Overcoming Overwhelm with Angie Monko

nknown Speaker 0:00
Hi

george grombacher 0:15
this is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guests struggle powerful Angie, Marco. Angie here ready to do this.

Unknown Speaker 0:22
Hi, thank you for having me, George, excited to have you back on the show Angie and she is the owner of harmony harbor coaching. She’s a life coach for intuitive women leaders. She’s helping them to overcome overwhelm, heal from pain, grief, so they can feel relaxed and supported and free to create a life that they absolutely love. Angie, tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do employ a loaded question.

Angie Monko 0:50
I, I grew up in a household where I did not feel empowered at all. And it was one of domestic violence. And I I just watched my dad abused my mom. And so I remember when I was kid it nothing felt safe. You know, there was always will there be a roller coaster today? Like will we be weather retention? Or will there be a happy day.

Unknown Speaker 1:17
And

Angie Monko 1:19
so I had this was all subconscious. But I had this belief that women were weak, you know, at least my mom was. Now of course, I totally don’t believe that anymore. But I, I just felt that

Unknown Speaker 1:34
I didn’t want to be like that. I didn’t want to let anybody control me or harm me like that. And so I, I guess you could say, I built a shield around my heart in some ways, and tried to protect myself. And as I grew older, I actually actually met a man that was like my dad, who I married. And we were married for five years, we were together for 12. And

Unknown Speaker 2:06
he was he had mother wounds. I had father wounds. And we came together and it was sort of an explosion of

Unknown Speaker 2:15
trying to control each other in some ways. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it wasn’t healthy. It was not a healthy dynamic and, and then we had a child together and she had cystic fibrosis. And so that was really difficult.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
I know we’re short on time. So I’m just trying to really pack this in. I, when she was two years old, I ended up giving her custody to her dad, I wanted out of that abusive relationship, and I didn’t know how to advocate for her and me at the same time. And because I wanted to have custody of her, I just didn’t know how to stand up to him. He was 12 years older than me. And, and so, so many life lessons, George in that, in that young life of mine up until age like 28 and still going. And and I think over that time, I just realized that I didn’t want to be that way in male who was I that I could give custody of my only child. And so it really led me on this path of inner exploration trying to figure out who am I? What’s going on? How wounded Am I that I can do that? And, and so that’s how I got into this really women’s empowerment arena. Because I wanted to help women to know that they don’t have to be doormats, you know, to anything and not from like, I’m not a man hater. That is not the energy from which I come I really just want to help women to love and accept themselves. And I help men too, by the way.

Unknown Speaker 3:51
But I run a women’s group and so yeah, I’ll stop there. I know I can say a lot in a short time. No, it’s it’s it’s I mean, where we find ourselves today it’s certainly the result of of of the experiences that we had and

Unknown Speaker 4:09
my perception is that it’s it’s it’s common to do something similar to what what you did having the negative experiences with your dad and then to find a partner that that is similar to that even though it’s it’s I don’t it’s It’s crazy to think that but that’s oftentimes how it works out Yeah, I needed to learn more lessons from him. Some people call people that we learned so many big lessons from our Jedi trainer

Unknown Speaker 4:39
because I’m I’m actually friends with him to this day so you know and I’m actually heal the relationship with my father. And so part of me is like, I don’t want to say these negative things about them truly I don’t I I’m just wanting to know when women’s know the impact of of their lives, what happened and again, not from a place of

Unknown Speaker 5:00
blame and shame of our teachers, but really from a place of empowerment.

Unknown Speaker 5:07
So, to be able to advocate for yourself, you said you wanted to be able to advocate for yourself and your daughter, but we don’t have the tools. So walk walk. Yeah. And now fast forward to where we are today. Sir, you’re helping people to get those tools. Yes. So when I was the See, this was 2006 2007, that I learned something called Emotional Freedom Technique. And I, at the time, I was working in corporate. So I worked in corporate for 20 years as a finance operations manager. And I started going to a 12 step program for overeat because Overeaters Anonymous. And it was at that time that I learned because I was in finance, accounting, like, how would I go from that to life coaching? I was at this 12 Step meeting. And someone approached me after a meeting and they said, Have you ever thought about being a life coach, and I didn’t do anything with it. A year later, someone said the same thing. Because when you sponsor people in a 12 step, it’s similar to coaching. It’s similar to life coaching, but I didn’t even know what life coaching was. So then, when the second person said it, I followed up, because they referred me to someone in Canada, who then referred me to someone a block from my house in St. Louis, Missouri. And at that fateful day, this woman came to my house, her name’s Barbara. And at the end of our two hour conversation, she said, Have you ever heard of Emotional Freedom Techniques? And I’m like, No, but tell me more. Because I wanted to empower myself, I knew my emotions had been leading me all my life, and I felt out of control with them. So emotional freedom, sounded really good to my nervous system to my body to unconsciously to what I needed. And so I started my business a year later, based off the premise of using emotional freedom technique, which is an energy technique to calm the nervous system, that fight flight or freeze part of our brain. And I fell in love with the ft and just how powerful it is, how simple it is, and effective. And, and I added tools to my toolkit to help women and to help me Of course, I was walking my talk, I was doing the stuff for myself first, so that I could then help them, guide them.

