Betsy welcomes viewers and explains she’s deviating to talk about skills of receiving, noting that she’s identified seven skills she needs to practice. She describes how this focus arose and how she researched the concept.
Betsy welcomes viewers and explains she’s deviating to talk about skills of receiving, noting that she’s identified seven skills she needs to practice. She describes how this focus arose and how she researched the concept.
Betsy names allowance as the first receiving skill and describes common ways people disallow good things. She then introduces tolerance for ease, sharing why easy things feel suspicious and how she’s practicing letting things be easy.
She outlines completion as letting a positive experience come fully and close the loop, linking it to nervous-system regulation. She then introduces somatic softening—notice and relax bodily tension when good things arrive.
Betsy presents non-urgency as a skill—resisting the urge to act immediately—and pairs it with noticing without planning the outcome. She explains how releasing urgency and management allows better reception of gifts and compliments.
Through personal examples (gifts, love languages, travel) Betsy shows how she often wants to manage results and how that can conflict with identity. She defines receiving without identity conflict and shares anecdotes about celebrity encounters to illustrate growth.
Betsy adds gratitude and grace as an additional practice that eases the other skills, then succinctly recaps the seven receiving skills for listeners to remember.
She closes the episode with a friendly sign-off, mentions attending a Bruce Springsteen event and the museum opening, and invites listeners to connect on the app.
Good morning, cadre. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Rules of Engagement. I am your host, Betsy Hodges, here for little chats about what I've learned about how to be in the world and how to live life. I'm going to deviate a little bit today from Rules of Engagement because there is something that has been very much capturing my imagination And it is already, you know, my focus on it has already been, you know, having little shoots up in my garden. So, and the concept is this, there are skills associated with receiving, right?
There are skills associated with being able to receive good things. I assume these are also about receiving things that I don't experience as good, but I'm right now just focusing on learning how to accept good things because the fact that all of these are things I need to practice, I'm going to get into them. The fact that I need to practice, there's seven of them, these seven different skills. The fact that they feel difficult to me and that they have really highlighted some of the challenges I faced is why And that is why I focus on accepting good things and why it's evidence to me that I struggle with them.
Hey, Shannon. Hello, Shannon. We're talking about the skills of receiving and how I struggle to receive the good things and get to just allow them. So that's the first rule of receiving is allowance. Allow the good thing to come. Just allow it. Don't Sometimes we have all sorts of ways that we disallow the good. We either don't see it or we see that it's there and we immediately, or I can speak for myself, or I immediately like spin tales about how it's not a good thing that's coming to me or how it's going to create more problems than it solves.
We talked last week about go get that problem, right? But this good thing is going to create all these problems. It's like, well, I worked really, really, really hard for those problems. So allowance is the first skill of receiving. And I really thought until I learned differently, and I don't remember where I got these seven skills. I learned that there was the concept of these and then I basically Googled what are the skills of, Googled ChatGPT, what are the skills of receiving, and it came up with this, which are just enough for now.
If you know whose concept this is, please let me know. I'd like to thank that person. Allowance is the first skill. Okay, brace yourself for receiving skill number two because I had to brace myself. Tolerance for ease. Tolerance for ease. The reason I'm looking over here is because I have written them on my whiteboard so I can see them wherever, basically wherever I'm sitting in my office. Um, tolerance for ease. It's okay to let it be easy. If something comes to you and it's coming too easy, let it be easy.
A lot of times the things that I consider good, yes, Shannon, this is one of my hardest things too. Um, one of the things that is really difficult for me is if it looks too easy, it looks suspicious because everything in my life has been, uh, not everything in my life has been difficult. most things in life have felt difficult. And so I just feel like difficulty is part of receiving. No, tolerance for ease is a skill you can learn. That's the thing I love about this idea of receiving skills is you can learn them.
I am practicing them. I don't have to be good at them. But if I know that's where I'm heading myself, I can practice, I can practice. And here's one thing I've learned, and this is already true just in like the week or so I've really put myself to this, when I decide to learn something, when I decide to grow in a certain way, the universe is very cooperative. And I finally realized, oh, if I focus on receiving skills, this was after I had decided to do it, the universe is going to give me lots of stuff to receive and receive well.
