A,B,C, Pound Sign

WSC Intro/Outro: This is when Spirit calls and you on your

journey, are in the right place. This show is about magic,

miracles and meaning shared through stories, interviews and

channeled messages. We have so much to share about who you are

and your divine mission here on the earth. Let's get to it when

Spirit calls. Is right now.

Rev. Rose Hope: We welcome to the show today. Bryan Turkel,

Bryan is a speaker, facilitator and coach who draws from a

background in leadership, psychology and performance. His

signature approach was forged in the fire after a decade long

battle with chronic pain, addiction and identity loss, he

now helps others alchemize their crucibles into clarity and

connection. Bryan's influences range from his education in

psychology to Union Shadow Work, logo therapy, internal family

systems and experiences with plant medicine. Bryan is the

creator of self improvement, an experiential workshop series

that uses game based exercises to teach applicable skills for

emotional regulation, mental resilience and living in

alignment. He's led sessions across North America for a

diverse array of participants, always with the goal of helping

people move from self consciousness to self trust,

whether he's on stage or working with individuals. Bryan's work

is about one thing, making meaning from pain and momentum

from truth.

Hello, hello, everyone. I'm so happy to be back with you on

another episode of when Spirit calls. Oh my gosh, you guys. I

am so excited about our guest today. I actually was introduced

through a beautiful friend, Roslyn Fung, which has been

interviewed on this show before, and her and I, we just have such

a beautiful connection relationship, and she meets

people for me all the time, and she happened to meet this

beautiful soul all the way across the world. I think you

guys were in Bali, if I'm not mistaken. So please welcome

Brian. Hi, Brian,

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited

to be here.

Rev. Rose Hope: I'm so happy you're here, and you know you

and I've had the pleasure now talking a few times, doing some

workshops together, and it's just been such a gift and honor

for me to witness your magic and what you bring to the table. So

I'm so excited for our audience to get a sense of that. And as

our audience knows, we always start off with a little

storytelling time. And so I would love for you to just share

with our audience they learned a little bit about you in the bio,

but would you share the backstory? Can we know when

spirit called you, which I know is more than once, but you know,

if you if you kind of can peel that back for us, we'd love to

hear

Yeah, so I'll just say that spirit called me when

my life seemed like it was going off the rails, when really it

was just going to a destination that I hadn't expected.

Rev. Rose Hope: Oh, I love that.

So I grew up in what I like to call a domino

culture. I'm from the northeast. Come from a Jewish background. I

went to a prep school, and in these places, there's a very

expected track that you have to hit. The best prep school goes

the best college, best college you go to the best major, best

major gets the best job, best job gets the most money, and so

on and so forth, allegedly, until you stop and happy and you

made it. And I, at the beginning part of my journey went really

well. I was a straight A student. I was a very decorated

athlete. I got I got recruited to play football and a top

liberal arts school out in California. And then that's when

I wouldn't say that the train went off the rails yet, but

there was some warning line. There was some warning signs in

the engine. At that point, I started getting hurt. I had four

surgeries on my wrist when I was in college, and I couldn't play

football anymore. And that really, that really shook up my

identity, because I had really identified with being this

competitor, this warrior, somebody who took a lot of pride

in my physical strength, my capabilities, because I was

really linked to who I was as a person. And so College became

very both physically and spiritually painful, and I fell

in with not a great group, and just I was really colored by the

that was like the domino culture on steroids. Wow. And my first

job out of school, I was a recruiter for a financial firm,

and this wasn't as fancy as of a job title, but this still was

gonna hit the check the box of making as much money as

possible, because this was but then I got there, and this was

like a very much woven Wall Street kind of firm with these,

like young kids printing money, lying their ass off all day off

the phones, wow. And at first, the competitor and the athlete

in me was very attracted to it. Also, it felt like this was the

fast track to all the things that I was told that I. Be going

after and but it was just was not sustainable. She was not in

alignment with who I was, and I was the last associate in a

class of 12 to burn out at the end of the year. And at that

point, I did what any other 24 year old in LA would do. I

became a life coach, like, like, what a schmuck I was.

