Find Your Freedom with Preston Smiles, Ep #92

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In this episode of the Coming Clean Podcast, I sit down with legendary Preston Smiles, the Messenger of Love. Preston is an author, coach, mentor, and father who recognizes the importance of showing up with open hearts and remembering who we are: pure, unadulterated love. Listen to Preston’s incredible journey through trauma and his transformation into the man he is becoming today.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

  • How to go from recognizing an issue to action [05:43]

  • Seeing blessings in chaos [08:43]

  • Steps to processing trauma [12:33]

  • Moving through ancestral trauma [14:59]

  • The ideas of right and wrong [20:46]

  • How to choose the right coach [28:08]

  • Preston’s current projects [32:02]

 

Preston’s transforming moment

Preston had avoided doctors as long as he could. The first doctor he saw told him that he needed to go directly to a cardiologist. At the age of 25, he was diagnosed with a heart condition. The doctor said that the test results didn’t make sense based on his age but made sense given his life history. Preston had been under such stress from the age of 13 that, in adulthood, his heart began to give out. The trauma he’d faced growing up in situations like his dad’s drug addiction, his parents’ divorce, and friends being murdered had caught up with him. 

 

Our bodies remember

The body is a living library that stores everything we’ve ever been through. When we go through major or subtle traumas, the body stores all of the stress in our nervous systems. We have to learn to work through the trauma. For example, the difference between an impala and us is that when the impala escapes from the cheetah and finds safety, it goes through a breathing exercise that “shakes off” the trauma and resets the nervous system. Because of that process, the impala will no longer walk around traumatized. Humans don’t do that. We have three centers of intelligence: mind, heart, and gut. Most of us try to figure everything out with the mind. But there’s a lot more body than there is mind. When we go through something, we justify it in our heads, but we never give our bodies the signal that everything’s ok now. 

What can we do to start processing the trauma? Step one is allowing yourself to feel the pain so it can complete itself. Step two is asking for help. We’ve been taught in this western culture that we have to figure it out by ourselves. That is the dumbest idea on the planet. We’ve all done it. Ask for help. Everyone who is listening to this episode has more than 100 things they can school us on. The question for making progress isn’t “How?” it’s “Who?” Who can support me in the how?

 

How to move from recognizing an issue to action

Recognizing the blessings in our lives is significant. If we see our experiences as a curse, we’ll be stuck in our past for a lifetime. Much of our audience is currently living in a state of survival. It’s difficult to see a blessing when living in disarray and chaos. I was impressed with how eloquently and kindly Preston was able to speak about his father. A man who loved his family but always wrestled with his demons. I did that for a long time. I was that broken little boy faking it into relationships and positions, sabotaging everything I was doing because I couldn’t impress anyone.

Preston recognizes how God has entrusted him to carry his particular wounds. Seeing the blessing inside the madness allowed Preston to have just enough space to back up and see the big picture. We can’t intervene in a world that we can’t see, and each of us is a world. As children, we adapted to survive, stay safe, get attention, and receive love. However, that mechanism is not what identifies us.  Check out episode 92 to learn how to find your freedom!

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Preston Smiles

Connect With Peter O. Estévez

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