And immediately I was like, oh, that means bad things. I'm going to have to learn how to receive bad things. I am so good at receiving bad things. I am exceedingly good at weathering storms. My entire life, my young life set me up really well to learn how to weather storms. , etc. So I have a feeling the universe is just going to be poking some good things my way. It's already happening. Tolerance for ease. is a skill. I just noticing that if something is easy, I get to practice letting it be easy has been huge.
Skill number three, completion. Completion. Letting the good thing that's coming to you come all the way. Just come all the way. Take it in. Let it resolve itself. If somebody gives you greetings and salutations, speak wonder. We are talking about the seven skills of receiving, which I am working on. And number one is allow allowance. And number two is tolerance for ease. And number three is completion. Let whatever is happening complete itself. If somebody gives you a compliment, take it in and then say thank you.
Let the loop complete. And that is resonant for me with nervous system stuff too, of let the loop complete, right? That trauma, the traumatized nervous system, the loop back to rest and relaxation doesn't complete. And I feel like the completion piece of receiving is an invitation to close the loop, to let it in, get back to rest and relaxation from the excitement of receiving something good. You're sweating. Shannon is sweating as I share this. Yep. Lock in. There's four more plus one I added. Number four, and this speaks to sweating, somatic softening, that I get clenched up when good things happen, when exciting things come my way.
I get clenched up. And I can practice, and I've been doing this one in particular since I read The Body Keeps a Score, I can practice noticing that I'm clenched up and just letting my body relax. And that helps the completion part, that helps me allow the good thing to come in and fully come my way. Somatic softening, number five. All of these are just, I am so nailed by all of these. Number five, non-urgency. Nothing urgent is happening when I receive a good thing. It feels urgent, like, oh my god, you know, I get an e-mail that says, hey, yes, this thing you wanted, uh, we want it too.
Oh my god, I have to reply to them right away if I don't reply to them right away, and I'll just spin out even though it's something good. And learning that I can practice non-urgency as a skill, that I can practice relaxation and serenity as a skill, game changer, but that it's a receiving skill, that it is part of receiving something well is to not feel urgent about it. And that to me is really coupled with number six is noticing without planning the outcome. Noticing without planning the outcome.
Notice the good thing has come to me and all of a sudden I want to clutch it like Gollum with the ring, like, oh, precious, this is mine. You're gonna be mine forever. Nothing is ever gonna change. This good thing is gonna be good forever, and I'm never gonna feel bad again. I'm gonna manage this outcome, manage this outcome, manage this outcome. Oy, I'm so nailed by all of these, I swear to you. Managing the, you know, just noticing that I have received something without managing the outcome. I get a gift in the mail.
Like my #2 love languages gifts. My number one love language is physical touch but it's been it was so messed with when I was a kid that gifts essentially function as my top love language except in my marriage. Okay so I have friends who also have gifts as a love language and then we send each other I mean I send things to all kinds of people because gifts is my love language going both ways but she'll send me little gifts in the mail and I also express love through words of affirmation but I That's a whole other live stream.
This one. She'll send me a gift and I'll be like, oh my God, I didn't send her one last month and this is nice and then I have to get her stuff. No. Just notice that I've received the gift. I don't have to manage the outcome. This is a friend who loves me regardless. This is, as a matter of fact, I know she loves me because she just sent me this little gift and that's how she expresses that she loves me. it's like words of affirmation is top love language, speak wonder. Yeah, it is for lots of people.
I am suspicious of words of affirmation. Not when I give them because I trust myself, but when I receive them because I don't, I'm like, okay, well, prove it, right? So, rule, skill #7, receiving skill #7. Receiving without identity conflict. Receiving without identity conflict. Meaning, how much money would you have to earn before you started wondering if you were a bad person? Because at that point it conflicts, the money you're receiving conflicts with your identity of being a good person or someone with integrity or a moral person.
That isn't true for everybody. I'm just using this as an example. Or, you know, I have this trip I am taking later this summer and It involves some cost and some inconvenience and was a real consideration for my family and it's going to be a true, true adventure. A woman I respect and admire a great deal. Her name is Ambassador Shabazz and she's an ambassador at large for the country of Belize. She's from here, but she's an ambassador at large for the country of Belize and she curates these trips and I am going on this trip with her this summer.
