Episode 20: The Game of Ten®

Transcript…

In this episode, you will learn:

  • Learn what the Game of Ten® is and how it can help you

  • Hear Steve and I share an A-ha moment about the freeze response that typically stems from trauma

  • Learn a new perspective on what is creating anxiety within your body

  • Learn what is under the freeze response with fight, flight or freeze

  • Learn what Steve considers to be pain…similar to my own beliefs

Episode 20: The Game of Ten®

Katie Wrigley: This is episode 20 of the pain changer podcast. Joining me today, in order to continue the theme around patterns and various ways to shift them when they don’t work for you anymore, is Steve Barton. Steve has created this incredibly powerful framework to help produce rapid perspective shifts. Stay tuned, he’s going to tell you about that right after this. 

Before we chat with Steve, I wanted to call out this week’s listener of the week. This week’s listener of the week is Stephanie MF who says 

“The Pain Changer is a game changer. I’ve worked with Katie for almost a couple of years and even before then, she’s always been so incredibly helpful to me. She has helped me to think outside the box, realize that pain, whether it’s physical or emotional can truly be healed by being aware and unraveling the patterns deep within you which no longer serve us. And that pain definitely does not mean permanent. Nor does your past define who you are. This podcast has definitely given me some good reminders of patterns I may still have been stuck in, and also new lessons that needed to be learned. I truly believe it will help a massive audience and I can’t wait to see what milestone happens next.” 

Thank you so much, Stephanie. I have enjoyed every minute of our work together and I am so proud of you and the effort that you have put into your own transformation. Please send me a DM on Instagram too @coachktdubs, and let me know you heard me give you a shout out. 

And now for this week’s episode. Joining me today is Steve Barton who is a native to Maine, a resident of Westbrook and has a 19 year old son Spencer and a partner named Liz. Born on Labor Day, September 2 1956. Steve’s schooling was through the Westbrook school system through high school. After receiving his BA in business management from the University of Southern Maine. Steve went into the family flower business Barton’s Flowers of Westbrook in 1979, at the age of 22, his father had a major stroke and Steve accepted the position to manage the family business. In 1985, he and his father purchased Harmons flowers of Portland, merging the two companies to what is now Harmons and Barton’s floral company in November of 2007. Then he and his father sold the company. 

Steve acquired his financial advisor’s licenses three years after, series 7, series 66 and the Maine state insurance license. It didn’t take long before he realized that this was not his passion. Still with a love of business and a strong desire to help people personally and in business, he began coaching individuals and business owners, based on his business background, his passion and knowledge of how people behave and how the mind works. He has helped individuals and teams to connect with their innate awareness. You know how I love awareness guys, he calls this a common sense approach to what is not at all common. In May 2015, Steve graduated the eight month intensive coaching program from the Gestalt international study center in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, giving him Foundation and the Gestalt model and the Gestalt core concepts and behaviors to work from, and September 2021, Steve graduated from Miracle Minded Coaching with Marianne Williamson and the team at Different Publication, giving him an even wider range of coaching skills to work with his clients. Currently, Steve is the owner of Steve Barton Coaching which provides coaching for individuals and groups. Steve is registered with the United States Trademark Office, a process that he uses in his coaching practice. It is the format of a psychological game and mindset practice. It is called The Game of 10®. He is currently creating programs to bring to organizations and businesses to create awareness. His hope is to train and teach others about this process to the psychological coaching and wellness community. His website is overthelookingglass.com. That is quite the background! Welcome to the pain changer podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today, Steve.

Steve Barton: Well, thank you, Katie, for having me. I’m really excited that you’ve asked me to be on and I’m here and willing to share what I know and can’t wait to hear your questions.

Katie Wrigley: Awesome. I can’t wait to dive in. So you have had, as we mentioned, going over your bio just now you’ve had quite a diverse past work experience. So at what point in all that, between your experience in the flower industry and then moving into financial planning… When did you realize that you wanted to help people differently?

Steve Barton: Well, I had a life changing awareness when I was 36 years old. And it’s in our book that my son and I wrote: The Father, the Son and the Aha Moment. I had an out of body experience, put myself in therapy. After three sessions, my therapist didn’t know what to do with me. And he asked me “Do you have some good people around you?” And of course, when the student’s ready, the teacher appears, and I had two or three great mentors, but then still remained in the flower business until I was I was 52, in 2007. I’m 65. So I still stayed in there. And in the book, I mentioned that my father and I really were, but vinegar and water. And so finally, I was at the place where I didn’t need that income. So we sold the company. And that was the best thing we ever did for each other and our relationship, and no looking back. So then I got my financial advisors licenses, as you said, but the coaching really resonated with me, and it was a perfect fit. It’s kind of like, as Steve Jobs says, You can’t connect the dots in the future, you only can connect them in the past. And it seems like it’s the best choice I’ve made because the dots are coming together in a way that I’ve never could imagine.

Katie Wrigley: That’s awesome. And I You’re right, you know, it’s hard to connect the dots in the future, you can only connect them in the past. But Steve Jobs, as we know, is pretty brilliant. I can’t even imagine you being anything other than a coach. Like it’s just such a natural fit for what I know of you. So it’s easy to see how you chose this profession for yourself. So what is the game of 10? Tell us about that.

