In this episode, we unravel the innovative approach of integrating AI in healthcare and the legal industry and how young professionals can evolve into trusted advisors. Kate In this episode, Renee Metty explores how mindfulness and the power of pause can transform both personal lives and leadership roles. From dealing with stress to creating mindful educational environments, Renee shares insights and practical strategies for connecting with our true selves and making conscious choices.
Key Takeaways:
- Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Mindfulness is all about being present and aware of our actions. Renee explains how it helps us navigate tough emotions and make thoughtful decisions.
- Positive and Negative Energy: Our energy is contagious, and being mindful can help us manage how we affect ourselves and those around us.
- Creating Mindful Learning Spaces: Renee’s journey in building a mindfulness-based Montessori school offers valuable lessons on creating calm and engaging educational environments.
Guest:
Renee Metty; mindfulness consultant, equine gestaltist coach, and founder of a Montessori mindfulness-based school.
Resources Mentioned:
- Renee Metty: LinkedIn and Facebook
- With Pause: Website and Instagram
- The Cove School: Website and Instagram
- Trusting Equus: Website and Instagram
- Kolbe Assessment
Quotes:
-“Mindfulness is about being okay with whatever is happening and having the space to navigate and choose a direction.” – Renee Metty
-“Knowing oneself raises consciousness and impacts the world’s consciousness.” – Renee Metty
-“The key to managing human energy is understanding its contagious nature and being mindful of the energy we bring into every interaction.” – Mark Wright
Listener Challenge:
This week, try instituting a daily mindfulness practice. Share your experience with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Renee Metty, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s great to have you here.
[00:00:03] Renee Metty: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.
[00:00:06] Mark Wright: we’re going to start with the question. Who is Renee Metty? When I started researching you, I realized that you are a lot of things. Really, I would say a Renaissance woman. You’re an equine or is it equine gestaltist?
[00:00:20] Renee Metty: I think either way I was saying equine and then I was watching Heartland recently and they say equine. So I don’t know. Yeah. Whatever you want to say.
[00:00:30] Mark Wright: But you’re an equine gestaltist coach and consultant. That is going to be super fun to explore. You’re a mindfulness. Is it fair to say in everything that you do, Renee, first and foremost, you’re really committed to just helping people align themselves? to the life that they want.
[00:00:55] Renee Metty: Yes. Most definitely it is been my own [00:01:00] journey in, uh, my own personal and professional development, and it brings me so much joy to just watch people open up to the fact that maybe they’re not living the life that they want to live, but the life that somebody else wanted them to live.
[00:01:14] Mark Wright: Wow. When did that become a realization for you? I know you started working with children pretty early in your career.
[00:01:21] Renee Metty: Yeah, I would say, It was a slow unraveling, but definitely through the lens of children is where I realized I had to open up my own, mind, my own heart to coming back to childhood is often what I will talk to people about. Because when you watch young children, especially why I love the Preschool age is from birth to five.
[00:01:46] Renee Metty: They are learning and growing and everything is new. And there’s this awe and wonderment. And I know for myself, life got so serious in terms of like, there was this path. You go to high [00:02:00] school, you’re looking for the best college. So then you can get this job and get married. I grew up Catholic. So there were Catholic and immigrant parents.
[00:02:07] Renee Metty: So there was a path laid out. Right. You get your degree, you get a good job, you get married, you have kids, and just wash, rinse, repeat. And over the course of, I’d say a good five to ten years, through my mindfulness practice, which really started as curriculum for children, is how my journey unraveled.
[00:02:30] Mark Wright: we look at the education system, it really seems like we, we sort of treat kids as animals that we’re training, right? We want them to learn X, Y, Z, and K. Then we just kind of lay out this path and curriculum, but you came to the realization pretty early on that the most important thing that an education can do is to reveal who that child is.
[00:02:54] Mark Wright: And I’d love you to speak more about, about that realization, if you would.
[00:02:58] Renee Metty: Yeah, I think part of that [00:03:00] was my own upbringing around education being such an important part. I remember my dad telling me that, you know, they were investing in my education because it’s some, it was something that no one could ever take from me once I learned, you know, and had those experiences, they would stay with me and I could carry that forward.
[00:03:18] Renee Metty: When I was in elementary school, high school, I hated school. Like I was there strictly for social, to see my friends, all the stuff after school and just having more of the friend and social experience. And then when I went into the workforce, I started in business, started out in corporate, and. Ended up volunteering like, I don’t know, I was in corporate for about five years and the last couple of years I was, during that nineties tech boom.
[00:03:50] Renee Metty: So I was in my young twenties. I also graduated pretty early just because of the way my birthday fell. So I started college, I was 17 and didn’t turn [00:04:00] 18 until the end of November of my freshman year. And so I always felt not as confident, not as smart. And. During that nineties tech boom, it was like the heyday.
[00:04:11] Renee Metty: I mean, managers were like 23, 24, 25. There was lots of money rolling in, had a lot of great experiences, but something was missing. And so I was doing a lot of volunteer work, ended up, one of my favorite volunteer positions at the time was working in a child psychiatric unit in a loft unit in Boston.
[00:04:30] Renee Metty: And, that is really, I think where the light bulb went off for me that, you know, this, I was. You know, working 40, 50 hours a week, plus volunteering 10 to 15 hours a week. And I was like, Oh, I think I could probably get paid for this., so in working with children, the thing I thought of was teaching and looking back, maybe I don’t really have a lot of any regrets because I believe each part of the path gets you to the, you know, the next piece.
[00:04:55] Renee Metty: And it’s a, an important part of the journey, but. There was a period of time [00:05:00] in my teaching career that I was like, I probably should have been in social work because I didn’t care anything about the academics, nothing. It didn’t matter to me what the kids learned or what they knew. What mattered to me was their social, emotional wellbeing.
[00:05:12] Renee Metty: And it, I cared a lot about how they learned. And I found that was missing. It was missing in my own, education journey. If you fast forward to just a few years ago, learning about my own, uh, I think you’re familiar with the Colby.
[00:05:27] Mark Wright: Oh yeah.
[00:05:27] Renee Metty: And so I learned about the Colby assessment, which looks at the way you are innate ability when you’re, going for something, taking action on something.
[00:05:39] Renee Metty: And I learned so much about myself that like reverse engineering was like, Oh, that’s why school, you know, didn’t sit right with me or I didn’t do the best that I could in school because of the way we were taught. So I think when I started volunteering, deciding to go into education, worked in the public school [00:06:00] system for about seven years.
[00:06:02] Renee Metty: Recognizing like this isn’t the way either and, kind of diverged. Did my own thing for a while as a wedding and event planner. And then through having my family and looking for somewhere for my kiddos to be that I could feel comfortable with and was excited about, ended up starting my own preschool.
[00:06:23] Mark Wright: Well, we’ll talk about that in just a little bit. I’d love to talk a little bit more about your time at the psychiatric ward for kids in Massachusetts. What was that lightbulb that went on, Renee? And give me an idea of the kind of kid that gets sent to a psych ward. Is it that they’re a danger to themselves or others?
[00:06:41] Mark Wright: Is that the sort of criteria?
[00:06:43] Renee Metty: Usually there’s some form of, physical altercation, whether it’s to themselves or to other people, but You know, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So there’s a kind of a pathway there that if they’re hurting others, it’s because they’ve [00:07:00] been hurt themselves. And so I would say the perception, which was definitely my perception, right?
[00:07:06] Renee Metty: It’s lower income families, tend to be in the African American community. Depends on the neighborhood, right? Just socioeconomic can play a big part in that. And so when I was in that unit, the light bulb moment for me was first, there were way too many kiddos under the age of eight., it went like, I think three.
[00:07:29] Renee Metty: Four was the youngest that was my interaction, which is the story I’ll tell in a second. But it went up to like 17 or 18. And I remember as a volunteer, I didn’t get a lot of information. I wasn’t privy to a lot of information, but I would hear phone calls or hear conversations among the staff about how like they can’t find beds for, some of the kiddos and people that were.
[00:07:50] Renee Metty: Repeat offenders coming back in and some of them are coming from homes. A lot of them were coming from like their own home, but a lot of them were coming [00:08:00] from like a group home type situation or the foster system. And so, You think teens often or like eight, nine, 10 and up are in there.
[00:08:11] Renee Metty:, but one night I, because I was working during the day, I usually did the evening shift and so helping with after dinner and activities and getting kiddos ready for bed and typically when a new. Child comes in, they have a mattress that sits outside of their room. I think they usually had two people, sometimes three in a room, but the first three nights or so they were on, being monitored outside of the outside of their unit, their room.
[00:08:42] Renee Metty: And, they said, okay, well, we’re going to have you work, uh, with a little girl, you just need to brush her hair and, read her a story and get her ready for bed and let me see. Great. I was excited. Uh, went into the room and she looked like, the little girl from [00:09:00] Poltergeist, like that platinum blonde hair, big blue eyes, someone I maybe would have babysat or nannied, in the past.
[00:09:07] Renee Metty: And I’m brushing her hair and I get teary thinking about it. It’s like, what gets a four year old in the locked unit? Like the life she had to have had seen or lived to be sitting there in front of me. And I was just like, that is not okay. And I never had any great, you know, dreams of saving the world or, but having some kind of an impact where something’s got to change.
[00:09:34] Renee Metty: And that’s, that was, One of the kind of key moments for me that I have to work in a place where I can impact children. And I’ve always been drawn to kids. You know, when I was in middle school, I’d rather hang out with the little kids than my own peers. Or I always was drawn to the moms with the babies.
[00:09:53] Renee Metty: So.,
[00:09:54] Mark Wright: Wow. That’s, that’s, powerful story. And I guess it speaks to, would you say that [00:10:00] most of the kids that got sent to that psych ward had a life experience that caused them to get to that point or had, an innate mental problem that caused, or was it a combination?
[00:10:12] Renee Metty: I’ve always come from the standpoint, it’s a combination, but what I’ve realized over the years, I think we have, Some wiring and predisposition to what may be that we might, you know, if exposed to certain things have an impact, but more and more, we have more impact and control than we think we do just even in our day to day, even with the healthiest of parents and the healthiest of relationships that it’s a lot of nurture.
[00:10:43] Renee Metty: I mean, there’s definitely, it’s definitely a combination, but nurture is a huge part of it.
[00:10:48] Mark Wright: I think we should probably talk about mindfulness before we get into your school, because it’s kind of founded on that premise of mindfulness. . I thought it was interesting, Renee, in your bio that you sent me, [00:11:00] that there’s a statement in your bio, right up near the top, and it says, Renee knows what it’s like to have a life driven by distraction instead of what’s in your soul. And I thought, what an interesting statement to the point. Put at the top of your bio.
[00:11:14] Mark Wright:, tell me why, why you put that there and, what does that telling us?
[00:11:17] Renee Metty: Well, especially now this day and age, there’s so much distraction with electronics and social media and just the amount of information that is out there that can come across, your day. And, I think if you go back to, you know, pre iPhone, distractions back then were really based on, like, for me, at least, doing.
[00:11:42] Renee Metty: How much could I get done in a day? And that was celebrated in a lot of ways., I’ve been called a high performer, a high achiever, prided myself on multitasking. Being able to do multiple things at once. And then I’m a mom and I’m an entrepReneeur and a student, and [00:12:00] I’m always doing a variety of things.
[00:12:02] Renee Metty: Well, what I realized in my journey of mindfulness, which Again, started his curriculum and we’ll dive into that. But when I started peeling away the layers of my awaReneess and seeing what was under the hood, I realized that a lot of that stuff was just distraction to keep moving and keep doing, to not feel, to not, you know, deal with any of the emotional stuff that was underlying.
[00:12:27] Renee Metty: And for me, there was, it was a lot of shame. And over the years, that distraction, really was. Unconscious. And so I still do a lot of things. I’m just more conscious in choosing the direction I’m going, why I’m doing it, reflecting on, you know, am I trying to avoid something or is this really something I want to do?
[00:12:48] Renee Metty: Uh, so that, that was a big part of, that line.
[00:12:52] Mark Wright: Yeah, because when we stay busy, we feel like we’ve accomplished something and our brain likes that., and we also [00:13:00] avoid thinking about the things that we really should be thinking about. Can I ask what the shame was based on Renee? Are you comfortable talking about that?
[00:13:08] Renee Metty: Yeah, I mean, at the root of it all is I’m not enough. And, my parents are amazing. They’ve provided so much for me. And I think this is what I realized on my journey. There can be often a lens of, a traumatic childhood or, you know, blaming our parents or something. I have no blame.
[00:13:26] Renee Metty: I have no resentment. They did what they could. You know, with the tools that they had, they were, here from the Philippines at like 21, made a life for themselves, made a great life for my brother and I. And, but what came with that was partially cultural. There, there’s a lot of YouTube videos. Look up Filipino moms on YouTube, a lot of comparison.
[00:13:48] Renee Metty: So never good enough. Why can’t you be like this? Why can’t you do that? You know, a big one that I joke around with my mom is like, I was a straight C student and I came home with like a [00:14:00] 97 or 98 and she’s like, why didn’t you get a hundred? And even if it’s joking, right? Like there wasn’t a lot of, a lot of it.
[00:14:08] Renee Metty: Could have appeared kind of lighthearted. You see this in a lot of families today, even, but sarcasm or joking around, depending on who the child is, can have an impact. And again, is that nature or nurture? It’s like, why, why can I walk away from this with not a lot of resentment? No resentment, really no blame.
