. Right.
Speaker 2
And
Speaker 1
the next change is and you still feel like Y.
Speaker 2
But the nice part is that if you don't trigger that firefighter, then there's a lot of progress that can be made. And so something that's been really effective for me with those intellectual managers is to kind of thank them, you know, for the job that they've done. Like this has been really, really helpful. And then to ask the question, what if, right? What if opens up that curiosity to an intellectual manager where it's not saying you're wrong, right? It's just saying, what if there's a different way to think about it?
Speaker 1
What if I didn't get to the end of the book? Right. What if I missed, you know, like what if there's something I didn't know? Right. And
Speaker 2
that little bit of curiosity, at least for me, and I think for a lot of my listeners, can open that door into this realm of, okay, like, what does that even mean, yoga, to connect, right? Can I experience something like that? And then to recognize that it's a tacit skill, that it doesn't matter how much someone talks to you about it. It doesn't matter how much you watch it. It doesn't matter any of that stuff. You're never going to learn to dance until you do
Speaker 1
the dance.
Speaker 2
Yeah, you can't learn to shoot a basketball unless you shoot a basketball You
Speaker 1
can watch all the NBA games you want. You're never going to
Speaker 2
be in Michael Jordan unless you play the game. For a long, long time.
Speaker 1
I think there's sometimes a perception that it's kind of either or. It's either science or mysticism. It's one or the other. And it's all both. So, you know, have your listeners been exposed to polyvagal theory at all? Yes, we've talked about it. Talked about that a little bit. Okay. Yeah, because there's a lot in polyvagal theory that, you know, explains some of the work that shamanic healers do and that,iki healers do. It explains some of that. But you know what? We still don't have all those answers. And just because we're starting to understand some of that and some of the reactions that the nervous some of the things that are happening in the nervous system Doesn't mean we understand all of it and doesn't mean that before we knew about it that it wasn't true. Mm-hmm. It's right
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1
that these processes were happening before we knew
Speaker 2
about them.

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