Unknown Speaker 7:33
And so then it became hypnosis, I became a certified hypnotist two years later. And then four years after that a certified healing code practitioner. So these are all things designed to work with the subconscious mind

Unknown Speaker 7:47
and to heal at a deep core level.

Unknown Speaker 7:50
And that’s where the healing really has to take place. Right, right. Yeah. And Don Eaton, that’s another woman that I follow. I’m not certified with Don Eaton. I’ve just been doing her stuff forever. And following her, and it’s all energy, energy techniques, energy medicine, we can call it. And currently I’m pursuing a certification in Positive Intelligence. I have so I haven’t gotten a certification since 2014. But I’m constantly learning. And I’m constantly learning so that I can help me first. And then secondly, help everyone that I talked to that I influence and, you know, my family and anybody who’s willing. Yeah, no, I certainly appreciate that. Yeah, so it’s a feeling that and the feeling is that is certainly unique to everybody. But common ones might be I’m stuck. This sucks. I don’t like my life, but I just don’t know what to do about it. I’m in a mat. I’m in an actual, horrible domestic violence situation, or I just might feel like my life is blah.

Unknown Speaker 9:01
Right. And, and I’ve been trying, I’ve been playing around with

Unknown Speaker 9:06
what do I solve? What do I solve? What’s the problem that I solve? And it’s hard to sometimes distill that down to one thing, when we is a life coach, we can do so many things we can pick so many focuses. And I picked intuitive woman leader because that’s who I have been. I did 20 years I have as a CPA, you know, I, I had teams that I lead in AT and T and smaller companies as well. And then public accounting. So I’ve had a diverse experience there. And then running my own business for the last 15 years. So I do see myself as an intuitive. Intuitive is important because I’ve learned to trust my intuition. So I don’t have to worry Well, how am I going to show up with George today? Well, I’m going to show up the same way that I do with my family and you know, I don’t have to wear that mask. I can just show up as me and and that’s enough and so intuitive.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
means I’m trusting. I’m trusting my gut, I’m trusting my instincts, my subconscious to lead me where I need to go. And then the woman leader part I just explained, and and then what’s the problem I solve for these women that I solve for myself?

Unknown Speaker 10:15
Well, that’s a little bit more complex. But did you know that overwhelm, because that’s what a lot of women are dealing with is overwhelm, overwhelm equals trauma in the body, so dramatically in the body? Overwhelm is the same experience as trauma. Did you know that I did not.

Unknown Speaker 10:37
So overwhelmed equals trauma to the body, and where there’s overwhelm and trauma, Grief can be found close by.

Unknown Speaker 10:48
And so I’m playing around with this of well, how do I meet them? where they’re at? How do I connect with them? Because if I were to say, I have three steps to heal, grief, hidden grief, they think, Well, I’m not grieving. I haven’t lost anybody close to me or whatever. You see, people associate grief, with loss. And, but it’s much more than that. grief comes from any change, you know, in our life, any significant change that occurs, which could be a divorce, it could be moving to another state. It could be moving schools, when we’re a child that Do you know, that’s so traumatic for children to move, to move a school or to move from one house to the next? I mean, people don’t think about it, but so hidden grief, hidden, it’s hidden, because we’re not consciously aware of it. It’s hidden in our subconscious in the beliefs that, that we adopt as we’re growing up.

Unknown Speaker 11:53
Is that all makes sense, do you because

Unknown Speaker 11:57
being intuitive and trusting my instincts,

Unknown Speaker 12:02
once I’m aware that I have some kind of a negative, flawed belief that was given because I grew up in a home, it could be about relationships, you know, could be about money, whatever diet and exercise, I am now aware that I had these beliefs, and I’m like, okay, that helps explain why I am doing the things that I’m doing it over and over again.

