Making Room For Our Humanness With Rohini Ross

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In early 2019 I experienced an almost three-month long period of depression, which was not something I’d ever encountered before. The friend who had introduced me to the 3 Principles knew what I was going through and sent me a quote from Rohini Ross’s newsletter. That quote changed many things for me, including giving me some understanding of what I was going through and why.

In this podcast episode, I talk to Rohini about that phenomenon and much more, including her lighthearted and often joyful Facebook Live series of videos on relationships that she does with her husband, Angus.

Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She’s a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global and the author of the short read Marriage: the Soul Centered Series book number one, which is available on Amazon.

Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles, helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency and success.

She is also the founder of the Soul Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality and the teachings of Sydney Banks.

You can find Rohini at RohiniRoss.com.

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Below are the show highlights, resources we mention, and full transcript.

Show Notes

On the cause of professional burnout, and the cure
How we can misinterpret our feelings of shame or unworthiness, and think they mean something
The unexpected source of our suffering
Finding long-sought freedom by understanding how the human experience works
Making room for our own humanness, and that of those around us
Transforming a marriage by understanding the 3 Principles
How our humanness is not something we need to overcome
What can happen when our minds slow down and we stop living from fear and adrenaline
What is the real source of creativity and inspiration when we’re not driving ourselves forward?

Resources mentioned in this episode

Rohini’s Soul Centered Series
Rohini’s Facebook page, which includes her Facebook live videos with husband Angus about relationships
Book: Marriage by Rohini Ross
Free Ebook about relationships
The Relationship Handbook by George Pransky
Michael Neill’s Super Coach Academy
Podcast episode with Jonelle Simms

Transcript of interview with Rohini Ross

Alexandra: Hi everyone I’m Alexandra Amor from StopSufferingAbout.com and I’m here today with Rohini Ross. Hi Rohini. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Rohini: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to speak with you.

Alexandra: I’m glad that you’re here. Very excited as well. So let me introduce our listeners to you, if they haven’t heard about you.

She is also the founder of the Soul Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality and the teachings of Sydney Banks.

Rohini, why don’t you start just by telling us a little bit more about you and how you came across this understanding and what drew you to it.

Rohini: It was really by happenstance I came across this understanding at the time. I was recommended to read The Relationship Handbook by George Pransky and I read it and it was very helpful. But I had no idea that there was a whole understanding behind it. And so I didn’t really look further than that.

It was probably nearly 10 years later when I was feeling burnt out in my work. I had recently become licensed as a therapist and life was going really well on all counts but I was feeling exhausted and I started to think maybe I can’t be a therapist anymore. Maybe I need to look at doing something different.

And so what I looked at, because there were a lot of people that I knew that were doing coaching, and I thought well maybe I should look at coaching and maybe that won’t burn me out as much as therapy does. Still not understanding where the brain is coming from.

I did a coaching course at the time, which was Michael Neill’s Super Coach Academy but it was one of the early academies where he had different modalities being shared in each weekend. But one of the weekends had George and Linda Pransky in it and they were sharing about principles.

Something struck me with what they were sharing and I couldn’t understand what it was that struck me but I knew that I wanted to know more about it. More about it because of how I felt. I felt more relaxed. I felt lighter. I felt more optimistic and I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know what they had done. It felt like they’d done something so I couldn’t put any of the dots together.

That started me on the path of wanting to learn more about the Three Principles. And as I did that it just it really had a huge impact on me personally and professionally.

I was able to see how the experience of burnout that I was having was really me having a relationship with my thoughts. It was creating stress and distress within me. And so it opened up a whole new vista as I got to see it more deeply.

Alexandra: I took a course that you offered about a little more than a year ago with Barb Patterson called the Solopreneur Leap.

You shared in there a little bit about how you had always been interested in self-help and had done a lot of work to ‘fix yourself’ and found that once you came across this understanding that became less necessary.

Would you say that’s true as well?

