Trust Falls

[00:00:00] Camille Kinzler: Have you ever been to a corporate event or maybe a church retreat when you were younger and participated in a trust fall? It's basically where you're standing up and you have to fall back and some stranger, maybe coworker of yours has to catch you, make sure you don't call fall on your butt. Well, in this episode, I am going to share a story about how my son and I both had to trust the fall and also how that relates to making and breaking habits.

[00:00:24] So join us today. 

[00:00:26] Hello, my beautiful friends. It is so good to be back. I bulk recorded the last several episodes so I could travel and I could be with my family and take some time off to rest and rejuvenate. I hope that you find the time to do that yourself. It is so important. But I have to say, it is so good to be back.

[00:01:08] It is so good to have a place to come home to. And when I say that, I mean you. It is so nice to have a place. Where I can be here with you, where we can play and experience growth and expansion and ask hard questions and learn. So thank you for being here while I was gone. And thank you for being here today.

[00:01:29] Today we are going to talk all about trust falls. And the reason why I thought of this is because I had a massive trust fall when I sent my kid to camp. And he had a massive trust fall when he said yes to going to a camp. That was new to him, where he didn't know anybody. He didn't have any friends that we're going along with him. 

[00:01:51] So I'll share that story in a little bit, and I'll share why that ties into making and breaking habits and how sometimes we have to trust fall, have this leap of faith when we are deciding to make changes in our life. So let me jump right into what a trust fall is for those of you who don't know. For those of you who've never been to church camp back in the eighties and nineties or corporate events.

[00:02:14] A trust fall is basically where you are standing with the person behind you. And you fall back and you hope that that person is going to catch you before you hit the ground. And that person is typically like a coworker. A trust fall really is just relying on someone or something to have you even when you can't see it. It's a leap of faith. It's trusting that the universe or God or spirit or whatever you believe in has your back, even when you don't know what the future holds, because woman, the cold, hard truth is, is that you never know what the future holds. We never know what the future holds.

[00:02:47] Therefore, you are experiencing these many trust falls every day without even realizing it, and you're surviving it. So even when you plan, and you prepare, and you fantasize, and maybe even worry. You mount that every step of your future. But you know the saying, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

[00:03:07] Most carefully planned plans can turn out differently than expected. And often, even when your plans turn out differently, it's still fine, right? It still all works out. I want you to just take a second to let that sink in. Is that even when our nicely planned out vacation, we have everything scheduled to a tee, the hotel, the tourist experiences, where we're going to eat. We get there and the restaurant's closed, or we mischeduled our tour and we get there an hour later, or the hotel doesn't have our reservation, but it all works out, right? We find someplace to sleep. We take the next tour, or we eat someplace else. It works out.

[00:03:50] So let me just tell you a little bit about the trustful that my son and I both experienced. A really good friend of mine had been telling me about this camp for years. Her girls had experienced this canoe camp for 10 years and they're even guides now, but she had been telling me about it for so long. I mean, my kids were tiny.

[00:04:06] I was like, my kids are way too small for this. So I didn't even consider it at the time, but when it crossed my path and around January or February, I signed up without a thought. I didn't even really look at the pamphlet. I looked at the website and watch the video and the kids looked like they were having a blast.

[00:04:23] So I was like, where do I sign? About two months before we were leaving for his trip, I got the email that said where to fly in. And I was shocked to find out that this camp was in Northern Canada. All my fault, right? Because I could have read the small print, but I didn't. And it said that this camp was in Northern Ontario, Canada.

[00:04:42] I live in Austin, Texas y'all this is really far away from home. When I thought the camp was somewhere in Minnesota. Because I mentioned canoes and water and then all my husband's family started talking about their canoe experiences when they were growing up and they're all from Minnesota. So I just, I don't know, figured it was there.

[00:04:58] I'm typically a little bit more detailed oriented, but I really just, like I said, it's just a trust fall. I just don't know. I knew that I wanted my son to have this coming of age experience at the age of 12. And so I signed the dotted line, but when I did find out it was in Northern Ontario, seems a little silly.

[00:05:15] It's not that much further from there than Minnesota, but I started creating all of these stories as to why he wouldn't be able to be successful there or how I, as a parent, couldn't send him that far away, but I pushed that aside anyway. And I planned out our trip from Austin, Texas to Northern Ontario.

[00:05:33] We took 10 days to get up there, road trip style, four bikes, one dog, two kids, my husband and I, and SUVs stuffed with things. And we went to Bentonville, Arkansas, to Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, hung out in Michigan, went to Mackinac Island. For those of you who have not been, it's this island that is free of cars.

[00:05:58] You have to take a ferry over, you leave your car on the mainland, you take a ferry over, And then just bike around or walk around the island. It's so lovely. Went from there to Niagara Falls, Canadian side. Magnificent. Had always heard of it. Brought back memories of watching Superman. More magnificent than I had imagined.

[00:06:17] It exceeded my expectation. And if you do go, do the boat tour that takes you right near the falls, cause that was spectacular. After Niagara Falls, we drove up to Toronto and then five hours north of Toronto. is this little town called Tamagami with 800 people. We drove straight to the landing strip where my son got on a puddle jumper and headed to their base camp, this tiny little island.

[00:06:41] And here's the deal is that the camp was only going to send us one correspondence and that's when all of the campers landed at the base camp. Then we weren't going to hear anything from them for two weeks. It was kind of the, you know, no news is good news type of thing. So when I watched him get on that plane, he had a slight trepidation, but he was even more excited.