Unknown Speaker 12:27
And I work to to unwind those to replace them with with with more beneficial positive beliefs.

Unknown Speaker 12:38
Do you find that people are like, Well, how do I trust my instincts? If they’re based on these limiting beliefs? How do I get to that point where I can trust myself?

Unknown Speaker 12:47
Yes, that’s a great point. And the way that I view this, how I can discern that is if if we have a belief or a thought that’s fearful, it’s coming from a place of fear. It’s usually a saboteur type of belief.

Unknown Speaker 13:05
We all have like 10, different saboteurs. Saboteurs are not necessarily bad, right? They’re not bad. I mean, there’s just part of us, they’re part of us are part of the collective consciousness. So if it comes from fear, we don’t have to, we don’t have to trust that. We don’t have to trust our thoughts at all. And that and that, that those thoughts, it’s usually that silent voice that that little whispering voice that’s very quiet, sort of quiet in the background, but it comes from this place of love, and compassion for ourselves. Not beating ourselves up for our history, our past, like, I can beat myself up and I did for a long time for giving custody of my daughter. And by the way, she did come back to me, she came back to live with me.

Unknown Speaker 13:53
But we could beat ourselves up for so many things. But when we’re coming from what Positive Intelligence calls our Sage, Sage perspective, that’s from a place of, okay, all right, like, Hey, you got you’ve got this, you know, yes, you’ve done some things and you made some mistakes, but you’re not a mistake. And you know, I got your I got your back, that’s our sage to, you know, and then like Shirzad of Positive Intelligence as the way of the sage is ease and flow is ease and flow. So if we’re in struggle, and fear, we know we’re coming from a saboteur mindset, like our hands on that hot stove.

Unknown Speaker 14:35
But if we come from ease and flow and like, you know, this is fun, I’m having fun, that we know we’re coming from our higher self, our sage perspective, or our intuition. It’s all kind of the same thing.

Unknown Speaker 14:48
So that those saboteurs negative thoughts, whatever that they’re present

Unknown Speaker 14:58
doesn’t mean that

Unknown Speaker 15:00
I haven’t done the work because always going to be present. That is right, just like anxiety, just like anxiety, because we all have anxiety. Everybody has it. If you’re human, you have it. But yet, most leaders don’t want to admit to that. They don’t want to admit, hey, I’m nervous, or I’m scared or whatever. We put this wall this facade up that says, you know, I got to be strong, I got to show the world this image. And, and that’s, I mean, that is the ego. That’s how the eagle operates. But it’s not the sage, it’s not the higher self, it takes so much more energy to maintain that image. And that’s why the anxiety comes because we fight it, we resist the anxiety, whatever that anxiety is, anxiety is really just a cloak for all negative emotions. And so it can show up as boredom even. But anxiety is anxiety, and we all have it. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of. And in fact, those saboteur voices will always be here. There will always be here. It’s just a matter of how do we handle it? What do we do with the anxiety when it shows up? I hope it’s not confusing when I’m saying anxiety interchangeable with saboteurs. Because it’s kind of bundled together.

Unknown Speaker 16:23
We don’t resist it. And that’s the key to healing is when we have the feelings, the negative feelings that we we don’t shame ourself, well, I should be further along. Or, or like when, with Maddie, and I know, we were almost out of time. So I lost my daughter Maddie when she was 22 years old. And that was in 2018. And there are times like, because I think we’re every day, there are times when I’ll, I have the grief come up. And I’m like, then I’ll shake my head like I’ll not I’ll shake my head like, no, like, that’s not right, she shouldn’t be gone. But then I say no to that, and say she is gone. And I’m just going to feel that grief. And I’m going to breathe through that grief. And I’m going to cry, and I’m going to release, and then the feeling leaves. That’s non resistance.

Unknown Speaker 17:19
We can do that with overwhelm. I just gotta say when we’re thinking that because we’re overwhelmed. This is where I really hope women overwhelm, equals trauma equals grief, all of that, which we don’t want to deal with as a society.

Unknown Speaker 17:32
When we get overwhelmed, what do we think the thought is, I have all these things on my long to do list, my master list to do. And I’m not going to get them all done today. And so the reason we resist this, is because we think it’s reality. Well, of course, I’m overwhelmed, because I actually do have to do all those things. And because I actually we see it as truth. We don’t we don’t breathe into the overwhelm. We resist it like, Well, you see what I’m saying? I do, we’re not even aware that we are overwhelmed. Maybe we are. But we believe the cause of that overwhelm is outside of us. So we don’t

Unknown Speaker 18:16
accept it. We don’t we just stay in resistance.

