Join Me Outside đŸŒ² Living in Cause vs. Effect | 068
In this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast, Toréa takes along a paddle of a picturesque mountain lake near the Jefferson Wilderness area in Oregon. As she paddles through the clear waters, she reflects on the concepts of living in cause versus effect, demonstrating how shifting our mindset can lead to empowerment.
Join Toréa as she explores the beauty of nature and discusses the significance of taking control of our reactions and actions in the face of life's challenges. This episode is a perfect blend of tranquility and inspiration, encouraging listeners to embrace the outdoors as a proactive approach to their wellness.
In This Episode
00:00 - Join Me Outside đŸŒ² Living in Cause vs. Effect
01:28 - Setting the Scene: A Mountain Lake Adventure
02:38 - Exploring the Ecosystem
05:49 - Living in Cause vs. Effect
08:37 - Overcoming Obstacles: A Personal Story
14:23 - Applying the Concept to Life and Wellness
17:45 - Celebrating Small Actions
19:34 - Announcement: Deep Transformation is coming this fall
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Toréa
Website: https://www.torearodriguez.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/torearodriguez/
Threads:https://www.threads.net/@torearodriguez
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 00:00 Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness. I am your host Toréa Rodriguez, and I've had a lifelong fascination with the natural world, and its impact on our well being. For over a decade, my work as a functional practitioner has been exploring how our relationship to our environment, to our thoughts, beliefs and emotions can have a profound impact on our physical and mental wellness. And because of that neurology, and brain based rewiring is a core focus of my practice. I am passionate about helping people not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves. They've been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you liked what you hear today, I would love it. If you would leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. Because we never know how much we can impact others when we do. Let's start today's adventure, shall we?
Toréa Rodriguez 01:28 Welcome back to another episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness Podcast. And this is another one of the episodes in the join me outside series where you get to join me on one of my little mini adventures outside. So today I am on a mountain lake. I wouldn't say a high alpine like, the lake is about I would say 4200ft elevation. But I am paddling around in a packraft. That's nice, because there's very few people here, there's a few. I'm here campaign with my husband and my dog. Right now I'm just looking at the mountain reflection kind of weaving in the ripples on the water and just coasting along and listening.
Toréa Rodriguez 02:38 And to give you an idea of what it looks like here and what it's like here in this space, I'm on a lake in the mountains pretty close to the Jefferson wilderness area in Oregon. And the lake is about 4000 feet in elevation. So it's not so much of an alpine lake, but it is a mountain lake and it's not super big. It's a I don't even know how big it is. But it's not super big. It's also not super tiny. And I'm out here on my packraft pedaling round. And as you can hear that sound it's the mic picked up on it was a trout jumping in the lake. There's quite a few of them here. And just looking into the water, at least right here near shore where I am. You can see a bunch of little baby trout swimming around you can also see tadpoles of frogs swimming around in the water is fairly clear. So this ecosystem is actually fairly healthy. For the most part. There are some larger pine trees that are along the shore line of this lake. But there's definitely evidence of a historical fire that was here. At one point in time. There's a lot of standing trunks that have burned marks on them and no pine needles and no living branches. But underneath all of that. There are a bunch of new growth trees that are happening. So it looks like it's growing back fairly nicely and the birds that are in the background. I looked them up on the on the Merlin app from Cornell that I love so much. What you're hearing are some warm colors. I think a yellow warbler, a fox Sparrow, we've got some flycatchers that are here. And often the distance I haven't heard of them a lot but often often the distance I have definitely seen some hawks and some turkey vultures and we've got some deer that are visiting along the shoreline. Definitely a lot of deer at nighttime and often the distance what I can see is this jutting up craggy peak, because in this part of Oregon, a lot of the mountains are part of a volcanic system. And so there's this craggy peak with snow flanking it sides. And that peak, that was a hike that I did a number of years ago, maybe two years ago now. And I do know that there are some mountain goat that live back there, when we were hiking back there, we saw about 12 of them. But it's a nice peaceful day on the water and my husband and I wanted to go camping to spend the summer solstice, and take advantage of some days off that he had at work so that we could have a full five days out in the wilderness like this.
