Anila is founder of a mental health tech company called Habit Aware. At habitaware, we help people with subconscious mental health conditions like hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting. How is your Thursday going?
November's theme is acceptance. Is it closing the door or is it opening the door? Wonder says acceptance to me is making peace with life's mysteries and unanswered questions. What do you see in your life when there's a blockade in the way?
Speak Wonder: Acceptance is acknowledgement of existence, but not necessarily allowance of existence. He says once we accept grief, we can make it smaller. Life can change in a positive or negative way depending on how we look at it.
Your dad is losing his memory. In these moments, the music comes back, the songs come back. That's the powerful nature of music, how it revives the memory. I'm hopeful that accepting the condition doesn't mean that's awesome.
Now you can see what medications there are. Like, music like what you're doing, like, it just changes the relationship. But again, can you still find the positive in it?
Well, thank you for joining me this evening. It's such a beautiful place to be where we can talk about the real things going on in our lives. Wishing you love, strength and awareness. Good night.
Hello, Cadre Sphere Anila here. I am coming to you live from my hallway because I hit start before I sat down. So I'm gonna come get settled in. Give me a second. Turn on some more lights. I am founder of a mental health tech company called Habit Aware. And at habitaware, we help people with subconscious mental health conditions like hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting. Hi. Speak Wonder. It is good to see you. How is your Thursday going? I keep thinking today is Wednesday because our kids were off from school and so I'm off my game and tomorrow is Friday already, if it's just gone so fast this week.
So, yeah, tell me how you're doing. Nice to see you today. November's theme is acceptance. And I was just. I put my calendar invite up for this just literally 15 minutes ago, because I realized, oh, no, it's on my calendar, but it's not on your calendar. Gotta get better about that. But what came to mind for me was this idea of is acceptance. Closing the door or opening the door. And what I mean by that is, in the community that I serve, right, people with hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting, a lot of people will talk about, I just have to accept that this is my lot in life kind of thing.
Like, I just have to accept that I have this. And that view of acceptance shuts the door to recovery. Because you're basically saying, this is it, there's nothing I can do about it. Random memes. Hey, I like the random memes. It was a cute one. And somehow it still works, right? Is it. Is it closing the door or is it opening the door? So, yeah, like, I'd love to know, in your life, has there ever been something where you just sort of had to accept it, right? And then what does acceptance mean? Because I see it in two different ways.
I see people saying, I just have to accept that this happened in my life, and that's just how it is. And then I see others say, I accept that I have this condition and I'm gonna do something about it, right? And I'm gonna take action to improve my life. And so one way of accepting things is basically letting them steamroll you. And the other way of accepting things is saying, I acknowledge your presence in my life and I'm gonna make you small in my life, right? As we're talking to the big problem in our life, whatever it may be.
So I'd just love to know, like, where, where. What do you see in your life when you're, you know, on the road to life and There's a blockade in the way. Like, how are you accepting it? Are you accepting it as in, well, okay, that thing's in the way. I'm gonna have to go around. I'm gonna have to go turn, turn a different way, Gonna, you know, make a U turn? Or are you gonna say, I accept that you're here and I'm gonna figure out my way through it and speak. Wonder says acceptance to me is making peace with life's mysteries and unanswered questions.
That's beautiful. Just letting them be. Acceptance of the unknowing. It sounds like from what you're saying and being okay with that. Right. And that to me sounds like faith and trust as well, in the way that you're talking about it. Making peace with life's mysteries and unanswered questions. Right. So that, to me feels like there's a lot of trust and faith in whatever that question may be, that it is. It doesn't need to be answered. Right. That it's not going to phase or impede your path. That's quite beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah, I think early on in this work that we've been doing to help people with hair pulling, skin picking, nail biting, I saw acceptance kind of as defeat as there's nothing I can do. So I accept that I have this. And I actually think the opposite, that fighting the condition makes it hard to make change happen. But once you acknowledge that it's there, to me, acceptance is acknowledgement of existence, but not necessarily allowance of existence, if that makes sense.
Acknowledgement that it exists, but you don't need to allow it to exist. You don't need to. Just because it's there doesn't mean it has to stay there. So, yes, I acknowledge it exists. I accept that it's here and I can do something about it to make it smaller. Maybe not disappear, but make it smaller. Because with mental health and chronic, especially chronic mental health conditions, you know, it's like a chronic health condition, chronic physical health condition. You're not going to completely eliminate it, but what you can do is make it small.
Okay. Speak, Wonder. I'm reading what you're saying. I have come to accept grief is companion, doesn't have to be an intruder. That's very. Yeah, 100% right. So it's like flipping the. Flipping it right. You're accepting that grief is there, but you also don't have to let grief drag you down. Right. That it can. You can flip how you use the grief, right? That it reminds you of all the beauty in your life, I really resonate with that. I think once we, especially with grief, I'm coming to terms with it.
I also, I lost a loved one when I was very young and it took me a very long time to get over it. And now I just like, yes, I still, still will cry sometimes. But now I see just in the, in the last few months, you know, asking for signs from the universe that you're with me, he's with me. And I see it everywhere, I see it. And so it's like hard to grieve what's not lost in a sense. Like, yes, the physical body is lost, but the energy is still there. And so me and grief have a different relationship right now.
And I think maybe that's the same for you. Speak Wonder where it's acknowledging, right, accepting, acknowledging that the physical person is gone. What did I say before it, but not allowing that to impact how I feel and flipping it a little bit to say, yes, okay, physically that person is not here. But spiritually and energetically, I'm still talking to them. I'm still getting their signs. I'm still getting like, they're still here. There's the luck. When I was a kid there was this movie called Empire Records.