Unknown Speaker 18:23
That’s super powerful. And, you know, it’s a it’s a very, very human loop. And particularly when we’re talking about people who are who are trying to do and doing, you know, big things in the world who are leaders in their lives, communities or work.

Unknown Speaker 18:39
It’s very, very natural and probably essential to

Unknown Speaker 18:44
have gotten us where we are to put that ego into it. Right. So we don’t question it. It’s like, well, yeah, I’m feeling overwhelmed, because I’m doing a lot of stuff. And whereas with the grief I could recognize, okay, I miss Maddie. So let me just breathe into that. We can do the same thing with overwhelm, even though we justify it more with like, Okay, I have bah, bah, bah, bah, ABCD to do today.

Unknown Speaker 19:12
Well, how do we read? How do we embrace that? Instead of resisted? We could just say, oh, there’s that voice. There’s that it’s a saboteur. It’s a part. There’s that voice that’s telling me I have to go at such a rapid pace that I cannot slow down that I can’t relax. There’s that voice. But is that really true?

Unknown Speaker 19:35
isn’t really true? We can question it. Maybe question in it, then is the way to not resist it. Okay, I’m feeling this. I’m going to breathe through this stress. I’m going to read through the overwhelming the anxiety.

Unknown Speaker 19:54
I love it. You’re not going to get rid of it. Embrace it. Don’t resist it.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
steer right into it and feel the feelings and let them go and move on. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 20:07
And it will never go away. I think that’s just profound. For sure. I totally agree. We, I don’t know me, it’s like, okay, this is something that I can overcome and move past for once and for all. But that is that is not accurate.

Unknown Speaker 20:24
Yeah, it’s kind of ironic, because, you know, I’m playing around with this title to my class is coming up. And it’s three steps to Grief Relief, and it’s, you know, for intuitive women leaders who want to or who want to who are overwhelmed, overwhelmed and overworked.

Unknown Speaker 20:42
But the thing is, I you know, I’ve thought about calling it three steps to overcome overwhelm. Because the The irony is that you can’t overcome overwhelm. If you don’t resist it.

Unknown Speaker 20:53
Do you see what I mean? So it’s like,

Unknown Speaker 20:57
you can be happy if you don’t, if you don’t, in a sense, if you don’t seek happiness, if you don’t try, if you don’t try to be happy, it will find you. If you don’t try to be successful, it’ll find you.

Unknown Speaker 21:12
So you can overcome overwhelm.

Unknown Speaker 21:15
By not resisting it.

Unknown Speaker 21:18
Does that make sense to you? Because I just wrote down the only way forward is through not around. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can’t get around it can’t jump over. Can’t go under it can’t go to the side of it.

Unknown Speaker 21:31
Get relief? You can get relief is through it? Yes. Yes. I love it.

Unknown Speaker 21:41
I love it. Angie has super powerful, and something that certainly all of us experience. But having the tools to be able to actually successfully do it and successfully manage I think is is is super, super helpful. So I appreciate you coming back on and sort of sharing a little bit of it. Where can people learn more? How can people engage with you? They can find me at Harmony harbor.com. So it’s H AR mo N EY Farber, H AR ve o r.com. And I have an Events tab out there. So that shows my upcoming event. It’s actually January 10. And it’s right now I’m calling it three steps to Grief Relief, I might call it three steps to overcome overwhelm, because I want to meet people where they’re at. And they might not understand the grief word there in that context. I’m also starting something January 18, it’s going to be the third Wednesday of every month. And that is not even out there yet. Because it’s brand new. And this is the heal your heart healing circle. And this is both of these things are free. The heal your heart healing circle is where I’m going to give what’s called the healing codes, free healing codes every month. And this is my way to give back to our community who is in a lot of pain and suffering right now. There’s a lot of confusion out there, suicide rates are high and there’s a lot of stuff going on. And like young people as well that I have a passion to help.

Unknown Speaker 23:15
I had a cookie party and they were talking about suicide, these kids at my kitchen table. And that got me to thinking I got to start this healing circle. It’s free. It’ll be every month third Wednesday from six to 7pm Central Time. And and so that’s my way of giving back and helping us to heal and really work together. You know, we’re all one

Unknown Speaker 23:39
amen.

Unknown Speaker 23:41
If you enjoyed as much as I did, try and do your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas go to harmony harbor.com and click on the Events tab to find out get the dates of the next event that is coming up and opportunities to engage directly with Angie as well. Thanks again, Angie. Thank you, George so much. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai