Mindful Inquiry and Better Questions with Ashnie Butler

In this episode of Our True Colors, Dr. Shawna Gann sits down with returning guest Ashnie Butler for a rich conversation about identity, belonging, and the power of asking better questions. Together with Marcel De Jonghe, they explore what happens when curiosity crosses the line into assumption, why certain questions about race and ethnicity can feel intrusive, and how mindful inquiry can help us communicate with more care, honesty, and connection. Ashnie shares how her lived experience as an Indian Trinidadian woman has shaped the way she understands identity, marginalization, and the layered realities of fitting in and standing out.

Drawing from her work as a certified professional diversity coach and creator of The Art of Mindful Inquiry, Ashnie offers a grounded framework for slowing down, noticing what is happening in the body, and asking questions from genuine curiosity instead of confirmation bias. This episode speaks directly to anyone navigating racial ambiguity, workplace tension, difficult conversations, or the everyday challenge of building authentic relationships across difference. One of the biggest takeaways is this: questions can either open a door or slam one shut. Mindful inquiry invites us to pause long enough to choose connection.

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Transcript

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Intro  0:00  
Welcome to our true colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in. You.

Shawna  0:23  
Well, hello, my friend. How are you doing over there on the other side of the world? Good.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:27  
I'm good. I got a haircut. This is so much easier to maintain looking good. Thank you very much.

Shawna  0:35  
I have a question for you, and it's kind of meta. Okay, it's a question about questions. Okay, the inception of all questions. We're not gonna go full inception. Just, just two layers, one and a half layers. The question is, when people ask you stuff about you they want to get to know you or whatever. Are there questions that ever set you off if you're asked a certain thing that just makes you feel completely uncomfortable, versus somebody who wants to get to know you, and they ask something that feels kind of benign.

Marcel De Jonghe  1:04  
That's a very, very, very good question. I'm naturally inquisitive, and I also want to respect how I find information. I'm a big believer of once you've said something, you can never get it back. So when I'm answering questions, I suppose I'm on the fly editing. How much do I want to give of myself? And I'm probably also known for giving too much.

Shawna  1:31  
Is that why the editing? Or is it just simply a privacy thing?

Marcel De Jonghe  1:35  
I think I've gone through few things in my life, and if I can help others by sharing what that meant to me, or how I was impacted by that, maybe they can learn from my mistakes. So just because I've experienced it doesn't mean I should wait for other people to experience it, but you can ask whether you're going to get an answer is a different question. Sometimes no answer is sufficient enough as an answer, isn't it? So back to that meta question. I've been asked questions which I felt were inappropriate for me at the time, or that person didn't have the right to ask the question of me because they don't know me enough. I owe them nothing. They don't owe me anything, you know, and information is power, and if I'm giving you that information, I've given you power over

Shawna  2:21  
me, yeah. And I would say, like, you're pretty generous, I think, with how you share things about you, but I think that's true about the power, and I can't wait to get into this conversation deeper with our guest. Her name is Ashnie Butler, and she was on in a previous season, and she's an amazing human being, and I'm so glad that she's here to share her brilliance with us, because she knows a whole lot of cool stuff. And I was like, I think that you could help us with a conversation that comes up a lot in the mixed race community, or just any sort of ethnic or cultural ambiguity space where people are naturally curious and they ask a lot of questions, but what happens is sometimes the way they ask questions or the actual question doesn't quite land right, or doesn't feel right. She happens to be someone who's great at asking questions and helping other people do the same. Ashnie is a certified professional diversity coach who supports individuals and organizations and communicating with clarity, deepening self awareness and building authentic connections through mindful inquiry. She was born on the island of Trinidad, with roots in Southern India, and she brings a multicultural lens shaped by migration history and the ways that culture lives in everyday life and in our bodies. With a background in American multicultural studies and experience as a union organizer focused on economic justice, Ashnie understands how systemic dynamics and interpersonal conflict often intersect. Her work draws from Theater of the Oppressed, non violent communication, courageous conversations, mindfulness and coaching, and she is the creator of The Art of mindful inquiry, a practice based framework that invites people to slow down, listen deeply, and ask questions that open pathways for clarity, courage and meaningful change. Ashnie, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so very excited for this conversation. I think people will get lots

Ashnie  4:15  
out of this. Well, thank you for having me. It's really exciting to be here with both of you?