It is going to be an adventure. I am looking forward to it. But this identity conflict of, oh no, you know, on purpose, it's like 9 full days and oh my goodness this and oh my goodness that, what is that going to mean? There's a little bit of an identity conflict between person who's hustling, I guess, and person who goes on adventure and can just receive and take in this adventure. Most of the time I can. When my anxiety is a little high, I get worried, but it's receiving without that identity conflict, right?
If there's something good in your life, this one I don't struggle with very much. I will say that because, and I used to, I used to be, oh no, if I'm gonna be a cool person, I can't absolutely lose my mind when I meet a celebrity who means a great deal to me. And for the most part, I don't, right? I've met many celebrities and notable people who mean a great deal to me, but when I, some of, you know, some people have heard the story of when I met Ralph Macchio. just totally decompensated immediately and confessed it to him to his face and he was very kind.
That would have bothered me a lot more like 30 years ago than it does now. There was no identity conflict. I was the mayor of Minneapolis and I lost my mind when I met Ralph Macchio. Speak wonder, Bruce Springsteen and I have not met and I have actually done a lot of work to receive without identity conflict what will happen when we do meet each other because I don't, I actually don't want to lose my mind when I meet him. I want to save that for my, you know, my therapist and my friends. I actually want to connect with him and be as present as I can.
When I met Ralph Macchio it was an absolute surprise and I had never thought about meeting him and so I had no time to sort of decide who I was going to be with him and let myself have these other feelings elsewhere. But with, you know, someday I'm going to meet Bruce Springsteen and he's going to meet me and it's going to go well and I'm going to feel good about it later that I set us up for any sort of future conversation we might have. just to see in the background of my brain. I've actually been working on that for a long time.
I have decisions in place about how I'm going to be with him. And maybe that can be another live stream too. What decisions do I put in place before I meet somebody I am? Ralph Macchio was the Karate Kid, indeed, indeed, and Cobra Kai even to this day. And he was my first celebrity crush. Even now, I'm just laughing because I was just so overwhelmed by me. I was at an event that he was at and I didn't know he was going to be there. And then somebody said, do you want to meet Ralph Macchio? And I was like, he's not here.
That's how it started. So those are the receiving skills. And I promise you, I added, I don't know if I add this as an 8 receiving skill, but it may be an additional skill or something that underlines all of them, which is gratitude and grace. Gratitude and grace. I think that helps ease the skids for all the seven other skills is to remember to be grateful and to remember grace, giving grace to others and giving grace to myself and experiencing the grace of the universe as it hands me something I'm delighting in.
So yes, I love Ralph Macchio too. My first, he was on the show Eight is Enough for the last two seasons, which he then called Nine is Too Many when I met him, and that was hilarious. But he was my first celebrity crush when he was on Eight is Enough in the 70s. And I remember when Karate Kid came out, I was like, I know him. Very exciting. Okay, so the seven receiving skills, allowance, tolerance for ease, completion, somatic softening, non-urgency, noticing without managing the outcome, and receiving without identity conflict.
And then something that helps with those for me at least, and maybe it is a skill itself, is gratitude and grace. So that's what I'm talking about this week with everybody, cadre. I'll see you on the app. Because you all know how much I love Bruce, I just want you to know I'm going to be in a very small theater with him on Saturday night. It's the American Music Honors, put on by the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. This will be my fifth year going. It is always a thrill. He will be there presenting and jamming on stage with the honorees who are basically all his friends or people he admires or wants to jam with.
I really think they started this as an excuse for him to hang out with cool people. So check it out. The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music opens to the public. The new facility opens to the public on June 7th, on June 7th. So if you're anywhere near Monmouth County, Monmouth, New Jersey, Long Branch, New Jersey, Monmouth University in Long Branch, New Jersey, you can check it out. I will also be there in June. So you all are great. I love being here with you. I look forward to being here with you more.
But until then, have a really great week and I will see everybody on the app. I'll let you know how it goes this weekend.