Steve Barton: All right. The game 10 is a combination of every self help book: The Course in Miracles. You name it, culminated into a five sentence, Mantra, meditation mindset. And it’s very simple. The game of 10 is we can play it right now. We want to play it with me? 

Okay, repeat after me. 

Katie Repeat after me

Steve Barton: You know you don’t have to. 

Katie Wrigley: sorry…I had to

Steve Barton: Thank you. And 10 is the highest level of awareness that we have. Okay. It is a universal innate being. I am 10

Katie Wrigley: I am 10

Steve Barton: I’m always right with the awareness that I have. 

Katie Wrigley: I am always right with the awareness that I have. 

Steve Barton: I am enough 

Katie Wrigley: I am enough. 

Steve Barton: I do enough. 

Katie Wrigley: I do enough.

Steve Barton: I have enough. 

Katie Wrigley: I have enough.

Steve Barton:  Those five sentences shut down your monkey mind because it’s constantly looking for that which this is not.

Katie Wrigley: And you know as soon as you said that, I realized my brain was very calm and still it’s like… I was just waiting for the next sentence. I wasn’t thinking anything, I wasn’t expecting anything I was just…wow.

Steve Barton: So I tell my clients: “It’s in the book, use it whenever you feel overwhelmed, things are coming at you. Your monkey mind is chattering. Say those five tenants.” I call them tenants because they’re powerful affirmations. The first one is declaring that you are an aspect of Divine Wisdom. God. You’re not God, but you’re an aspect, we all are. That is a huge statement. 

The second huge statement proclaims your innocence. I’m doing the best I can with the awareness I have or sometimes I say I’m always right with the awareness I have. It takes away the guilt and shame and proclaims your innocence.

Katie Wrigley: I love that. I love that. 

Steve Barton: And then the next one brings us into present moment flow. Be do have. I am as I am enough. I do enough. I have enough. We have our purpose in life. Be? Yes. Someone asked me what is the most important thing I wrote in the book was really diving into enough. I’ve never heard it written in any book I’ve read or said the way I’ve said it. It’s enough is a universal quantity. Yes. And it connects time, which is now Eckhart Tolle fate, one of my favorite books The Power of Now 

Katie Wrigley: I love that book. 

Steve Barton: It’s in that, but he goes into time, when he calls it clock, we have clock time, and we have eternal time. And that time is eternity. Yes. And then enough, is the universal quantity. So it puts time space into a higher level of awareness.

Katie Wrigley: You know, in that time space that comes in a higher level of importance, I think it’s always important at some level that we’re tracking, but with people who are dealing with chronic pain, chronic illnesses, being able to track in time what’s happening and track your progress becomes incredibly important. Or, if you haven’t realized or been able to get in front of whatever’s happening with you, you’re also tracking your decline. But it’s important to be able to do that so that you have a baseline at any point in time where you are. And then once you have that baseline, it’s not as easy as like, “Okay, this is where I am and that’s where I want to go, here I go.” There’s usually a coupleof  like, “Ah, shit, that’s where I am.” There’s some resistance in there. So in a lot of what I find that and I found it with myself too, so I’m going to call myself out first. We’re usually our own worst enemy. And it’s pretty much when you’re looking for the person’s ass to kick who’s in your way, just figure out how to kick your own ass because it’s probably you. It was definitely me. And we do this by these limiting beliefs that we put into place that come out of these subconscious patterns that hold us back. Like I can’t move because I hurt too much. I can’t have fun because I hurt too much. I’m not enough because I can’t give what I want to do and we tell ourselves these stories and then we find evidence to back up the stories and it becomes our truth. And then we stay small. What do you see or what has been one of the limiting beliefs that you tend to come across as you’re helping people raise their awareness and see they have enough they are enough that within the constraints of time whatever they may be working towards? They still have enough, they are enough, everything is enough, right now, in this moment before they reach that goal. What is that thing that tends to get in their way the most?

Steve Barton: Just everything you said. They put conditions: you know I’ll be happy when ___. Be happy now because the conditions that we put on are actually exactly what you said. “I need to get this done.” “I need to get rid of this pain.” Well, the pain paradox is that you try to get rid of it. And it gets deeper ingrained. Yes. So the game of 10 is all about love. Okay? It’s the foundation of love. It’s who we are. It’s ours, our appointment. Okay? What happens is when things don’t go quite right, and we label it as not being the way it is, it is not what it is. It is what its from is what it is, to its not what it is, I don’t want this. It gets locked in. Yeah, we’ll call this the game often played. 

Katie Wrigley: Ah, and the game often played.

Steve Barton:  Of those five tenants. In reverse, I’m not 10. I’m not right with you where it is. I have, I have not enough. I don’t do enough. I don’t have enough. Anatomic, and I use it on a continuing continuum of one to nine. So the game often played one through nine, that is called the game often played, because that’s what’s out there in the world. And that’s what’s being fed to us on the news and media, social media, that guess what, you need this to be enough. So yeah, people used it for marketing, and for selling things that will make you enough. Right, instead of you’re already enough. And if you still want those things, for whatever reason, go get them. They aren’t good, they’re gonna have any impact on you as a person, it’s just a thing that you have. 