Shawna  4:20  
I'm going to link your previous episode in the show notes so folks can go back and listen, but this particular conversation will sort of build on your professional experiences to get our conversation started, though, given the premise of the show, when people meet you for the first time, what do folks tend to be curious about?

Ashnie  4:37  
Yeah, it has changed through the years, and I think there was a time where someone that looked like me wasn't as common, and now there's more of an Indian population that's throughout the United States. So there's always been some confusion, or someone starting. To speak Spanish to me right away, often mistaken for being Latino. It's like your hair is really straight and it's long, but are you? Are you black? Are you what? What are you? And because I am Indian, but from the Caribbean, I have a Caribbean culture, so I hold myself in a different way than someone that identifies as Indian from India, and so it's a layer of confusion for folks. I guess my sassiness loses them a little bit.

Marcel De Jonghe  5:33  
I fear for how long this podcast is gonna be.

Shawna  5:36  
We're gonna be so good, we're gonna be we'll see. We'll see. I don't know that was interesting, because I was going to ask you, when you say you hold yourself differently than folks might be expecting, what that could look like. So other than sassiness, what else?

Ashnie  5:49  
The place I notice it the most is if I go into, say, a store, Indian store, where I believe I look like the people that are in that store, but they don't see me the same way. There was one author I read years and years ago that talked about a pep in your step when you're an Indian from the Caribbean, right? Like, there's just a different way that carry yourself, and the way I dress, you know, this is a pretty low neckline, you know, like, I'm not on the conservative end, although being covered up altogether has changed so much in Indian culture and my hair as well, my hair can get curly, and so when I wear it curly, then it's definitely not that very straight looking as it is right now. And that is also a difference, because it's kind of unkempt in when it's curly, which I love. But you know, there's our perspective that it's not neat and tidy and presentable. Wow.

Shawna  6:49  
Okay. Marcel, like the hair thing comes up so much, but I didn't expect it to in this particular conversation. It's interesting how texturism crosses so many different groups of folks. And the other thing that comes up a lot is the being assumed to be Latina. Latino people are like, Oh, you're not white, you aren't quite black. You must be this only other thing, so, wow.

Ashnie  7:13  
There was also a confusion with being Ethiopian, and that was from Ethiopian folks, which for me, was quite an honor, because I think Ethiopian folks are, like, incredibly gorgeous, but I've had people running through the airport to catch up with me to see if I was someone they knew from Ethiopia.

Shawna  7:31  
You said, like, when you go into a store and you you think, Hey, this is an Indian store. I feel like, I look like these folks, but they might have a different perspective. Do they ask you any questions about who you are? Or do other folks ask you questions about your identity?

Ashnie  7:46  
In Indian stores, it's mostly being ignored, really, yes and ignored, and just very curt for me, sometimes I just need to be around those smells and the items in there, and just, you know, walking through the store brings me back to home, and brings me back to the food I love. And you know that connection, but then the people around me are not that friendly, and so it's a real disconnect sometimes,

Marcel De Jonghe  8:18  
yeah, yeah. Why do you think that is? Is it because they can't put their finger on exactly who and where you're from? There's something familiar, but it's not quite what they know that part.

Ashnie  8:33  
Yeah. So I'm different. I don't fully belong there, you know, but I obviously, based on the things I'm picking up, I do have some knowledge about, you know, what's in here, and no one takes the time other places folks might take the time to ask, but not necessarily in Indian stores

Marcel De Jonghe  8:55  
open the UK, you will find that you go down to quite regional stores Like, say, Indian stores, and someone like myself walks in who isn't clearly Asian, I get treated quite well. I think it's because I'm such an anomaly. It is, what are you looking for? How can we help you? And I have a friend who's currently in India, and he's a white male, and he's like, I have never been treated this well in my life, I said, but then you see other people speak to other Asians and Indians, especially with sometimes disdain. It's such a weird way of how we cast this light upon it. And in India and South Asia especially, there is that caste

Ashnie  9:37  
system isn't there? That is exactly right? And because my skin is darker color, so that creates a layer too, of marginalization that exists, and then the difference between the UK and the United States as

Shawna  9:51  
well, yeah, oh yeah, there's lots of layers there. As you were growing up, how did you come to understand. Your own identity and culture and ancestry, even though you grew up in Trinidad

Marcel De Jonghe  10:06  
versus in Asia.

