Episode Summary
In this episode we spoke with ShaRon Rea about how to apply her principles of “No Judgment. Just Love.” We discussed what that means and how to use it to reduce conflict and optimize happiness.
To learn more about ShaRon or to contact her, go to https://www.njjl.world/.
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The Best Way to Get Up To Speed Quickly
An excellent place to start if you want to learn the basics is the Emotional Embuffination book. In it, you'll find a comprehensive walkthrough on how to resolve conflict and live your best life possible. It's available on Audible, print, or as an e-book.
Show Transcript
David Enevoldsen: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Emotional Embuffination podcast. I am your host, David Enevoldsen, and here on Emotional Embuffination we are training to become emotionally buff enough to overcome any conflict in life. And at the same time we are learning and figuring out ways to discover new levels of success and happiness and optimize all those really positive, good feelings in life. This podcast is just one of a number of resources I have available. If you want to learn more about any of that, check out the Emotional Embuffination website, which is embuffination.com.
David Enevoldsen: All right, today, I have the pleasure of getting to interview Ms. ShaRon Rea. ShaRon has a couple of different hats that she gets to wear. She is a parent coach, a life coach, I believe. She is the founder of the No Judgment, Just Love global movement. So much of this is dealing with conflict and how you’re managing conflict, how you’re managing your emotions, negative emotions when you’re running into those in the midst of conflict and how to deal with drama. Is that all a fair statement?
ShaRon Rea: Absolutely.
David Enevoldsen: And so to me, that means you are a perfect fit for a discussion in the emotional embuffination realm, which is of course all about all of those same things managing emotions, dealing with conflict. So, ShaRon, thank you very much for agreeing to interview with me today. Thanks for being on the show. Maybe we can start with just a little bit of discussion about what it is exactly you do. So you’re your coach or parent coach, life coach. What does all that mean? What are you?
ShaRon Rea: Yeah, great. First of all, thank you so much for having me and inviting me here to have this conversation. It just lifts me up when we’re talking about emotions and helping people live in the world. Just more comfortable in being who they are. I’m a coach at the core. I work a lot with parents and families. In those spaces I think is the beginning for the rest of our lives. How we get our emotional intelligence, how we move through and become resilient or not. So I really work a lot with parents and some of the more frustrating ways when you’re going through a divorce, when you’re raising teenagers, which is a whole new for me, wonderful time. But for most parents, not so much. I love working with dads that are taking on more of the role and now there’s a lot of grand, well, there have been for a while a lot of grandparents that for whatever reason, their children are out of the picture. And so they’re raising their grandchildren, which creates a whole different communication issue because there’s a generational gap. So I work a lot with helping people truly communicate what they want to say, how they want to say it, and allow people to hear it the way they hear it, and then be able to begin a dialogue about whatever it is the topic is.
ShaRon Rea: And I think that many of us learned how to communicate from our elders or from our school or from watching TV. And we don’t really use words properly. We don’t listen to understand, we don’t speak to be understood. So very much a communication coach as well. And then with my global movement of no judgment, just love. Oh, lordy. That is the foundation for everything. It’s the foundation for how I’ve chosen to live. And let me just say, this is not an easy choice because we judge all the time and that’s normal and human. And I’m not asking us to not be normal and human. What I want is when you do that, to take a pause and breathe and then shift into what I call my GPS, which is my greatest personal shift. And then I have a lot of other thoughts that can bring me to more allowance for people and myself to be who we are. And from there start the interactions.
David Enevoldsen: Wow. There was a lot there that very much resonates with me. Let me let me break some of that back there. So, let me start off with your background before I get into the specifics about the actual coaching and the no judgment just love. How did you get what brought you to all of this? How did you get on this path in the first place?
ShaRon Rea: I’m a butterfly business woman, professional. I’ve had probably 29 different jobs. I’ve been a dance teacher, I’ve been a store manager, I’ve been a lobbyist. I’ve worked for Make-A-Wish, I worked for the Arizona Arizona State government. And I’ve just been so many, many, many different things.
David Enevoldsen: But you have been doing this for a while, right?
ShaRon Rea: I’ve been doing this for 13 years. So, I’m a little older than I probably sound. That’s okay. And at my last job, which was with first Things First Arizona program for birth to five families, helping their kids understand and help the parents excuse me understand that that’s a very, very vulnerable time in a person’s life. I had and this is this is just real ShaRon here. I had a job that I was supposed to do that day. And I also had a friend who was in a little crisis. And I chose to help my friend and not do my job. And then I realized, well, if I love doing that and not so much that I quit my job right in 2008, the height of everybody going, including my children, “What are you doing, Mom? The world is crumbling.” But I met a person who said, “You know what? The world can do what it does, and I choose not to participate.” I like Ooh, I like that.
David Enevoldsen: I do, too. That is so perfect.
ShaRon Rea: So I just jumped out and started coaching. And it has evolved over the years.
David Enevoldsen: And were you doing like, coaching part time prior to that?
ShaRon Rea: No, I had I mean, maybe in my normal everyday life, but I wasn’t defined and trained as a coach. That happened after I quit at Christmas time. So, I’m like, okay, what am I going to do? And, you know, pardon me, I’m not Irish, but I think there’s a phrase that says the road will rise up to meet you. And the road, the road rose up to meet me every step of the way. I was just guided. I got the business LLC, I got a name, I got all of this. And then one day I those four words, no judgment, just love kind of dropped into my spirit. And I thought, Well, that’s powerful. How how do I live that?
David Enevoldsen: Yeah.