[00:14:29] Renee Metty:, not hanging on to that. It’s more for me, the, and me talking about it is more about. Information that allows me to make different choices in my life. And so that’s where all that unraveling started.
[00:14:43] Mark Wright: Yeah, I’ve had so many friends over the years with immigrant parents who tell me this exact same story. And I think it’s, I think it’s based on actually a couple of, of things. And one is that immigrant parents, I think more than I [00:15:00] think that people who are more educated than others understand that education really is a great equalizer in our country that and when you get advanced education it really does often lead to success on many levels and I think they see that and I think the other thing is that when you come from scarcity, the fear of not having enough, the fear of not succeeding must be just palpable for people who come to this country with nothing and then think oh my god I hope my children don’t fail.
[00:15:29] Mark Wright: You know, where will they be if they, if they don’t have enough? And, uh, but I’ve heard that over and over. So you’re saying Renee that you came to terms with that by just really understanding their mindset. Is that how it worked for you?
[00:15:44] Renee Metty: it’s, it’s kind of all intertwined, right? The, our paths aren’t linear. And I think it started with, I remember being in, I don’t know why I decided to, to see a therapist in my twenties, but I did, but I remember thinking like [00:16:00] there was nothing I wanted to reveal about my parents because I had so much respect for them and I didn’t Like my perception around therapy was like, what did my parents do, you know, to me to cause whatever it is, what was causing.
[00:16:14] Renee Metty:, and now I’m so open to it because what I realized over the years is you start understanding, I have a huge interest in human behavior, just in general, always have. And so mindfulness helped me with not being Like we, as parents were like, these are my kids. They’re not our kids. You know, they are children that we’ve had that have a life of their own and they become the people that they are.
[00:16:45] Renee Metty: So they can hopefully contribute something to the world. And then it, we all become, you know, one. And. I learned how to not attach or grip too tightly to concepts and ideas, people., so that was a piece [00:17:00] of it. And then I started to understand other people’s stuff isn’t always my stuff.
[00:17:05] Renee Metty: And yet a lot of times they get conflated. And so. I feel like a lot of story, a lot of meaning is attached to different people’s experiences. So I learned that along the way that, I don’t have a lot of story. I usually am able to meet reality. I’m human, of course, there are different conditionings and patterns and perspectives that I see, but I tend to be able to have a little bit of space and distance with that to be a little more objective and a little bit more neutral.
[00:17:40] Mark Wright: So you’re a mindfulness facilitator, a consultant and coach. You started a company called WithPause, dedicated to really bringing mindfulness into education and business as well. Renee, I think a lot of us have heard the term mindfulness, but I don’t think, and I’m being honest here, I don’t fully [00:18:00] understand what mindfulness is.
[00:18:02] Mark Wright: When someone asks you that question, how do you define it?
[00:18:05] Renee Metty:, there’s a couple of things that I say. First, I’ll say is it is a technique, but I really come from the lens that it is a way of being. It’s how we show up in our day to day experience. And in it, there’s lots of definitions of mindfulness. There’s the formal mindfulness practice. And then mindfulness often is just about, being aware of what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, in the moment that you’re doing it.
[00:18:31] Renee Metty: And so that’s in its simplest form, how I come to the conversation around mindfulness.
[00:18:37] Mark Wright: Would you say that mindfulness is Most of us don’t walk around with that awaReneess because I’m laughing because I’m pretty sure I’m one of those people who’ve gone through most of my life completely unaware, like that person did this to me and gosh, darn it.
[00:18:53] Renee Metty: You know, it’s, because I’ve been in the field so long and I’ve learned to surround my, myself with the people I want to [00:19:00] be around that lift my energy and don’t bring it down. Normally I would say, yeah, most people are like that, but then I go out into the world sometimes and I’m like, Hmm, maybe not so much.
[00:19:10] Renee Metty: And so,
[00:19:11] Mark Wright: honks and then flips you off in traffic. Like,
[00:19:14] Renee Metty: yeah, which I used to be that person.
[00:19:16] Mark Wright: nice
[00:19:17] Renee Metty: was from the East coast and I moved to, to the West coast. I’m like, what is this? Like, You go. No, you go. Like move.
[00:19:26] Renee Metty:, I think one of the misperceptions too, I know any of us that were in the mindfulness field, particularly when it kind of took off after the medical field and got into kind of the counseling and therapeutic fields and education field, and then into the business sector, there’s this idea that, someone that’s a mindfulness practitioner doesn’t get angry or like, why are they doing that?
[00:19:50] Renee Metty: They’re like, I mean, I’ve, people literally said this to me. Oh, I’m surprised since you teach mindfulness. I’m not a Saint, like still human., and [00:20:00] mindfulness is about, you know, Being okay with whatever is happening. So there’s a perception of, yes, there’s kind of the secondary, bringing calm and peace, but it’s, are you okay with being angry?
[00:20:14] Renee Metty: Are you okay with, having feelings of anxiety? Are you okay with the fear that you’re facing? And do you have enough space to kind of navigate and choose what to do? A direction, or are you just flipping off and having a reactive moment? So can you respond or are you reacting to life?
[00:20:36] Mark Wright: Yeah. Human beings. I guess we all got here because we were pretty good at sort of unconsciously reacting to the world around us, which was a blessing way back, way back in the cave person days, but not
[00:20:49] Renee Metty: And still very necessary. Like we talk about that a lot around, you know, I talk a lot about ego in essence, and it’s not to get rid of the ego. It’s not to get rid of fear or the survival [00:21:00] mechanism. We need that to stay alive. It’s, do you know when it’s the thing driving you instead of choosing how you want to lead your life?
[00:21:09] Mark Wright: Yeah. Who’s in
[00:21:10] Renee Metty: Choosing, right. Who’s in control.
[00:21:12] Mark Wright: Kind of like that Disney movie where they, the cartoon where everybody in the head is all the different emotions
[00:21:17] Renee Metty: 2 yesterday. It
[00:21:20] Mark Wright: what was your, what was your take on it, Renee? Did you like it?
[00:21:22] Renee Metty: I loved it. I mean, I thought it was great., somebody had posted this week, if you want to know what I do for a living, this is it, you know?, and what I love about it, part of being a Gestaltist is, Bringing people back to wholeness. Well, there are different parts of ourselves that show up.
[00:21:41] Renee Metty: Like, who are you as a parent? Who are you as a parent under stress? Who are you as a CEO or founder of a company? Who are you as someone that’s interviewing people? And what are the different parts of you that show up? So what I love about the movie is, seeing all the, did you see Inside Out, the first one?