Ashnie  10:07  
Yeah, post Atlantic slavery, slave trade. The Brits went to India, and that's how my ancestors got to Trinidad. And so it's close to equal Afro Trinidadians and Indian Trinidadians is how I grew up. However, I grew up in the northern part of the country, very small country, but in the northern part which was predominantly Afro Trinidadians. So in my class, I was maybe one of three or four Indian identifying students in the class, and I was Christian. You know, I wasn't practicing Muslim or Hindu or any of the other religions that we tend to fit into in the box there. I was Christian. So I grew up with a fair amount of marginalization as an Indian person growing up in Trinidad. That was a new to me, because the dominance somewhat British appointed laid in hands of Afro Trinidadians, right? Because there was a split when the Brits left in Trinidad and who had the political power and who had the economic power. And so there's always been a place of fitting in and not fitting in for me as part of my experience, when I think of myself culturally, I am fully Trinidadian culture, right? But grew up in an Indian household and practice all the, you know, the food and everything that was there, right? Every household Trinidad, more or less, cooks all the food that is Trinidad based, right? There's not a separation. Indian folks tend to make more of the curries and the breads and stuff like that, and are at that point sort of better at it, I would say. But now it's hard to tell everybody's doing everything. So it's a big shift has happened that way Trinidad is made up in such a way that there are parts of the island where you possibly could have landed in India, it's hard to tell. You know, it's the huge flags and the ceremonial areas for pujas and and all of it just completely Indian folks living in some of the areas not fitting in wasn't necessarily foreign to me,

Shawna  12:25  
Just in different ways, different places, different circumstances. Yeah, I

Shawna  12:46  
I'm curious how much if any of your upbringing and your experiences have contributed to you going this path, helping folks with mindful inquiry

Ashnie  12:57  
and so on. Yeah, you know, I also grew up with the children are to be seen and not heard. So I feel like it took me a long time to feel like I had enough of a voice to ask questions, to inquire about things, but once I learned that, then there was no stopping. Yeah, so learning when that has an impact on someone. By seeing the impact on them through the years as I've grown and participated in different trainings and mindfulness practices and spiritual practices, you're recognizing that how you're asking questions is not necessarily getting to build a connection, which is why we ask questions, right? We're trying to get information, and we're building connections. And so I always think of questions as either opening a door or slamming a door. It goes nowhere if the door slams right, but if you can ask a question that invites someone in, then you're building a connection. And because of that, thread of children are to be seen and not heard. You know, the practice of saying things that just shuts things down, so no further inquiry about anything like, why did you ask that question? How did you feel about it? What's affecting you around that? None of that existed. So that's something that I had to develop because I really wanted to build relationships.

Marcel De Jonghe  14:24  
Can I ask then, how do you define the difference between mindful inquiry and some just being ignorant and intrusive with that question? Where's that fine line?

Shawna  14:37  
What's the difference between being curious and nosy? Yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  14:42  
How would you ask someone the question, which we've all heard that many times our life. So what are you with? What? How would you mindfully inquire about that?

Ashnie  14:51  
It depends on a few factors, who the person is, what the environment is I'm in, and. How I'm feeling in the moment, and that how you're feeling in the moment is really important. And that comes back to the mindfulness part, right? That you're really checking in with yourself to see how I'm feeling. That question has a lot of charge for a lot of people. And so the difference between someone being nosy and someone actually mindfully inquiring, really comes back to the person answering the question first as to how they respond. Sometimes, if I'm feeling generous, I'll say, What do you mean where I'm from, and put it back on that other person to explain themselves, right? And a question of, What do you mean? Where I'm from isn't attacking, isn't saying, Why are you so silly or stupid for asking me that question? Right? Or go educate yourself. Or the number of things that happens in our bodies when we're asked a question about our identity, especially our racial identity, that creates so much discomfort in our bodies and comes with so much charge and triggers, right? So being able to come back to yourself and understand like, oh yeah, this can have some heat in it, but what can I do in this moment to maintain who I am trying to be, right, which is someone who's building connection? I can simply say, What do you mean? And then they can say the answer, yeah, and then you say, I didn't catch that.

Shawna  16:31  
Language is that, yeah. I mean, it is true. Sometimes when you respond with an intelligent response that isn't a reaction to a shocking question, it can actually throw the person to maybe they're not sure how you would react. I would say that I haven't really been asked where I'm from, but I have been asked the What are you question? And I've answered that so many different ways over the many decades of my life, it's been I'm a person or I'm an American, because right, not only does the context matter as to where I'm at, like, I lived overseas. So, you know, I was never asked, What are you when I lived abroad, but in the US, you know, I would sort of fluctuate between a smart ass answer, like I'm a human to like, well, I know that they really want to know what my racial background is, and then it's like this whole explanation, because mine's like, I'm not biracial. So it's not like an easy answer, either, and it can be kind of fatiguing, honestly to answer.

Ashnie  17:26  
It's a gift to the other person to allow them to explore what it is they're asking. It allows them to look at, if, if they're willing to look at why am I asking that question? What is it I see that I am making assumptions about you know, because what does it matter? If you're just connecting where each person is from, it doesn't really matter. But what happens is an assumption is made, or that person is different, or they must be from somewhere else, or they're acting different.

Shawna  17:59  
So like the question, you would say is likely them trying to validate or confirm something they've already filled up in their mind,

Marcel De Jonghe  18:07  
build and conscious bias? Yes,

Shawna  18:11  
we've used the term mindful inquiry on the surface. It might seem like pretty easy to define, but I think it would be helpful for folks to know what that really means, especially in the work that you do. Could you talk about what mindful inquiry is?

Ashnie  18:27  
So a short answer is, it's about coming back to yourself and really understanding where you are in a given moment, being able to assess Am I feeling happy? Sad, grateful, frustrated, annoyed, am I too hot? And it's really comes back to the body. It's an embodied practice, right? So understanding that being mindful of where you're at at the moment, and in that process, you keep learning layers and layers about yourself, mostly about how you react to what someone's saying or a situation, and that has a long thread of, why am I reacting that way? Is it something from my childhood? Is it something from my job? It's coming from somewhere. And as you continue to allow yourself to deepen in your what I would call practice, then you learn more about yourself. And a key piece of it is not just responding, it's taking a pause to like and you don't even have to know, but if you take that pause, you're like something is stirring in there. It's stirring

Shawna  19:37  
so maybe even just identifying that something's happening, even if you haven't identified what that

Ashnie  19:42  
something is correct, and you can participate in the conversation from that place. You can say, I hear your question and something is going on in me and I don't quite know what it is. I just need a second to kind of fully understand what's happening so I can respond to you from a place of connection.

Shawna  19:59  
Mm. I love that you said that. I think a lot of folks, I don't know if it's how we're socialized or whatever, but I think people forget that it's okay to take a pause. Like, I think we feel a pressure to fill space so much that we do react without taking a pause and but then to know it's actually okay to do that. Like, it's okay to say, I need a second. Recently, I was traveling, and one of these days of travel was more stressful than others, and my way of thinking was like doing the spiral, oh, here we go. Here we go. And then I stopped, and I was like, Wait a second. I'm jet lagged. I'm probably tired. This is probably impacting me more than it would if I weren't tired. And maybe once I take a nap or whatever, I can come back and think about this a different way. And so that was a moment where I was able to say, like, hold on, a second before I do the freak out spiral thing. What's going on? I'm sleepy. It's like, when you have a little kid and the kid is throwing a tantrum, and you're like, wait, they're hungry, they're sleepy, they're uncomfortable, they're too hot, like you said, or whatever. And I think because we're adults, we forget to do that.

Ashnie  21:04  
Yeah, there's a lot of pressure, like you're saying, to fill the space. And communication means just talking back and forth, right? Well, that usually means no one's listening. You're just waiting to respond, you know? And sometimes you interrupt someone to respond even rather than just taking that time to fully listen to what they're saying. Because what we've trained to do is, as soon as you hear someone say something, you build an association in your mind, right? And you want to be able to share that right away. And so the person finishes saying what they're saying, and you jump into your own story, and the person in front of you will do a few things, either follow along, or they're like, Oh, well, okay, they didn't hear me. They're not paying attention. They don't care, you know. And as a result, disconnect happens. And so there's not a checking in to say, Are you complete? You know. Another good question is, Do you need anything from me, or did you just need to tell me that, you know,

Marcel De Jonghe  22:02  
few years ago, I had a colleague who would come every Monday to me and complain about their weekend, about their partner with everything, and I'd listen. And then one day later in the week, I asked them a question about what was, you know, something, okay, you know, you said this, and they were shocked that I remembered and that I listened and retained it. All they needed was a wall to throw their issues up. But after that moment, I realized, okay, this relationship is I sit here, I listen and probably don't even need to actually retain this. For them, they just need a place to vent.