Katie Wrigley: Absolutely right. And you know, you’re spot on with, you know, the harder we get task focused on breaking apart pain, breaking apart stress, the more we identify with it. And so it happened to my experience, and I’ve had this conversation with a lot of other people and I get a different reaction pretty much every time from “hmm”, or complete awareness and everything in between. But when my pain first broke, I had a panic attack. Because I had been so focused on getting rid of it that when I got rid of it, I had no frickin idea what to do. None. And then I’m like, Okay, what’s that about? Why am I freaking out? I don’t hurt anymore. I had been thinking of what the hell just happened. Like, and I didn’t, I didn’t understand it, and then I did, I was like, okay, Shannon had told me pain can become part of my identity. Clearly, that was true. Like everything she’s told me. And I took a hard look at myself and realized how I’ve been holding myself back and what I was actually getting something out of pain. And doesn’t matter how many times I say that, it still sounds messed up to myself. But we don’t stay in any state that we’re in unless we get something out of it on some level, usually a level we aren’t consciously aware of. What is your experience with that, Steve?

Steve Barton: I had anxiety for the first time in my life. When I was asked to leave the house with my 13 year old, without my 13 year old son 30 years ago. The flower business, dozens of weddings a weekend. Never had anxiety. And I think it lasted for about a year. And those of you have ever had it. You said you’ve had, it’s like a wave coming over you.

Katie Wrigley: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Barton: And finally, one day, I had an idea, A Course in Miracles says “that which is not real does not exist.” And everything is love. So I said, and then I also thought of the phrase that Marianne Williamson says, “We’re not afraid of how insignificant we are. We’re afraid of how powerful we are.”

Katie Wrigley: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve Barton: And here’s what I came to the, this was my aha moment. I had given my power away to another person who rejected me. I was devastated. And I said, this wave I was saying, I would dread, I was just dreading the waves coming. I’ll get through it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I said, I gave my love away and outside of myself. And that’s just my love trying to get back in. Oh, and I said, I used some swear words. “Get back in here now.” Yeah. And it was gone. 

Katie Wrigley: Wow. 

Steve Barton: You get it and I did it maybe three or four times over a two day period, I have never had any anxiety ever again. We can use our free will to give our power away. And in your case with your clients, you gave your power away to pain. 

Katie Wrigley: Yep. 

Steve Barton: And the pain. And so 10 says, “Okay, we’ll, we’ll let you go outside yourself.” When it goes away, you’ve given it away. Now we’re going to teach you a lesson. And our minds would never think that anxiety is our love, powerful love trying to get back in our bodies. I asked one client once they were stuck, had anxiety. I said, “does it feel like you’re beside yourself?” Yes. I said, “because you were. Yes, just get back together. Welcome it in, expect it in.” We have the ability to give our power away to a person, place or situation. At the split second of any moment. And you’ll know that you have given it away if you feel that energy that’s feels like it’s kept pushing you back in. And we call it anxiety. And we medicate it when we try to avoid it. And then guess what? That turns into pain and or depression. You know, it’s yeah, we give our power away unconsciously, sometimes consciously. Yeah, yeah. That’s my two cents right there. And anyone out there listening with anxiety? Don’t believe me? Try it. Just try it.

Katie Wrigley: Yes. And that’s a recurring theme that we’ve heard on a few episodes now. It’s just…just give it a shot. Like, if what you are doing now is not yielding you a calm mind, you have nothing to lose by trying something else that you may hear in this. So give it a shot. If it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you. But if it does, awesome, now you’ve got another trick in your tool bag to help get anxiety under control when you feel it. And you can get to a point where Steve does where he doesn’t have anxiety anymore, just get back in here. And he feels good again. I love that, and especially the anxious mind with chronic pain. Like I say this all the time: that pain and fear play together like quintessential mean girls, they stab you in the back, they do not have your best interest, you think you’re ahead of them, and then boom, they come get you again. And what it tends to look like is “this is never going to improve”, “this is as good as it gets.” And then they’re in this anxious spiral there. So that’s another trick and I’ve said on other episodes, I’ve mentioned how we can really attach to that feeling, get curious about it, examine it and just by examining it, it starts to go away. You know, in your suggestion of pulling it back into like, Okay, I want all of my love back in for me. You know, I don’t care what you’ve done in this life. You deserve forgiveness. You deserve love, you deserve connection. You know, some things may require a higher level of forgiveness. But it starts with you being able to forgive yourself, pull your love back in, stay in control of it. It’s up to you. You’re going to have more to give the people you care about in your life if you’re giving it to yourself first.

Steve Barton: Here’s one thing that I’ve learned. You can’t love yourself. You are love. 

Katie Wrigley: Oh, I like that. 

Steve Barton: We have to separate from ourselves to nine, eight, you know, to Oh, I love you, Steve. I love myself. I’m so good. I’m so positive. We have to separate from ourselves to love ourselves. I love what Eckhart Tolle says when it is like one of his tapes you can’t love yourself. You are yourself. If I asked my cat do you love yourself? He looked at me and say Are you mad?

