#31 Self Compassion Vs Laziness - How To Tell The Difference

Description:

In this episode, Mark Rosenfeld and Teal Elisabeth discuss self-compassion and laziness and how to tell the difference. Mark shares his thoughts on how to recognize when you're being kind to yourself versus making excuses, while Teal offers her perspective on listening to your body and knowing when to push through. They explore how to balance self-care with taking action, and why it’s so important to differentiate the two.

The duo also discuss how to find a partner without putting 'pressure' on yourself or the situation, and make gives an update on The Tinder Project!

Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
00:41 Teal's Pregnancy Update
02:00 A Tinder Project Update!
08:23 Are We Being TOO Strict?
11:53 How Do I Go About Dating Without Putting 'PRESSURE' On The Process?
20:24 Self Compassion Vs Laziness - How To Tell The Difference
32:41 Want 1-1 Help? Book a call!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:41 Teal's Pregnancy Update
• 2:00 A Tinder Project Update!
• 8:23 Are We Being TOO Strict?
• 11:53 How Do I Go About Dating Without Putting 'PRESSURE' On The Process?
• 20:24 Self Compassion Vs Laziness - How To Tell The Difference
• 32:41 Want 1-1 Help? Book a call!

Transcript

Mark Rosenfeld (00:00.753)
The crazy results of my niching experiment. How to find a partner without putting pressure on yourself or your dates and is self-compassion.

Mark Rosenfeld (00:20.645)
crazy results of my niching experiment, how to find a partner without putting pressure on yourself or your dates, and how to differentiate self-compassion from outright laziness. We'll see you right after this.

Mark Rosenfeld (00:35.889)
Fun with that. All right, let's go.

Mark Rosenfeld (00:44.529)
tail hello how far along are you now

Teal Elisabeth (00:45.804)
Hi Mark!

I'm nine months, yeah. I know, it's crazy. I got like four weeks to go and I'm so excited. The end is near.

Mark Rosenfeld (00:51.407)
What? What? it's so exciting.

Mark Rosenfeld (00:59.055)
So wow, so we might even not make it to next week. Possibly. Small chance.

Teal Elisabeth (01:03.566)
No, no, no, we still got a few more episodes in the bank to plan. Yes, yes. No, I still have a good four weeks before she should be arriving. So I'm just in major nesting mode right now. Just getting everything ready. It's so fun.

Mark Rosenfeld (01:08.221)
I still got a few more episodes. Okay, good. Good to hear. Good to hear.

Mark Rosenfeld (01:18.793)
that's adorable. Are you expecting, I know you can't predict this, but does your family have a history of usually things come on time or late or early? Is there any sort of pattern or are you just taking it as it comes?

Teal Elisabeth (01:31.31)
Yeah, no, it's a pattern of being late, so I'm not holding my hopes up for an early birth. I'm gonna for the long haul. I know, keep on baking in there, baby.

Mark Rosenfeld (01:35.365)
Okay. Okay. Right. Got it. 11 months. Here we come. Nice. I liked it. Yeah. Does it give you, does it give you empathy for other species that maybe have even longer pregnancies? You know, you hear elephants have 18 months gestations. You go, how do they do that? I got 21 months or something wild. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. If you ever see a female elephant out there, give her some baths. She probably worked really hard.

Teal Elisabeth (01:50.532)
my gosh.

Teal Elisabeth (01:55.726)
I have a lot of compassion for elephants. mean, birth an elephant.

Mark Rosenfeld (02:04.572)
who have her babies. Teal, we've been doing some niching as you know, over the past couple of months and I have some nice big results for you to share. It's been a very different process Teal, but one that I feel has been quite rewarding. So I'm excited to share it with you. Let me open up my, my little window here. Click the right button. There it is. Okay, Teal, can you see my screen?