Toréa Rodriguez 05:49 And so what led up to us getting here kind of got me to thinking about the topic for this podcast episode. You know, there's this concept in when you're talking about mindset, and a mindset coaching, there's this concept of living in cars versus living in effect, and living in fact, a lot of people are familiar with this one, because if it's not you, then it might be somebody that, you know, we all know somebody who looks at the world as if the glass is half empty, everything is out to get them, things are happening to them. And they're very much living in the effect of their circumstances. And we sponding to their circumstances, without taking an active role in them, right. And living in cars is the opposite. It is the glass is half full, I'm going to look for the opportunity in this circumstance, or I'm going to look for what I can control in the circumstance. Because we all have circumstances things happen. Cars break down, we lose jobs, like we get fired, or we get furloughed, or you know, we get downsized or whatever, things definitely happen. We get born into a particular family or born into a particular financial situation. That is a circumstance. But what I've noticed is, and there's a lot of books that I've read that confer right, is that when we are unhappy when we are feeling those emotions that are frustration, sometimes anger, sometimes sadness, sometimes, I don't know what the name of the emotion is, but the woe is me, we are really looking at the reality of a situation or the circumstance itself and fighting against it. And if we switch that around and start to look at, how can I find? Or where can I find an action that I can take? That's totally under my power. That was a trout jumping. So what actions can I take that are totally under my power? Because when we have that, like, in effect, when we're looking at the world through the lenses of I am a victim of the world, then it can be hard to at first to look at what are the actions that we can take.
Toréa Rodriguez 08:37 So leading up to this. We were trying to leave on a Wednesday that was his first day, often in the week, trying to leave on a Wednesday. And we just had one of those days where no matter what we did to try and get things packed in the car, get everything ready, and depart and leave. And if you hear a dog barking in the distance, that is my dog, Moxie. She's barking at something. No matter what we did, we would have things go wrong, we would be thwarted one way or the other. And the old me probably about five years ago, I would have a day like that. And I would be complaining about how crappy of a day I was having, how everything was going wrong, how the universe was just trying to tell me that I shouldn't go camping. I don't deserve to be outside. I should just give up. And that would be the way that I would think. And then when I started learning about the cause versus effect and asking different questions, I started to become much more empowered in my life and in the choices that I make. And this was especially true when I was sick with chronic illness. I would feel very much like life was happening to me. Why am I the one who was getting ill? What What wasn't about me? What was it about my genetics? What was it about my life that led to me getting sick like this, that was a very common way for me to think. And so, you know, if I start to think about a particular circumstance, what are the things that are under our control. So one of the things that kind of got into our plans, right, that threw a wrench in our plans, if you will, the other day, um, we received a package, it was kind of a big package, and I was lifting it up, and it was awkward. And I thought that I had Shut the front door. And then I took the package into the garage to open it and take care of it and put things away and didn't realize it, but I hadn't Shut the front door all the way. And the wind blew open the door, and Moxie got out. And she decided to take her own tour in the neighborhood. And so that then created my husband and I were searching around the neighborhood. So we spent a couple hours trying to find her, we found her, she was having the best old time just hanging out in one of our neighbor's backyards. So you know, she didn't go far. But meanwhile, you know, we had to stop everything, drop everything and start looking for the dog. And then as we finally got everything packed up and ready to go, we started to go out of town.
Toréa Rodriguez 11:22 And I had forgotten some of our food on the counter, probably because I got interrupted when the search for the dog had to happen. And so we had to turn around and go back. And then as we were driving out of town, we have this weird noise in the vehicle. And we were about ready to go on four wheel drive roads in the back country. And we thought to ourselves, you know what, we should probably have that checked out. So we ended up at 430 in the afternoon, at the the auto shop, getting our vehicle checked out and inspected to make sure that we were totally safe. So if I had had a day like that in the past, I would just be like, Oh my gosh, we don't deserve to go, we should just give up now. Like, forget it. This isn't any fun. Like, this isn't gonna happen. It's not happening the way that I had it. But instead, it was interesting. Because I noticed that I was going down that path, I am not at all impervious or immune to any of this kind of stuff happening. I just noticed it now so that they can flip it and shift it a lot more quickly than I used to. And so I started to ask myself, Okay, fine. We've got some delays here, what, what is under, like, what do I have control over in this situation like, I can control my reaction to it, I can control my response. I can decide that you know, what we, we lost today. But actually, it might be better if we leave early in the morning, when we are fresh, and have had a good night's sleep instead of trying to get to camp, close to the time that sun is going down. And in that moment, we also recognize you know what, we could also just celebrate this and go get a good meal, go out to dinner, act as if we're celebrating like a birthday. And I'm totally getting tied up right now in this tree. Active as if we're celebrating a birthday and just go get a good meal, and have a good time. And then start off fresh in the morning. And it was a much more stress free, relaxing, enjoyable experience, even though all those things did not go according to plan. And so that's an example of living in cause versus effect, even though the circumstances are not ideal, right. And I know that my day of having things go wrong with the car and you know, losing Moxie and then having to go find her. I know that that's very different. And in comparison to certain people's circumstances, whether they were born into, you know, a family that is in poverty, that's a much different kind of circumstance.
Toréa Rodriguez 14:23 Yet at the same time, we still can find ways that we can take control and find a way for us to work with their circumstances that we have in that moment. We can find actions that we can take. There are so many resources on this planet now with the different YouTube videos with the different things on the internet that we can start to learn. Okay, how how do we manage finances For example, how does that work? What are the things that I can control? And I don't want to get too far down into the the money mindset piece of it. But what I do know is that if we start to look at our life differently, if we start to look at how can I respond to this environment in a way that is going to make me feel more empowered, and that I have more control over my life and more autonomy over my life, then that is the step in the right direction. And I've seen this a lot with my clients who have come to me with health coaching, right? And they are in that mindset of like, Oh, God, how did I get this sick? And I don't understand, and it must be my genetics, and I might as well just give up and be sick forever. And, yes, that's an exaggeration. But at the same time, those thoughts have crossed my mind, you know, when I was sick, too, and I've watched them start to look at, okay, today, I've got horrible fatigue. But what can I do today, that is going to get me closer to my goal of healing my body, and getting my energy back, and feeling totally vital. And the answer may differ for each person. But if we can just do one action each day, that gets us closer and closer to what it is our goals are. Then guess what, two weeks from now, two months from now. You're gonna be thinking to yourself, Man, why didn't I start doing this sooner? Had I started doing this sooner, I would have been so much closer to the goal. But the good news is that you start taking these actions, and you do get closer to your goal. And it's so fun to start seeing my clients start to celebrate each of these small actions, and then chain them all together. And then within a couple of months, really, they completely change their life and turn it around. And this is just one example, of course of the type of concepts and coaching that I cover with my clients. But I wanted to share the cause versus effect and well, there is a butterfly. Okay, that was really cool. That butterfly looked a lot like a monarch butterfly, but it was black and white. And it came right over my head and almost landed on the top of my raft that was super cool. See, isn't it fun to do these dreamy outside episodes.
Toréa Rodriguez 17:45 So what I was saying is that, you know, it's really fun to see my clients start to string these concepts together. And, you know, this is just one of many different concepts that I teach in my programs, and teach my one on one clients. So you know, if that's something that is peeking your curiosity, and you want to see if there's a way to work together, and perhaps change your life around, whether that be in health, we're in, you know, your career. aspirations, whether that's, you know, finding a new career or, you know, changing your own. And so this is just a single example of the kinds of topics and concepts that I teach my clients when they go through my deep transformation program, or work with me one on one. And the good news is that deep transformation is going to have a cohort again this fall. And if you have an interest in that, you can go to my website, check out the landing page for that program, you can get yourself on the waitlist to be notified when the enrollment opens. So with that, I'm going to paddle back to our campsite. Have a little lunch. So I hope that you enjoy your summer and get outside as much as possible. I'll see you next time.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:34 Hey, thanks for joining me for this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your wellness, you can check out my website torerodriguez.com. Want to have a peek into what it's like to work with me? Check out the Wellness Curiosity Collective or any of my other programs or retreats. And if you found something helpful in today's episode, don't forget to leave a review hit that follow button or share it with a friend because they're gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, See You Outside.