[00:07:03] And so I pushed away all of those fears, all of those thoughts, all of those what ifs, and allowed him to have this experience. And I told myself he will be fine. He will learn the lessons that he needs to learn as he goes on this trip. And then of course, a silent prayer that I hope that he would love it and he would meet great friends and have these great experiences.

[00:07:25] And not break any bones, but I was okay with that happening too. So let's fast forward to two weeks after that, when we picked him up and he had the most spectacular time. He was all smiles and laughters and stories. They were just flowing from him. And my boy usually shares like, how was school good? So the fact that he was like expressing.

[00:07:46] All of his thoughts and feelings and intimate stories about his friends and guides was so special. And if I would have let all of those ifs and unknowns and endless unexpected outcomes cloud my mind, there is a hundred percent no way I would have let him get on that plane. And then there would have been zero possibility.

[00:08:06] He would have had such an amazing time where he was able to stretch himself and learn that he can do really, really hard things. Learn that he can get over the incessant buzzing noise of all of the bugs that are in northern Canada during this season. And he also learned that he could portage, which is carrying gear over the dry land from one part of the water when the water stops and, or it's too rough, you have to carry your equipment over the dry land to get back to another safe water spot.

[00:08:35] So he learned that he could portage. Over 80 pounds of gear and walk that 80 pounds of gear over a quarter of a mile. It's huge guys, so big. And this really got me thinking about adults, about us. And about how averse to risk we are and how adverse to challenges we are, unless we know 100 percent that we're guaranteed a certain outcome, we don't leave relationships without grown, we don't move cities or change jobs or start new ones.

[00:09:05] When we absolutely hate the ones that we're currently in or know that we could do so much more, it's even hard for us to move to a new neighborhood in the same city where it's just hard as being an adult to do something different without the 100 percent guarantee it's going to work out. Right? But we don't have that magic ball that tells us the future.

[00:09:25] We have to trust the future. We have to have a little bit of sprinkle of faith in the universe or whatever you believe in, because life is always lifing. We have proof that even when things don't work out, where we miss our turn or we say the wrong thing or accidentally put ourselves in positions we don't want to be in, that we have strength and courage and we can come out on the other side okay, right?

[00:09:48] So let's use that, let's use that as part of our power and not something that makes us more afraid to try new things as adults. So often we let potential negative aspects blur our vision. Like when we want to break or make a habit, we start thinking of the negative aspects of it. Like I'll never be able to drink again or I'll never be able to have Chick fil A sauce or I'll never be able to have ice cream or I'll have to work out every single day for the rest of my life.

[00:10:16] Oh my gosh, that's like deciding not to plant a tree because it will take too long to grow or not investing because you're too old for the compounding interest to take off. So you're like thinking of all of these ways that it won't work instead of let me ask you this question. Okay, this is a question that I asked my clients when they get stuck in this rut of the what ifs, what if all of these negative things could possibly happen?

[00:10:41] And I ask, what if you knew with a hundred percent certainty? That you would be happier, healthier. More energetic, more successful, more productive. If you did the dang thing, if you just did it, a hundred percent of my clients are like, where do I sign up? Of course I would do it. If I knew the outcome was going to be great, I would do it.

[00:11:00] This is the trust fall. You have to believe that that knock on your intuition, telling you to take that leap of faith and change your lifestyle. So you can achieve that better version of you. That one that's so desperately wants to shine through. It's not about the lacking. It's not about what you can't have.

[00:11:17] It's all about what's possible when you trust that everything will work out because everything always has and always will be fine. We, as humans, love to catastrophize things. We love even feeling guilty about what if we have this great body or what if we feel really healthy or what if we have this great successful life and career, then that we're happy, we feel guilty about it.

[00:11:41] We catastrophize what it'll look like when things maybe go wrong, when we make these really hard choices, or maybe we make these easy choices that seem really hard. So I have a few questions I would love for you to ask yourself. What is the worst thing that can happen? What's the worst thing that can happen if you go 30 days without drinking?

[00:12:00] What is the worst thing that can happen if you cut out Chick fil A? What is the worst thing that can happen if you decide to go on that canoe trip? And then the better question is, what's the best outcome that can happen if you change these things? And remember, always, there is no wrong decision. There's only the decision that's right in front of you.

[00:12:20] You can always pivot. You can always change later, but that one next decision is just picking up a breadcrumb that will lead you to the next, to the next, to the next. So live like, you know, you'll be a hundred percent successful, a hundred percent happier. If you just take the leap of faith. Raise your hand to the highest and most eager to be the first one to do the trust fall.

[00:12:44] When somebody asked for a volunteer, can't wait to see you at the next episode. 

[00:12:49] Have you ever been doing really well on a diet where you're eating super healthy and you're just rocking it or where you're going to the gym at least five days a week and you're feeling amazing in your body? Or maybe you have taken a 30 day break from alcohol or maybe you're just having it, you know, one drink a night and then somebody gets in your way, right?

[00:13:15] You have a bad day at work or your partner says something that you don't like, or a friend of yours doesn't return a phone call, and you start drinking at them, or eating at them, or basically just eating or drinking away your emotions, or deny going to the gym that you know was going to make you feel good just because you feel grouchy about how somebody treated you.

[00:13:35] In next week's episode, we are going to talk about, dun dun dun, personal responsibility. Yep, super sexy, but super important. See you then.