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HEBREWHome > Podcast > Mindset > EP 339: Forgiveness and Transcending Darkness with Rhonda Britten
Forgiveness and Transcending Darkness with Rhonda Britten
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Orion Talmay
Podcast Host
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A Personal Note From Orion
In this week’s episode with the amazing Rhonda Britten, we dive deep into the transformative power of forgiveness and transcending darkness. Prepare to be inspired as we unravel the secrets to embrace your fears and emerge as the fearless, authentic you.
Our extraordinary guest, Rhonda Britten, is an Emmy Award winner, a repeat guest on Oprah’s show, a Master Coach, and a true luminary in the world of personal growth and empowerment. She’s touched countless lives through her appearances on over 600 episodes of reality television, including her starring role in the hit daytime reality show, Starting Over. As the founder of the Fearless Living Institute, and with four bestsellers under her belt, including her seminal work, Fearless Living, Rhonda is a phenomenal guide on the path to unleash our inner power. She’s been named “America’s Favorite Life Coach” for a reason, and you’re about to find out why.
Tune in to discover how the neuroscience of fear can be harnessed to break free from the shackles of self-doubt and “not being good enough.” Rhonda’s groundbreaking “Wheels” technology offers you the tools to navigate the darkest corners of your psyche and transform your fears into authentic strengths. Get ready to rewrite your story and embrace a life filled with courage, self-acceptance, and unstoppable resilience. Remember, live fearlessly. Without further ado, let’s dive into the show!
Make your life stellar,
In this Episode
- [02:27] Rhonda Britten recounts a traumatic childhood event involving her parents. She shares how she overcame guilt, shame, and fear.
- [09:55] Rhonda shares a dream where her deceased father appeared, which led to their forgiveness and closure.
- [14:27] Rhonda talks about her fear, which is rooted in her childhood trauma.
- [16:44] Rhonda discusses the wheel of fear and the wheel of freedom to help you transcend your fears and align with your true nature.
- [20:06] Orion and Rhonda share how they’ve learned to embrace their true identity and express themselves fully in the world.
- [24:31] Rhonda discusses the importance of recognizing and understanding one’s triggers, as they are the things that have been running us in the dark and hiding to protect us.
- [26:24] Orion wants to know how to develop our own wheel of freedom and wheel of fear, prompting Rhonda to emphasize the importance of understanding how our body and brain process information.
- [37:48] Rhonda describes her spiritual awakening, overcoming personal struggles through self-love and spiritual growth.
- [41:01] Rhonda describes an exercise for forgiveness and letting go of anger.
- [47:14] Rhonda gives her top three tips for living a stellar life.
About Today’s Show
Hi, Rhonda, and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.
My pleasure. who doesn`t want a stellar life? i known i do. we all want stellar lives, Happy to be here.
Before we begin, can you share your origin story and how you became the person you are? How did you discover your passion?
Those are many questions, and I appreciate it. Of course, I’ll tell you about the worst day of my life. The origin story for most people is
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the very thing they don’t want it to be their origin story. The very thing that they want to be like, “I don’t want to tell that story.”
I can relate.
We run from the place where our seed burst and where it broke open. I ran from mine for over 20 years. I didn’t want to talk about it, and I definitely wouldn’t have told you what made me who I am today because I thought everything that made me who I am today was bad, wrong, and shameful.
Again, I don’t think I’m alone in that. The place we broke open is the place where we broke down. I was 14 years old and grew up in a tiny town in upper Michigan—365 inches of snow a year, no fast food, and only two restaurants, Big Boy and the Douglas House Hotel.
It was Father’s Day, and my father was coming out to take us to brunch. My parents were separated at this time. So he was coming over, and my mother made me a brand new dress because she sewed all my clothes. He knocks on the door, and he’s like, “Come on, come on,” because that’s what dads do. And my mom and I walked out. We were just in her bedroom, and she was putting on her beehive hairdo and her rose-colored lipstick and patting it down.
My two sisters are in our one bathroom. We have one bathroom as in the old days. Hardly anybody has one bathroom anymore. My dad yelled, “Come on,” and me and my mom started walking out. My two sisters are still fighting in the bathroom. As we start walking out, it starts sprinkling, so my dad says he’s got to get his coat from the car.
As he opens the trunk to get his coat, I notice that he hasn’t grabbed a coat, but he has grabbed a gun, and he starts screaming at my mother, “You made me do this! You made me do this!” and he fires. I’m 14 years old, and I just start screaming, “Dad, what are you doing? Dad, stop. What are you doing, Dad? Stop.”