[00:21:58] Mark Wright: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:59] Renee Metty: The, you know, the [00:22:00] core memories and the balls and the different colors with all the different memories. Well, they expounded on that a little bit more and it really was just to me, like, kind of highlighted, like, these are the thousand parts of ourselves that show up in the world. And are you aware of which parts these are?
[00:22:16] Renee Metty: And are you aware of the parts that you wish showed up as, uh, You know, a spouse, a partner, an educator, parent, and then you get to hone those connections within yourself and allow those parts that you want to show up, show up more.
[00:22:34] Mark Wright: I’m laughing because when you said, as you know, how are you showing up as a parent when, I mean, the thing about parenting that I discovered really early on is it really does bring out the worst in you at the worst possible times. And it’s like the, when stress hits and it’s like, Oh my goodness, why did I say that?
[00:22:51] Mark Wright: And then I have to go back and say, you know what, I’m really sorry that I said that to you. To my spouse or to my kids. Um, [00:23:00] we touched on this earlier, Renee, but I’d love to go a little deeper on it. You really believe that our society is way too focused on going and doing, and that we just simply don’t pause enough.
[00:23:11] Mark Wright: What does pausing allow us to do that is so beneficial in your perspective?
[00:23:16] Renee Metty: There’s a few things. Bringing pause gives you that space to notice the reaction versus choosing to respond in a different way, it allows, this path has really led me down more around kind of quantum physics and the energetic field and how we’re all interconnected. And I think of it almost like a spiderweb.
[00:23:39] Renee Metty: It’s, I just see this spiderweb and how we pull this one string. And then it pulls this side over here, maybe not directly correlated, but you know, all the different connection points. So if you think of a kaleidoscope and we make one comment or take one action and it kind of reorders everything [00:24:00] around us and beyond.
[00:24:02] Renee Metty: And so bringing pause allows from kind of the science side to settle the nervous system a little bit, reduces the fReneeticism and chaos. brings more ease and then if you go a little a lot deeper and a little further out in the concept it really Allows for allowing instead of trying to control everything things Whatever your belief system is, God, universe, Buddha, Allah, they really have your back. And there’s this just natural flow, energy flow, and oftentimes we’re trying to go in and change it or control it. And I found that once we create that space, we pause, settle the nervous system, create the space, we can see more clearly the different, directions or actions that need to be taken or not taken.
[00:24:54] Renee Metty: And it requires very little from us. And so. It’s been a long [00:25:00] journey to get into this space and to this perspective, but it is so rich and so fulfilling and it can bring a lot of purpose for people.
[00:25:10] Mark Wright: I think what has really amazed me over the years is the contagion that human energy has, both good and bad. And we’ve seen many examples of good and bad contagion when it comes to Human energy. And I, I’d love to dig a little bit deeper on that. I mean, something that I think there’s a corollary in the natural world that, I mean, a lot of people don’t know that the different species of trees can communicate to each other in the forest.
[00:25:43] Mark Wright: And if, and if one, one tree. senses that the other tree, it could be a deciduous tree and an evergreen tree, senses that other species of tree doesn’t have enough energy, it will give up available energy from its own root system to help that other tree survive. And I’m thinking [00:26:00] there is so much going on that is going so far over our heads.
[00:26:04] Mark Wright: But just that one example, Renee, about the natural world, and I’m, guessing that as you’ve gotten more into Human energy and the power of our energy that you see sort of that same comparison, right?
[00:26:18] Renee Metty: I do. And I learned about the trees just several years ago as well. I thought that was incredibly fascinating. I’ve been a huge proponent of just nature and being outside. One of my happiest places is. Usually in the woods somewhere. My ideal is like where the woods meet the ocean., but there’s just something about being in the forest and so much so that my preschool has a forest kindergarten component to it, spending a lot of time in the mountains or retreats in the woods, those kinds of things are really important to me.
[00:26:49] Renee Metty: But what I found is that I was trained as a body language communicator, as well, learning that most. 80 to 90 percent of [00:27:00] communication is in the nonverbal. And then when you start diving into the human mind, which is what I did in human behavior, recognizing your brain is probably the most fallible mechanism that we have because so much of reality is an illusion where based on your perspective and conditioning and experiences gives you a belief.
[00:27:23] Renee Metty: About something that causes your actions. And when you get into the human energy realm, there’s so much, you know, like, what book was that? Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink that became like a question in our house. Like what’s your blink? What’s your gut tell you? Like before you start reasoning and thinking of all the conditions in making a decision, Almost always we come back to like, I knew, but I went a different direction.
[00:27:51] Renee Metty: But if you create the pause, create the space. That becomes so much stronger and you can even look back on experiences that [00:28:00] you’ve had or decisions that you’ve made that’s just like, definitely should have made a different decision and you knew it in the moment, but all of these conditions tell you to go this way.
[00:28:07] Renee Metty: So you did.
[00:28:08] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about your Montessori school. It’s called the Cove School and first in the nation to have mindfulness as its primary and guiding principle., where’s the school? When did you start it? And I’d love to just know the origin story of the school.
[00:28:23] Renee Metty: So, and this is, will tie into this energy flow. Cause I can really pinpoint the different phases of the school that came from the mind versus it came from the soul. And so it is Montessori inspired. So not a Montessori, but inspired by Montessori principles because I’m just a big proponent of Montessori.
[00:28:43] Renee Metty: All my kiddos went to Montessori, and it’s the most inherently mindful place. Kind of curriculum methodology and philosophy., so I would say, let’s see, I was a wedding and event planner back in 2000. And I think I started in 2004. I did [00:29:00] that for about 10 years, 2008. I had my second kiddo and I was really, and this was right before the, crash, the real estate crash.
[00:29:10] Renee Metty: So everything was, you know, on a high, everything was going great. I wanted to focus solely on my wedding and event planning business because really what I was doing was focused on the business in the middle of parenting. And so while the kids were sleeping nights and weekends, when my husband was home, I was squeezing in this business.
[00:29:30] Renee Metty: And decided that after the birth of my second at the encouragement of a friend, uh, was actually a parent of one of my kindergarten students., when I taught kindergarten and first grade, she’s like, you really need to open a daycare. There’s so much need. You’d be great at it. There’s great money in it.
[00:29:48] Renee Metty: And so I started a daycare in my home. Uh, that was in 2008. Very quickly it was like this daycare thing is not for me, but there was a need. Like I had parents on the [00:30:00] phone crying that they couldn’t find good quality care. And so I did that for about a year and a half. The economy crashed., I knew a year in that I would be transitioning probably the following year to a preschool.
[00:30:15] Renee Metty: Cause I realized like, wait, I, this is my business. I can run it any way I want. Fast, rewind to my teaching days. Like, Oh, I can create whatever I want that I thought would be great for my kids. So I basically took leadership and entrepReneeur principles, reversed engineered, what do my kiddos need so that they can become contributing members of society that do what they want when they want to do it.
[00:30:40] Renee Metty: And make a living from it. And that is where the cove was born. So I went from, preschool or went from daycare transition to preschool. Now what’s interesting about the transition was I wanted to be the best preschool it’s in West Seattle. I wanted to [00:31:00] be the best preschool in West Seattle or even Seattle and beyond.
[00:31:04] Renee Metty: So when you want to be the best at something that requires that you look externally at. All the other preschools and how are all the other schools are doing it. So I traveled to elementary schools, to other preschools, had conversations, like, what are you looking for with preschool students? So the clientele was like, let me get into the best preschool so I can get in the best elementary school to the best college, the best job, you know, the rest of the story.
[00:31:29] Renee Metty: And. Very quickly within six months, I was like, this is not the way I want this to go. Well, simultaneously the economy was crashing. So I was losing families to job loss., couldn’t afford it., anxiety, my own within my own family and friends just watching, am I going to lose my job or I have lost my job?
[00:31:50] Renee Metty: How am I going to support my family? So I thought, my gosh, I have these two and a half year olds that are just wide eyed and. Just like sponges, like [00:32:00] ready to take anything in. I’m like, there’s gotta be something that I knew it wasn’t going to take all of that away. I was watching people not navigate that so well.
[00:32:09] Renee Metty: And so I thought there’s gotta be something that can help these kiddos navigate all of these challenges in the future. So I think I Googled anxiety and children and mindfulness kept coming up. So I’m in Seattle from the East coast, Philadelphia, New York, like, Type A at the time. I now say I’m no longer a Type A personality.
[00:32:31] Renee Metty: I just have certain behaviors that people might think that. Recovering Perfectionist and
[00:32:38] Renee Metty: Yeah, we’re covering perfectionists. So this mindfulness stuff, I was like, Oh, that’s hippie dippie stuff, but Hey, you know, there’s curriculum that I can get on Amazon. That’s 15 and I’ll get it in two days. So bought this curriculum and started implementing it. And I was seeing really great. results. I saw kiddos more focused, more [00:33:00] engaged.
[00:33:00] Renee Metty: There was something that I was already doing that I wouldn’t have called mindfulness, but it was really helping them focus. It was looking at a sand timer. And when I looked back or thought back on it, the days that I used the sand timer where kiddos could look at the sand, listen, close their eyes, and they were, it was right before they were to choose which area they were going to go to for their work time, in preschool.
[00:33:26] Renee Metty: And I noticed the cleanup was easier. They were engaged way longer than when we didn’t use it. There was a lot more chaos. So given my immigrant parents and the value of education, I started looking at more ways that I mindfulness to help better the school. The whole perspective was this is for the kids, this is for the school.
[00:33:46] Renee Metty: It was very early on in mindfulness and education where preschool really wasn’t part of it. It was usually K and up or middle school and high school. So I had to adapt a lot of things and it was even a little bit [00:34:00] controversial at the time when I kind of launched as a mindfulness preschool. People were like, they’re too young.
[00:34:06] Renee Metty: You shouldn’t teach this at this age. And I said, well, I’m not really teaching anything. I’m just. They’re already mindful. They’re in the moment already. And it’s the adults that take them out of the moment.
[00:34:17] Mark Wright: I’m just hearing the voice of Yoda that, you know, he’s not ready for training. You know, it’s like, but it sounds like mindfulness. I mean, even if you taught a kid that was too young, it wouldn’t do any damage, would it?
[00:34:28] Renee Metty: Yeah, no, no. Yeah. So looking back now, like in the moment, I was just kind of like, Oh gosh, am I doing harm? And a big part of when you get into mindfulness and meditation is to do no harm. Like, I don’t want to, harm these children, but I came to the same conclusion. Like, this is, They’re already there.
[00:34:48] Renee Metty: I’m just reminding parents and bringing attention to the fact that like, oh, these are some of the things, that you’re feeling in your body. That’s a big distinction for me and our preschool is all preschools teach emotions, [00:35:00] but we really bring in the somatic piece because the emotion. Our point of view is that the emotion starts in the body before it hits the mind to know what the emotion is.
[00:35:10] Renee Metty: And so that was kind of the, beginning of, Playing around with mindfulness. It was an in home daycare, transitioned it to preschool. And then my husband’s like, you really should start a school. I’m like, I don’t want to school. You really should start a school. I’m like, I don’t want to school. I don’t want to do that.
[00:35:27] Renee Metty: So I used to joke. And now I say quite confidently that the school found me. And so it was looking at all these other schools. Realizing that I was looking externally, it was falling under comparison, which now being able to track back that comparison comes from my ego and the mind versus allowing to present to me these opportunities that I started implementing, uh, the mindfulness practices.
[00:35:59] Renee Metty: And [00:36:00] it was really important to me that it wasn’t just, Oh, here’s a 15 minute mindfulness session. Time during the schedule that it was an embodied part of the school. So, ended up finding a location that we could move it out of our home. And again, all of that was an allowing because found, I wanted it in a house.
[00:36:19] Renee Metty: I didn’t want it in a strip mall. I didn’t want it in a corporate building. This house ended up being posted in the wrong section because it was a commercial house, but it was posted under regular renting houses, like on Craigslist. The short version of the story is that a lot of pieces had to line up for this to come to fruition.
[00:36:40] Renee Metty: And I stayed the course, kept conversations with the two potential landlords. One of them gave me all these potential blocks that would get in the way of doing what I wanted to do. I kept bringing solutions, made it really easy for him. And then, really Because of the path [00:37:00] that I was on and opening up to this quote unquote hippie stuff, I was visioning more, I was creating the future that I wanted down to the month and I would say, found the house, I think it was like January or February, they wanted it rented in April.
[00:37:16] Renee Metty: I didn’t want to rent it until August and everything lined up. I created. a huge piece of paper on my wall with post it notes, printed out the picture of house, put everything that I wanted and sign the lease on the, in the month that I wanted it to sign because I didn’t want to have to run two locations in the middle of the year and try and fill spots and staffing and all of that.
[00:37:40] Renee Metty: And so everything Just lined up. And so, and the best part of this story is we opened in 2012 in the new location. So kiddos and parents are in the yard. I think I was doing a tour for a family and this older woman was there and I thought maybe she was, you know, the grandma of the family that [00:38:00] was there.
[00:38:00] Renee Metty: So she followed in for the tour and then she pulled me aside and, come to find out she was across the street with her mom. So this woman was. Late seventies. Her mom was in her nineties. They were getting their nails done across the street. Saw all the hubbub at the school. She came over. She’s one of five girls in the family.
[00:38:21] Renee Metty: They had lived in that house. That was a one owner house., her dad raised five girls in the house is what she told me. And they, oh, I have chills every time I tell the story. And they were all educators. And one of the biggest things that I get when people come through and what I felt when I saw the house was it feels so good in here.
[00:38:41] Renee Metty: So back to the human energy, like there, there is a vibe in the school that was just like, this is yours and you need to have a school here. And then for her to come in that first month and tell us that five educators live there and were raised there. It was just like, wow.
[00:38:59] Mark Wright: that’s really [00:39:00] cool the value of mindfulness. I learned a number of years ago I helped put a video together for a Seattle artist who’s now become a friend. Catherine Meyer is her name She’s a brilliant artist and has a studio in Belltown She created an app for tablets that allowed kids to create artwork So when they would start their day they would Open up their tablets and they would start to create art.
[00:39:25] Mark Wright: And it was also shared on big screens in the cafeteria during lunch. So the kids could look up and say, Hey, that’s my art. And what teachers started to realize in the pilot project of this is that when there was this mindful activity at, and it also had some instructions for breathing and stuff like that, but when they started their day with this tablet focused on mindfulness, there was massive improvement in engagement.
[00:39:51] Mark Wright: And what they realized is that there’s a lot of chaos that these kids are facing at home. And a lot of kids arrive at school, not in any mental [00:40:00] state to learn, they’re thinking about the fight that mom and dad had, or maybe they didn’t have enough food last night for dinner or whatever. But, what they’ve discovered was that the power of that mindfulness for just creating that.
[00:40:13] Mark Wright: Environment for learning was massive. And, uh, I’m guessing that, that you’ve seen the same thing, but I’d love to, can you give me an example, Renee, of how a mindfulness school differs from a curriculum standpoint, to a regular school?
[00:40:29] Renee Metty: yeah, I mean, there’s a couple aspects to it. I think one of the things is the ability to be in the moment and respond to what’s happening. And so educators need to, and this is the same for parents, is we teach who we are. We parent who we are. So there’s a big component of personal and professional development that happens with the adults.
[00:40:54] Renee Metty: It’s Like I mentioned, it’s not just a curriculum for the kiddos, but it’s more of a [00:41:00] cultural, energetic vibe in the school of less chaos. And so when I think about a classroom teacher, myself included, when I started is, We are working right up to the moment that bell rings and the door opens and the kids come flying in with all of their energy and their, you know, whatever they’re bringing from the playground or home, or lack of food.
[00:41:22] Renee Metty: And so it’s really important for our program that the facilitators are done five to 10 minutes prior to the door opening. Uh, we have a quiet time., five to 10 minutes and it’s, not perfect, but the expectation is that you are sipping your tea or your coffee, you are getting still, you are preparing for, you’re settling your energy so that you can be prepared for whatever comes through that door.
[00:41:51] Renee Metty: And so that’s a huge piece of our program. I think that’s really different. Uh, there’s a big piece Embedded in the [00:42:00] curriculum, we don’t do, a lot of preschools will do like themes, Montessori doesn’t. So that’s part of the Montessori inspiration, but we do different concepts that we teach through games and books.
[00:42:13] Renee Metty:, and the concepts ended up coming about more for the adults. Cause they’re like, what are you teaching? They like, everybody wants to know what we’re teaching. And it’s really about. Relationships and how do, how can children engage with each other and how do we deal with conflict? We, I would say we’re more of a hands off school.
[00:42:30] Renee Metty: Like we come from the perspective that everybody, the children are humans first. Before children, so less of the top down, I’m the teacher, you’re the student, but like, what do you need right now? Who are you? What do you need? Some kiddos need more movement. Some kid, kiddos need more, you know, silence and quiet before answering a question.
[00:42:54] Renee Metty: You know, we take into account introverts and extroverts., we take into account, like we really, I’d say the [00:43:00] biggest thing that our facilitators and that my director and I really impart on, try to impart on parents, but really from the education side, is there’s nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with any of these kiddos.
[00:43:13] Renee Metty: There’s behaviors that communicate a need. There are certain needs that children have that other children don’t have.
[00:43:22] Renee Metty: Everybody in the education system could come from that perspective instead of the labels of ADHD and anxiety and all these things. You can have those behaviors, but when you come from a lens that there’s absolutely nothing wrong, and this child is made perfectly exactly the way they should be, and they’re where they are in their.
[00:43:41] Renee Metty: Long, hopefully long developmental and, you know, spiritual path, whatever path you want to call it, that your actions and your language are just completely different in how you respond to them. And they feel that they know it. They know by the time they’re three, [00:44:00] that if they’re the bad kid, and I can’t tell you how many students that we get from other schools that they’ve already been kicked out of.
[00:44:06] Renee Metty: It breaks my heart.
[00:44:08] Mark Wright: I’d like us to shift to the idea of redeeming work. Renee, what you’ve learned about human development in kids, I’m guessing a lot of that translates to success as adults when we, uh, when we harness it the right way. Our mission is to redeem work, and that is just to make work something that makes us better human beings.
[00:44:27] Mark Wright: And also the work environment needs to honor everyone in the equation., as you look at. Everything that you’re teaching these kids, how do we redeem work? How do we make work better based on the wisdom that you’re sharing with these little ones?
[00:44:41] Renee Metty: I mean, I think I work also with with mostly adults now, uh, in leadership capacities and, They’re the same principles, right? Coming from an abundance mindset. How I just had a conversation today with a client around when you’re engaging with someone, instead [00:45:00] of presenting to them language is a big part of our, preschool program, but instead of the black and white thinking, or like, can I do this, or do we have enough budget?
[00:45:09] Renee Metty: The question becomes, how can I hire a person to my team? So when you say, how can I, that opens up the possibility of multiple potential solutions. And I think if everyone at work could come from that lens that there’s nothing wrong with anyone, then they would. approach the conversation differently, they would have different kind of relationship with their team, with their boss, and if everyone could come from a place of knowing who they are and what their strengths are, they could better advocate for themselves.
[00:45:46] Renee Metty: These are the conversations I have all the time in terms of when you’re, wanting something at work or whether it’s work life balance or you’re working too many hours or you need to hire someone or need budget or whatever the case may [00:46:00] be is we learn the language to advocate for ourselves.
[00:46:03] Renee Metty: Like you’re going to get the most out of me. with this or this is what I need versus trying to constantly look around like, okay, that person’s really successful. How do I be more like them? And if you could be more like you and what comes with that is you have to know what you want. And that’s a lot of times the hardest part for people to understand what they want, which is where the mindfulness piece comes in and peeling away those layers of what have I been conditioned to do versus what am I naturally, what are my natural abilities?
[00:46:34] Renee Metty: I had this conversation is that I can do a lot of things. I can do a lot of things. Well, it doesn’t mean I’m good at it. I mean, it doesn’t mean that it’s natural to me that it can cause a lot of stress, right? Which has a ripple effect and impact on your work life and your family life. And so if you can get really clear on who you are, what your strengths are, what your values are, make sure they all align mind, body, and soul, and then operate from that [00:47:00] lens.
[00:47:00] Renee Metty: Versus the external coming in and then I think the last piece would be like, what contribution are you making to the world? Big or small? Doesn’t need to be some big top of the mountain thing. It’s the day to day interactions you have with when picking up your dry cleaning or at, you know, with a barista is one of my favorite kind of anchors for myself is leave them better than you found them.
[00:47:23] Renee Metty: And so, It’s simple, but not easy.
[00:47:25] Mark Wright: And I think it’s interesting too, that you teach these little ones at the Montessori based school how to frame things positively, because when a kid says, I can’t, And then fill in the blank. How, how do you deal with that? Again, you told me when we
[00:47:39] Renee Metty: Yes, so the I can’t just stops you like well, that’s a dead end. And so they say I can’t put on my shoe. We say how can you? And then they look at us at two and a half. By four they have some responses, but two and a half they’re like, would I be asking you if I knew? And so
[00:47:56] Mark Wright: two and a half, the world kind of revolves around me. So put on my shoe, dang [00:48:00] it.
[00:48:00] Renee Metty: Yeah, exactly. And so you, you take a pause, you say, how can you, and they look at you and you say, you can ask a friend, you can ask an adult, you can do, and then maybe you show them a different way. You could try it this way. And so we try and give three options so that we’re starting to wire the brain that there are multiple possibilities.
[00:48:19] Renee Metty: You might not like all of them. I say that to adults all the time. Like you always have a choice. That’s like my. The thing that shoots, they, shivers up my spine when someone’s like, well, I don’t have a choice. Like you always have a choice. You might not like some of the choices you have, but you always have a choice.
[00:48:34] Mark Wright: Do you think that work should feel good
[00:48:37] Renee Metty: Yes. I won’t do it if I don’t, if I’m not having a good time and I’m not having fun, there’s a period of, you know, kind of. Suck it up for a little bit or like bumps in the road another big concept is Discerning versus judging so you have to discern for yourself in your situation What is like sometimes [00:49:00] things are hard or we have to do hard things, right?
[00:49:02] Renee Metty: So I don’t think it needs to be easy all the time, but it should definitely outweigh the bad, the, you know, the good feeling. I think, for a long time, I’m like, am I a workaholic? Is that one of my distractions? But I love what I do so much that like, I was like, I don’t think it is because it doesn’t feel like work.
[00:49:23] Renee Metty: And my dad instilled that in me, from a very young age. If you’re doing what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And I subscribe to that 1000%.
[00:49:33] Mark Wright: as you’re consulting business people, Renee, is there a common stumbling block? Is there a common. Mental or emotional block that you deal with
[00:49:41] Renee Metty: There’s a couple, I’d say the biggest one is doing things you think you’re supposed to do and working with people around what expectations are. Like they expect me to work and grind, you know, or I’m going to, that’s a big one, especially in this climate is [00:50:00] like, I have to put in more hours. I have to work harder than the, the other person, which may be the case in that situation in that, you know, in that company.
[00:50:08] Renee Metty: But the question becomes then, How’s that working for you? And is that how you want to live your life? And if not, then I help align them to, you know, what the next steps are and how to get clear on that and how to advocate for themselves.
[00:50:22] Mark Wright: our company work P2P and, you know, Dan Rogers, our founder, um, we’re about to go into a two week oscillation period. And that is a period where we don’t have to work. And we, just recharge, and there’s just such wisdom. And, uh, just at every turn, I’m just, floored by. The wisdom that Dan has really thought about before creating this, business, a four day work week, we have unlimited, PTO.
[00:50:48] Mark Wright:, and it’s just, it’s understanding human nature and honoring it in a way that empowers us. To, to do the right thing. And I love this so much that I’ll [00:51:00] come up, I sometimes do my best work between 10 PM and midnight, and I’ll find myself often listening to interviews and editing and doing, stuff like that because I love it.
[00:51:11] Mark Wright: I just feel like if more business owners stopped looking at the clock and stopped, punishing people when they stare out the window or when, they aren’t grinding, because I really feel like our culture has a very limited definition of, a good employee. And that is the person that shows up early, stays late and grinds.
[00:51:33] Renee Metty: Yes.
[00:51:35] Mark Wright: And it just kills me because those people are the ones that either ruin their families or burn out or both. And it’s just really sad. And I just, that’s why we’re on this mission to try to get more business leaders to understand there is a better way of doing it., if you had to give advice to a business leader, Renee, about all of the wisdom that you’ve learned as it relates to making work a better place and a better thing, [00:52:00] what would that be?
[00:52:02] Renee Metty: There’s so much I could say, but since you brought up what you just brought up about the oscillation period, I would say that the power in. Allowing the system to rest. You know, you talked about that in the workplace. I see it with kids being driven, you know, so hard in their workloads and things like that, I’ll share a quick story that like eight years into my mindfulness journey my oldest son, who’s a senior now was in eighth grade and was stressed out., and we, I’ve talked to my kids about like, what’s your default reaction to stress? Is it fight, flight, or freeze? And so he often is freeze. So he was in freeze mode one morning, didn’t get an assignment done. This goes back to my, my, like this mindfulness practitioner, she’s super frustrated and angry with her kids.
[00:52:48] Renee Metty: She’s going to, the other kids are going to be late. Right. So I’m going through all those fields of like being frustrated and he’s very good at like calling me on that stuff. So I said, I’m like, the kids are going to be, the other two are going to be [00:53:00] late. I’m going to take them. And I’m like frustrated.
[00:53:02] Renee Metty: I said, when I get back, you better be dressed and we’ll talk about the next step. So, he said, you sound like you’re angry. And I’m like breathing in the hallway. I’m like, I’m not angry. I’m just frustrated. I’ll talk to you when I get back. So take the kids to school on my way back. I’m like, Renee, you do this for a living.
[00:53:18] Renee Metty: Like what? How would you like, right? Like, how, what would you, how would you coach your client? So I’m like trying to get my happiest energy and voice going. Right. So I, we get home and he comes up, he’s in his robe. I’m like, you’re not dressed. I, you know, I asked you to get dressed. I’m like, go get dressed.
[00:53:36] Renee Metty: And we, one of the, his favorite places at the time was like a trampoline bouncy house. I’m like, we’re going to go to the trampoline place and go have breakfast. And he like looked at me and just tears flowed down his face. And he’s like, Really? I said, yeah, let’s go. So we got dressed. We went door to door, two hours, right?
[00:53:54] Renee Metty: Jumping. It was early in the morning. I got to jump too, which I wouldn’t normally do. We had breakfast. We [00:54:00] laughed. We came home. And so during that time, I talked to him about when we’re stressed out, we can get all bunched up and we just need time to recharge. But the effect of that, that blew even me away, knowing cognitively what the effects could be.
[00:54:16] Renee Metty: For the next six hours, he didn’t work straight through, but there was a clarity. There was, okay, I’m going to do this first. And then he went outside and did some things, came back and did some other things. So the focus and attention for six hours to get all the things that he needed to get done that had frozen him that morning.
[00:54:34] Renee Metty: Like there is, there’s not enough money you could pay for that. So if leaders could just give space for people to recharge, the trick is the people given the space also need to take advantage of the space and not fill it with other things. Right. Um, yeah.
[00:54:52] Mark Wright: I need to ask you about Equine Gestaltist coaching consultant. I can’t even say it. What is it? What is [00:55:00] Gestaltist?, and is it Gestalt? Is it a German word?
[00:55:04] Renee Metty: Gestalt.
[00:55:05] Mark Wright: So what is it?
[00:55:06] Renee Metty: So Gestalt is, if people are therapists, that it’s a, Particular way on the humanistic side versus the opposite, which is more Freudian, psychological. It’s a, it’s more of a holistic view, bringing people back to wholeness. It’s very experiential, less talk therapy, less. It’s more on the coaching side, the work that I do, but it’s around giving people the experience.
[00:55:29] Renee Metty: So the easiest way I can describe it is you need to make a decision in traditional therapy or coaching. We might ask you some questions around, okay, what are the two decisions? I’m going to stay at the job I’m at or I’m going to leave the job I’m at. And so in our equine gestalt work, there’s, Popular experience in Gestalt, I believe, is called polarity.
[00:55:52] Renee Metty: So you put something on the ground, pole or stick or whatever, and you ask the client, okay, which side is the [00:56:00] staying where you’re at and which side is the leaving and. Everybody has a side, like you can’t tell them what side there’s a specific side, so they choose it. So then you have the person stand in that side.
[00:56:10] Renee Metty: Okay. When you are at this job, what do you have to say to the other side that is a new job, let’s say. And so you’re looking at the, you’re basically looking at like fear and freedom or, money, no money, whatever the opposites are, and you go back and forth over the pole. To kind of talk to each other.
[00:56:31] Renee Metty: And me as the coach doesn’t really say much. It they’re open ended like, okay, what do you have to say to that? You know, and you’re just guiding them back and forth. They come to their own conclusion. The belief is that, you know, we are whole creative and resourceful and that we have everything we need., and we’re just there to kind of guide them as an objective third party, but it’s very experiential.
[00:56:53] Renee Metty: There’s something powerful about stepping into. That part of yourself and stepping into [00:57:00] the other potential part of yourself that can move mountains and moves the energy out of your body., so then there’s different ways that we respond that help move the energy out., and then the equine part is once we get to a place, let’s say like, okay, I’ve decided I’m going to leave my job.
[00:57:18] Renee Metty: Then the client goes in with the horse. And during the time when they’re outside of the round pen, the horse sometimes gives me information. And that’s the piece that I learned. We don’t train the horses for this. All horses have this unique gift and every horse is different, but we learned to read the signs and then pose the question.
[00:57:38] Renee Metty: Like, what do you think that might mean? The horse just walked away or the horse will align chakras, will pull energy, toxic energy from people. So there’s all different things that the horse can do. Help. We’re co active partners in the coaching process. And then the client will go in with the horse and usually the horses will really align with you when [00:58:00] you’re aligned.
[00:58:01] Renee Metty: If you’re in your head, they pretty much ignore you.
[00:58:04] Mark Wright: I’m guessing you must have experienced some pretty emotional, things through this.
[00:58:09] Renee Metty: Yes, in a lot of my training, we get to go and do our own work. So we go to Denver, outside of Denver, five, for five days, at least five times in the two year period of this program. And I have witnessed Something that I don’t experience a lot in my environment, or even myself, is like anger. Like, I don’t have a lot to be angry about.
[00:58:31] Renee Metty: I have frustration, um, but not a lot of anger. And I have been blown away. There’s, an exercise, and you have to have done lots of layers of other work before you get to this, where people will release their anger on something called the cube.
[00:58:46] Mark Wright: Hmm.
[00:58:47] Renee Metty: And I mean, they are just whacking this cube with a tennis racket and moving all of that energy out of the body.
[00:58:54] Renee Metty: I have seen deeply emotional, I’ve seen men and women do it, and you can [00:59:00] feel the reverberation in the arena. And then they, their face shape changes. So a day or two later after the deep healing work, they feel lighter, they look lighter, they’re walking taller, like just some amazing, really transformative.
[00:59:17] Renee Metty: Both energetically and physically. Somebody I saw literally looked 10 years younger after releasing, because usually there’s something in childhood that. determines the rest of our trajectory., I was a Filipino American, grew up in a very lily white Irish Italian, middle class neighborhood, went to a Catholic school for eight years, and I recognized that very early on, I was five and I went to a friend’s house.
[00:59:48] Renee Metty: So in our house, we eat with, the spoon. In the Philippines, you put the rice on the spoon and push the food on with the fork, and then you’re eating off the spoon, where in America you eat off the fork.
[00:59:59] Mark Wright: Hmm.
[00:59:59] Renee Metty: [01:00:00] So I was raised, when in Rome do as the Romans. So what taught at a very young age saw that my friend’s household was the fork and I pick up my spoon and my fork, and then I switched it.
[01:00:10] Renee Metty: Very quickly and realize that, oh, my entire life, I am constantly looking to see what everybody else is doing. And the impact that has, as in my career is massive. And as a leader is massive. And so once I recognize that now I can make different choices, and then I also see that part of me shows up that I can then choose like, oh, this isn’t okay for, you know, to kind of follow versus lead
[01:00:37] Renee, as we, wrap up, I just had a huge light bulb go on. And that is the power of mindfulness is that when we pause, it allows us to really examine who we are and why we do the things that we do. And as you said, so much of it is just based on what we learned as kids to be able to survive in the [01:01:00] world.
[01:01:00] Mark Wright: And it really strikes me that When we have that pause, we also have the ability to say, what do I really want? And then set about identifying that and going for it because as human beings, we’ve spent so much time and energy over the millennia that to just fit in and be a part of the group and please the group and help the group.
[01:01:21] Mark Wright: And, but it, just seems like there’s such wisdom. In really understanding who we are.
[01:01:28] Renee Metty: And once we know who we are, we can raise our level of consciousness, which then raises the world’s level of consciousness.
[01:01:35] Mark Wright: Wow. Well, we could, go on talking for several more hours. I feel like. Renee Metty, thank you so much for taking the time and for the work that you’re doing in the world. And we’ll put links to all of your consulting work in the show notes. So thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure.
[01:01:50] Renee Metty: Yeah. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.