Rev. Rose Hope: Because, you know, everything at 24 Brian.

course, absolutely and so I went into that, but I

just was, I was clearly, just from a chronological standpoint,

not ready to help people in their work, because I still had

barely started mine. I have a teacher who, she has a great

saying she has, you share the scar, not the wound. And I still

have a lot of healing to do on myself first, but I did that for

about a year and a half. I got my coaching certification. I had

a few clients, but I was really struggling. And this is when I

realized, like, Oh no, like, I have gone off the rails. And it

felt like me and all of my peers were going through the alphabet

together, you know, A, B C, the prep school, the college, the

fantasy sounding job. But then I went, a B, C, hammer sign. I was

like, Oh my God. Like, I messed this up so hard, I'm not even in

the alphabet anymore. And I saw all my friends going, D, E, F,

and my life was like pound sign, Star OG wiki face. I just kept

on getting like weirder, and I thought that I had irreparably

messed up my life, and all the opportunities that I was given,

and my family worked really hard to provide for me, and that

paired with, you know, throughout my 20s and my early

30s, I had seven orthopedic surgeries from, you know, my

time in sports, and my dad was slowly dying from a degenerative

disease. And so it was really like it was so much integrated

physical and spiritual pain in that time, yeah, I bet. And I, I

was really in a very dark place towards the end of my 20s, and I

had heard about ayahuasca somewhere. I just, I had no idea

where I heard about it, but I needed a Hail Mary at that

point, because for then I had done every psychiatric known to

man. I was, you know, done every modality, and I was like, I need

something to really show my system. And so I think, like a

lot of people, I expected a silver bullet, you know, if you

were doing, if you're reaching for ayahuasca, your life has

probably not been a party thus far, and but I didn't understand

that was not like I thought that I would go to, you know, fly to

Latin America, go to the jungle, drink some crazy stuff, have a

vision and, like, be ready to rock, but that, but that was

really the beginning of my journey, not the end. Wow. And

since then, I've had to do a lot of work on myself and I real and

have what brought me to helping other people with their work was

when I was younger, it was very important for me and others to

understand and acknowledge that nobody suffered as much or as

uniquely as Brian. It was. It was very important for me,

because I thought there was nothing special about me, and

that was kind of my individuating factor.

Rev. Rose Hope: Okay, so the suffering for you was a

uniqueness, like a unique value proposition, in a way of, like,

yeah,

no. And, but then, as I've, you know, gotten older,

and I've walked my own path, and I've walked with, you know, with

other people walking there, as I realized, actually there's a lot

of people who are very similar to me. Similar to me. And so if

I have found things in my life, practices, behavior, shifts in

mindset, that really work for me, there's just really no

reason it can't work for other people. And so now I work with

people like myself. You know, people who are recovering, the

perfectionist type A overachievers, people who I feel

like can really benefit from the experiences that changed my

life, and I'm just here to pass it on, help people with their

work.

Rev. Rose Hope: Amazing. I love that this kind of came full

circle for you. You know, becoming a life coach at 24 but

like, really now becoming the life coach that you, you know,

thought maybe you could be now, and to be able to have gathered

all of those tools and all of those experiences now. I mean, I

often tell my clients, you know, when they're moving through the

stuff of life, you know, they're getting their PhD, you're

getting exactly what they need. So now you don't just have a

life coaching, you know, certificate. Now you have a life

coaching PhD, you know, because, yeah, so much life that you move

through.

and unfortunately, it's really, it's really going

through the stuff where we get what we need. I always say that

healing. And growing is like a crucible, like, you know, you,

you know, throw a chunk of impure metal, it's a furnace.

You crank up the heat, and when the impurities melt off, you're

left with this essence that you can forge, something that you

need out of. But I always say, like, I can't imagine the metals

having fun in there. It looks hot.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, I can't imagine, right as we go through

our own suffering processes, right? Yeah, oh, wow. And so, So

Brian, now you coach other people. You guide other people

in kind of their process, their journey. What are some of the

big things that you feel like everyone should know? Like, what

do we need to know? What are the the value ads that you got in

that journey that you know would just be so helpful for our

listeners today.

I think that a lot of it has to do with I think

everything starts and ends with values work in the sense of,

when you're uncertain or you're feeling stuck, it probably means

you're not acting in accordance with who you really are. And a

lot of the people who came from where I grew up and were on the

same path that I was kind of on, these were people who were like,

Okay, I did all the things i i went to the good college, good

job, I, you know, make a ton of money now, like, you know, I

white picket fence. So where is it I was promised happy when,

like I was and then, so when people do that, it's the

goalpost usually moves like, okay, it's not 100k It's

actually 200k then I'll feel but a lot of the times, people feel

this kind of sad burnout from living someone else's life, and

they're like, Okay, I'm doing everything I was told to do. So

why doesn't it feel the way everyone said it would? Ah, yes.

And so another reason why I really like values work is

because your values are always accessible to you. You know, in

one of my workshops that I do is I use improvis modality to teach

skills for alignment based living and emotional regulation

and and a very you know, one thing that my coach and improv

always said, we said, like, you can't just, you can't just be

comfortable on stage when there's laughter, because even

the best teams in the world, there's a lot of time in between

laughs. But he said that on stage, your point of view, being

really locked into your character is how you can feel

confident and enjoy yourself on stage in life, it's your point

of values you, because, just like, on the same way it's on

stage, like, there's a lot of life in between Instagram posts.

And no one's saying don't be happy on that Sunset Beach. And,

you know, in California, but you but if that's what you're

hooking it to, like, what are you gonna do until the next

Sunset Beach? Yeah. And so a lot of what I do with people is help

them get real clarity on what their values are, and help them

create practices so they can act in that all the time. And it's

the it's like the quiet hum of satisfaction that a lot of

people are missing out on because everyone's shooting for

this highlight. Hate, happy all the time.

Rev. Rose Hope: right? Oh, I can still relate to this. And many

of the audiences have heard my stories. And you know, one of

the biggest dilemmas I had was the I'll be happy when game I

played, the I'll be happy when game I did the ABC all the way

to Z or Zed, depending if you're American or Canadian. And I went

the whole way, and I was still feeling so lost, and I was

feeling so disconnected, and it was because I didn't really know

who I was or what I valued. So I had lost sight of that along the

way somewhere. So how does somebody know what they value?

Brian, is there? Like, I'm sure there's an exercise you can do

to help us pull values. And there's values in different

facets. But can you give the audience an idea? Because just

in case, they're like, listening, they're like, What

does he mean by values? Can we kind of break that

down a little more absolutely so your values are

they're not constructed, they're revealed. And so is like

anything else in life, it is incredibly simple and

straightforward. You I literally send my clients a list of 100

values, and I say, don't think about it. Don't consider it.

Don't think what you should or, you know, shouldn't want, just

what pumps out at you, because that is your north star to

living the life that you actually want. And it reminds me

this there was this story was pretty much the best gift that

my dad gave me before he died, and when I was much younger, my

older sister passed away pretty suddenly, and and my dad went to

a therapist, and the therapist didn't say anything. He just

gave him, he just showed him a piece of paper. On one side of

the piece of paper had a very complex map of the world, and

the other side had a very simple cartoon band, and then he tore

it up into pieces, and he told my dad to put the world

together. And my dad tried, but it was really complicated, and

he couldn't make the pieces fit. So the guy stopped, and after a

few minutes, and the therapist turned over the pieces, arranged

the man, and then taped the piece of the paper together. And

when he flipped it over. The world was in place. And he said,

if you put the man together, the role falls into place.

Rev. Rose Hope: Well, I love that story, yeah. And so when we

look at our values, it's like we're bringing ourself back

together, or we're at least seeing ourselves as a whole in

that experience, so that we can, you know, put the world back

together, so to speak. So what would be an example get throw me

out five values that you have. What are your what are some

values that stand out for you?

I would say kindness, creativity,

connection, generosity and deep thinking and And so basically,

going back to what I do with my in the workshop, what my coach

always said was that if he always used the example of Bob

the angry butcher. So if you know Bob is an angry guy, all

you have to do is play. If this is true, what else is true? What

would an angry guy do in this situation, at the post office or

at a bar? And following that line of thread will

automatically lead you to a correct or satiating thing on

stage. And it's the same exact thing in life with your instead

of having a point of view on stage, you have your point of

values, yeah, in the world. So when I'm ordering coffee in the

morning I go to my coffee shop, I'd say, Okay, how would

somebody who order who values connection order this coffee?