ShaRon Rea: And so, at the time the legislature and I was a lobbyist as well in New York. So, I’ve done a lot of things. Was creating a law to prohibit business, to prohibit to allow businesses to not serve people. And I had an opinion about which side of that argument I was on. And so, I gave myself a challenge. I said, if you can find a way to not agree with everything but allow the other side to be and have their say, then you are confirmed to be able to be the carrier of these four words. And that’s when I found out I had to, couldn’t do it as a human on this earth place because I was like, what’s wrong with you all? But rising up to my greatest personal shift allowed me to think more globally. And I found it. And I’ve been practicing it because it is a practice, everyday sense.
David Enevoldsen: I love that message. Again, I’m going to circle back to that. So, is there anything that took you to kind of this realm of stuff specifically? Like why why are you passionate about kind of dealing with, well, the judgment and the conflict and the parents dealing with divorce situations and all of that.
ShaRon Rea: Because, you know, I’m an only child. I still am. And I never wanted to be because I love people so much. I just do. And because of that
David Enevoldsen: Do you feel you’re an extrovert, is that the
ShaRon Rea: Yes, I am. But I love being by myself as well. So, I’m probably an ambivert.
David Enevoldsen: Somewhere in between.
ShaRon Rea: Yes, exactly. And so as an only child, the way I lived it was I kind of leaned into everyone else because I wanted to be a part of this group and a part of that group. And I didn’t feel like I fully belonged. Which caused me to perceive judgments harshly. Now, there were absolutely some harsh judgments. I grew up in sort of a singly cultured community. And then when I moved to New York, there was a lot of different cultures. When I moved to Arizona, it was like culture shock because I’m a black woman. And yes, I’ve been judged. Yes, I’ve been racially profiled as a woman, as a black woman, as a smart woman, all of that. And it hurts.
David Enevoldsen: Sure.
ShaRon Rea: When you get judged by people. And so many different times, I realized if I’m feeling this, other people are. And we all put on a mask, we all put on a little superhuman cape like nothing’s bothering me. And deep inside, we’re suffering.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah. Have you been through your own divorce?
ShaRon Rea: Yes. Oh yes.
David Enevoldsen: You’ve had that experience.
ShaRon Rea: My sweet former husband and I were married for 21 years. And no offense, David, but he’s a lawyer, and I’m not.
David Enevoldsen: He’s already clearly a monster.
ShaRon Rea: Well, he just has a perspective that I don’t always share of how to speak to people.
David Enevoldsen: Wow look at you practicing what you preach there.
ShaRon Rea: Yes.
David Enevoldsen: That was a great spin. I love that angle.
ShaRon Rea: So we tried for 21 years to just come to peace. What we and he’s you know, we’re different as night and day. He’s Italian. I’m not. He’s, you know, all of that. And so I just chose because I knew he was terribly unhappy, even though we made this contract, that we had to stay together. But I was just dying. And we have two daughters. And I thought, I cannot show them that this is the model of love in this world because it’s not.
David Enevoldsen: Right.
ShaRon Rea: So, I chose to separate our family, transition it to a single two single households. And that was a really long time ago. And we’re all doing well.
David Enevoldsen: And you said that you mentioned teenagers earlier. Do you currently have teenagers, that kind of the
ShaRon Rea: No. But when I quit my job and we were getting divorced, our girls were teenagers. So, I was doing all those things at the same time, which was pretty stressful. My older daughter and my younger daughter, three years after that, were part of a book project that we wrote a book called Children and Divorce Parenting Tips to Help Your Family Cope and Adjust. And that’s when I just was starting the coaching business. And writing this book is kind of like a guide for different age ranges for kids and parents to know, you know, what to do is all foundational and no judgment, just love how to help them when you’re going through a divorce in different ages because they need different things from the parents. And then if you read it, it’s a small book. It’s a mini book and if you read it, it takes about 45 minutes. It’s a hopeful story that divorce doesn’t have to be the end of the world for anybody. It’s your perspective of how you move forward.
David Enevoldsen: Well, speaking as a former family law attorney, I very much agree with that. I feel like people have this impression that divorce has to be the end of the world or is the end of the world. And, you know, it’s funny, I’ve had a few times that I worked on divorces where people seemed perfectly fine. You know, I’ve had people that were about to get divorced and they went to the courthouse together with me and they would, like, hug and, you know, like, all right, well, this is great. You know, they were very diplomatic. And I saw other people get almost upset that they weren’t fighting about this breakup. So to me, it’s a very much an exemplar of exactly what you’re describing there, that it it doesn’t have to be this mess that just leaves everybody traumatized and you never recover from. There’s other ways. So
ShaRon Rea: Exactly.
David Enevoldsen: I agree with you.
ShaRon Rea: I’ll share a quick perspective of how I got there. I had a choice because it was very toxic situation towards the end. It was difficult to uncouple us. Just a lot of stuff going on. And I said, okay, ShaRon, you can either be a really slim, messed up woman or a slightly fat healthy. I said, you cannot deal with both of those at the same time. So, pick one. I chose my mental health.
David Enevoldsen: The interesting element to that is I’m currently coming to the belief that in the long term you may look better in the short run if you’re doing these kind of toxic behavior patterns. But if you have your mindset right, I think in the long run you’re going to it’s going to show up on your face and your body and it’s going to have an impact and all sorts of things no a physiological level. Cortisol levels over the long run that can have just catastrophic effects on your body. So, I think when you it’s funny, I’m kind of a nerd, and so I’ll go to go to like the comic cons and those things where you get to meet some of these famous actors. And there’s this contrast in my head that I feel like I’ve seen. So, once I got to meet Dick Van Dyke. And Dick Van Dyke, I went up and got his autograph and all this, and he’s exactly like he was in his eighties when I saw him, right? And he’s exactly like what I would expect Dick Van Dyke to be. He was energetic. He was super nice. He was like, “Hey, how are you doing?” And it was just full of energy and he’s he’s up there in age, right? And I just exactly what I would have thought he would have been.