Rohini: I would say that I was pretty compulsive about self-help and I think being trained as a psychologist or in psychology that that’s pretty natural to think that that’s the way to happiness.

What I didn’t understand was that my drive and push for self-improvement was actually behind my suffering. I wasn’t able to feel good enough in the moment that I was constantly seeing more than I needed to do.

I really had a very painful relationship with my emotional experience because I in my innocence had categorized all kinds of emotional experiences like shame and insecurity feelings of unworthiness I had thought they meant something. I thought that they were feedback to me that I needed to do something so that I would not have those experiences.

So I was on a quest to rid myself of those experiences and I thought through self-improvement and I was always a spiritual seeker as well and so that was the kind of got meshed together. And what the understanding of the Principles did is it helped me unlink the two.

I had the opportunity to do an intensive. And my focus for the intensive in terms of what I wanted to get out of it was I wanted to get rid of feeling insecure.

I was I was in a position where I was doing a lot of public speaking for a company at the time. I wanted to do what I love in my work. I loved the opportunities it gave me. But I would get really nervous whenever I would speak. I’d feel really insecure and I’d be insecure before. I’d be insecure during and it wasn’t like there was a relief afterwards because then I would be insecure and think I didn’t do a good job. I just couldn’t win.

Someone could tell me that was great, we loved what you said. But it wouldn’t feel true. It wouldn’t ring true to me. And it was it was very intense and was at one of the more anxious periods of my life.

I went on this intensive and rather than being rid of insecurity what I saw was that insecurity is a normal part of the human experience just like the full range of emotions or the normal part of the human experience and that it wasn’t insecurity that was actually creating all the suffering that I was having.

What was creating the suffering was my attempts to get rid of it and to not have it. And what I made it mean about me. It was almost like going into a wrestling match with my insecurity and it just made it expand in my experience.

When I saw that I was the one that was doing that, that I was creating this magnified experience inside of myself, that was all I really needed to be like oh just leave it alone. It doesn’t mean anything.

Feelings come and go and I know that thoughts come and go. So why not just let that be one of the ones that comes and goes? Why get into a fight with it or try to improve myself by getting rid of it?

After that I was doing another talk and I had the same sensations, the butterflies in my stomach, the sweaty palms, the fast heartbeat, but I didn’t do anything. I just thought, I’m having some nerves. No big deal.

It was it was so freeing for me to see that I could leave it alone and then to go ahead and be in the talk and actually see how all of that just diminished and went away so I could actually be present. I could actually think because I could barely think before and I could connect with who I was speaking with and was grounded.

It was a completely different experience but it wasn’t because I got rid of the insecurity. It naturally went away but because I allowed it and because I realized like oh I’m safe with it, it’s okay that I have it.

That was the end of my self-improvement and it was really more about seeing that I can be okay with my humanness and I don’t have to even like all of my personality traits but I can be okay with them and I don’t I don’t need to be better than I am to be okay.

Now that to me was the freedom that I’d been looking for, that I was thinking that I was going to get through self-improvement. I actually got it by stopping trying to improve myself and felt the freedom and felt the self-compassion.

And it may sound silly to other people but for me, who had been such a perfectionist and such a striver in that way, it just created a much better quality of life for myself because I was experiencing that for myself. It also helped me to be open to other people’s humanness as well. People close in my life, like my husband. People a little further away, I was okay with their humanness but with Angus, my husband, it was much harder to be okay with his humanness.

But getting comfortable with my own would actually make room for his too and it was great for our relationship.

Alexandra: I can relate to that. I was a psychology major in university too and then became a self-help junkie, as Jonelle Simms said recently on a podcast.

That constant striving for improvement and picking these certain things that you feel you have to fix just made them worse, almost. That fight with them is what really made them very intense. So I can completely relate to that.

You mentioned Angus and one of the things I love is the Facebook lives that you and Angus do every week about your relationship.

One thing that I find a bit interesting is how transparent you guys are when you you’re sharing this understanding and how it relates to your relationship.

Has that been an evolution for you and what made you decide to share in that way?

Rohini: I think as an evolution this is a constant learning. I’m a constant student. So yes it’s always going to be evolution.

But what really inspired us to do that is that I think that this understanding transformed our marriage. I didn’t think we had a bad marriage but I just didn’t know it was possible.

I had resigned myself; it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. It was good enough. But I had no idea that there was this level of intimacy and aliveness and joy and fun that we could have together. I didn’t understand that.

Having that experience and feeling that transformation there was the natural desire to want to share that with other people so that other people can experience that as well. But we wanted to do it in a way that was not setting ourselves up as experts. It was not setting ourselves like we figured all of this out and we’re telling you what to do like that. That’s not how this understanding works.

It felt really good to be able to help people see the ordinary-ness and the normalcy of what still happens in our marriage and the tips that we have or just the learning curve that we’re still on and yet even though it’s a learning curve we still have this amazing experience together. Not all of the time but way more than we used to.

The transparency is very intentional in the sense of helping people see that it’s not about perfection, it’s not about being anything other than who you are, where you’re at and being able to see what’s available inside of each one of us. Exactly as we are.

That’s the intent behind it. And the other thing is that we do purposely keep it very light and fun because I think that relationships can feel serious, like we need to fix it or it’s a real problem here.

Humor and lightness has been something that’s just really infused our relationship more with this understanding we just take ourselves a lot less seriously. We laugh at ourselves a lot more.

I guess he’s always been pretty good at that. I was not so good at that stuff but a lot better at that and even better to him laughing at me this along those lines. But it’s really to just be human to human and connect with people in that way and have people see that their humanness is not something to overcome.

It’s something that can be enjoyed and that there’s deeper parts to ourself that encompass all of that and we don’t have to get rid of any of ourselves to enjoy that the entire human experience.

Alexandra: I love them so much. I’m not in a relationship at the moment and I still really enjoy watching them. They are quite lighthearted and fun. And you guys seem to be having such a good time. So I think that’s really great.

I’ll put a link to the show in the show notes by the way just so people can find your Facebook page if they want to check that out.

One of the main things I wanted to talk to you about today was about what we go through perhaps when we’re learning about this understanding as our minds are quieting down.

I’ve been following this understanding for almost two years now and I had an experience at the beginning of this year where I had several weeks of quite a deep depression, which is not something I’d ever encountered before. And the girlfriend who introduced me to this understanding knew that I was going through that. And so she would check in with me every once in a while and just see how I was doing and I was keeping her informed.

And then one day she got your newsletter. And so I’m going to read a quote for the listeners from your newsletter. And then I would just want to ask you about that. So here’s the quote.

I remember when I finally saw the benefit of letting my mind relax and slowing down when I took my foot off the gas. I felt exhausted. I felt flat. I wasn’t depressed but I had no energy or motivation. This lasted for months. Fortunately, I recognized this was not about boredom or lack of inspiration. It was the byproduct of pushing myself for years. I was just plain old tired and my lack of motivation was a good thing. I needed to rest. I didn’t want to do anything. So I did the basics of what was required. I read a lot of novels, rested and worked as needed. It took a while for my mind to actually relax and get used to a different internal pace as I took care of myself. My body healed and my mind slowed even more. I began to notice that I didn’t feel flat and then inspired. My mood became more buoyant and hopeful. I began to have the energy to do new things and create.

I was so relieved when my friend sent me that clip because it explains a lot of what I was going through and I had known that it was temporary but it was still kind of challenging to deal with.

I wondered if you could expand on that a little bit, because I’ve never heard anybody else talk about what may happen as we’re learning about the Principles.

Rohini: Well, that was it was surprising to me. I was shocked at how exhausted I was and now what I see is that I had been living life from the fuel of adrenaline and that was what was keeping me going.

It was fear. Needing to better and needing to do more. Needing to do that in order to feel good enough and all of that was adrenaline driven. Survival driven. And even though it’s not true it felt true inside of my nervous system.

One of the gifts that this understanding is it got my mind more quiet in a very profound way.

And as it got quiet I felt the physical tired like I had been going on adrenaline. It was like I was immune to it. If I had gone longer I’m sure I would have had other health issues that would have got me to stop but fortunately that wasn’t the way it happened.

But I then realized I didn’t want to anymore push through that. It no longer makes sense for me to push through that. And it didn’t make sense but it also didn’t seem like I possibly could because all of a sudden this is done.

I had had experiences of depression in my life before so significant periods of depression and I see that was my way of functioning I would push push push and then I would crash. Push push push. Then I would crash.

But this was different in that I didn’t have the suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t in that kind of depression where I was really gripped by my negative thinking and feeling worthless and like I didn’t deserve to live it wasn’t that experience but the physical side of it was very similar.

I got to see things more clearly where it’s like I’m just tired and this is my wisdom guiding me to rest and relax and of course when you’ve been running on adrenaline for most of my life the body is going to wear out. When I gave myself the rest and I took care of myself – I had literally left a job was launching into my own business or I thought I would be launching – I didn’t launch anything. I just did what was needed of not growing anything right now but just let myself have the time that I needed.

What happened was I got healthier but I got connected with inspiration, so rather than driving my life from adrenaline I started to see that there’s is other energy inside of me an inspiration that I can create from. And it is actually far more powerful and does not burn me out. And it’s kind of like I in a sense when I was that exhausted I was following the inspiration to rest. My inspiration was saying rest you need the rest.

Maybe a week or two. That’s great. A month, two months, I think it was at least three months where I was exhausted and obviously I gradually got more energy but it was way longer than I expected.

As I started to realize that there’s this different feeling inside of me that I can use to guide me, I can use as a compass, to let me know what direction to go in. And so then as I got replenished and felt better then I got more ideas and started to follow them.

But I think it’s really common in our culture for people to be running on adrenaline and the amount of caffeine that’s consumed. We keep ourselves going when we don’t really have the internal reserves.

It can feel like depression. I think when people all of a sudden realize how tired they are because mood can get flat in that way. But if we can realize the physical body does need to be taken care of. And even when it’s inspiration driving me it’s like I still need to rest.

It’s important to recognize the relationship between the physical bodies well-being and the deeper spiritual well-being that’s available to us. To me they work together. And when I take care of my physical body it allows me to have more access to that. It just seems like common sense to me and I was overriding that before.

When fear is no longer the motivator then we get to feel what’s left. And sometimes it’s just no energy left but it’s to me it’s a way to reorient to a deeper source of inspiration motivation an inner calling and to see the wisdom that’s available when that’s followed.

Alexandra: Well said. I love that.

For me it kind of felt like an unspooling. If something had been wound really, really tight and then it needed to unwind.

Rohini: Really in that there’s the wisdom of that, the health in that, and I had just never trusted that. Or it was like that scary to unwind. That’s scary to really ask what’s going to happen. I’m going to end up living on the streets homeless and now it’s like all these crazy thoughts that come in and it’s like oh that’s true.

There’s still the desire to take care of myself and provide for the family but that didn’t go away. But it didn’t have to be done in the way that I was doing it and I just didn’t see that before.

Alexandra: You bring up such a good point. I had the same sort of experience as that was happening. The thought would come in, “What if I’m like this forever? What if I never feel inspired or never want to do anything again?”

And of course that wasn’t the case. And it felt important to give myself the space to let that happen.

Rohini: Previously I would have thought, I just don’t have the luxury. I can’t afford that or that’s just not available to me. And what I see now is that was just me not being open to the creativity of figuring out how to do that in my life. And it was not a priority. That’s why I didn’t know how to do it. It just wasn’t a priority.

And so to see me now, I really have more room on my calendar and more spaciousness in my life because I see the importance of that and I see I have less tolerance for when I overbook myself or start to overwork .

