MONDAYS / On Having the Hard Conversation
EPISODE OVERVIEW: Building the courage to confront the thing you’ve been avoiding.
Hosted by Fiona Bicknell.
In this episode, we delve into the practical steps of cultivating self-acceptance, especially when it comes to emotional vulnerability and personal growth. With the new moon in Virgo and the start of a new month, it's an ideal time to reset and focus on how embracing where we are in life can open doors to deeper connections and more meaningful interactions.
This episode presents a challenge to move past mental blocks and take action by having those difficult conversations—moments of vulnerability that ultimately lead to greater self-awareness and authenticity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Vulnerability is not just about emotional openness but about taking the first step toward it—often through difficult conversations.
The new moon energy provides a unique opportunity for setting new intentions and shifting into a more present, authentic version of yourself.
Facing fears and stepping into vulnerability can be a powerful way to advocate for yourself and build self-love.
This week’s challenge: Identify and have the conversation you’ve been avoiding to help break down emotional walls and foster deeper intimacy.
Self-acceptance and presence are foundational for cultivating more fulfilling and supportive relationships with others.
What Next?
If this episode felt useful and you’d like to connect further with PORTER, there are multiple ways to engage with Fiona and the brand:
To tune into more OVT, browse all episodes at the link below.
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Hello, welcome to a new week.
We are on Monday, August 26th.
I hope you had a beautiful weekend.
I hope you are feeling energized and refreshed and ready for the week ahead.
And I'm gonna focus today around a quote from Albert Einstein.
So I'm gonna start by reading this quote, and then I'll share a little bit about personally some of my key takeaways, and I will pose some questions for contemplation to take with you through your week.
So Einstein said, I think the most important question facing humanity is, is the universe a friendly place?
This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.
For if we decide the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technologies, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness, and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly.
And I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves in this process.
If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly, and that God is essentially playing dice with the universe, then we are simply victims to the random toss of that dice, and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.
But if we decide the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe.
Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.
So there's a lot we can take from this.
But the first thing I want to pose is that question of, is the universe a friendly place?
Can you take a moment to contemplate that for yourself, and see where you currently live on that, in response to that question, where your mind currently holds as a view of the world?
And I want to challenge you to think of this not as a fundamental truth that you have to try and uncover or get to.
Not thinking whether there is a right or wrong here, and that the universe definitely is or isn't friendly.
But rather, can you see it as a choice that you get to make?
And a choice that is really important for you to make?
How do I want to see the world?
Because how you choose to see the world is really going to inform every interaction you have, every experience you have, every situation that you find yourself in.
The lens through which we see the world will largely create so many of our experiences or impact so many of our experiences.
If we believe the universe is an unfriendly place, if we take on that belief, whether this is conscious or unconscious, we live in a world that has a lot of negativity and a lot of collective fear that is just constantly filtering in through all of these different touch points that we come into contact with throughout our daily lives.
So we might not have consciously chosen to see the world as an unfriendly place, but if we find that we do happen to believe the world is unfriendly, that it is working against us in some way, that it is something that we must fight against, and we're in this constant conflict or battle with unfriendly forces in the universe, then our mind is going to seek confirmation of that belief.
This is how the mind operates.
The mind looks for confirmation for its belief system.
So if we believe the world is an unfriendly place, and the mind is unconsciously always on the lookout for proof that it is an unfriendly place, and therefore our experiences will largely reflect that belief.
But if we choose that the world is a friendly place, then the mind is going to be on the lookout for the confirmation that the world is a friendly place to live in.
And so my first challenge here is, can you contemplate this question for yourself as a choice?
How do I choose to see the world?
How do I want to see the universe?
That's friendly or unfriendly?
And it's okay if you still don't feel fully on board with this belief that the world is a friendly place, but yeah, can you make the commitment to self of, I'm choosing to move closer to that belief?
Okay, so that's the first part is, is really just contemplating, how do I currently see the world, and how do I want to see the world?
The second part here I want to suggest is about acknowledging how powerful this can be, not only for yourself, but for all the people that you come into contact with.
I think it is very easy for us to get caught up in the collective narratives that we see through the media.
Yeah, and the messaging that we receive from corporations, and this idea of, if we decide the universe is an unfriendly place, we will use our technologies, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls.
And I do really believe that we live in a world that reinforces this for us over and over and over, that the way to create safety and the way to be in our power, and as humans, we all want to feel power.
This isn't something to reject, it's something to understand and accept that part of being human is we will seek power.
And if we can accept that we are going to seek power, then we can work with it to understand why do we want power, and what is the most, what is the kindest, what is the most compassionate, what is the most loving way that we can create power.
But we do live in this world that that creation of safety and power is very much found through putting up walls, through believing, through this like underlying collective belief that in order to be safe, we need to be in this protective mode at all times.
We must put up walls.
And so I want you to contemplate or bring awareness throughout the week to where do I naturally put up walls?
Where is my first instinct to say, in order to feel safe, I need to protect.
In order to feel safe, I need to create a barrier.
In order to feel safe, I push back against something rather than open myself up to it.
Because this this counter side that he offers here, that if we decide the universe is a friendly place, that power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.
How can you take this with you through all of the interactions that you have?
Actually, what I seek is to feel safe. As humans, we all seek to feel safe. And what I seek is to feel powerful. Again, we all seek to feel powerful.
What if my greatest way of creating that for myself is through understanding?
And how do I understand another?
How do I understand a situation in the greatest way possible?
It's when I'm open to it.
If I put up walls and if I am defensive, I'm closing myself down to being able to understand another.
So where is there more room for me to take a more open approach?
Where is there more room for me to open myself to trying to understand rather than putting up walls and approaching things from a place of fear, essentially, that is fear.
And don't underestimate how powerful it can be.
We've got so much going on right now that feels out of our hands.
We're in an election year here in the US.
We are also at a time in life in the world where we have more exposure to destruction and more exposure to destructive behaviors and thinking, and hurtful, harmful action.
We are more exposed to this than we ever have been through the Internet and through social media.
We are seeing, we are seeing the negative impact of this belief of seeing the world as an unfriendly place in bigger ways than ever before.
And it can be very easy for us to fall into this space of, well, what's the point?
I have no power here. It's out of my hands.
Or believing that, like, well, the government needs to make a change.
Or it's up to these other people to make a difference.
It's out of my hands.
It's someone else's responsibility to create change.
And yeah, I want to suggest, don't underestimate the power of you as an individual.
If you choose to see the world as an as a friendly place, don't underestimate how contagious that is.
Don't underestimate how impactful that that might be for every person that you come into contact with and for every situation that you find yourself in.
That imagine if we can all hold ourselves in this place, what might it create if every time you meet someone new, or every time you have a challenging conversation, or every time you find yourself in a situation where there's tension or fear that you were met with openness, that you were met with someone who's trying to understand you versus someone who was trying to push against you.
Like that can be so powerful.
So don't underestimate how much this choice can be impactful on others.
It's not only going to impact your own life and what you create for yourself, but it will also impact everyone that you come into connection with.
And I think that's really beautiful.
And then the final thing I want to say here, my intention was to keep these under 10 minutes.
I've gone a little bit over, but the final thing I want to say here is just about Einstein himself.
So I love reading Einstein.
I think this man has so many incredible ideas to share with us.
And he was someone who, he's most well known for his theory of relativity.
And he published that and put that out into the world at a time where he was really going against the grain.
There were a lot of people who did not want to hear what he had to say because what he was offering was definitely outside of the norm.
And there was a lot of people that caused a lot of disruption.
It was undoing a lot of the theories and belief systems upon which the world was operating at that time.
And so it was quite radical and he had the courage to be the person to put something out into the world to say, do you know what, all of these ideas and beliefs that we have been operating from, I actually think it could be something different.
And I'm going to be unafraid to propose something different, to be the person that says the thing that I know other people maybe don't want to hear.
And to have the courage to do that, I think we have to believe the world is a friendly place, right?
To put ourselves out there, to do something radical, to offer something new to the world.
We have to believe that we're going to be supported.
We have to believe that we're safe to do that.
And so whatever it is you might be working on for yourself, or whatever vision it might be that you have, or whatever goals that are ahead of you, that you're working towards, I also want to pose this idea of how might those goals and that vision be more easily achieved when you choose to take on this belief that the world is a friendly place, that the universe is a friendly place.
If it is friendly, then I am supported.
If it is friendly, then I can go out and I can do this radical thing, or I can put myself out into the world, and I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be safe.
So, okay, I'm going to leave it there.
But the main thing to take away here is just pondering this question and making a choice for yourself.
How do I want to see the world? Is the universe a friendly place?
I hope you have a really beautiful week ahead.
And yeah, if you have any questions, if you have any feedback, please do drop me a DM, send me an email.
I'm always, always, always so open to hearing from people.
And yeah, I'm sending so much love.