Katie Wrigley: Yeah, I remember that part. 

Steve Barton: You know, it was like, Oh my god. So people really are just really engaged with loving somebody, loving themselves. They are love and you appreciate that love. You know, you know sometimes love is no. Sometimes love says no to some people and, but always know that our essence is love.

Katie Wrigley: Yes. And I’ve also heard a lot that there’s two primary emotions. There’s love and fear or love and everything else. 

Steve Barton: All right. The Course of Miracles bases its whole 700 page text on this. Okay, Hmm. Only one of those emotions is real.

Katie Wrigley:  Love. 

Steve Barton: Exactly. Yeah. And free. We have the ability to separate through free will. Okay. Yes. And I say to people, there’s nothing free about freewill. It always comes at a cost.

Katie Wrigley: Yep, it does, it does. And we often miss the cost. You know, like, especially when you look at pain, you have the doctor telling you, it’s not gonna get better, there’s nothing you can do, you need surgery. You’ve been taught through programming in society to listen to your doctor. They are the expert, they do know a lot. The one thing they do not know better than you is your own body, they may know it clinically better, they may know it anatomically better, they may be able to list off all the parts that you can’t list off, but they do not know what it’s like to live inside your body, to be able to feel your body. And so it looks like following the doctor’s suggestion of surgery is going to be the best solution. And it may be but are you looking at the cost? There is not just the copay, there’s the cost to your body…they’ve been able to prove that your subconscious mind actually gets traumatized by surgery because even though your conscious mind is out cold, your subconscious is still awake, your subconscious is aware, you’re being cut into. That is not a calming thing for us in the conscious mind. It’s not a calming thing for us in the subconscious mind. Even though you are doped up and you are not aware, your subconscious mind is aware. So there’s a toll there. There’s also the toll on the brain of taking anesthetic, some people have a hard time with it, that’s in my genetic pool, most people don’t. But even someone I know recently had a surgery for their eyes, and it was something they really needed to have done. And they were exhausted afterwards. And then you have the time away from work, the cost of that. And there’s so many costs, and then you have the cost of rehab, of all those weeks to get back to normal. And that’s if the surgery was a success. If your body responds well, if you’re able to get through all those extra layers of trauma and come out ahead, which that’s a gamble. But it looks like that’s a good solution and your will, it’s your choice to do that. You also have the will to say you know what, I don’t do well with surgery. This doesn’t seem like a good idea. And I’m going to figure out something else. And again, that is your will and people are going to look at you wacky especially if you have a cancer diagnosis or something like that and you aren’t going for chemo or radiation, you are going to get all kinds of people. I’ve heard people getting judged over and over again. There was Suzanne Somers back from Three’s Company days and the ThighMaster and all that, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I think she’s still with us. She was diagnosed with breast cancer back in the 90s. And I remember listening to the radio riding the bus into work, totally aging myself here, riding the bus into work and hearing that and people are basically calling her crazy, because she was choosing to treat it with diet and exercise and wellness. And she’s still here. Breast cancer. 

Steve Barton: Good point. And everybody thought she was nuts. You know, that’s another one I forget who said this quote, It may have been Steve Jobs or someone else but it’s the basic premise is you’re crazy until you’re proven right? 

Katie Wrigley: Absolutely right, then you’re a genius.

Steve Barton: Yeah, pretty much.

Katie Wrigley: Yeah.

Steve Barton: Freewill to me is having the ability to have a thought that is not in alignment with love. 

Katie Wrigley: Give me an example of that. 

Steve Barton: All right, when you’re in alignment, any thought that is loving, kind, wonderful. Even the thought that you are ill? Yep. Because in reality, it’s not possible. But our mind can make it real and we can manifest dis-ease in our bodies. 

Katie Wrigley: Yep. 

Steve Barton: So the only will that I want is in direct alignment with 10. And when that will is in alignment with God, 10, whatever you want to call universal source, whatever. When that thought alignment is in alignment with that universal thought, you are healthy. It’s a thing calledl miracles. It’s a miracle. We came in one day, the cancer is gone. So, of course in miracles says there are no degrees of miracles, no degrees, everything is a miracle is a miracle, because miracles are Cause all right, and when you’re at 10, you’re above duality. The game often played is duality good, bad, hot, cold, you know, it is so. 10 is above the your, you’ve transcended karma, everything is just Cause there was no Effect. So cause cause…cause this cause that, and that cause that, and that cause that and that cause that… And who caused this? The buck stops here.

Katie Wrigley: Yeah. Ah, oh, and you know, my business coach actually talks about either being in cause or being an effect. And when you’re in effect, you’re in full control, you’re at 10. You know, it’s just another way of of looking at that when you’re in effect, you are in full accountability, full control, full ownership of everything happening to you, and what you just said, you just gave me a couple of aha moments. So I’ve heard multiple stories, and a lot of them have come through through people I’ve met through cognomovement. And one was a story that Bill told, I don’t remember who it was, but they went into the doctor and they were told they have breast cancer, and every part of her being went NO I DON’T. And she walked out of there and she does not have breast cancer. This was like 20-30 years ago, she never had breast cancer. It was, she just went Nope. And every part of her said, That is not true. And it was gone. Much to your point. And when I read The Power of Now is when I was disabled in 2018. And part of what Eckhart Tolle says in there is pain is an illusion. And I even put that on my wall as an affirmation. I even said on the show, like people in pain, have a hard time buying that, even looking at that. I’m like, yeah, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. You just explained why he says that pain is an illusion, because pain is not love, therefore it’s false.