David Enevoldsen: And he felt very positive. And so in my mind, that’s part of a reflection of having that long term positive mindset. Now, the contrast was there was one time I like this actor, so I’m not trying to badmouth him, or maybe I won’t even say his name, but he’s another, so I’ll skip his name. But he’s a somewhat older actor and I. Walked up to him and I was like, “Hey, how are you doing?” And he goes, “I’m tired.” And it was just like the whole dialogue was just kind of drained terrible thing. And like, you see it in his face, like he looked tired. He just, it, it felt like this another reflection of mindset. And I don’t have a clear way to correlate what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis. But I feel like I’ve seen this over and over again where the older people get, the more you start to see the impact on their bodies, their attitudes just from mindset. So
ShaRon Rea: Absolutely.
David Enevoldsen: In your situation, maybe in the short run you were abandoning some toxic behaviors that might have like shred a little bit of body fat or something, but in the long run, you’re probably way better off. And quite frankly, I mean, you look really good from my perspective. So I don’t I think you’re doing all right.
ShaRon Rea: Thank you. But I agree with you. There is an extreme connection that at least in this country, we don’t talk enough about. So I don’t think our our citizenry really embraces it. But your mental and your emotional and your physical health are so linked together that when you have depression, when you have sadness for prolonged periods of time, illness shows up because, you know, we’re supposed to cry to release our tears and our sweet men in this world resist that. And so there’s a lot of stress within their body that is going to show up in a lot of different unhealthy ways. So, yeah, I gained like 40 pounds. Because I had a lot of stress over a long period of time. But I was healthy and on my way to being much more comfortable with who I am, which is what allowed me to look out at our children’s dad, my former husband, and say, you know, you and I, you and I are connected forever. We are forever parents. This is not going to end when the court stops.
David Enevoldsen: Yup.
ShaRon Rea: And I need to respect you. Not that I need to, but I want to. Because somewhere in this time we loved each other in a different way than we will going forward. So I was healthy, relationships were wonderful and I lost the weight. So that was for me, a good choice.
David Enevoldsen: Even went away after anyway. Yeah. That is perfect. So, you have the experience here. Like you’ve got some real legite life experience behind all this. I mean, you’ve experienced divorce and children situations, not only a divorce with children, but you’ve dealt with children, which in and of itself, as I have children, so I know it’s a struggle. That’s something, especially when you have co-parenting issues. You know, somebody wants to parent different ways. And I don’t know what your situation was. That can be
ShaRon Rea: Opposite. Just absolutely opposite.
David Enevoldsen: Right. So, you’ve got some experience here dealing with a lot of these forms of conflict. That takes you into kind of this coaching. Tell me a little bit about what you do as a coach like on a just a day-to-day basis. How does that work?
ShaRon Rea: People come to me in a lot of different ways and I deliver coaching in a lot of different ways. So there is obviously one on one coaching and I say from preteen Middle school is my one of my favorite ages for young people because you know, the world wants to just close their eyes when kids are between 11 and 16 and hope they grow up. But that’s the time you need to lean in farther and help them and they deserve it and they need it. So I do one on one coaching with middle school up to 105, however old you are. And the way I coach is, I’ve learned to listen not only to what you’re saying, but what you’re not saying. And to your emotions. Very high intelligence for people’s emotions and and I’ve created a space that I call the comfy couch. It’s actually I’m sitting on it right now, but you can’t see it on my thing because I got the outdoor picture. And the comfy couch is a space where you can say anything in our privacy session. My eyebrows won’t raise. I won’t get aghast. I’ll just allow you to release whatever you need to release. And I don’t share things with anyone else in your family unless you give me permission or unless you’re under age and I see your safety is at risk. And then I
David Enevoldsen: Where you would otherwise be legally obligated to say something anyway.
ShaRon Rea: Absolutely. But I don’t say it first. I invite you to do something first and taking ownership for your behavior and your life. And if you don’t, then I will step in. I also work with families and groups we can do online or in person on the phone, whatever is the comfort level for people. I collaborate with a lot of organizations and businesses to group coach, which I don’t call coaching. It’s facilitating. So, facilitating a conversation on particular topics. Like right now I’m creating a workshop for self-care made easy. And I’m writing a complimentary book with that, which is an activity book, because self-care shouldn’t be drudgery. It should be fun with word search and puzzles and games and thought process. So just like when you were a kid in a car riding with your little activity book. So that’s coming up. And then. I’m sorry.
David Enevoldsen: You have a lot going on.
ShaRon Rea: I do. It’s a you know, like I said, I’m a butterfly here. There are lots of things. And I’m a visionary, too. So I have a lot of like, sometimes I have to turn the thoughts off because they just keep coming. The ideas. I’m like, oh, I’ve got to write that down. I’ve got to write that down. So yeah, there’s a lot of ways to deliver it. And one of the things that comes up often when I speak about it and people remind me is that I had the privilege of delivering a reunification program, not delivering it, but I wrote it under the heading of No Judgment, Just Love to Perryville, which is a women’s prison here in Arizona for a week with these wonderful women. And when you go in to a prison and you see the outside, the walls, the vacantness, then you cannot interact with anybody well. I walk in at Halloween and their orange jumpsuits matched their Halloween decorations, which made me laugh. And and then I see them whole. I see their magnificence and interact with them in that way. Because so much judgment, not only from society but within themselves, has caused them to shrivel. So, I hope that answers your question.
David Enevoldsen: It does. Yeah. There’s actually I want to circle back to a couple of things in there. One, you were talking about, I guess listening to what people are saying and what they’re not saying. That one, that’s another one of those comments that really resonates with me. In my, so I wrote a book, Emotional Embuffination, which is I guess one of the centerpieces of the Emotional Embuffination project that I have going on. And in that there’s actually a couple of different spots where I talk about it, but chapter ten, I talk, I have entitled Stop Fighting with Facts. And my theme there is, actually my last podcast episode was all about that topic. Was just when you have somebody that’s emotionally invested in an argument, what they tend to do is they say, “My point is right, here’s why.” And then the other person kind of waits for them to stop talking and then jumps in and says, “Nuh uh, my point is right, here’s why.” And so, no one’s listening. Nobody’s even paying any attention to what’s going on. And they both just kind of get angry and riled up and stuck in their positions. And no one nothing changes. Worse than that, people become entrenched in their positions even more because there’s various research seems to show that you push someone further into their belief if they’re already emotionally invested by arguing with them about it.
David Enevoldsen: The other thing there is the, listen to what they’re not saying thing, because that’s one of my big themes in that chapter and in another chapter is like, listen. Because very often I find that people are not really arguing about what they think they’re arguing about.
ShaRon Rea: Mm hmm.
David Enevoldsen: Start arguing about the surface facts. Frequently, you’re totally missing the point, and people just get angrier. I had, I mentioned this in the last episode. I had a former romantic relationship where I would argue with whatever we were arguing about, and everything escalated. And I had a friend who said, “David, that’s not what you were arguing about. She was upset about this other thing.” And I went, “Oh, wait. Right.” And then the next time it happened, I remember stopping myself because I was starting to argue again and went, “What are we actually arguing about?” And I thought about it. I was like, “Wait, I think we’re talking about this other thing.” And then I started talking about that and it immediately de-escalated.
ShaRon Rea: Yes.
David Enevoldsen: It seems to go back to what you’re saying here about like, listen, not to just what’s being said, but also to what’s not being said, because to me, that’s super important and that’s also very consistent with what I said in the Emotional Embuffination book, which is just shut up and listen. Pay attention to what they’re where they’re coming from and why they’re arguing in the first place, because you you have a much better chance of getting somewhere by just listening.
ShaRon Rea: But, you know, David, we can’t. And you everything you said is so right on. And I hope people will replay it over. Because it’s so important. And what I’ve come to know over the time for myself, my former husband, my kids friends, we can’t listen well, meaning we can’t give what we don’t have. I have eight apples and you want 12. Try as I might I cannot give you 12 because I only have eight. And when we haven’t learned how to even listen to our own internal nudging, our own emotions, our own thoughts, how do we give that to someone else?
David Enevoldsen: That’s a fair point. That is,
ShaRon Rea: Because, like you said, we’re entrenched in being right. And I remember this argument with my former husband so many times. I said, you are a phenomenal litigator, but we are not judge and jury here at your home.
David Enevoldsen: Yup.
ShaRon Rea: Do you want to be right or do you want to have a relationship with us?
David Enevoldsen: Right.
ShaRon Rea: Because those two things won’t work.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah. No, you’re you’re 100% right. I agree with that, too. And that also ties to something else I talked about in the book. There’s there’s one I can’t remember where exactly I said this, but in the book I mentioned there’s a YouTube video that kind of talks about how to win a fight in any argument or something like that or how to win any argument. I can’t remember exactly what the title was. And it has like almost 2 million hits. The last time I looked at it like there were over 2 million people that had seen this video, and the entire video was just about how to kind of use these little logical tricks to dupe somebody into looking like the idiot when you’re in the midst of an argument. And my point in the book was, what the heck is the point of that? If your objective is to resolve conflict, to not be miserable, to solve the problem in front of you, like just making somebody else look stupid in the midst of a single argument doesn’t get you anywhere. So the the other thing that you’re sorry, you’re getting me excited when you’re about these things. The other thing there is that a lot of times I have this perspective that sometimes people are so wrapped up in their own variants of pain that they can’t see beyond that pain. And so sometimes, again, consistent with that message of sometimes people aren’t saying what they’re actually saying if they’re angry with you, they might not be capable of hearing anything because they’re just so caught up in what they’re feeling that it’s like there is zero capacity for them to get beyond that. Which which means that in essence, we have to deal with our own pain points and get them under some level of control before we can start going outwards and listening to what someone else is saying. So once again, I 100% agree with you, assuming that was consistent with your message.
ShaRon Rea: Yes. And, you know, I think one of the I don’t think I am pretty certain for me, not for everyone is that, and I have to only keep talking about America because I don’t live in another country. So I just know this one is so in every aspect, we are in competition. You know, all of our sports, is competition, our school, did you get an A or did you get an F, you know? In driving you get rewarded if you do this or don’t do that. And it’s very difficult. I don’t even like I understand why that video got so many hits because we are conditioned to win. We are not conditioned to allow people to have their say and find a way to come together for solutions or walk away and agree to disagree. We just want to win. So even the beginning way they titled it is not how I would answer it. I wouldn’t even go there because it’s not about winning and being a lobbyist and being in government and watching our sweet government struggle right now and be interviewed I stopped watching a lot of things because I want to tell the interviewer, that’s not the question. Don’t frame it like that. You give too oppos too opposing. There’s a whole litany of things in the middle that this person could talk about. And so, I get trained. When people ask me a question, I go, that’s that’s an interesting question. I’m going to answer it this way. You know, whenever someone asks me, because I don’t want to get fault, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of responding in a way that is inconsistent now with who I’ve become.
David Enevoldsen: And is just compliant with your leading question.
ShaRon Rea: Yes.
David Enevoldsen: I don’t know if you can see this, but this is my book, Emotional Embuffination. This is in chapter one.