Teal Elisabeth (02:27.883)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Rosenfeld (02:29.264)
We have here for those who are listening on the screen, the results of my online experiments on the Tinder project ever back or ever since back to the 1st of July, which was when we started the whole project. I did do about 75 days warmup before that, but this is the first time I started really tracking. was 1st of July. So what I've got at the bottom is the last two months. That's the January, February sort of combo and then the February into March kind of combo. Now we were on a couple of interesting websites during this time. We were on plenty of fish.

and then OkCupid, which are not websites you hear about a whole lot these days, but I wanted to use these for two reasons. One, they're a bit out of the way, so it allows me to test things and two, they do allow a long bio. A lot of websites these days are very short on the bios. People don't want to read as much anymore. Match.com is an exception, but as is Plenty Efficient OkCupid. So I wanted those two things. and to niche down, I actually wanted a website where the guys could message us without having to match.

And the reason I did that is I thought, wow, that way we don't even have to look at profiles. We can just look at our inbox. It kind of saves a step. So anyway, here's the results. Plenty of fish was a bit of a hot mess. And because of the way the website works without getting into detail, there were certain things I couldn't track. For example, I couldn't track how many we viewed or how many we liked. but I did track the fact that we got into 20 different conversations throughout the time. That means at least 20 people answered our question correctly and got through the filtering process.

And of those, we gave our number to 13 and had essentially 12 dates. It does say 10 on the screen, but two guys asked for selfie verification of my wife's identity, which I was not able to provide, so they didn't call because of that. So I guess they realized that I was not quite who I said I was, but nonetheless, I was pretty happy with this because we were actually only on there 18 days, which the other websites we were all on about 30 days. Now, the one downside of having these 10 to 12 dates,

is that they weren't specifically filtered in this case. They weren't aggressively filtered for attractiveness. So if we were to grade all the guys A, B, C, or D, we were giving dates to the A's, the B's and the C's. So we did get 12 days and 18 days, which is a bloody impressive rate, but a decent chunk of them were C's. So I think there was about four or five B's or above in there. So pretty good numbers overall. The subsequent month, which is the one we just finished, we went to okay Cupid.

Mark Rosenfeld (04:54.392)
Okay, Cupid's a little bit easier to track. And basically we slapped the profile up on OkayCupid. I then got sick, which I told you guys about a couple of episodes ago, and I wasn't able to basically be on for that time. So we came back to OkayCupid. We had 413 messages. Now that sounds very overwhelming. It sounds like a lot. We had 4,000 views and 400 ish messages. So about 10 % of the people that looked at his messages.

Teal Elisabeth (05:11.618)
my gosh.

Mark Rosenfeld (05:19.26)
Sounds like a lot to you, but when you are just filtering based on what the guys have answered, it's actually really quick. You just take the ones that gave the answers you want of which there were, let me make sure I've got my numbers right here. There were 37 who answered the question correctly. There was about 50 in total that answered it. So we got 400 messages, about 50 of those 400.

answered the question and then about 37 answered it correctly. So immediately we've gone very quickly from 400 down to 37. For those who are watching on the video, you'll see my stats here say 25. So what's the difference? Why did 37 people answer it correctly? We had 25 who made it. It's because we eliminated some on distance and we eliminated some who were basically too old or too young, type of

So we had 25 guys that essentially answered the question correctly. They were in the right age group in the right area. And then we eliminated all the Cs and Ds and we had 12 left. We essentially had 12 guys who we dropped the number with and that led to six unique phone dates with guys who were, yeah, pretty fricking solid, I have to say. So I just want to double check one stat to make sure I've quoted you correctly there. Did I get this right?

Teal Elisabeth (06:42.19)
Yeah, and so just to confirm for our listeners, the questions you're asking were really qualifying questions, which is a much more niching approach around, do you want to have kids in the coming year? Are you ready to be a provider because I want to be a stay-at-home mom? And are you into self-development, basically? I have a

Mark Rosenfeld (06:58.332)
Mom.

basically those three. Yeah. And also are you into, we got into, do you have a health and fitness routine and do you enjoy and have passion for your work? So we also got into those in the chats. So it was very detailed. So essentially we had 12 guys that were a B or an A and six of them ended up as dates, which yeah, it was pretty cool at a 400 and we did it over the course of 18 days. And remember we're going on 20 minutes a day.

Teal Elisabeth (07:06.446)
Mmm.

Teal Elisabeth (07:11.38)
Mmm. Good. Good. Yeah.