He cocks the gun again, and he points it at me, and I 100% believe I’m next. He looks at me, and I look at him. He blinks, I blink. It felt like it lasted forever.
My mother, who already had one bullet, looked up at that moment, saw that gun in my face, and screamed, “No, don’t.” My father, realizing my mother was still alive, took that bullet intended for me to shoot my mother a second time. That second bullet went through my mother’s abdomen, out her back, and landed in the car horn. For the next 20 minutes, all I heard was [flatline sound]. Then my father cocked the gun one more time, jumped to his knees, put the gun to his head, and fired.
Within less than two minutes, I was the sole witness of watching my father murder my mother and commit suicide in front of me. I don’t know how other people would respond, but this is how I responded, “It was my fault. I didn’t jump in front of the gun. I didn’t grab it. I didn’t even protect my mother. I didn’t jump in front of her. I did nothing that magically stopped my father and was the only one standing.”
The wheel of freedom allows us to transcend blame, shame, and self-defeat –- to unlock our greatest potential.
For the next 20 years, I lived with a tremendous amount of shame, a tremendous amount of guilt, and a tremendous amount of “You don’t get to be alive. You don’t get to be happy if you watch your mother die. You just don’t get to be happy.”
For the next 20 years, I eventually became an alcoholic, got three DUIs, and tried to kill myself three times. And it was that third suicide attempt when I realized I wasn’t good at killing myself—not skilled at it, need a coach for that—that I had to figure out another way. This wasn’t working.
Mind you, I do want to give myself a bunch of credit that during those 20 years, I went to therapy, I went to workshops, and I read books. I’ve been reading self-help and spiritual books since I was 12 and wanted to be a minister when I was 13. I was heavily into the personal development and spiritual path.
I did all those things during that time, and they were all helpful. They were all nice. But none of them took away the feeling that something was wrong with me. I couldn’t shake the feeling. No matter what work I did, no matter how much therapy I did, no matter what books I read, no matter how many workshops I’ve done, no matter if I worked the shaman or did inner child work, I just kept on having the feeling there was something wrong with me.
It wasn’t until I faced that something was wrong with me. I was the seed of the work I do today because I had to face the fact that fear had been running my life. But I never said I’m afraid or I’m scared. I think that’s very common.
If you had told me at 14, 20, 25, and 30 that I would work on fear, I would’ve looked at you like you were crazy because I’m not afraid. I really believed that. I was like, “I’m not afraid, I’m not scared.” That’s the trick of high achievers and people trying to get on with their way. They want to find another reason that they’re stuck.
“It must be because I procrastinate. It must be because I didn’t have a mother who loved me.” They want to use that. But, under all of that, it is just because we’re all afraid. Once I was willing to see and claim that, everything started to change. That’s why I do Fearless Living.
This story really touched my heart. It was quite shocking. What did you guys do? Why did you and your sisters end up staying? What was your life like?
We stayed in that house for two years. The three of us. My sister was 18, I was 14, and my little sister was 13. My sister was 18, which allowed us to stay in the house. We lived there for two years. I was a straight-A student. I was the lead scorer of the basketball team. I ran on the track. But I felt like the whole world was whispering at me. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.
Then, some parents wouldn’t let their kids play with me anymore because I was from one of those families. I’m from a little town, and these things don’t happen—murder-suicide.
I felt ostracized, and eventually, we moved to Minneapolis. I went to the University of Minnesota,
where I started drinking. I never drank in high school, but when I got to college, it was like, “Drinking! Nobody knows me. Nobody knows my story. Nobody knows who I am.” I felt like I could start over. I had a fresh start. It’s like nobody knows me. I made a commitment to never tell anybody my story.
I thought I could run from it. I thought I could hide it. I thought I could dump it. I thought I could avoid it. I thought I could ignore it. Again, we all know the truth of that statement: that’s impossible.
I found alcohol, and it numbed my pain and nightmares because after my father killed my mother, I had nightmares every single night for almost two decades that he was chasing and trying to kill me. I discovered alcohol. It made me black out, and I didn’t have to have those nightmares. “This was awesome!” That’s when I started drinking.
My first suicide attempt was my last year in college. College was good in the sense that I wanted to get away from myself, but it was also the place where I didn’t have the wholeness within me. I didn’t know who I was. This is typical for high school and college students, but I didn’t know who I was. Let’s just say college was not fun. College was really hard, and I had the devil on my back, and I was still running.
That’s so much to go through. When did the nightmares stop?
It’s a beautiful story, actually, because I was planning to be a minister. The day my father killed my mother, people said, “Oh my God.” I said, “Well, I’ve forgiven him.” I believe I forgave him at that moment because I knew it was the right thing to do. So I just told everybody I did.
Authenticity requires deep inner work and the willingness to know yourself and understand how you process information.
It became very clear to me over the next 10 to 15 years that I had some issues with my father. I did a lot of forgiveness work with him, but it didn’t stop the nightmares. Then, one night, I just had a car accident. I got hit by a car on my bike. My face hit the cement, so I had stitches all the way down my face. I couldn’t work. My boyfriend had just broken up with me, and I had just quit drinking.
I had no man, no alcohol, and I couldn’t work. I was too wrecked up. For those years, I felt like my father lived in my closet. I’m sitting there alone and sober. I’m trying to go to bed, and I used to sleep with the light on because I had nightmares. I can feel my father in my closet, and I go, “Dad, just get out of my closet. Leave me alone. Just stop haunting me. Just go away.” And he won’t leave.
A thought went through my mind that, “If you can’t beat him, join him.” It’s an odd phrase, but how I took it was I said, “Dad, come on over.” I got him out of the closet, and I was on the side of my bed, and he knelt beside me. I put my arms around him and said, “I forgive you.” He whispered, “That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
Wow. I got goosebumps.
Then I fell asleep crying because it was just so moving. That night, I had the same dream. My father was chasing me again, but this time, I turned around and said, “Just go ahead and shoot me. Just do it. ” He took out his gun. He shot at me, and he kept missing. Then he tried again and again and kept missing.
There was a little stone wall right next to him, and he took his gun and threw it down. He goes, “I guess that doesn’t work anymore.” He leaned over the stone wall, pulled out a picnic basket and said, “Do you want to have a picnic?”
I know it’s wild. Then I said, “Yes.” He took a red and white checkered tablecloth, opened it up, and we sat down and broke bread together, and I’ve never had a nightmare since.
That’s incredible. Do you feel like you’re psychic? Was this experience only with your father’s spirit?
My mother has only come to me twice. She came to me and said, “I had no other choice. I didn’t know what else to do.” She came to me just to let me know she was trapped. I feel my father and mother. I love my father and my mother. And I believe from a spiritual point of view, I always imagine myself, my dad, and my mom. We’re not mom and dad and daughter. We’re three, let’s call them angels, for the sake of this conversation.
“What are we going to do in the next lifetime?” “We want to go back.” “Let’s go back to earth.” My dad goes, “Oh, I got something.” We’re like, “What?” He goes, “Okay, why don’t we eradicate fear from the planet?” We’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s good.”
He says, “Rhonda, why don’t you be the one that brings freedom to the people?” I’m like, “Really? Me? Okay, awesome.” He goes, “But something bad has to happen to you.” We’re like, “Yeah, something bad will have to happen.” He goes, “I’ll be the dad. I’ll be the bad guy. You are the mom. I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill myself in front of you.” We’re all like, “Yeah, good idea. Great plan.”
It seems like The Little Soul and the Sun. Do you know that book?
Yeah. I don’t believe that this was haphazard. This was part of my path and destiny. When I was able to forgive my father, and I got sober, those two things then allowed the unfolding of other things that allowed me to finally claim what I do today and who I am today.
My core fear is fear of being a loser.
You said many people think they can’t move forward because they procrastinate or give other reasons. But nobody wants to face their fears. How do you discover what you are really afraid of? In your case, it’s pretty obvious.
Actually, it’s not. That’s the thing. If you ask somebody what they’re afraid of, most people go, “I’m afraid of bugs, spiders, heights.” I go, “Okay, those are physical fears. I want to talk about emotional fears.” Then they’ll say, “Fear of failure and fear of public speaking.” They’ll say those types of things. Those are all what I call fear responses.
Most of us don’t have a fear of rejection. We have deeper fears, and they’re the fears that kind of ignite all the other fears. My fears were not born when my father killed my mother. My fears were born when I was five, as yours are, as everybody’s is. We learn these survival mechanisms. We learn the way the world works.
During that time, I just want you to imagine that you hide a little part of yourself away, because it’s not safe to have that part. You can’t speak up because everybody gets mad, so you put that part away. Maybe when you’re happy, people go, “What are you so happy about?” You put that part away. Or you hear everybody talking about how stupid people are, so anytime you have a question, you put that away. We’re unconsciously and consciously taught and come into this world a little bit with our fears. They do research now that some of our fears are through our DNA.
My core fear is fear of being a loser. It doesn’t have to be an A to A like my father killed himself and killed my mother and loser. No, those don’t necessarily go perfectly together, but they work perfectly for me.
If I am “procrastinating,” which I don’t believe in on one level, we can talk about that too. So let’s say, “I’m afraid of rejection, I won’t go to a party, I won’t write my book, or I can’t change jobs” because of all these reasons. It’s not all those reasons. Again, we’re smart enough to know those aren’t the real reasons.
The reason is that we are afraid that we will look stupid, be rejected, be a loser, or be incompetent. Those are the deeper fears that produce the kind of fears we think are okay, like, “I can say I have a fear of rejection because many people have that fear of failure.” But we don’t want to say, “We’re afraid we’re stupid. We’re afraid we’re incompetent. We’re afraid we’re a loser.”
That’s the whole work I’ve developed, the wheel of fear and the wheel of freedom. The wheel of fear is how you operate when you have not surrendered to your destiny—when you are resistant, fighting, blaming, shaming, and beating yourself up, that’s all the wheel of fear stuff.
The wheel of freedom is when you’re aligned with your destiny, you’re aligned with your true nature, and you
are free to be who you’re born to be. We’re all here for a reason, so when we’re on the wheel of freedom, we can transcend blame and shame, beat ourselves up, and procrastinate. We can transcend all that.
What happens today is most people get caught up in a fear response like “Oh, it’s procrastination, if I just get rid of that.” They get caught on to that and think that if they can solve that, everything will change, and they will take a procrastination class. You’ll learn some great things. But then they go to bed that night or wake up three weeks from then and still feel the same way.
I love that. That is so true and so deep. Tell me a little more about procrastination. What are some fears behind procrastination that you discovered for your clients?
You have a wheel of fear that’s unique to you, and I have a wheel of fear that’s unique to me.
Identifying your fear is really important because it takes away the insanity. Sometimes, I think what I do is eliminate the question, “What’s wrong with me? Why do I do this?” I’m going to tell you exactly why you do this.
People shift like, “I thought it was this, but now I think it’s this.” No. You have one wheel of fear, one wheel of freedom, and it stays that way your entire life. And so when I am feeling, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I doing this? Why can’t I get going?” or any of those types of questions, I know exactly what to do, and I know exactly what’s happening to me.
The wheel of freedom is when you’re aligned with your destiny, you’re aligned with your true nature, and you are free to be who you’re born to be.
I know that my wheel of fear has been activated. I know that I’m having hesitation. It’s about the unknown. It’s about failure. It’s about success. We could talk about all those feelings, but my first step is to get on my wheel of freedom.
My wheel of freedom, because yours is going to be different than mine, my first is called the essential nature. The first part of the wheel of freedom that starts the wheel of freedom for me is to be authentic.
I would never talk about my parents. I would never talk about my alcoholism. “Be authentic? What are you crazy?” Because in my family, being authentic was the last thing you could be. “You’re too much. You’re too this. You’re too that. Stop doing this. Stop doing that. Being myself? No, you could not be yourself.”
Me being myself, me being authentic to my true nature. It’s like everyone talks about “Be authentic.” Being authentic for me, and for 10%, 20%, and 30% of the population, is the most frightening thing of all.
I think it’s more like 80%.
I’ll take it. Being authentic, we all say that we want to be and that we are, but being authentic is real subtle, deep work and a willingness to get to know yourself and understand how you process information and to fill yourself up with yourself between your bones and your skin. You’re filled up with yourself. You’re not filled up with your mom’s thoughts, your boyfriend’s thoughts, your spouse’s thoughts, your partner’s thoughts, or your grandmother’s thoughts. You’re not filled up with them anymore. You’re filled up with you. That takes time. It takes energy. It takes a choice. It takes a decision.
Yeah, it’s almost like my life’s mission in the last few years—becoming more and more authentic with myself, my audience, and my clients. Mostly with myself and the way I express myself in the world. And it is a process of discovery because I lived in many places.
Profound growth unfolds in our darkest nights, and ultimately, this is where we uncover the deepest beliefs that shape our journey.
I’m from Israel. I lived in Japan for three and a half years. I lived in LA. I lived in New York. I did this, I did that. In many places, I tried to adapt and be like other people, almost like a chameleon where I dim my light or change my colors to fit in just to rediscover over and over again that there is no way I can fit in anywhere by just being me.
That’s right.
I cannot satisfy anybody else. I cannot fit into anyone else’s way of life or value system just with my own. There is a fear with me about this full expression because I don’t want to be too much. I can be too much. I can be a lot.
My definition of success for the last 28 years is full self-expression. You can have a book. I have four books. I have three TV shows. I’ve done lots of things. I’ve won an Emmy. But the success is that I was myself.