ShaRon Rea: What? What is what is winning? Yes, exactly.
David Enevoldsen: I went to a whole subsection there about what does that even mean? If I win the argument, did I win? If I get split custody, did I win? And so, I and I talk about the exact same thing there. It’s just we’re so primed to I’ve got to win. I’ve got to beat my ex. I’ve got to beat this other political candidate or whatever. And it’s
ShaRon Rea: And it’s like my side, you know, it’s like I can’t I can’t have any resonance with your side because then I’m a traitor for my side. And that’s the problem with sides.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned a little bit earlier when we were talking, you made some comment about kind of men that have a tendency to, I guess, kind of avoid some of the things that they otherwise should. Do you notice with respect to this, well, any of this stuff, I guess, gender distinctions? Do you notice like trends? Not that all men and women are the same in either direction, unequivocally, do you notice patterns?
ShaRon Rea: Yes, I do. And what I have to very and this is a shift for me because I’m of generations where there were two genders and now I talk in forms of personality, a male personality,
David Enevoldsen: Sure.
ShaRon Rea: Leaning versus a female, which could be in any type of body that you would see. And so and also how much freedom you’ve grown up with to be able to express your feelings or be in touch with your feelings. Stand up and be a man. Don’t be soft. And those things are you know, they had their time and they do have their place. But when you’re trying to uncover who you are and what is important to you, and this is how I kind of describe describe it, is that, you know, your head is like your brain is like a computer. It only spits out what you put in. And it will give it to you in the way that it thinks to protect you from being hurt or harmed. So that is a very excellent use of your brain for logical thinking, but your heart and your emotions tell you exactly what’s going on at any moment in time. And it’s not there to protect you. It’s there to inform you. And when you can lean into your emotions and not make them bad or wrong or scary and just say, “Oh, I’m feeling scratchy about that person, let me pause and uncover what I can think would let me just stay away from them for a minute or go closer to them for a minute,” whatever it is, our emotions are an information source and we have shut that down in this country.
David Enevoldsen: Oh yeah. Do you feel that 2020 and the events since then was an exemplar of all this?
ShaRon Rea: I think that just like a pot of water on the stove, it’s been boiling for decades. And at some point the pot will boil and it will boil over if you don’t watch it. And we have not been watching the lead up to all of that. How you know, well, I don’t want to get into all the things that I want to say, but, you know, from from the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, early, 2000s we have not we have gone farther and farther, not completely in every aspect of society, but many aspects got to be about me in disregard to you. I got to have more or I can’t share because there’s not enough.
David Enevoldsen: Yup.
ShaRon Rea: You know, so yes, I do think that elevated it to a level that we could all see what the challenges are. So I don’t shun it. I kind of bless it because, you know, when things are under the covers moving around, you don’t know what’s under there. And now that the covers are off, it’s like, “Holy moly, don’t, that’s what it was under there.”
David Enevoldsen: Interesting. Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. Do you, let me, I’m bouncing around a little bit, going back to my question a second ago. So, you are noticing at least a distinction in terms of maybe gender is the wrong word or maybe it is the right word, because if you look at gender and you define that as a sort of your your leaning, whatever kind of physiological body you’re in, do you notice or do you use a different approach if somebody is kind of leaning in terms of one gender energy versus the.
ShaRon Rea: I do. I do. Because with no judgment, just love and with how I have chosen to live in the world, I want everyone to feel comfy on this comfy couch. And if I come at a man the way I would come at a woman and I’m using those two terms loosely right now because more women seem to be in touch with their feelings, not necessarily understanding them all. Many men are pushing down their feelings so they can have a perspective to live in this world as what is deemed a man, manly. I do come to them and with everyone I ask more questions than I give statements. Because I don’t really know what you know fully in your life. But I have some inklings and some experience to help you uncover what you might not know. So yes, with men, I absolutely know that there is more often than not an unspoken and probably an unawareness that please let me be in front of someone who allow me to have my emotions because they are strong, raw and they’re hurting.
David Enevoldsen: Interesting. So what do you do with that? So they somebody comes out, they’ve got painful emotions. I mean, where do you how do you direct it? What do you what do you do as a coach?
ShaRon Rea: You know, it’s it’s personal to each person that I work with. So I don’t have a general specific thing. But generally, like I said, I listen to what they’re saying to me and what they’re not saying to me. And I inform in the question that I ask. I remember a gentleman was having some trouble because he said, who was it? I don’t you know, unfortunately, there’s so many, many young, sweet men who have lost their lives in the past years. I just can’t remember everyone’s name. But he was saying, I’m afraid to go out. And yet I know that I have to be strong. I know I’m a man. I know I have to, but I am afraid to go outside and interact with what I deem is an authority figure.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah.
ShaRon Rea: And so I gave him a space to be able to truly talk about that, which tears ensued. You know, cracked voice ensued. And that’s where you get to the rawness, the open space where we can have a discussion about so what small things, what things can you do to change your perspective, to give a different energy out? Because a male energy against a male energy that’s strong like a ram or a bull is just going to battle. There is no there is nothing else happening there. So how can you allow the softness, which is not a weakness, but the softness, the kindness, the compassion to come from you and emanate that so that you don’t aren’t attracting this type of and this doesn’t work with everyone. But with this gentleman that I was speaking with, it did.
David Enevoldsen: That makes perfect sense to me. And obviously everybody’s going to be different. Your approach to things is going to be different. So I guess it really all starts with what we were talking about earlier, which is, listen. You know, pay attention to where where somebody is coming from and what it is that they’re needing to say. And where does that go? Is that a fair statement?
ShaRon Rea: Yes, very fair.