Teal Elisabeth (07:25.876)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mark Rosenfeld (07:28.272)
So over 18 days, if I just calculate this out in my brain, over 18 days, 20 minutes a day, that's about six hours if you spread it out. So in that six hours, we had six dates with guys who are B's or A's and we filtered through a good number. I think quite efficiently. Six hours sounds like a lot when you say it like that, but 20 minutes a day for 18 days, it felt fine. It felt pretty doable. Yeah. It felt like a habit, you know, like an exercise habit or something.

Teal Elisabeth (07:51.042)
That's not that much. No, that's very... Six hours to get six B's and A's of men who are highly qualified? That's pretty very good!

Mark Rosenfeld (07:57.767)
pretty good, right? Who are fully, yeah, who are compatible, who are fully compatible and qualified and that's the key. And then they register as B's and A's. So to do that in only 18 days, I'm, I really enjoyed it and I'm now going to experiment with it on the more well-known website. So we're going to hit it up on Hinge. We'll probably put it on maybe even Tinder because Tinder, know, you got 6,000 matches or a thousand matches. You don't know what to do with them. But if we have a really efficient process to, get the compatible ones through, that could have a lot of value.

Teal Elisabeth (08:03.48)
Yeah.

Yes.

Teal Elisabeth (08:14.562)
Uh-huh.

Teal Elisabeth (08:27.704)
Right.

Mark Rosenfeld (08:27.884)
So I think overall that was a positive result to you. Efficiency, you some dates. Yeah, it good fun.

Teal Elisabeth (08:31.402)
Yeah, I love it. I love it. The question I guess for me is because we never want to put too many qualifiers too soon. We've talked about this before, you know, where is the balance between over qualifying too soon and cutting out potentials that really could be good for you versus saying, you know what, I'm going to entertain those ideas. I know what I want. I'm part in the Red Seas here and I'm only giving my attention to the A's and B's.

Mark Rosenfeld (08:57.562)
Yeah, there was a few times during this experiment where I saw guys who were certainly B's, maybe even A's, but they did not answer the question correctly. They either sent a different opening message or they answered it incorrectly. For the guys that answered it incorrectly, I think that's probably a good filter. But for the guys that didn't answer it at all, those ones were tricky because you're right. We probably ruled out some good people.

by doing that. And this is the thing with the previous system, the tried and tested one, it's going to get more people in by keeping more of an open mind. But you can see by looking at the numbers, we would move through a hundred, 80, maybe 150 profiles in a month. This one, we went through 400 in 18 days. So it's almost like a system has to work one of two ways. Either the filters are going to be a little bit more porous.

which ensures that the good guys get through, but you have a bit more filtering work to do or the filters are going to be very, very stringent, which means a few of the good guys will not get through potentially. So I guess it depends which, which problem you choose. I don't know that there is a perfect system that is going to catch all the guys you would like, including compatibility without, and at the same time, rule out every single guy you don't want. I mean, maybe there'll be a future AI bot or something that can do that, but

especially when you only have to go on as a profile. It's tricky to do that. So I guess the difference with this system is, look, we processed a lot more. It's kind of like if there was 15 % of guys at the top, let's say the top 15%, this system almost finds five, 5 % of that batch. So you've got, Hey, maybe a third of them come through and the other top 10 % you lose. Whereas the other system takes the top 30 % of guys.

So you get the top 15%, but you also have not top of the 15, the other not 15 % to filter through. So it kind of depends which problem you want. I do really like that this system seems to get people who are very compatible though. So you kind of clean up a lot of those conversations upfront, further testing required, but it's good to see how efficient it is.

Teal Elisabeth (11:04.087)
Yes.

Teal Elisabeth (11:08.704)
I love seeing these results. And I think a nice approach is maybe starting with this approach. And then when you're actually connecting on the phone and in person, then you hold off on being quite so critiquing in your standards and just then really lean into, can I build a good connection? Can I have fun with this person? Can I get out of my head, out of the stack?

Mark Rosenfeld (11:27.196)
Yeah. I think you have to be a normal human once you're in conversation. Um, the second system, I would say if I had to sum it up, the first system is becoming a normal human on the messaging app, which a lot of people find very hard to do. The second system is more like, no, I'll kind of be my own robot when I'm on the app with all the preset questions and then I'll be a normal human once I talk to them. So yeah, it kind of depends, depends who you want to be. I like the first system a bit better, but the second maybe may turn out to be more efficient and maybe more popular with clients. So we'll watch this space to you.

Teal Elisabeth (11:47.01)
Hehehehehe

Teal Elisabeth (11:56.91)
This is why we're doing this. This is why the inner project exists. This is super cool. There's nothing else like it. I like this on the internet. Yeah.

Mark Rosenfeld (11:58.683)
This is why we're doing this, to test this out.

Now, I had a, I had a great question from a client this week and I thought it kind of goes along the same lines, which is Mark, how do I go about this process? How do I look for a man and not ride the waves of hope and disappointment and put too much pressure on my dates? You know, I match with a good guy. I find a good guy, get really excited and then we go on a date and we don't match. And then I get really disappointed and riding those waves. I said to a client, know, you don't go to the gym.

and do your exercise, you know, your bench press, and then you look in the mirror and be like, am I fit yet? I'm not fit yet. So you run back to the bench press, you do another set, and then you run back to the mirror. You're like, please this time, still not fit. You know, it'd be crazy to do that. And yet with our dating, we so often do this, you know, we go on a date or two and we think, I've got a boyfriend. Wait, no, I don't. Not yet. And it crashes and it peaks and it crashes. So the question was,

from a client, how do you go about this process? Which obviously someone's going to hire a coach and invest in a coach. They're investing time, they're investing money. Clearly they have a goal, they have a result that they want that they believe the coach can help them get. At the same time, when you're out there, when you're on a date, you don't really want to be sitting there gripping the table thinking, how do I turn this? How do get my result? How do I make this happen? You know, that's not going to be very attractive. So how do you, on the one hand, have a goal to have a relationship? And on the other hand, stay relaxed and not put pressure on

Teal Elisabeth (13:21.966)
Thank

Mark Rosenfeld (13:31.366)
process. Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Teal Elisabeth (13:33.735)
Well, wanted to hear what you were going to say. What did you say back to the... Yeah!

Mark Rosenfeld (13:36.269)
I ain't putting me on first, you? All right, I'll go first here. The biggest thing that I say to clients is set in place a habit or habits that if continued are almost inevitable to create the result. So for example, if you are meeting five new men in your age group out and about each week, somehow you're doing that.

I go to networking events every week. I go to social groups every week. I go to bar and meet people every week. I talk to people at shopping center every week. Talk to people at gym, whatever it is. If you have a habit that you can do and it's hard to imagine that habit failing, then you're on the right track. So an example in fitness would be if your friend comes and says to you and says, Hey, you, I'm going to the gym five days a week and this is my workout plan. Do you, do you think if I keep this up, I'll probably have my

my body within a year. Most of the time you're going to go, yeah, yeah, you probably need to do your nutrition habit too. But if you do nutrition habit and your fitness habit, I can't see how you could do this for a year and not have the body you want. It doesn't really make sense that you would fail. So it's really the same in dating. If your friend comes to you and says, Hey, I'm meeting one guy a month. Do you think I'm going to be in a relationship in a year? And you look at that and you go one guy a month, probably not if we're being completely honest. But if she says to you, look, I'm going, I don't know,

speed dating once a month, I'm going to an event once a month, I'm going on dates with four guys from online or doing 20 minutes a day each day, whatever the habit is. If you look at your friend's habits and you find it hard to imagine her failing, then that's, that is gold. That's what you want to do because once you have that habit that you can believe in, I say to clients, Teal, that's when you have to let it go and let fate do the rest. And that way you're not sitting on your dates, again, gripping the table, hoping this becomes a relationship.

you're not really hoping for anything. You're just trusting your habits will do it for you. So the habits get set up intentionally, takes a bit of work at first, then you get momentum. But once you've got momentum, same in fitness, same with saving money, same with relationships and dating, set up the habit and then trust the habit and let fate. You can still get hit by a bus tomorrow. Unfortunately, that's just the reality of it. It might never happen. But for the most part, if you can trust the habit,

Mark Rosenfeld (16:01.24)
then you don't need to be worrying about the results. And that's, that's the mindset I help clients take. Just really let it, let it go once you've got your habits in place. And of course, you need to make the habit sustainable, enjoyable, at least somewhat sustainable. But yeah, if you can do those things, you don't have to worry about the result. It'll, it'll come with the habits. Any thoughts on this?

Teal Elisabeth (16:04.438)
Hmm.

Teal Elisabeth (16:21.846)
I love that. Yeah, no, I love it. It's like you're setting up the container for success and then you're allowing and then trusting the process.

Mark Rosenfeld (16:28.752)
and then trusting it. Yeah. And if it doesn't happen for you, if you're the unlucky duck one in a hundred, you know, that's, that's your fate. You can change the habit or it doesn't, there are no guarantees in this life. know, anytime we start a goal, we have to do so with the inherent knowledge that there's always a possibility it might not happen. We, that's, that is life. As I found out recently, it can end very quick. Like we never know. can end quickly. Who knows? So that's the release part.

Teal Elisabeth (16:53.398)
Yeah, I would add something to that. I definitely agree with the putting in good habits and trusting the process and releasing. I think there's another piece to it for me, which that I help really women go into a lot, which is the inner mindset piece. Because I think even if you are saying, I'm trusting the process, are you actually, your subconscious allowing you to trust the process?

Mark Rosenfeld (16:57.659)
I that.

Mark Rosenfeld (17:11.612)
Hmm.

Mark Rosenfeld (17:19.93)
Yeah, cause you could show up to your habit every day and kind of unconsciously sabotage, couldn't you?

Teal Elisabeth (17:25.12)
Exactly, exactly. And I see this happen so many times with clients where they're like, yeah, I'm being chill. I'm being relaxed. I'm leaning back. I'm not doing anything. But deep down they're like, why isn't this guy cold? And my gosh. Or I don't know. I'm really nervous. So I think there's a lot of the inner mindset piece that still needs to be touched on and supported and cleared out to make sure that you really can relax into the trust piece. I think that trust piece is really, really key.

Mark Rosenfeld (17:51.557)
Right.

Teal Elisabeth (17:53.358)
It can be said. yes, I'm trusting this but the actual work of getting to the place of actually feeling so at peace So surrendered in faith that yes, I truly trust that I am ready and open to receive I'm gonna put myself out there and I trust to know the right men are gonna come to me and I'm gonna know how to handle that when it when they do come And I'm not gonna ruin this when they come is a whole other piece that gets to be massaged

Mark Rosenfeld (18:23.76)
And it really is about that inner relaxation, isn't it? Because you're right. You can show up and be, look chill on the outside, but on the inside, I still really hoping this amounts to something and you have to be completely present with the reality that is and accepting of your singleness there and they're not trying to make it something that it's not. You know, had a, I had a really, client shared a story recently and she said she connected with this guy and they had this beautiful moment together.

And she, she wasn't sure. She said the moment was really beautiful, but he did say he was not in town all the time, as in he lived up North. She's from Florida. I think he lived in New York. And she said, look, we had the most beautiful moment, most beautiful moment together. And I said to, I said to God, I said, you know, if it's meant to be, have him text me. If it's not meant to be, please don't have him text me. And she kind of just lent back and trusted that. And in the end, he didn't text her.

And she was so at peace with that. And she said, Mark, I've just realized I've, I've really come to this point where I'm actually so at peace and it's attracting all these men and it's attracting all these moments like this. That two years ago would have taken me out. I would have been asked myself all these questions. Now I can just see how accepting she is. She's like, this is, I'm right where I should be. I'm exactly where I should be. And if that moment wasn't meant to turn into something, then I have faith.

that it wasn't meant to turn into something. It wouldn't have been good for me if I tried to make it turn into something. So she's just in such a wonderful position. And she said to me, I'm just attracting the amount of male energy I'm attracting out from this position is wild. The amount of people I meet in person is wild. I don't even need your online stuff anymore. Cause every time I leave the house and she's, you know, she's in her sixties, she's a mature, mature lady. She's just getting hit on so frequently that she's like, I can't do the online. I have too many dates from the random people that talk to me.

Teal Elisabeth (20:15.79)
amazing.

Mark Rosenfeld (20:17.305)
Which is just beautiful, right? And so, yeah, I thought that was great.

Teal Elisabeth (20:20.798)
That essence of relaxing into love, like I call my company. Yeah, it is. So I think there's, yeah, everything you said was good and actually the trusting piece is a lot of work. Yeah.

Mark Rosenfeld (20:24.678)
Yeah.

Mark Rosenfeld (20:31.11)
the inner peace in the middle is really hard to get to. I would agree with that. So Teal, I want to talk about something that you are foremost expert in. You're amazing at this. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. Self-compassion and coming to a place of understanding. I might even get you to define what you see as self-compassion for the listeners, cause I'd be curious about that versus laziness. And this is something I've gotten confused in the past because, well, you know, I want to go to the gym today.

Okay. I had a, I had a tough night last night or I've had a tough week. Is it, is it laziness if I don't go or, or am I being understanding to myself? How does someone differentiate the two, especially when we consider sometimes it's the act of doing that thing that actually helps you do more of the thing. You know, sometimes getting off your butt and going to the gym is exactly what helps you go to the gym more often. So how do you know if you're just being lazy?

making excuses for yourself. Well, you know, I had a tough day. I got 20 minutes less sleep than usual. Maybe I should be self-compassionate. How does someone know if they should push themselves or be quote unquote self-compassionate?

Teal Elisabeth (21:50.766)
Yeah, that's a really good one. And it is such a fine line. And I think it is, it can be hard. And I'm speaking from being a recovering overachiever. I... Yes, recovering being the operative word here, because I'm really, really been working in the last few years to unwind that part of myself. It feels like it's just like...

Mark Rosenfeld (22:02.95)
Good place to speak from, I like it.

Teal Elisabeth (22:15.288)
just constantly slamming me. There's gotta be another word for slave driver, because I don't like that term, slave driver. that's what it feels like. It's just like when you're in that place of the mind where it just does not, nothing feels good enough. And it feels like, okay, I need to stay disciplined. I need to be hardworking. I need to be thorough. I need to keep pushing. There's so much in our external world that conditions us to...

adopt that mindset and that belief and makes that feel like normalcy. And I even see this with my husband too, you know, he'll put all these Post-It notes on his mirrors and stuff around like hard, know, success comes with hard work and effort and you know, you can't relax into it or whatever it is. And I'm just over here like, what if you could relax into love and relax into success and just dance your way through life. And he's just like, I don't get it. So.

It's a big, big... Yeah, yeah. It's a big part of the way our world has normalized success is a listening to that part of the mind that says, you're not good enough. You need to do more. You need to be better. You need to keep pushing yourself. You need to keep reaching for that highest potential. And there is truth to that, right? We don't want to be lazy. And I actually used to joke about this as a running joke in our relationship where I would call him lazy because even though he was pushing himself,

Mark Rosenfeld (23:11.779)
I hear him.

Teal Elisabeth (23:40.93)
he had a very different mentality than I did. It was like the roles were reversed where he, he said he was very efficient with his actions. Whereas I was just the, I'm going to do everything under the sun and hope that something sticks and is productive, but almost to the opposite extreme. And I would call him lazy because he would take three hours to sharpen the sword before getting into his activity. And I'm like, what are you doing? So there's, there is a line, but I think the biggest distinction here comes in.

Is it coming from a place of the mind and the ego or is it coming from a place of the soul? And this is one of the biggest things that I do with women inside of my soul rebirthing program and course and helping them come back home to that deep sense of intuition and self love is starting to distinguish this relationship between the mind and the ego versus our heart and our soul. And when we can start to really see them as almost two different entities, not

one conglomerated entity, we can start to understand how they actually show up and feel differently in our body because they will. You'll notice this when, when you have a thought and you notice what that thought is, you can usually start to feel right away how that thought feels in your body. So let's take the gym example. I need to get to the gym, right? How does that thought feel in your body?

And this is exactly kind of, think the approach for being able to understand is this coming from place of self-compassion or is this coming from a place of, laziness and, and the ego. And we can call it laziness or we could call it the opposite, which is the overachiever kind of pushing you beyond what your, your, your needs are. It is coming through from a place of constriction in your body where it feels tight. It feels heavy. It shameful or judgmental, you know, you fatty.

You can't get it together. You're going to just spiral out. If you don't go to the gym, you need to keep pushing it. You're a lazy, you know, effort. All these things that the mind likes to kind of cling onto and make us feel bad about ourselves. That energy feels very, very different than the energy that comes from the soul and the heart. When we hear those same words saying, I need to get to the gym, if we can feel into it as in, hmm,

Mark Rosenfeld (26:00.603)
Right.

Teal Elisabeth (26:07.586)
this feels expansive, this feels light, this feels maybe like not something my mind wants to do in this moment, but I know how good it feels when I'm at the gym and you connect to it from that place, then you know that it's coming from more of a soul-led place. And so it could literally be the same thought, but it's really just about deciphering how it feels in the body. And this takes a lot of practice. This isn't something that we can necessarily have a clear understanding of right off the bat.

but we can start to develop more awareness of our thoughts and deciphering our thoughts to see, this an ego-driven thought or is this a heart and soul led thought? And if it's a heart and soul led thought, even if the body's going, I feel sluggish today, your soul's going to say, I know you feel sluggish, but you're going to feel so good if you go to the gym and it feels so expansive when you do this. And it feels an alignment to who you are in your soul versus

the ego just trying to slave drive you to get you to the gym or not and say, yeah, just take it easy. Just have another, you know, have another donut, sit on the couch. Does that make sense?

Mark Rosenfeld (27:14.14)
I really like that. I like that a lot. How does a woman start practicing knowing whether it is ego or soul talking and differentiating the two?

Teal Elisabeth (27:28.866)
Yeah, like I said, it really starts with bringing in the body, the wisdom of the body and starting to be aware of how thoughts feel in the body. And this is something I just continue to deepen more and more into, especially being pregnant, just how much wisdom we have in our bodies that is constantly communicating with us. But we discount it. We give so much attention to the mind, to the shoulds. I should get myself to the gym. I know I need to do this. If I want to lose weight, I got to do these things.

We put so much focus on the mind, but when we come into it with how does this feel in the body, the body can then tell us, this thought feeling expansive or contractive? Is it feeling light or is it feeling heavy? And if you start guiding your decision-making with everything in life based on does this feel more light or does this feel heavy, it actually helps to be able to distinguish between the two and start living a more soul-led heart-based life.

Mark Rosenfeld (28:25.724)
So if it's feeling light and expansive, then that's more a soul. That's the soul communicating green light here. Heavy and constrictive is more red light.

Teal Elisabeth (28:33.888)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this is hard with the gym example because the body's probably going, but I don't want to go to the gym. Right? Because the body also has its own... Don't you damage me on that. So the body also has a voice too, but we're talking about distinguishing... We're just distinguishing between the voice...

Mark Rosenfeld (28:42.812)
My legs after legs down like don't you dare go on that treadmill. I'm the buddy and I'm telling you don't go near that treadmill

Mark Rosenfeld (28:54.748)
Is that the body? That's the body ego. But that's just to add a third element of confusion in there. Okay.

Teal Elisabeth (29:03.214)
I should go to the gym, right? So the body may be like I'm feeling sluggish and then the mind's gonna be like yeah We should stay home. We shouldn't do this We should just be lazy and that's even though that feels good in the moment. The thought actually is a heavier thought It's a thought of I'm not actually living into my best self. I know this is the easy path This feels heavy. This is gonna keep me in this place of kind of stuckness

I know I should be doing something else. That actually feels heavier than the thought of, I need to go to the gym, yes. Even though my body feels sluggish, I know it's gonna set me up for success, I know I feel so much better, I know it feels aligned with the identity that I wanna be as a person, that feels lighter and more expansive. So can you lean more towards giving power to the expansive energy than the heavy constrictive energy?

Mark Rosenfeld (29:58.173)
Wow, I really like that. I really like that. think I'm.

I don't really have a lot to add other than I had a little practical thing, which is nowhere near as deep or as wise as what you shared, but it was maybe something, something little that helped me differentiate. To use a gym example again, but you can use any exercise. You could use writing, for example, getting yourself to write or do some work, maybe go on a dating app for the day, whatever it is. One of my coaches said to me, try starting the activity in a small way. For example, putting your gym shoes on.

jumping on and give it, if you can give it five or 10 minutes and just see if you build momentum.

And often if you build momentum, what you find is that actually your body's getting behind you now and it was just laziness or maybe there's even more resistance and tiredness and you're pushing even harder at the five to 10 minute mark, in which case it probably means you need to rest. I don't know how that interlocks with your amazing wisdom about listening to the body. It's much more superficial advice there, but that was a neat little trick that sometimes helped me, has helped me differentiate the two to kind of find out if it's, if it's real or if it's my own ego.

Teal Elisabeth (31:05.219)
Yeah.

Mark Rosenfeld (31:11.175)
The ego seems to get out of the way if the momentum is undergoing, whereas if there's genuine exhaustion in the body, it's very hard to continue pushing through. Your momentum won't start.

Teal Elisabeth (31:23.296)
Yeah, no, I think that's a fabulous way. I encourage women to do that too. But yeah, I would test that out. And for anyone listening, I would test that out with any little decisions that you need to make. Just ask yourself when you're trying to make a big decision or a little decision, does this feel light or does this feel heavy? Does this feel constrictive or does this feel expansive?

Mark Rosenfeld (31:24.977)
be a little thing.

Mark Rosenfeld (31:43.485)
does it feel? Would you even go so far as to say, does this feel, I don't like using the word should. The reason I'm tempted to use it here, tell me if this is good or bad is because there are times where our intuition tells us that we should do something and we can ignore it. So it seems that there's room there for a should from our own intuition. Is it a case of teal? Does this feel like something I should do to live a better life?

Teal Elisabeth (31:59.822)
Hmm.

Mark Rosenfeld (32:12.75)
Or is that a bad question?

Teal Elisabeth (32:17.986)
I think it's more of what makes your soul feel most expressed. And if going to the gym doesn't actually make your soul feel expressed, then no, you should not go to the gym. But are there other ways to honor what your body is needing in terms of movement that can allow it to still have that sense of expression? Because the soul does not want to be... You can keep the sheds out, but just maybe redirect the question of what feels most aligned in terms of movement.

Mark Rosenfeld (32:30.118)
Okay.

Mark Rosenfeld (32:37.402)
Okay, so keep the shoulds out of there. No shoulds.

Teal Elisabeth (32:47.074)
that would feel inspiring and expansive for me in this moment. And that could be another way of doing it.

Mark Rosenfeld (32:49.754)
and expansive. And the cool part is if you find that expansive thing, you're likely to keep doing it, right? Cause it's going to feel aligned. So you'll keep up the habit, whether it's dance class or walking or whatever, whatever thing it is, you're more likely to actually keep it up and get the benefit than the thing you quote unquote should do. I like that, Teal. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Guys, if you want to hear more of Teal's wisdom, she has some amazing meditations that she has dropped in the show notes. And if you want to call with me, you can also find the link to do so there.

Teal Elisabeth (33:00.216)
Yes.

Teal Elisabeth (33:07.468)
Yes. You're welcome.

Mark Rosenfeld (33:18.916)
tail, it's been magical. Thank you for sharing your incredible wisdom.

Teal Elisabeth (33:21.422)
Aww. Thank you, Mark. Same. Thank you for always coming so prepared with all of your statistics. It's so fun to learn through this journey and you're like, you're paving the way for a whole new just world of dating out here. I love it.

Mark Rosenfeld (33:30.492)
Can't miss the numbers.

Mark Rosenfeld (33:37.692)
I am very passionate about it. Guys, thanks for joining us on the Tinder project. You're the best. We will see you next week.

Teal Elisabeth (33:45.09)
Talk soon. Bye, guys.