Ashnie  22:41  
We've learned a lot of mixed messages about what it means to be a friend or build connections, and it's been steeped in, you know, our very individualistic way of being so that has so many layers to it in this country, and it's all about me. So I'll just bring it back to me and tell you about that.

Shawna  23:03  
I wonder, why? Like, what is it? What's our show and tell mentality, like we just are so eager. Why do we do that? And not everybody does, but many people do.

Ashnie  23:13  
So, circling back to what mindfulness is, when you feel that excitement, you can notice that for yourself and just go, Whoa. Look at that. I'm so excited about what they're saying, and is it appropriate for me to then share my story, or do they need the space so it's an always checking in to see where you are in the moment, in an exchange,

Marcel De Jonghe  23:34  
I think in answer to your question as well. Shauna, we all are the main character in our stories. I think there's a bit of an epiphany in our lives. The first time you realize everybody else feels exactly the same. Wait, was that you talking about sonder? Yes, yay, yay. And that helps me so much, because I'm like, I get I kid in a candy shop. Someone says something a lot. There's a very tenuous link to something I could talk about because I'm an eager beaver and have multiple hobbies and things which I want to share with you. But hold on, this is about them. They are the most important thing in their mind. And one of us need to recognize that. Do you

Shawna  24:15  
know that? Ashnie, sonder, I don't Marcel. Do you mind just kind of explaining it.

Marcel De Jonghe  24:21  
Yeah, so sonder is the realization that everybody person to the left right view walking down the street has their own unique world. We believe ourselves to be the most important person in our world, right? Because we can only see it from our perception. When you suddenly look at someone else and think they've got all the same kind of thoughts depth as myself. They've got family issues. They might be worrying about what they need to be doing when they get home. It's as important as my thoughts the world, suddenly I find blossoms. Oh, my God. There are like 8 billion people on this planet, and. And all of them are the movie stuff or their own movie, right? And I remember it happening once to myself just thinking, Okay, well, I'm sat gonna miss my train. This is the most important thing in the world. Nothing else is more important than this. Oh, my Lord. Why is no one else moving out of my way move and then to me, they know nothing about me and how I feel. They're insignificant to my story. I must be exactly the same to them, so I just look like a moron who rude, who's trying to get past them, when, in fact, I'm like, Oh my God, I've got a cape on. I must get home because they don't understand. I've got to make sure that my daughter sees me before she goes to bed. They're like, what an ignorant kit. And sonder just gives you that opening to go, Oh my lord Yes. Okay, everybody is the main character in their own story.

Shawna  25:52  
A great way to build empathy when you realize that, yeah, yes, I have a question about the discomfort that folks might feel sometimes, like, what do you notice about the kinds of questions that people ask when they do notice like, ugh, I'm feeling tense. I disagree with this person, or they're just uncomfortable because, like, right now, just to be real, I'm just gonna take us out of our own little conversation here for a minute and think about what's happening in the world and in our various parts of the world, where there's a lot of social, political stuff going on that just makes people feel tense. Have you noticed, like, how do people ask one another things when they are feeling that tension or discomfort?

Ashnie  26:36  
You know what I've noticed, mostly, what's happening right now is a lot of feeling helpless and I don't know how to make sense of things. How do I make sense of it? Is the question, because nobody can fully make sense of what's happening altogether, right? Not that we aren't aware that this has been building and growing for a while, and this is where we're at right now based on how things have unfold in our history. So there's that kind of general knowledge for those of us who have been paying attention for a long time, are aware of the history, and we're aware of how things have changed politically, and also based on our identity, what we've had to live through. Right some of us have had different experiences based on our racial identity gender, and so there are ways in which we grasp certain things. And then there are folks who haven't had to live through being uncomfortable and being marginalized based on their racial identity. And so they're sitting in a place of what is happening. I don't know what's happening. How do I figure this out? What do I do? A lot of those questions are happening right now, and you don't actually have to know all of the answers right now, because you're you're asking questions that all of the answers is not knowable in the one question you're asking. So how do you return to yourself and gain an awareness of what's creating the discomfort? Is it that you're afraid for your safety? Is it that you're afraid for the safety of someone you love? Is it that you're just scared because you don't fully understand, like, what is it you're afraid of in this moment, and when you notice what you're afraid of in this moment, you can also look around and see, am I in a safe house? Is my house warm? Do I have food? Are my children safe? Are my friends safe? Right? So then you kind of start making sense of what your world actually is. So you can have a sense of, oh yeah, my body is safe right now. My body might not be safe in a couple hours, but in this moment, it's safe, so I don't have to freak out about a couple hours from now. I can be here now, and that gives a clearer insight as how to take care of if it's possible that you can walk into the next couple hours with some More groundedness and safety.