David Enevoldsen: Okay. Let me you also mentioned earlier, you made comment to the GPS the greatest personal shift.
ShaRon Rea: Yeah.
David Enevoldsen: Let me dive back into that. What does that mean? What is the greatest personal shift?
ShaRon Rea: From my spiritual perspective, that I have honed and still learn and get surprised every day that, oh, there’s more, there’s more to know, there’s more to uncover.
David Enevoldsen: This is not possible because I’m pretty sure I know everything there is that anyone could possibly know.
ShaRon Rea: Well, you may be one of the 10 million that think that.
David Enevoldsen: Seems everybody has that perspective, right.
ShaRon Rea: I lived to tell a quick, quick story. I live in New York with my husband at the time and we wanted to build a home.
David Enevoldsen: Okay.
ShaRon Rea: And my friend’s husband was an architect. And like I remind everyone, I’m black. And I went over to their house because he invited me in the morning and to talk about the plans. And I’m sitting at the kitchen table with he and his wife and his two daughters come in and I look and I say hello and they don’t look at me and they look at their dad and they said, “Daddy, what is she doing here? I thought you said, no black people in our house.”
David Enevoldsen: Oof. Ugh.
ShaRon Rea: Now I know how I felt inside.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah. I’m sure I don’t even know if I can imagine that, that’s, ugh.
ShaRon Rea: And he was sitting across the table from me, turned every shade of whatever color is in the rainbow. I don’t even recall because I was a little in shock. I don’t even recall what he said. I just got up from the table, excused myself, and I left. Now, in my normal human way I could not find justification for that. I couldn’t find peace with that. I was hurt. I was crushed. I was pissed. I was all of those emotions. But in learning to practice and be no judgment, just love. I needed to for myself and my peace, because when you carry pain, hurt, disregard, like you said, it affects your physical and it shows up. So I had to find allowance for that family. And I have to tell you, it did not happen right away. It took a little bit, but what I uncovered from that is when I can move up to a place of a larger vista, just like if you’re on the ground, you only see certain things when you’re in the woods. But if you get up to the mountain, you can see higher. And that’s what I call my greatest personal shift to something higher, a higher perspective of more, a wider vista to be able to see the value of this family. And the value was, “Oh, guess what, ShaRon? Everybody doesn’t like everybody. Remember that. Oh, guess what, ShaRo? Parents do say things in the privacy of their home that they really don’t realize their kids are going to repeat at the most inopportune times.” So, I had all kinds of conversations that allowed me to find the peace with that situation.
David Enevoldsen: Okay, I’m going to repeat this and make sure I’m understanding it correctly. So the greatest personal shift, in essence, is when you kind of step yourself out of whatever is going on and say, okay, even if this is hurtful or toxic or whatever, I can recognize that it has some value and kind of look at it, I guess, from a more objective perspective and then say, okay, how do I interface with this, recognizing that there’s value in it, even if it feels hurtful once you’re in the midst of it. Is that a fair characterization?
ShaRon Rea: That is a fair, and I want to shift just one of your words, which is interact. We don’t have to interact with something that’s harmful to us.
David Enevoldsen: Oh okay. Fair enough.
ShaRon Rea: I want to recognize it. I want to give it its place. And then I get to choose all of those things. I’m having this conversation in my head, not out loud. So I get to say whatever I want to say, figure out whatever I want to figure out right, wrong, or indifferent to allow me to come to peace. And that is my greatest personal shift that I offer to everybody if you choose.
David Enevoldsen: I like that. I like that a lot. That that makes sense to me. I feel like that ties into something else that’s sort of all these things are just intertwined, so it’s not going in a very linear direction. But just because they all makes so much sense and connect in different ways. Tell me about the No Judgment Just Love idea. So obviously in its face, it’s got no judgment, just love. But can you elaborate a little bit on.
ShaRon Rea: Yes. Yes.
David Enevoldsen: What does that statement mean and what is the the project about, the movement?
ShaRon Rea: Okay. So, it’s two separate sentences. No judgment period. Just love period. And what it means is no judgment is an ideal because we can’t we cannot not judge. That’s how we live in this world. And when you can recognize that it’s an ideal and you hear me or give yourself permission, judge away. I judge all the time. Holy cow. It’s what you do with it after you make that judgment that brings you closer to the second sentence, which is just love or keeps you stuck in the first sentence of judgment.
David Enevoldsen: Oh, man. That’s pretty powerful. Here again, I feel like you’re reminding me of something that I have written about. So at the end of the Emotional Embuffination book, I made this comment. I say this at the end of every one of the podcast shows I’ve done too, that I want people to go from saying “The struggle is real,” to saying “What struggle?” Because I want the mindset shift to be not like, “Oh my God, this is so overwhelming, it’s terrible.” But I’m likening it to like when people go to the gym and they say, “Bruh, do you even lift?” Because, you know, they’ve been lifting so much that they have these huge muscles and can lift enormous things and they see somebody else who’s struggling with a tiny weight. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to have struggle. It doesn’t mean because obviously if the weightlifter is still going and maintains these big muscles, he’s going to be lifting things that are a struggle. But it’s that ideal state. It’s same way that you’re no judgment is like this ideal state that you’re moving towards. And then it’s just again, it very much feels like it connects up.
ShaRon Rea: We are so well suited for this conversation.
David Enevoldsen: I know. I love this. Like you’re saying the same things in a different way and I love it. It’s like, at least that’s what it feels like.
ShaRon Rea: And you know what I found? I’m sorry.