Steve Barton: And it’s created by our freewill and our belief. Okay. Right in the brain. Yes. Doctor told us. I’ve got you cancer and I love her response. No. And do it from the depths of your soul. Okay, I’m not, I’m not anti-people…do what you need to do. I’m not telling anybody not to do it. If you can’t do what that woman did. Just ask lots of questions and get second several opinions. Yes. And look for alternative healing methods to complement what you did. So, but we are amazingly powerful. We are. And that’s what we’re afraid of, with the only thing that we can be afraid of is love. Isn’t that something?

Katie Wrigley: Yeah. And that seems so silly. Like why would you be afraid of love? Like most people aren’t afraid of love. They want the idea of it. But then love also means letting someone see you.

Steve Barton: Yeah, the secrets where they won’t like me if I tell them my shit. 

Katie Wrigley: Yeah. 

Steve Barton: And that’s where it gets scary. My big aha moment was a realization I was talking to a friend who said I’m telling you something deep. I said, nobody cares about your secrets except you.

Katie Wrigley: Yep. It’s true. We always fear so much more what someone’s gonna say and you know, there are things people have done that can be very hard to hear, you know, if you have done something atrocious, like if you have been a part of human trafficking, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that is a horribly atrocious thing to do to someone else. If you have hurt children, if you have hurt animals, whoa those are some doozies, those are harder to get by. There is a reason that you’ve done that. While your behavior is not excusable, but there’s reasons in your life that you can look at and figure out why you did those things and start to unravel it and start to forgive yourself. But for most of us, we tend to put our “sins” in air quotes of you know, maybe we were a jerk to someone one day, or maybe we were really mean to someone or we broke their heart and then we beat ourselves up for it. And we’re putting that at the level of clubbing baby seals, with the level of guilt and it’s like, okay, that’s not what I actually did. Like, I didn’t treat someone the way they deserved to be treated. And I didn’t realize it until later. Like it can be as innocuous as that but we will sit there and we will beat ourselves up for it.

People do the best they can with the awareness they have. 

Steve Barton: Yes. Okay. Rule number two. Show me someone who’s beating up a dead baby, I’ll show you a child that was beaten by somebody who they thought loved them.

Katie Wrigley: Exactly. Exactly. And so much of these patterns are rooted in trauma, you know, and then those those limiting beliefs come out of trauma, especially if it’s another person traumatizing you a lot of times there’s verbal trauma in there to someone saying you’re not good enough, someone showing you, giving you evidence of this, that you then internalize. That still does not have to be your truth.

Steve Barton: I’m finding that we have talked about fight flight and freeze. Yep. Freeze this trauma.

Katie Wrigley: It is, it is. 

Steve Barton: So anytime I talk. So when do you remember freezing? From? Yep. Let’s start with that.

Yes. And fight can be a trauma response to it’s one or the other. But usually it is the freeze, the shutdown, the locks, that seals that hermetically seals it into our psyche. 

Katie Wrigley: Yep. Yeah. And then, and then we have to be willing to recognize it. You can’t go around it. You can’t go over it. You can’t go on it. You’ve got to go through it. And be willing to experience it in a different way.

Steve Barton: Yeah. And that in itself can be a challenge sometimes, is a challenge. Yeah. It was our unconscious will to freeze and be traumatized by it. It’s now our conscious will to not deny it didn’t happen. Tonight wasn’t atrocious, not to deny any of that. It’s to accept. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, I mean, look at me now.

Katie Wrigley: Yeah. And there was a healing technique I’d done early on, I’m not going to mention it because I don’t want to speak negative about anything. So it was only just my experience. It could have been different. But one of the things they said was, I hadn’t yet acknowledged my childhood trauma at that point when I tried this, but I, I had always suspected I’d had one. Like, since the time I was introduced to the ideas on repressed memories, something tells me there’s something here, and I didn’t let it go for decades. It wasn’t something I was wrapped around the axel on all the time. But when it came up, I’m like, why do I feel like that applies to me? And then on I go on with my life. And so I said, like, does this work if you have repressed memories, if you don’t know what the trauma is? And she’s like, oh, yeah, it does. It does? No, no, it doesn’t. What it did do is it got rid of my bear phobia, which is awesome, because I’m going to Alaska in 10 days, and we’re going bear watching. So I’m excited. I would have never done that before that, but it did not touch the outcome of that childhood trauma. And I still notice in the moment, if I feel I’m being attacked, I freeze. And because I know this much, to your point about that challenge of getting out of your unconscious, subconscious mind’s way. Like I’ve done a lot of work with cognomovement to move through that. But one of the places I see it, I’ve got a very reactive German Shepherd, I love her. She’s very reactive. And sometimes dogs will lunge at her because she’s so afraid of them, they feel it and they come at her. I’m freezing along with her. It’s not what I want to be doing in that moment. And I’m working my way through it, working with a trainer. And really, I’ve already unblocked that freeze effect, where I actually go into it now. But holy cow, that was a big shift to make, and I threw a lot at it to do it.

It was a big shift when it happened. So now it’s gonna be a big shift when it releases too.

Steve Barton: Yes. 

Katie Wrigley: And it’s on its way, you know. And you know, I’ve also got the other pattern limiting belief going where I know I can be a bulldozer and forceful and I watched that and so we’ve got this… that would be the place where that freeze reaction wants to come up. Okay, let’s pull into the inner bulldozer here. Let’s get through that freeze and take action here but then let’s stop before we plow someone over like so. There’s a few things that I’m working on within there but it’s working. It’s moving forward and I’m reacting/responding in the ways that I want to.

Steve Barton: I’m wondering if that freeze is the same thing that I just thought was anxiety. I’m having a bit of an aha moment. Maybe an hour coming into you at that moment.

Oh, you know why? Because there is anxiety because it’s like, my immediately thought, Oh, shit. I was like, oh, I need to do something. Maybe the freeze that we feel is actually our Spirit coming to our major power. Oh, I’ve had just…that was my aha moment.

Katie Wrigley: Wow, yeah. 

Steve Barton: Yeah, that’s maybe its not a bad thing. Maybe it’s our power that we don’t know how to use it.

Katie Wrigley: I think you may be right. It’s easy for me to replicate the situation, all I have to do is go take my dog for a walk and around another dog and see why. And there’s dogs I can use to stage this safely. Do not worry for any dog lovers out there, never put my dog at risk.

Steve Barton: And say to that freeze, thank you, Goddess. Gratitude for what you were doing.

First, rising to the occasion, and see what happens. That will be I’m, I’m 100% Sure. And our ego doesn’t want us to think that they want us to be, the ego wants us to be a victim. 

Katie Wrigley: Yep. 

Steve Barton: And we are conditioned to be that, that we were abused and blah, blah, blah. As you said, this, there’s some nasty stuff out there. Okay. All right. But we don’t have to be victim to it. It may happen to us, but it doesn’t have to define our life. No pain or distress. 

Katie Wrigley: Right. 

Steve Barton: So the sooner we just know that, yeah, you know, it happened. Yeah. Get over it. Easier said than done sometimes. But when you know that that freeze is actually your spirit that didn’t know what to do. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley: That is powerful. Thank you for sharing that. So have you worked with anybody who’s experiencing pain, like directly in your coaching business, Steve?

Steve Barton: Anyone who’s got anxiety, depression, I promise you they have pain to go along with it.

Katie Wrigley: I agree. I agree. I know that’s why I encompass emotional pain in my practice, not just physical pain. 

Steve Barton: So emotional pain is physical pain. 

Katie Wrigley: Yes. Thank you. 

Steve Barton: Thank you, you can’t separate them.

Katie Wrigley: No, it cannot. And anybody, and I go back to the example of the heartbreak, if you have ever had your heart broken, it actually hurts. There is nothing physically wrong with you, but it physically hurts.

Steve Barton: Because it hurts when we close our hearts. It has no place to go. You’ve just rebutted it. And it hurts because the heart energy wants to get out. Yes. And we’re and we call it, we have free will again, that comes at a cost to close it down. And when you close it down, it wants to shine its bright light to the world. And what did you do? Pulled it shut, that closed the windows, closed the blinds. Put on the shutters nailed up, waiting for a hurricane to come because you got hurt.

Katie Wrigley: You just gave me the analogy of like a bottle of pop right? Like someone breaks your heart. You know, that’s like screwing the lid on a jug of soda shaking it up. Like it’s gonna be like if that bottle had nerve endings. It’s gonna hurt because all that pressure wants to come out of there.

Steve Barton: Yep, exactly. My heart cannot be broken. Cannot be either good or bad. Being married, about after we got separated, that girlfriend and she wasn’t ready. She was getting divorced. I’m just gonna break your heart. I said, You can’t break my heart. And she went back with her husband. You okay? I said, I told you, you can’t break my heart. So it can’t be broken. It’s an illusion. We have the ability to break our own hearts by thinking someone did it in causing all this grammar around or they cheated on me. They started from a they’re horrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You just close your heart. And that hurts. Didn’t you? Who hurt you? You hurt you? Can I? So I guess I’m a good coach because I don’t buy into any of this stuff. I don’t subscribe to that. Or that TV station or that movie. Just don’t listen to I know what I know. You are hurting? I get it. I acknowledge it. But let’s see if we can look at it in a different way. Yes, we are one big massive energy waiting to just shine our energy to the world. And we as individuals have freewill to shut it down and blame somebody else or the economy or society or so. Yeah, we’re raising creatures.

Katie Wrigley: We really are you know and that that story is so important to us you know and a lot of times that story it’s filled with emotions that are asking to be processed and that’s where that work is, like if your story is serving you…keep it, but look at the emotions in that story. What is compelling you to stay in that They Hurt Me story. What is that giving you? What are you getting? And how can you source that for yourself? When people are giving you compassion? How can you give yourself more compassion? Like, what about that story? Are you getting so that you can look at those emotions, feel them and release them. So that you can be like Steve, where you can’t break his heart. And, you know, and I love conversations like this, because I’ve done so much work. And I know I’ve come a long way in a really short time. And there’s always something new to learn. Like I even said a couple of weeks ago, I talked about, it was a friend of mine, it wasn’t a romantic relationship, it was a platonic relationship. But she just very unceremoniously kicked me out of her life. And it broke my heart at the time. And I’m sitting here thinking, I’m not arguing with you, I’m sitting there going, Okay. I’m less than 10 over there. So how do I get to 10? So I realized that I let her do that, and what am I getting out of staying in that pain? And now I can examine that and I’m not getting anything out of staying in that pain and, and I don’t need anybody to dislike her. I don’t need anybody to take my side and say what she did was messed up. Like, I have my own opinion. I know. I know what I saw. I know my role. And I just, even saying this. I’m like, oh, no, she didn’t break my heart. It was a really good learning experience for me. And she was legit doing the best she could with the awareness she had at the time.

Steve Barton: So sure, an imaginary Thank you. 

Katie Wrigley: No. Thank you. Thank you, sent to her higher herself. Thank you for the lesson.

I love what you said about giving yourself compassion. But you also have to it’s almost like giving yourself love. 

Steve Barton: Yes. Oh, compassion is word break it down: with passion. Yep. So with that passion is love. So 10 is passion. And passion. You’re with love. And we are love. Correct. So. So when you say it sounds really good. When you say give yourself compassion? You are compassion? Own it, be it, share it be that bright light of love. And guess what? People are afraid a lot of people are afraid of that. Yes. The light is too bright. Get away from me. You’re weird. You creeped me out. Yeah, don’t ever dim your light for those people, you shine a brighter,

Katie Wrigley: Yes, those are just not your people, people who want your light to be dimmer. Those aren’t your people, shine the light towards others. And when they shine it back. Those are people. Absolutely never, never do emulate, never dim your light. 

Katie Wrigley: And so to really, because I really focus on words a lot too. And I like to take people like at a really beginner level of awareness, you know, or wherever they are, meet them wherever they are, and bring them up but my general programs tend to start more at the at the beginner level. So what’s the most accurate way to say what I was just saying about giving yourself compassion is if you find within your story that people are giving…you have compassion because of what you’ve dealt with, then source it and exercise the fact you are compassion within yourself. So that you are feeling what you’re asking from others. 

Steve Barton: Correct. Okay, I can live with that much easier. And go back into the game after we played even that nine. Okay, because it seems so good. I’m a real positive thinker. Yeah. I’m, I love. I’m awesome. Everyone’s Awesome. Well, you know, having a peanut butter sandwich is not all that awesome. Awesome. Well, no, it’s a peanut butter sandwich. You know? Maybe it is, you know, maybe everything’s awesome. And I think the word is just kind of like, okay. I’d rather see that than just complaining about XYZ, you know, so, yeah,

yeah. Over enthusiasm versus the Negative Nelly, who’s, you know, finding something wrong in everything you say? Nines are very awesome. Awesome. Eccentric. Yeah. But 10s is what it is. Yeah, that’s everything is awesome. And it is what it is. Okay. Picking up the dog poop. It’s what it is.

Katie Wrigley: It is what it is. Yeah. And then Steve is the real deal guys. I’ve met him in person several times. His energy is just what you’re getting in this audio. You know, I’m looking at him on the screen so…but I’m sure from the energy he’s bringing into this that it’s coming across with that same enthusiasm. I really want to highly encourage you to reach out and we’re gonna get your info again in a moment. But I want to wrap up by asking like for someone who’s new to a lot of this fast mindset, or maybe they’re really struggling or in resistance with what you say today and what we talked about, where would you say is step one for that person? Where would you suggest that they start?

Steve Barton: I’d read my book.

Katie Wrigley: Read your book, that’s a good place. 

Steve Barton: You can get it on Amazon, you can download it for free at www.thegameof10.com. So you get it, you will get some nurture trickles. But that’s the price you’re paying to get it for free. And where else would I start? I got mine listening to reading A Course in Miracles 30 years ago. And it’s pretty powerful stuff. You might want to read the book how the Course in Miracles was written: a journey without distance. Love that title, the journey of the distance is getting from your head to your heart. Love that, isn’t it? And that’s where people most people are blocked playing the game often played this stuck in their head. Yep. There’s they’ve blocked their heart. So there’s no flow because they got hurt. And so I think just having that understanding of how we are energetic beings. I was gonna say this back awhile. The ego, okay, or freewill separate from source, the only will that I want is one connected to 10. Or God, or whatever you would call it, you know, because what you call it, and our freewill wants to think we’re a body. Therein lies the conundrum.

So if you look at it this way, that we are a being, okay. And our being is pure spirit connected to everyone and everything. Personally, that’s being proven today with science. And if we look at ourselves as a being first that has a suit, yep. AKA the body. Yes. That is amazing. You do it, it’s trillions of physiological actions happening every second really is. But without the being, it would be nothing. Yes, it is an innate being that is, has been programmed with DNA and RNA and we are amazing computers. We are, we are and we need reboots. And if you have your platform, be from love. You will be happy, healthy, wealthy, healed and whole. If you have fear, you will be the opposite. In everything you get, you still manifest from one through nine. But when you manifest from one through nine, you always have to pay your free will with struggles. Maybe you know you might win the mega bucks and can make $100 million. And you find out the next day you get cancer, you know? Yep. So that’s when you go in, they say, you know, I don’t want the mega bucks. Yeah, I do not have cancer. And I just want the mega bucks and I’m traveling the world. And it is that zero doubt in the physical body. There is zero doubt in there. That

takes on conditioning that you condition that you were a body a whole life. Yep, you have a body. I recognize everyone has a body. Everyone Poops, right? Yep. And so yeah, but that’s not who you are.

Katie Wrigley: Right? And what you do that speeds up to uncondition this former conditioning that has us looking outside ourselves for all the things, the thing that I do, it clears anything in resistance or at risk with what you’re trying to manifest. So everything in your mind, body spirit, every fiber of your being knows that this is yours. There’s no doubt, there’s no nothing. You know, we’re going to have another whole episode on the law of attraction at some point and really talking about it because there’s a lot of people calling BS on it. It’s like it’s not it, you are actually calling in exactly what you are asking for. You just don’t realize you’re asking for things you don’t want with the level of the game you’re playing. 

Steve Barton: Yes. So it behooves everyone to play the game of 10. Yep, it does. It does because if you manifest from that level, there is no cost. There is no plan Pain and suffering and torture is hoops and it just comez, you asked. Okay, I’m pretty sure Oprah man has press from that level. Yeah, yeah. You know. And a lot of people, there’s a few people out there that do. Yeah. And it’s you. And there’s a reason that 0.001% of the population own 85% of the wealth. 

Katie Wrigley: Yes, exactly. 

Steve Barton: There’s a reason. But if everyone becomes the same, that might ,that might cut into their percentage.

Katie Wrigley: Yep. Yep, I hope you guys are hearing the underlying meaning there of what you are mentioning. That very few people have most of the wealth in the world, if more of us start to tap into our own power, their percentage gets smaller. So just keep that in mind. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a right to it, that you don’t deserve it. It just means that you’re cutting into someone else’s percentage, and they may have a response to that, depending on if they’re running from love, or something else.

Steve Barton: It’s, you have to love what they have. Okay. Yep. grateful for what they have. They have, they don’t even have said, so. Our inheritance is to be appointed 10. Yes. We’re not entitled, it’s our inheritance. Okay. So do we going to transition into words that people use?

Katie Wrigley: Yeah, we, I guess we’ve been going for a while. We may not have time today. But I would love to do like a deeper dive just into, just around words, because there’s so much yeah. And with the Gestalt training, you’ve had love to have you come back again and expand. And we will dive deeper into all of the nuances behind the words. 

Steve Barton:Got it. That would be great. 

Katie Wrigley: So before we go, thank you again for joining me today, Steve and I’m going to be putting in this in the shownotes. Can you tell us again where people can find you?

Steve Barton: You can find me on www.overthelookingglass.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, send me a DM. If you want to talk more, sign up, go to my website, sign up for a free consultation. download my book for free or buy it on Amazon and read or write me a review. Okay, whatever you do, and that would certainly get me out there. I’m in the process of pitching over actually for my book and follow the dots. The Father, the Son, the aha moment, who likes aha moments. Oprah Yep. Trained by in Miracle minded coaching, who was my coach at reading, writing the book, Marianne Williamson, one of Oprah’s spiritual advisors, probably her only one. And now she has several. But she has been on Oprah about 30 times. So she was…there’s another dot. And who is my pitch coach at the company I’m working with for media and pitching was the former producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Katie Wrigley: Nice, nice good dots…are some excellent dots. And I can’t wait to see how they connect when they connect. 

Steve Barton: You be the one of the first summit. 

Katie Wrigley: I’m looking forward to that. And I just so we are going to put all this in the show notes again. So people can click directly, go out find your book with you, schedule a call, run through the game of 10. And on the last note, I just want to say someone that I love dearly. One of my closest friends is actually going to start working with Steve, starting tonight. And I am so excited to see what’s going to happen. So thank you, Steve, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for helping one of the people I love dearly in my life. Thank you for shining your light and refusing to dim it for anybody.

Steve Barton: Right back at you.

Katie Wrigley: Thank you very much.

Steve Barton: Thank you for having me on. Hope your audience got a few aha moments out of this. 

Katie Wrigley: I hope they did too, if they get one, it’s a success. 

Steve Barton: Absolutely. I agree. 

Katie Wrigley: So let us know if you got an aha moment today or not. And as always, thank you so much for joining me today. Come back again next week when another guest is going to join me to talk about the power of positivity, especially when you are facing a chronic condition. In my experience, mindset and a positive outlook makes all the difference. So I hope you’ll join me again to learn more about the power of positivity next week.

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