Shawna  29:21  
I imagine some of this extends to the workplace for people too.

Ashnie  29:25  
Absolutely, as an individual, in a workplace where you don't necessarily feel included or belong there, there's for a myriad of reasons that's happening. Could be gender, could be age, you know could be race. Could just combination, a combination, exactly layered, stuck right, and you never feel like your voice is being heard. So how do you understand the layers of things that happens in your body and how you feel about it, and understand exactly what is happening? Around you why that is the situation. Some of it's within your control, and some of it's not. Maybe a lot of it's not in your control. But you can get clear for yourself, like, is this a place? There's movement if I ask better questions, or is this a place, no matter how I approach this situation, the doors aren't going to open.

Marcel De Jonghe  30:22  
Yeah. So workplace the prickly place to be in, right? You know, and every organization wished they had a magic wand to stop grievances, issues arising. If you were to give every single organization just one silver bullet and tell them, this is the one thing you can do to really reduce or stop a necessary conflict? What would that be? There isn't one.

Ashnie  30:49  
I don't think there is one magic bullet for any organization. I think an honest assessment to understand the dynamics of what's happening in the place of why people feel one way or the other, they belong or they don't belong, whose voice is elevated, whose voice is marginalized, that awareness can only come through a really detailed self assessment with a lot of honesty, and then looking at where there are the pitfalls, and then addressing those. I think it's a practice again, of continually working towards change. We're humans. That's the thing, like you said, right? Each and every one is the star of our own story. So you put together an organization and you have all these little stars running around, and maybe no one's talking to each other and no one's understanding each other. Why is the single mom late three times a week? And nobody's saying, oh my god, do you have childcare? Do you have what you need to get you here? No one's asking those questions, right? They're just like, she's always late, making assumptions, looking for that on everyone.

Marcel De Jonghe  31:54  
I think the one thing which I did get from that though Ashnie was the honesty part. I think before you do anything else, the company either needs to be able to be honest with itself and admit there's a problem. Some companies will no, no, it's not us. It's not us. It's it's yes, we're losing people, left, right and center are attrition bombing, but it's not the company. But you just need to say, well, you need to be honest, and you need to create safe spaces for people to be able to tell you what is going wrong and without any repercussions. You know that has to be your grounding right before you can build anything else.

Ashnie  32:32  
Modesty and transparency,

Shawna  32:34  
which I think is difficult, not just for organizations, but for individuals. Sometimes too, like, there are times I have to face myself and be like, Oh, damn it. I don't I don't like this. I don't want to whatever, but to be honest with oneself is pretty darn hard. So you can imagine, yeah, when you can distribute the responsibility among people in an organization, how much more difficult it is

Ashnie  32:56  
exactly sometimes you find yourself really disagreeing with someone else you know, be it a family member or a friend or something, and you're really having that conflict, and one of the tools to engage is, what if what they're saying is true about me? No, say it needs so what? What if I approach it that way? To see what's actually there that belongs to me. It's quite free.

Marcel De Jonghe  33:23  
Favorite one is when you tell someone that they're very quick to anger or they're very quick to defend themselves, and then they instantly go into defense mode, telling you how they're not and that they're not happy with you. I was literally me setting you up, but they still don't see it.

Ashnie  33:40  
It's hard, man, it is hard. It's really hard, right? And that's what this work is about. Is self reflection, be it an individual or an organization. How do you reflect?

Speaker 1  34:02  
You so

Shawna  34:09  
tell us about what you do. How do you work with folks with the art of mindful inquiry?

Ashnie  34:15  
Yeah, if you're an individual, what if your identities puts you in the position that you're in, being fully transparent, going through the layers of being fully transparent about who you are in a given situation, right?

Shawna  34:29  
And then can I clarify? Do you mean being transparent with oneself?