I don't know if you heard of it, it was like popular in the 90s, I guess. Empire Records. And in Empire Records someone says, I have a force much greater than luck when they're playing a casino game because someone's like, that's a crazy bet. And the guy's like, I have a force much greater than luck. And that is exactly how I feel. And when you can think like that, then again it's like the grief becomes small. So you can accept the grief and you can accept the hair pulling disorder. And you can also say to it, alright, I accept it.
I acknowledge that you're here and I'm going to do things to make you small in my life because you're not gonna have power over me. I refuse for that to have power over me. And so acceptance is then again also a sense of control. So thank you, Speak Wonder, for sharing with me tonight. I hope that this kickstart some different thinking for whoever is listening and whoever listens to the replay. And that's what it's all about. It's all about new perspectives and seeing the same thing in a different way.
And when you do that, life changes in good ways depending, right? Life can change. You can look at that thing and look at it in a negative way or look at it In a positive way. Even if it's a negative thing, right? You can find the positive in it. Like even with me and my breast cancer. I accepted I had breast cancer a few years ago when I was diagnosed. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna sit there and not do anything about it. Hey, welcome, welcome, welcome. Right. Acceptance means acknowledging that I have the cancer, but doesn't mean that's it.
This thing is. I'm gonna let this thing eat me alive? No, it means I am gonna now take action. I have these weird dots. Oh, I think it's just. I got it now. There's these two white dots in my eyes, but it's from the text coming. Scrolling. Hi. Junk food, junk key. Did I get it right? Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're talking about acceptance and whether it closes the door or opens the door. And I've seen both, depending on people's interpretations of acceptance. So acceptance of, well, this is just my lot in life, and then you're stuck with it.
Or acceptance as in, I acknowledge it exists in my life, but I can make the change if I want to still. And that little flip changes everything. I hope this was helpful to you. Please drop me a note if there's other questions you may have or more of my journey you'd like to know about, as to why I'm allowed to be speaking here. Because I. I've been through a lot and. And yet at the same time, I've been through nothing. Right. Because everybody's got such different journeys, but I'm coming out the other side of it.
Thank you for sharing. Very hard acceptance to swallow. Your dad is losing his memory. Yep. Yeah. Oh, see, I wish I could give emojis. I want to give a heart emoji too, to that. And so it can be accepted and also can, you know, it can be acknowledged. It can. Yes. This exists. This. This pain exists. This problem exists. And I. I don't have to allow it, in a sense. Right? Like, there's gonna. There's gotta be someone. Oh, my God. You can hear the cello from here. Wow. How is that possible? The mic is picking it up.
That's like all the way downstairs in a different room. I totally got off, but yes. My. My 8 year old is practicing the cello. Oh, you've probably met him before. Mirin. He comes on sometimes. Doesn't know I'm doing this right now, otherwise he'd be here. He's doing. He's practicing cello and. I'm sorry. Junkwood. Junkie. My train of thought went. Went away. As this. I'm just in shock that you can hear the cello. I can faintly hear it. But I'm very impressed that this. Like, is it annoying? Like, I'm very impressed that the phone is picking it up.
He loves. We've been want. We watched the Hunger Games, and so there's this song under the hang the hanging tree. And he asked his teacher for the music for that. I'm like, do you know what it's about? And he's like, yeah. And then he told me, and I was like, oh, my God. Like, why do you know this? This is so sad. But that's what he wanted to play. So I'm very sorry to hear about your dad. And I'm hopeful that accepting that this is happening doesn't mean that's awesome. Yep. Yeah, that's the beauty.
Believe it or not, I am okay with it because I just play music he likes and he will start singing the songs. Yep. I think that's. That's the powerful nature of music, how it revives the memory. There was actually a study done. Have to find it, because it was just really interesting. It was like they took older generation folks and they put them in a home with the same clothes, music, you know, appliances from back in the day from their generation, and how it enlivened them. It like they went from being seniors back to being, you know, seniors in high school, kind of.
It was very. It was a very interesting research. Obviously, you know, I didn't read the research. I probably read the Twitter. Twitter version of it or the Instagram version of it. But it's very interesting and very powerful how just the connection to the things from the past, the things that made them. Them revive them. So that's beautiful that, you know, there may be some memory loss. But see, in these moments, the music comes back, the songs come back, the memories might come back, or even with smells and things like that.
So I'm hopeful that accepting the condition doesn't mean the end. Right. It means now you can go do research. Now you can see what medications there are. You can see what, you know, what other therapies there are. Like, music like what you're doing, like, it just changes the relationship. Yes. But again, can you still find the positive in it? The word you were looking for, could it be Cliff Notes you read? Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining me this evening. I'm glad to have gotten to know you both a little bit more.
It's such a beautiful place to be where we can talk about, you know, the real things going on in our lives instead of, instead of the weather and. Yeah, yep, yeah I think, I think I, I probably read the Cliff Notes. I probably read the Instagram post, you know something somewhere. It's like so hard to know where you find information nowadays because it's like did I read it on a website, did I read it on Instagram, did I read it on social media? No idea. I just remember seeing it somewhere. I mean maybe someone told me about it.
I have no clue but maybe with the little bit of information I shared with you you can probably do a Google search and find something on it. There was definitely something about how folks did this experiment of sort of going back in time like living in their timing, living in their time and how it changed, how it changed their energy. Have a good night. It's good to see you. Wishing you love, strength and awareness. Good night. Take care.