I notice it and I’m not able to do work in the way that I used to. And I see that as a good thing. I see that as me being more attuned to the feedback inside of me rather than overriding it is easily the way that I used him.

Alexandra: Exactly. Your colleague Barb Patterson had a great blog post this week about using the metaphor of a sailboat and thinking that we have to be the wind blowing air into the sail.

But when we come across this understanding what we realize is the wind actually comes on its own. And I don’t think she said this in the post but I feel like more like we’re the sail. And the wind comes along when we let it.

Rohini: You feel that to recognize that there is something greater than us that we can be the vehicle for that. But it not coming from our personal will or our personal mind. There’s something that moves through us that when we allow it. We don’t even need to know where it’s taking us. It’s like we can just kind of be along for the ride. It’s kind of fun.

Alexandra: Exactly.

And I know for someone like yourself and like me I was a real driver and striver and really used to working very, very hard. That idea that sometimes we don’t even know what the outcome of something is going to be when we feel inspired to do it. But even before that just being open to inspiration and not feeling like I have to grip so tightly and make everything happen was a bit of a scary transition.

It’s been a gradual process of kind of letting go and trusting that inspiration.

Rohini: I think that I’ve been quite good. I’m definitely striver and hardworking but I was always quite good at following my intuition. So that felt like I knew that that worked out.

But what I didn’t realize is that I was putting in way more than was required. It’s almost like you know those kids that are in those play cars and they think they’re driving the car. It’s like I did all that hard work. It was going to happen anyway. You did that put in all the hard work so it’s like realizing oh my goodness. Who knew?

I was able to do things in spite of myself rather than because of the hard work. It was almost in spite of it that things came to fruition. So that was a very humbling wakeup call that I was way less important than I thought.

Alexandra: One of the things we mentioned early on was the book that you’ve written about marriage and are you working on another one.

I noticed that it’s book one in a series.

Rohini: There is actually. And I can give you the link to a second a follow up to that which is essays about relationships.

That’s book two in the series. And the idea was to pick various themes and to just have those be part of the series. So I can give you the ebook that I created.

Alexandra: Great. And I can share that notes.

Is there anything that you’re well what are you doing these days that sort of making you excited and happy and wow?

Rohini: I just finished recently the Soul Centered Series, which is a six-month program that had a lot of the original pioneer teachers of this understanding come and participate in. That was a wonderful experience and really one of those experiences where it wasn’t me.

This was something that was an idea that didn’t feel like it was from me and I got to have the benefit of helping it come to fruition and so that was really wonderful.

We’re going to do another one of those this fall because it was such a great experience. I’m excitedly putting together the finishing touches with scheduling and putting the Web page up all those kinds of things. I’m excited to do that.

And then Angus and I are doing a lot of couples work. We do couples intensive. And we’re going to be speaking in Denmark at the end of May and then at the 3P U.K. conference in London at the beginning of June.

And our 25th anniversary coming up this summer. So we’ll have a little vacation to celebrate that. We haven’t decided where yet. So those are the main things that are coming up.

I’m also doing quite a bit of organizational work and just might go into organizations and really help the culture shift and bring the understanding into culture. So that’s a really exciting way to have a lot of impact with people that may not be expecting to be impacted in this way.

But what I hear a lot in the corporate work that we do is people are so grateful that their company is providing them with a training that is so practical and not just relevant at work but also really relevant in their personal lives so people really enjoy that.

It’s a win win and feel very grateful to get to participate in that. It’s part of that work.

Alexandra: When I was in corporate life I would have given anything to hear something like this.

It has been amazing chatting with you I’ve enjoyed it so much. Why don’t you let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work.

Rohini: The best place to go would be my Web site which is RohiniRoss.com.

Alexandra: Great. I’ll put links to that in the show notes as well. Thanks again for chatting with me.

Rohini: Thank you for having me. Take care. Bye bye bye.

[Holding hands image courtesy Joe Yates and Unsplash.]