David Enevoldsen: Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
ShaRon Rea: I was. What I’ve found is that the missing link, or I shouldn’t say missing because it’s there. It’s the unknown link. See how I edit everything? Be more clear in, this is what I do with clients. This is how I speak because I want to be as clear as I can so people have a chance. And and it’s funny because many times it falls on what you say. Why do you say it that way or what? Because we’re not accustomed to that. But anyway, my point is the the opportunity to do what you said, which is let go of the struggle or have the struggle and not let it be a prohibiter is that we don’t have the tools, we don’t have the new thought, we don’t have the permission given to ourselves to do something different that’s not the thing I’ve heard on the commercials every day or what my friend is doing next to me. To be unique, to be individual. We are all precious, unique, magnificent souls trying to fit in to everybody else, which is never going to work because we all here bringing something different. I say it’s like this tapestry or a puzzle. If you’re putting together a puzzle and not looking at the box like you want to see what it becomes, every piece will fit into every other piece if you allow it to be its own piece.
David Enevoldsen: Yeah.
ShaRon Rea: Oh, I never said it that way before. But anyway.
David Enevoldsen: That’s another deep statement. Wow. It was, yeah. And this reminded me of an experience I had a little bit that this actually I was doing volunteer work in hospice for a while. And I would basically go and visit these people that were in hospice and were kind of expected to pass away within the next six months or so, was generally the expectation and there was a guy that I started visiting with who I ended up kind of hanging around. He didn’t pass away, at least up to the point of COVID, and then they wouldn’t let me visit anymore because of COVID. But I he was utterly fascinating to me. I was meeting with him weekly for several years, and during that time I found out all these crazy things that I didn’t know, and I became utterly fascinated by this guy’s life. And it was so interesting to me to just go and talk to him about all these life stories. And it was crazy stuff. Like he went to Harvard, he was in law school with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ShaRon Rea: Wow.
David Enevoldsen: He like, met Malcolm X. He was in a cult, you know, and he traveled the country with his cult. And it was just all these insane stories. And I mean, it got to the point where I started writing them down because I was like, this is insane. Somebody has to remember this stuff.
ShaRon Rea: Yes.
David Enevoldsen: One of the thoughts that I had and the reason I brought this up is that in the midst of all that, there was one point where I remember thinking, if I knew this guy and we were both the same age, I never would have been friends with this person. Like he there was so many things about him that were so distinct, like he the way he organized his law practice, like he described that. And I was like he did some very questionable ethical things. He was very disorganized. He was chaotic throughout his whole life. He just had these ideals and ways of living that were completely contrary to many of the things that I try to follow. And so my thought was, you know, if this was somebody I just knew that was my age, I would this would not be a buddy, you know, and I wouldn’t have heard all this stuff. And so it was weird because when he’s in this hospice setting, I was able to disconnect enough that I was just sort of listening. And as I was listening, like he got into some really deep, like we had some theological discussions that were kind of deep and he said some things I don’t think I would have ever thought about. So it was sort of this just acceptance of him for what he was, no judgment and just saying, okay, let me figure out whatever value is there. And I ended up getting a lot out of that interaction. But because I kind of set aside all these, well, you don’t follow my ideological structure and therefore you’re a monster and I don’t want to talk to you. Instead, I just kind of sat back and listened. And then later it wasn’t even until later that I realized I wouldn’t have quite meshed with him. But by that point I was already fascinated.
ShaRon Rea: And wouldn’t the world be a phenomenal place if we could all do that for each other? There are so many stories, so many stories inside of each one of the 8 billion people that are here that will go untold because you sat on the comfy couch with him.
David Enevoldsen: Yup.
ShaRon Rea: In my view and allowed him to just be comfortable to share all that because you were willing to put aside whatever judgments you had. So he oh, thank you for sharing that story with me and everybody who’s listening.
David Enevoldsen: And yeah, I mean, there’s I mean, I was joking earlier, obviously, when I said I knew everything. I mean, there’s so much to learn still and there’s so much, but I mean, so many of the things that you’re saying resonate so much with my experience with this whole Emotional Embuffination project in terms of how do you manage conflict, how do you get along better, how do you optimize happiness on a day-to-day level? Like how do you maximize the positive things that you’re feeling and how do you interact with people so that you’re eliminating the fights? And this is if I can just attack one more thing, not attack if I can dive into one more thing about.
ShaRon Rea: Yeah, yeah.
David Enevoldsen: The no judgment, just love concept as I’m hearing it that I really love about it is I am a huge, huge fan of the idea of the Drama Triangle. And I know I mentioned this a little bit before we started the podcast. So, I’ve got a separate podcast about it for anybody that’s listening. Check it out. I go into a lot of detail about it, but basically the Drama Triangle is this idea. It’s sort of a model of human interactions when people are experiencing things they don’t like and it’s a triangle. So, there’s three points on the triangle and each of the points represents a different mindset. In essence, it’s this role that we step into. One of the, on the bottom of the triangle, the bottom point is a victim. The upper left point of the triangle is a persecutor. And then the upper right corner of the triangle is a rescuer. So, what we do is we kind of jump into these different positions of this whole dynamic. So, we say, I’m a victim. I can’t do anything because that person or those people or that class of people or whatever over there are holding me back. They’re stopping me and it’s their fault. But now I’m powerless to change anything in my life. And my life is terrible because of it. The and the problem there is you don’t change anything. You just get stuck. In the persecutor role, typically, that person is acting out of anger, trying to correct the wrongs that they perceive. So this is the person that’s snapping back, yelling, judging, going crazy. And then the rescuer role, usually they try to jump in and they feel like somebody is oppressing the victim and they want to step in and help them. But the problem there is they’re trying to fight the battle on behalf of the victim, leaving the victim disempowered. And so what we do is we kind of shift around into these different roles. And where I was going with this is that in the no judgment, just love, well, backing up a step. So, the problem with the Drama Triangle is it inflames conflict. It doesn’t help. You remain a victim if you’re associating with that role. If you’re a persecutor and you’re getting angry and lashing out at someone, that tends to inflame problems because people get defensive, they lash back at you, they entrench in their positions. And so, what I so much love about no judgment, just love, is that I think it’s tapping into the same model. Because what I saw in family law all the time, what I see with conflict is people get super angry. They scream at the other person, they won’t listen. And it’s just this is your fault. You need to fix this. You did this to me. And so then the other person gets defensive and so no judgment to me, correct me if I’m misspeaking, no judgment is in part saying get rid of that, get, so detach from this persecutor role and kind of step in and just show some care for this person who may be in whatever other role you are, you’re not inflaming the problem. Then you open the opportunity to to create some dialogue, to create some level of resolution, and it fundamentally alters the conflict framework. And that’s a big part of why, if I’m understanding you right, this.
ShaRon Rea: Yes,
David Enevoldsen: It’s a huge model.
ShaRon Rea: And, you know, this is this is a you know, there’s so many, I think, in pictures a lot so there are so many analogies going on in my head right now when you’re talking. And the one that comes to mind is, you know, as parents, we think our kids are our property and then we raise them in a certain way and then we send them out in the world and we have to let go and let them become who they are. And so with no judgment, just love, I know what it means to me. I know what I’d like people to get from my perspective. But I adore when other people have a definition for it that they’ve embraced that says it a little different than mine, but it resonates. And yes, so what you just, said comes up.
David Enevoldsen: So, whether you agree with it or not.
ShaRon Rea: No, I do agree with it. I absolutely do. Because, you know, when you were talking about the triangle, which I’ve heard before and now it reminds me what I saw was a triangle with all of those labels, all of those selves.
David Enevoldsen: Yes.
ShaRon Rea: Not as different people, because we all do them within ourselves at any particular point.
David Enevoldsen: Exactly. And that’s part of the model, actually, is that you’re you’re constantly rotating around to the different roles.
ShaRon Rea: And what I saw in the middle wasn’t an empty, was a whole ball of pain.
David Enevoldsen: Yes.
ShaRon Rea: A whole ball of fear.
David Enevoldsen: Oh, I like that.
ShaRon Rea: A whole ball of injustice. A whole ball of depression. All of that’s in the middle. So we don’t get a chance to exit the triangle or the circle because we haven’t dealt with the center yet.
David Enevoldsen: That’s good. I like that. That’s really good. I’ve never even thought of that as an angle, but it’s almost like you’re on the circuit in a you can’t exit because you’re stuck in this, it’s often characterized as the drama game or the Drama Triangle game because people just play this game and they get kind of stuck in loops and it’s like you’re looping around the pain and the injustice and the drama. I like that a lot.
ShaRon Rea: And if you you know, I’m sure you do about how our brains function, they function by repetition.
David Enevoldsen: Yup.
ShaRon Rea: So when you are constantly in this circle, you don’t know that there’s anything else but this circle, because your brain has said, Oh, oh, we got that. You’re doing it over and over again. Got click, it’s in now. So any time you try and get out, your brain’s go, Whoa, Where’s the circle that you were in? What’s this over here? So it really takes compassion, effort, awareness, knowledge, support to to be wanting to go into that middle of the unknown pain that you don’t know how far or deep that goes in order to release yourself from that triangle circle of events.
ShaRon Rea: But
David Enevoldsen: Those roles.
ShaRon Rea: But when you do oh my goodness, fresh air.
David Enevoldsen: Yes.
ShaRon Rea: The levels of happiness are off the chart, the level of fulfillment. And I don’t even have the vocabulary right now. I can just feel it in my soul. So anyway, that’s what that’s when you get closer to the love, the bliss, the majestic, the unimaginable joy. Sorry.
David Enevoldsen: Oh, no, no. You’re speaking my language right now. This is absolutely perfect. I’m looking at the clock. I feel like I could continue this conversation for a very long time, but I’m kind of getting up to the point where we should probably be wrapping it up. So, yeah, let me let me do this because I really like this conversation and I could probably go on for a very long time. And I want to be somewhat respectful of your time as well. I have one question I’ve been asking all my guests. I’m going to ask you that. All right. So last substantive question here. And this is what I’ve been asking everybody. If you could offer one piece of advice to people about emotional health or strength and how to optimize those good feelings, what would that piece of advice be?
ShaRon Rea: Cultivate your own self love.
David Enevoldsen: I like that. Good advice. Most definitely. ShaRon, thank you very, very much. It has been an absolute pleasure. I very much appreciate you being on and doing this interview with me. Like I said, I feel like I could go on and on and on because we’re you’re very much speaking my language. So thank you very much for your time today. Thank you for being on. And I guess I will cut you loose and have a great
ShaRon Rea: Thank you so much. This has been a joy to everyone who listens to your beautiful podcast and this conversation, thank you for your time and listening. I hope you found some value and just enjoy the rest of the day and your life.
David Enevoldsen: Man. Yeah, what ShaRon said. All right. Thank you, Sharon.
ShaRon Rea: Thank you. Bye bye.
David Enevoldsen: So that brings us to the end of today’s show. I hope that you have found this useful. I hope that you can take away something. That there was some little nugget in here somewhere that’s going to help you to make your life just a little bit better. Remember, we want to keep becoming more emotionally embuffed all the time, and that means you keep working on it, you keep doing it, you keep regularly checking in and trying to figure out ways to strengthen your emotions and become more emotionally resilient. At the end of the day, the objective here is to take you from a place of saying things like, “The struggle is real,” to saying, “What struggle?” Thank you all for listening. I hope you have a great week and we will see you on the next show.