I’ve talked about “beautiful states” a few times in my website and this blog. And here’s what it is, in a nutshell: the active choice not to suffer.

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As human beings, we subconsciously go through life in a state of fight or flight, because of how our brains are wired at its most basic level. And that in essence is a state of suffering, whether you call it stress or fear. As we develop the more advanced parts of the brain, we get more conscious about our thoughts, beliefs, choices, and actions, as well as gain the ability to foresee, anticipate, and accept the consequences of these actions.

What we do with this consciousness is the difference between living in a beautiful state and remaining in a suffering state.

When you encounter stress, fear, anxiety, frustration, and so on, do you choose to see the negative thought or feeling for what it is, observe it, release it, and let it go by? Or do you choose to flow with it – either because that’s “who you are”, or to get attention, to feel loved, to feel needed, to get some form of emotion or response from those around you?

What is the meaning you attach to feeling a certain way? And how is that impacting your life? These are questions that most of us don’t ask ourselves on a day to day basis, so we end up going with the flow. And emotional flows can sometimes be tsunamis.

What I love about being a life coach¹ is that I get to do this with clients, but also with myself and my family (especially my husband Dany who keeps me accountable). Just this week, Marie Forleo², a woman I admire greatly for her candor and authentic approach to life and business, interviewed Tony Robbins on her channel MarieTV about the documentary Tony Robbins – I Am Not Your Guru, which I am really looking forward to seeing.

In this interview³, she shares how her relationship with her partner is constantly evolving, because with the awareness of emotional triggers comes the ability to stop and take a step back (not necessarily immediately), have the space to observe feelings and behaviours, and make decisions about how to work through them.

By coincidence, some months ago in KL, Dany and I had decided on a “safe word” (NOT for BDSM, although that gives me some other ideas) for times when we were at odds (read: fighting) with one another, and felt misunderstood, or misheard by the other.

Once the safe word is used (and it is a pretty amusing word!) we stop and write down what we (think we) said, heard, and interpreted in that situation, from our own POV; we then share it, so we can see how the situation escalated. This has led to us finding whole new ways of looking at the issue at hand, and new solutions of working together on it emerge. Will it work all the time? Only time will tell, but at least it’s progress!

Tony Robbins is an amazing human being: a businessman, transformative life coach, philanthropist, and, quite simply, an inspiration to millions. In this interview, he shares some gems of wisdom, some of which will be familiar to those of you who know his work; for those who’ve not experienced Tony at a live event, these will be eye opening and more importantly, heart opening. He shares more about allowing and letting go, learning from what we are attracted to and repulsed by in others, and of course, beautiful states and suffering states in this 60-min video. Enjoy!