Ashnie  34:32  
Yeah, oneself first, for in the individual with organization, it's more of the transparency. If you have a team or a board or a committee of some kind being transparent about, okay, we come in here and we say, we want everybody's voices to be heard, and yet, when we leave, only two people have made the decision. What is happening here? What is it we're not doing? How are we not. Listening. Why are they not speaking up? Is it unsafe? Do they feel targeted when they speak up? What is actually happening, right? So full transparency about that, and then the understanding of coming back to yourself to know what's going on inside of you, you have to understand that, what is your natural tendencies, and how is it positive in the situation, or how is it hindering the situation? And then being able to understand how to listen listen is really important. Right? To be able to not listen, to respond or not listen to be right? Because often we're asking a question to get confirmation of what we're thinking. But how to ask a really honest, curious question? Is your question steeped in curiosity, or is it steeped in confirmation? So understanding that is helpful. So there are six parts to this, all the way to putting it into action, being able to go out into the world or in the meeting and be able to enact being mindful, being aware, listening to yourself first before you respond, and then being responsive to the person in front of you by listening. It's like the greatest gift you can give someone is your full attention. We're not well practiced at that right to be fully present and say, I hear you giving them time to say, I'm complete in what I was saying, you know? And then if you're unclear, asking a question rather than making an assumption. Because that's where we really get caught, right? Is all these so we run around all day long, making assumptions about all kinds of things, right? You really ask. So I wasn't clear about when you said X, can you say more about that? You know? Or, Wow, I was really uncomfortable with this. Can you say more about that? I don't think your intention was to make me uncomfortable, but I felt it, and you're responsible for how you feel. Someone could say something that makes you uncomfortable, but you're responsible for understanding that your discomfort is not theirs. And if you need clarity, to ask for it directly, I bet that's a tough one too.

Marcel De Jonghe  37:14  
Absolutely. You mentioned about power. You said like your CEO, your white male who has this power, which is, they're born with it, privilege can be referred to as multiple things. How do you genuinely get people to acknowledge those without feeling threatened? Because I feel like you put the word white privilege out there into a large amount of audiences, and the first thing people want to do is defend that. Yeah. How do you bring that out and say, well, but it exists.

Ashnie  37:45  
You know, this might not be a popular thing. I'm about to say. Actually, I align with my my friend Shauna here, using those kinds of words, does not support change. It doesn't support growth, and it doesn't support awareness. Because mostly the only thing that happens is someone feels attacked, agreed, and then when you feel attacked, you're shutting down. You're not hearing anything else, you're not opening it up. But if you invite people into self inquiry, they're not going to shut themselves down from themselves, right? And you ask them how they feel about a particular situation. You can ask them, when you hear the term white privilege, what comes up for you, what do you understand about it? Right? You can explore it without putting people in categories. And I think that's one of the place that has been challenging and has kind of hindered work in the DEI space, is these categories that we have that we throw out there willy nilly sometimes, and people just shut down, right? And they then don't feel a part of and sometimes they have to work a little harder in the organizational space to encourage other voices. And you can say things like that. You can say, you know, there are some voices in this room that usually don't have a platform, usually don't get to speak, and so as a facilitator, I'm going to make some room for that. So you know that that's what I'm doing, right? And so if I ask you to hold off for a minute, I'm going to invite this person to speak. Know that that's where it's coming from. It is my job as a facilitator to make sure everyone in here has an opportunity to share.

Marcel De Jonghe  39:25  
Well, I've made that mistake. Historically, I've actually looked at how privilege can be used as a superpower. You might have white privilege, but you have two ways of using it. You can either use it to your advantage or use it to break down barriers for the people. So like you said, if you're in a room and you recognize that you have the audience because everyone will listen to you, then you use that to bring the quieter voices in. I've done it before where I've seen the users recognize that they have the power and go actually I want to hear from you, because you don't normally speak. Talk.

Shawna  40:16  
Ashley, I wanted to ask you who might be the best audiences for this program that you do, like, Huh? That's for me. I could use this. I could learn how to ask better questions and practice mindful inquiry.

Ashnie  40:29  
If someone's interested in understanding how they communicate and how they refine their communication, this is really good. Could work for them. It's really good for organizations who are really wanting to create more culture change, you know, we didn't learn how to think about the person in front of us and be fully present for them, you know? So it's really, I think it's a gift that you can give yourself, right?