Ah, and that will inherently lead me to something that feels

solid. My favorite class that I took in college was Aristotle's

Nicomachean Ethics. And he says that he has something called the

function theory, basically, a something is a good something,

if it does its job, like this chair is a good chair because

I'm able to sit in it. But if I use this chair to, like,

skateboard down the street, it wouldn't make it a good chair

because it's on its thing. Yeah. And he says human beings are the

only things that could be virtuous. So to be a good human

is to be virtuous, but, but then when you get to our point of

values, what makes a good D is different? What makes a good?

Bryant, yeah. But aerosol says that when we, when we stick the

landing on these things, we experience something called the

eudaimonia. It's a Greek word that doesn't mean happiness. It

means a flourishing of the spirit that we feel when we

reach our highest potential.

Rev. Rose Hope: Oh, what is it called? Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia,

eudaimonia,

yeah, and so that is what the bulk of your life is

accessible to, you know, again, like, you know, Instagram

highlightation, nobody's hating on that. I love traveling. I

love the I love that, you know, those big, you know, punctuated

events, but most of your life is the time in between. Yeah,

Rev. Rose Hope: I love that in itself, to me, that adds to

this. Values work being a key piece, but also recognizing the

time in between, the time in between, all those big things.

Because I don't know about you, but like, it's so easy to go

onto social and see all these people. Like, I was just

thinking this this morning, like, Oh my God, all these

people are on holidays right now, and I'm still working.

Like, why? You know, we gonna get in that comparison trap. But

what you're really saying is like, hey, there's a lot that

happens in the in between of those moments, those highlight

reels, and I think that's important for all of us to

recognize, because otherwise it's easy for us to get caught

up in this trap that life has to always look a certain way. Do

you know what I mean for us to be enjoying, or, you know,

gaining in the experience? And I mean it all value

social media has forgot, has made us forget that

a lot of life is just like kind of standard, this standard,

like, it's standard issue, and bad days and bad things are a

part of that. And that, like, that's something also has been

huge in my work, in the sense of, I would always feel like, if

I was having negative emotions or experience, I'm like, Okay,

there's something wrong with me that is producing these negative

emotions. So I trace it back to the source and say, I'm bad, but

there's a freedom and being like sometimes some things suck,

that's totally okay.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, you know, I love that you're bringing this

up because there was a time in my life as well, too, where, you

know, something bad would happen in my environment or my circle,

and I would think that like that was a punishment, or like that I

was deserving of being that sadness, that grief, that shame,

guilt, whatever it was that was coming up, I thought that, like,

I had done something wrong. And I think a lot of us tend to do

that, where it's like, oh my god, this relationship failed.

And for me, I know a lot of people do go into blaming other

parties and other experiences, but actually for me, I would go

into self blame, and I would go into self shame and thinking

like, Oh, my God, I deserve this. I must be bad. I must be

evil, I must be whatever that those stories played out for me,

and that is heartbreaking in itself.

Would you identify as a perfectionist or a covering

perfectionist?

Rev. Rose Hope: I definitely, in a lot of ways, I am an

overachiever, people pleaser, and so with that, there comes a

bit of that perfectionism. Yeah, totally.

A lot of people who lived a lot of their lives,

whether it's people pleasing or kind of feeling like they needed

to have a resume of like, our accolades to, you know, receive

love or to be values, like, if they're like, Okay, I. Use this

event which is which is good, so I can trace it back and I am

good, but it works for the converse as well. And people are

like, Oh, if I'm like, I everything kind of rides on me.

So if I'm experiencing bad or something bad happens, I it has

to be my fault,

Rev. Rose Hope: right? Oh, my God, the pressure of that isn't

that horrible. So you do to counter that, because obviously,

you've been through you can relate to that. What do you do

when you're feeling like you're coming down on yourself, or

you're, you know, I mean, you got your values list, but now

life is happening and you're dealing with some shit, and it's

like, oh, now what

you know, like, there's been a couple of

phrases, or like mantras, that have come up to me. It come into

my life throughout this journey. And the first one is that I can

think of immediately, is that makes sense, and that came from

when I was I took him very I got a new job. They say it doesn't

start over three weeks. I'm like, Okay, I've always wanted

to go to Thailand, but I have no excuse not to go right now. And

so I just like the next day I was on a flight to Bangkok, and

I remember it very clearly. I was, it was like, day three or

four on a trip. I was out of the van from pai to Chiang Mai, and

I was like, as miserable as you can get. My like, I was sweaty,

I was like, this jet lag, my stomach hurt. And I had, like

that in itself, was a very negative, you know, kind of

experience in that moment, and I had a voice in my head start to

go down this path of like, oh my god, Brian. Like, you're gonna

bitch even in Thailand, like nothing could ever make you

happy. And because, like, I was again, like I was, like,

experiencing this negativity. So like, okay, like, I'm in

paradise. I can't be happy if I'm experiencing it here. But

then, for the first time ever, there's a separate voice. I was

like, I don't know that's kind of like, let's kind of like,

break this down. So we flew for 36 hours. We've been partying,

we haven't been sleeping, we've been eating and drinking weird

things, like, I don't know, Why Does your stomach hurt? Yeah.

And then out of nowhere, the phrase that that makes sense

just came alive. And I was like, in that moment, I was able to

kind of create the separation. It didn't make my stomach ache

go away, but it made all the suffering around my stomach ache

go away.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yes, ah, I love that you said that. Because I

think, you know, people often ask me, they're like, Well,

everyone has to suffer, but what length or the depth in which we

suffer? I do believe is a choice. And so by you being able

to say, Oh, that makes sense, it was almost like you got to

dissolve all those other negative suffering thoughts

around the stomach ache and just be with that,

yeah. Like, if I had 100 units of suffering,

maybe 80 of them were from the story in my head that, like, Oh,

you're never going to be happy. This is never going to work.

Like some stomach happens, like, it doesn't decide, like, you

know, like, information is not indicative, it's not prophecy.

It doesn't mean that we're always going to be miserable

around a stomach ache.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, I love that. I love how simple that is.

And isn't it so true Brian that, like, it's everything's actually

really simple. It's our it's our willingness to complicate it.

So, yeah, I think the directives are usually

civil. The complexity comes with integration, for sure. Yeah,

Rev. Rose Hope: yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. I

love that. Okay, one more kind of golden nugget for our

audience, in terms of them moving through their own

experience, whether it's tied to perfectionism or, you know,

figuring life out. What else do you want to share with our

group?

Yeah, so there's another there is another tool,

actually, that happens to come from the workshop as well. But I

spent a lot of time my 20s wishing things were different.

My life was very difficult for a long time. And so there's one

story that really I tell all my clients. And so that story is,

my friend was my friend was looking after his kid. It was a

hot summer day, and the son went to go to the freezer get some

ice cream, and when he saw they didn't have any, he started to

cry. And the dad was like, what's wrong? And son goes, I

want him ice cream, but there's no ice cream. And so the dad

goes, Do you think that crying is going to make ice cream?

Because if you do get crying, I would love some ice cream. But

unless you like, unless you really believe that crying is

going to make ice cream, what do you want to eat? And I spend so

much time my 20s crying trying to make ice cream.

Rev. Rose Hope: Wow.

And the shift that's required from that is

saying, Yes, this is the experience, and how do I move

forward? Because a lot of the times we kind of get in this

Merry Go Round of, yeah, this is my experience, but it shouldn't

have happened that way, but I'm mad about it, but this was not

my plan, and there's no physical amount of crying that makes ice

for you.

Rev. Rose Hope: There it is. I love that story as well, and I

think it really drives home to that, that state, when we can

get to that point where we are maybe feeling a bit sorry for

ourselves, and we are feeling like we're a bit in the victim,

and is it important to. Try and let that come. Yes, you're not

saying it's not important to still let those feelings come,

but the point that you have here, that you're trying to

make, I believe, is that there's opportunity for us, even in the

things that are not showing up the way that they think, that we

think they should, that there still is value in the experience

and an opportunity to redirect, an opportunity to say, oh,

there's no ice cream. But guess what? There's pudding, right?

It's only an opportunity. Is the only way

forward, like the only way to move forward is with what is.

Rev. Rose Hope: Is with what is, and how many of us resist what

is? Most of us.

Absolutely.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, most of us do. I spent a lot of my life

feeling frustrated with what was, you know, and I think that

loving acceptance into just knowing, oh, that's the way it

turned out. That's the way it was supposed to turn out. I

don't like how it turned out, but I get to move forward from

that. I get to choose how I respond to whatever it is that

is showing up. So again, to me, that's like putting the power

back in us, like, Okay, I have the power to choose whether or

not I go and get ice cream now or walk to the store to get ice

cream, versus sitting here and crying.

Yeah. Like one book that was one of the books

that really changed my life was Man's Search for Meaning, by

Viktor Frankl, and he says that the last freedom that a human

has that absolutely nobody can take away from him is how he

chooses to respond circumstances.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, how we choose to respond folks. That's

what you're hearing. You have a choice in how you're responding

to everything and anything that happens around you. Brian, this

has been so much fun. I feel like you have a bunch of other

stories in there, but we'll have to leave those for another time.

As we're coming to our wrap up, you know, I know that you offer

a lot. You have a lot of different workshops and a lot of

different wisdom and knowledge that you share with people. What

have you got in store for our audience? If they think, Oh, my

Want to know more about this guy, and what do you have to

offer?

Absolutely so because I love you and I love

the people that you connect with, so I'm going to be

offering if people are interested and they resonate

with what I've been talking about, or they feel like they

kind of see a little bit of themselves in my journey and,

you know, my story, and they feel like I'm somebody that want

to get to know a little more. I'm offering a free coaching

session, so no strings attached, completely free. It's like my

gift to the community, and I just hope that I can help some

people now

Rev. Rose Hope: it's amazing. Oh my gosh. What a gift for all of

you listening. We're gonna have that link in the show notes, so

please watch for that just under this podcast recording, Brian,

you have so much ancient wisdom inside of you, and you have such

an energy to you. I just love it. I wish I could jump through

the screen and give you a big hug right now. So thank you. We

want you energetically. Final Words of wisdom, any quote,

anything that you feel on your heart, that you want to finish

off with anything that's coming to you. I just want to hold the

space for you to share whatever that might be.

I would just say that a lot of the times that the

experience that we're having, even if it feels like we're off

the path, is actually exactly we need to be walking in the first

place. It's it can be hard when it doesn't match with your

expectations. But if you lean in and kind of see what's there for

you, you'll be able to look back and be like, where I needed to

go required that exact path.

Rev. Rose Hope: Right? How many times have I thought that I was

like, you know, in this way off branch of where I was supposed

to be, only to realize it was exactly where I needed to be.

And I love that you shared that, because it came up earlier

today, that you know we're exactly where we're supposed to

be always. And I think it's that reminder for us, you know, we

can't mess up our lives that bad. You know what I mean? Like

we have to go through certain experiences, and so sometimes we

regret making certain decisions, but those decisions are what

allow us to come into the fullness and into the complete

beings that we are, or at least, remember the complete beings

that we are. So I love that. And you know, there's Rumi says, you

know, start on the path, and the way will appear. And sometimes

we just have to be willing to take those steps. And all of a

sudden we start to see those spiritual breadcrumbs lining up

for us right, guiding us along the way.

And suddenly, I'll share from a ancient philosopher

my cousin, who has shared with me, he says that he's sometimes

a lot of times in my 20s, he said, Brian, making the wrong

move is better to make no move at all.

Rev. Rose Hope: Yeah, right. And how often we freeze or get stuck

somewhere thinking we have to have it all figured out before

we move. And really it's about imperfect action, right? It's

imperfect action is better than no action. One of my coaches

used to say so there it is. But. Great way to wrap it up. Thank

you so much, Bryan, thanks for your grace for having me. Oh,

it's such a joy to be with you, and for those of you listening,

thank you so much for tuning in until next time. Be well. Take

care, and we'll be with you again soon. On Wind Spirit

calls. Bye, everyone.

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