Shawna  40:56  
And I also think about people who might have neurodivergent identities that could really benefit from practices like this too. Because some folks, we might be seeing ourselves as the main character of our movie, and some of us don't mean to see ourselves as the main character the movie, but nevertheless, need the practice to, you know, consider others and to have true connection, right? Because if you're not, if you're not thinking of the others, it's going to do just the opposite of what you said this is about, which is dialog for connection. So gotcha, yeah,

Ashnie  41:27  
you know, I just, I want folks to start engaging, to really be able to feel into themselves that I can't, you know, iterate that enough, right? Like it's just taking that time before you respond, to be able to understand what's happening in your body, and to know that that it is okay we need each other, and we need to be able to communicate in an honest way so that we can build those relationships and connections you SG,

Shawna  42:12  
well, listen, before we close, there's a new thing we do on The Season of Our true colors. I just reached into the box for the archive of mixed messages, and I'm just going to randomly pick one out here, Ashnie, and I'd love for you to respond to it. Marcel, I'll ask you to respond as well. Here we go. It says this, it's really easy to get this idea in your head that this was a long time ago and things are different now. What comes

Marcel De Jonghe  42:39  
up for you when you hear that quote,

Ashnie  42:43  
that it's a perspective of someone with privilege, that there's a forgetting that happens, that because one's life isn't still at the mercy of what's happened, and that it's not still affecting them in many areas of their life, and so they can be, you know, oh, that was such a long time ago. Don't worry about that anymore, when it's still present daily. What about you? Marcel, to me, it's

Marcel De Jonghe  43:13  
just thinking about what time actually is. For a lot of people, it differs. Time is, yes, it might be a linear concept, but I'm not going to go to time travel, don't we? It's more to do with some people. 10 years ago was there yesterday, 50 years ago. Now, if you've been on this earth for 80 years, 50 years ago isn't actually that long ago. Comparative someone who is myself, I'm in my 40s. 50 years ago, I wasn't even thought of. So it's unfair to use that as an argument and a way to turn around and say, Well, that was in the past. Doesn't doesn't matter. We really want to bring that up. Over the last 100 years, I've really been able to vote only in the last 4050, years, some women were able to get bank accounts without their husband co signing. You know, just because time, time is a healer, but those scars persist. If you've been cut, you have been cut, and I think if we don't learn from the past, we are asking ourselves to repeat it. We're humans. We're fickle, foolish. We don't always learn from our mistakes.

Shawna  44:19  
Yeah, don't have to feel good about the past, but we should learn from it. We need to know the truth well.

Shawna  44:41  
Thank you both for this conversation. Ashnie, I just truly appreciate what you offer in this space. Where can folks find you if they want to learn more about the art of mindful inquiry?

Ashnie  44:53  
Yeah, please do find me that inner work, outer play. Just punch that in. I'll pop right up.

Shawna  45:00  
Sweet, and I'll put a link in the show notes for folks. Too.

Ashnie  45:03  
Awesome. Thank you. And very soon, I'll be launching a free info session for the art of mindful inquiry that will be open for folks to get a sampling of it.

Shawna  45:15  
I'll become that. Thank you so much. Y'all. I really appreciate the conversation. As always, I've learned so much.

Ashnie  45:22  
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity take care.

Shawna  45:36  
What a rich conversation. I really appreciated Ashnie's reminder that mindful inquiry starts with self awareness, pausing, noticing what's happening in our bodies, and getting honest about whether we're asking questions from curiosity or from assumption. She also gave us a powerful framework to think about how questions can either open a door or slam one shut. That idea has stayed with me, particularly in a world where we are always navigating identity, and especially one in which people are trying to figure out those of us who are a bit racially ambiguous. And besides that, there's a lot of tension going on in the world right now. It's an uncertain time, so having a framework like this can really help us all. You can learn more about Ashnie and her work through the link in the show notes. Find her at inner work, outer play, and be sure to keep an eye out for her upcoming free info session on the art of mindful inquiry. And while you're there, check out the show notes for more ways to stay connected with me. You can always reach out, share your thoughts and keep the conversation going on social or directly with me. And also visit true culture consulting.com to learn more about my work and to sign up for updates about my upcoming book. Mixed signals until next time, stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon. You

Intro  47:08  
You've been listening to our true colors. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai