Going With The Flow: Making A Pivot When Life Doesn’t Go Your Way

Jul 17, 2020

MGU 96| Learning To Pivot

 

Life seldom goes our way, especially now that we’re in Mercury retrograde. Whenever we try to impose our will on it, it quickly shows us how illusory our beliefs of control and certainty are. In these times, it is very appropriate to learn how to pivot our plans, go with the flow, and change things at the moment. These are just some of the things Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen talk about in this Friday episode. In a very tangential yet highly enlightening conversation, they talk about many things, including some of their guests in past episodes like Adam Yasmin and Paul Jarvis, and their horrifying experiences in water sliding and skydiving. Also of interest are their conversations on whether anxiety can make you itch, how to manifest someone to contact you in the middle of Mercury retrograde, and the amazing products at Living Libations.

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Listen to the podcast here


 

Going With The Flow: Making A Pivot When Life Doesn’t Go Your Way

This might be our very first Friday without a guest. It’s interesting if you, the reader, believes or is intrigued by Mercury in retrograde. I wonder if that’s at play because we finally have gotten to flow but previous to that, we are in Mercury retrograde. It ends on July 11th, 2020. I wonder if it’s a Mercury in retrograde thing because it felt so challenging to book people, don’t you think, Jason? The miscommunications, the people rescheduling and people that don’t have equipment that works well or access to good Wi-Fi. The amount of challenges we have to overcome in order to get a guest on the show, not to mention that previous to COVID, we were doing every single guest episode in-person. Jason, don’t you think that looking back, it felt so much work? That was a lot of energy that went into scheduling to see somebody in person and then the energy that it takes to be with another person in-person. Now that we’re doing this virtually, are we ever going to go back to that?

It’s required so much pivoting, changing, and flexibility. This retrograde period, Whitney, has definitely been an intensification of communication breakdowns, assumptions, not communicating clearly, or talking to other people about lack of clear communication. Beyond that, it’s been interesting, not only in our business dealings and my personal life but other people around me. People’s refrigerators going out, strange checks going missing, and my Wi-Fi not working well. You and I had a miscommunication around some work duties because we are co-owners and co-creators of the Wellevatr brand. That is the progenitor and the brand that overarches this show.

I liked that word progenitor. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard that before.

One of the things I take pride in on this show and life in general, Whitney is breaking out some big vocabulary words, not for the sake of big vocabulary words of, “Look at my big words.” I like having a fluid, expansive vocabulary. I’m going to bust out those big Scrabble words from time-to-time. I used to kick asses Scrabble, by the way. I haven’t played Scrabble for a long time.

Maybe you should.

I would beat people’s asses and wipe the floor. If we were to ever play Scrabble for money, you all better bring dollars.

That’d be a creative business idea. I bet you there’s a virtual Scrabble game. There’s got to be. I’m surprised you haven’t done that during COVID. I invited you to do game night and it hasn’t worked out yet. Our intention is to flow in ways that we may not expect as we usually do with the show. What we’re going to start off with is a behind the scenes look at how we run This Might Get Uncomfortable and it’s constantly changing. We have only been doing the show for about several months. We’re also about to hit 100 episodes, which is exciting. This is our 96 episode and 100 will be here before we know it, which is cool. It’s nice to hit those milestones. It’s fascinating because even though we launched This Might Get Uncomfortable in December 2019, we started doing it way before that. I’m trying to think off the top of my head. Do you remember the first month that we started? Was it in 2019 or was it in 2018, Jason?

It might have been late 2018 as far as the intro episodes go. A little bit of backstory to go way back. We formed our brand, Wellevatr, at the beginning of 2018. The concept of it, Whitney and I, as we do like to brainstorm a lot of creative ideas, names and concepts before we choose one. We did the same process with choosing the name of This Might Get Uncomfortable as we did with Wellevatr. We like to kick around ideas, brainstorm and consider things dutifully before we make a decision. Wellevatr itself has been around since the beginning of 2018. I believe, Whitney, we started doing some of the first episodes at the end of 2018, but I remember topically in terms of some of the first episodes about relationships. I always judge by who I was dating at that time.

How many different women have you dated since we started?

I wanted to give an accurate answer. It’s been four people that I have dated over the course of the formation of Wellevatr in the launch of the show. A little bit of behind the scenes that Whitney mentioned, we front-loaded before we released this show publicly. We had close to 30 episodes, Whitney. How many was it?

I don’t remember. That feels like an eternity ago. It’s amazing because the more you record episodes, even a few episodes back feels like a blur. I wanted to dig into the behind the scenes of recording with guests though. I hope this is interesting to anyone reading. Some people I’m hearing is reading the blog because they like us, which is nice. Some people are reading because of the topics or the guests that we bring on. We’re always trying to learn more about you. We created a survey that you can fill out at Podcast.Wellevatr.com/Survey or you can go to the show notes for this episode to fill it out because we’re always looking for ways to refine our process and the guests that we bring on. We’re curious about you, the readers, and what you want.

What do you want to read more of less of, all of that? At the end of every show, we always give you some opportunities to connect with us so we’ll bring that up again. I say that because I want to share the behind the scenes for potentially other podcasters. I found this incredible resource that allows podcasters to connect with one another, network, and be on each other’s shows. It was fascinating to me because it’s interesting how most of our guests we’ve had on the show are people that we know. Jason Green, who is one of, if not, the only person we’ve had on twice. Is he the only person we’ve had on the show twice so far, Jason?

We’ve threatened to have other meetings. I said it to be funny. With Justin Polgar, Adam Yasmin and some of the other guests we’ve been like, “We need to go deeper. We haven’t gone deep enough.” Jason Green talking about attachment styles and dating during COVID-19. I’ve received a lot of benefits from all of our guests but in particular romantically, in terms of communication and taking a good deep look at how I’m showing up in a relationship. I feel like Jason Green’s episodes have given me a lot. He’s provided me a lot of perspectives.

Clearly, to other people, because the first time that he came on the show was our number one episode by a long slide, is that the right term?

No. It’s a landslide. Along slide is the one that when you go to the waterpark, it’s high off the ground, and you’re scared to ride it. Speaking of which, as a complete aside, scariest water slot I ever went on was one called Der Stuka at Wet ‘n Wild in Florida. At that time, it was the tallest water slide in the world to the point that when you went down the water slide, your body would come slightly off of the water slide because of the lack of gravity at that height. It was terrifying.

It is appropriate right now to learn how to pivot our plans, go with the flow, and change things at the moment. Share on X

Somehow, somebody is going to find in this show because you mentioned that specific water slide. That’s going to show up in Google Analytics at some point but I’ve definitely heard you shared that before. It might’ve been on an episode and it’s funny.

About Der Stuka?

Yes.

Anything that sounds menacing. It even sounds like an evil German like, “You will ride Der Stuka and you will shit on your pants.” I literally thought I was going to crap in my board shorts. I didn’t because I’m a grown man.

Is it one of those water slides where you go straight down?

Correct.

I went on one of those and had an equally traumatizing experience. I don’t know if I’ve been on another one since. It’s one of those things where as soon as I hear the name, I’ll embody more of the feelings of fear that I had. I remember I was twelve years old going to the local water park. It was in New Hampshire. I grew up in Massachusetts and it was right over the border in New Hampshire, Water Country, that’s the name.

Water Country sounds like a place that would have crappy animatronic, anthropomorphic animals like Chuck E. Cheese with an eyeball hanging out and an arm hanging off and they’re like, “Welcome to Water Country, we’re going to make you crap your pants.”

You got the jingle right because it wasn’t the jingle but it had a little bit of a twang sound to it but the jingle went, “Water Country, Water Country, have some fun.” There was a whole jingle before that, but it worked on me because I wanted to go to Water Country. I was obsessed with water parks. This is where we go on major tangents during the show. I had no idea this was going to come up. Do you know what I think it was called? I’m going to go double-check as you’re talking Jason. I don’t know why this is making me laugh. As a side note reminds me of a good TikTok I saw. I’ve seen this a couple of times because on TikTok, people tend to do their own versions and outdo each other. First, let me tell you the name of the water slide, then I’ll tell you the TikTok story so I don’t forget. The name of the waterslide I’m fairly certain was called Geronimo.

That’s what they want you to scream as you’re dropping 175 feet to your death.

I’m going to look up both waterslides and see if they were the same height. Yours is called Der Stuka. You look it up and then I’ll look up. I think it was called Geronimo at Water Country. The TikTok video is funny and this will make you laugh too, Jason. Who knew we are going to talk about this on the show? This has nothing to do with wellbeing but I suppose going to a park is part of wellbeing. It certainly brought me a lot of joy growing up even though as an adult, I always hear people talking about how dirty, full of chlorine, and all the negative health sides of going to a water park, which is unfortunate because of the amount of joy they can bring you. This TikTok video is people parroting when you would go to a water park and you would get to the top, you’d have to wait for the lifeguard to give the thumbs up for you to go down the slide. Remember that, Jason?

I do remember that.

It always felt incredibly confusing. The video I’m thinking of is this guy playing himself as a little kid sitting at the top of the waterslide and he keeps looking at the lifeguard for the right signal to go down the slide but the lifeguard keeps making confusing signal. It’s funny. It’s not funny when I talk about it and describe it. As long as TikTok doesn’t get banned. There’s been a threat from our president of banning TikTok. Although I will link to a great article that I read on CNN about some of, not just pros and cons of TikTok from a privacy standpoint, but also what would the ramifications be. There’s a lot of sensationalism going around about TikTok. Some people want to jump on the bandwagon that TikTok is this horrible place that steals all your data, it’s collecting all your data. I might be biased. I don’t think it’s any worse than Facebook is because other social media platforms also collect a lot of our information and we’re giving out a lot of our privacy as we talked about with Paul Jarvis on his guest episode. Things with TikTok are up in the air but I’m hoping that it will remain because it brings me a lot of joy. Jason, what did you find?

Two things. First of all, going back to the waterslide. Der Stuka is 76 feet high. That doesn’t seem like that many, but when you consider the math that a story of a typical building code is about 14 feet, that means from the top of this waterslide to the bottom, it’s close to five and a half storey. Walk by a building, look at a 5.5 to 6 storey building, and then imagine sliding in a near completely 90-degree angle vertically down into a pool of filthy tepid water, it becomes terrifying. I can assure you, 76 feet on a slippery waterslide is horrifying. There are some POV videos that people have taken. If you have any fear of heights as I do, one of the things I’ve dealt with ever since I was a kid, I am terrified of heights which is one reason, Whitney, we go over to back to the title of this show, I have willfully chosen to my entire life to do things like the Demon Drop, the Magnum XL-500, 5,000, 5 million at Cedar Point. I’ve done skydiving and Der Stuka.

Knowing that I have a terror of heights, I have willfully chosen to do things to attempt to conquer that fear of heights. I have not conquered the fear of heights. When I went skydiving, when I’ve done the Magnum XL 5,000, when I’ve done the Der Stuka, I feel like I’m going to crap my fucking pants every single time. It doesn’t go away, but it does build my confidence in knowing that I can be scared to death literally of something like heights or use that as a metaphor for anything in life. Even though I’m scared of it, I can still choose to engage with it and do it. On a higher spiritual or mental level, I’ve done these things, not to conquer them because my fear of heights isn’t gone, but knowing that I can choose to act and do something even in spite of being afraid of it.

We could wrap up this episode right there, although we did promise some behind the scenes. Before we get there, I don’t know if you found this. First of all, I can’t believe that I remember the name of that water slide. That was completely off the top of my head. It’s crazy when we think about all these memories that we have stored. I went to the Water Country a couple of times in my life. I don’t even know if it’s still open. I haven’t checked yet but it is in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which Jason and I went to. It’s an amazing, incredible part of New Hampshire. I love visiting there and I forgot that it was there. If Water Country is still open, you like water parks, and you’re allowed to go back to water parks, I suppose it’ll be interesting to see if those will even open ever, which is sad to think about.

I’m impressed, Jason. It seems like you’ve thought about your waterslide a lot in your life, but I have only thought about the feeling of going down that waterslide. I didn’t know that I still remembered the name. I want to give myself a little pat in the back and encourage you, readers, what can you pull out of your memory vault? Lastly, Jason, I will say that to compare, Geronimo is only 58 feet. Considering the terror, I recall going down that waterslide in my early teens, I imagine yours was scary at 75. Is that what you said?

It’s 76 feet.

That’s almost 20 feet higher.

The other thing too was, as I was approaching the waterslide, there was a boy who might’ve been between age 10 and 12 if I had to guess. I’m approaching and I see his body dropping. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs, flailing his arms and legs as if he is trying to save his life. I thought, “Why am I doing this again?” I’m a glutton for punishment.

How old were you?

I was 26 at that time. I saw this kid screaming for his life. Of course, the ego comes in. I’m like, “I’m a 26-year-old.”

Who were you with? Were you trying to impress a girl or something?

No, I already had a long-term partner. We were living in New York at that time. We drove with Gary Yourofsky, and the three of us went to this water park. We drove all the way from New York City to Florida, to Wet ‘n Wild to do Der Stuka. It was a road trip specifically to do Der Stuka. When you get to the top of Der Stuka, there’s not one waterslide, Whitney, there are two. Here’s the difference. The waterslide on the left is where you have to push yourself, use your own momentum to go over the precipice and it is so high and so much at a 90-degree angle, you cannot see the bottom of the slide. That’s how high and how vertical it is. To the right, there’s a trap door where there is a lifeguard operating the trap door who does not tell you when he’s opening the trap door.

MGU 96| Learning To Pivot

Learning To Pivot: If we resist reality or try to impose our will on life, life will show us that expectations, control, and certainty are all illusions.

 

I feel like you showed me a video of this. This is all coming back to me. I know you’ve told me this story and it may or may not be in a previous episode.

The interesting thing about this is on the left, you are choosing to physically push yourself, even though every cell in your body is telling you do not push. Whereas on the right, you are giving your fate over to the will and the timing of the lifeguard who presses a button, the trapdoor drops from underneath you, and you go down the slide. Can you guess which one I chose?

No.

I chose to push myself. Here’s why. It was harder and more terrifying to muster the will and the strength to push myself over the edge than giving my fate over to someone else and them doing it for me. I chose the scarier thing in my mind which was like, I don’t know if you can push yourself down this thing but I did that because that’s the one that felt more terrifying to me.

You’ve been skydiving before. Didn’t you go before I did?

I did. I went into the year 2000.

What was the story? Are we ever going to get behind the scenes of the show?

We will but for anyone who’s new, we are a very tangent show and we cover a lot of topics here. I did this because it was my last year of college. I was at Columbia and I came home to Michigan. One of my assignments in this class of my senior year was to do something that scared the crap out of me. It was like, “Choose something that terrifies you, align your will, make a choice, takes action, and do it.” I knew how terrified I was. I’ve always known of heights. To me, the most terrifying thing thought, “I’m going to go skydiving.” I was 21 or 22 at that time. There was a place called Skydive Tecumseh which was out near Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan is. I did the skydiving thing and it was terrifying as hell.

When you were describing pushing yourself over this waterslide, it reminded me of going skydiving, which I did in 2013. I have it captured on video because it was part of a video project I did on my Eco-Vegan Gal YouTube channel. You can see me go skydiving. Jason was there watching. He didn’t jump out of a plane that day. I don’t know why. It didn’t make sense financially because I was being sponsored. This was a sponsored project I worked on. They paid for my skydiving trip. Is that why you didn’t come with me, Jason or did you lose the desire to go skydiving again?

It was a financial decision was I knew that you were getting comped as part of the Fiesta Movement. I also wanted to watch you dropping from the sky like, “This is going to be interesting to watch her like body hurdling to the earth.”

Was it interesting?

For sure. I had never been on the ground watching someone else do a skydive. It was cool for me to have the opposite perspective having already experienced what it’s like to jump.

Speaking of getting uncomfortable, jumping out of a plane is certainly one of the most uncomfortable things that you can do. It’s interesting because you said that you have a fear of heights. Consciously, I don’t have a fear of heights. It depends on the situation. I get to the top of tall things and feel uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t say that if someone brought it up like, “What are your top fears?” That would not come up in my brain whereas it sounds like for you, that’s a big thing, Jason. How did you convince yourself to go skydiving?

I was in a class in my senior year at Columbia. It was an anthropology class if I recall. It was to willfully choose to do something that made me fearful or uncomfortable. The first thing that came to my mind was going skydiving. I thought, “That’s interesting.” On a break in between semesters is when I went home to Michigan and booked the skydiving trip. Back then, I don’t think it was that much money. It might’ve been $150 or $200 or something. It was a fascinating experience. I have to say though, the most terrifying part to me, was not jumping. It was the moment before the jump when they opened the hatch and you’re at, I remember being between 12,000 and 15,000 feet and the force of the air rushing into the cabin of the plane is so strong and so loud. That’s when my stomach sank. It wasn’t going up in the plane, it wasn’t jumping and doing the falling, it was the moment before the jump with so loud and forceful. I was like, “Oh my God.” I felt like I needed to poop in my pants. I was so terrified. Once that hatch opens then I was like, “This shit is real.”

Speaking of other people, when you were watching the kid in front of you draw off, I remember I was the last one out of the plane when I went skydiving. Seeing these people go in front of you, you’re like, “The dread.” I don’t think it hit me though until I was leaning over the side. You have to put your legs out of the plane. That was one of those moments that’s so lodged in my head because agreed, I didn’t feel that nervous in the actual plane, but once I was out on the ledge like about to do it, you have this moment of hesitation. That’s intense and yet, it’s funny because I would do it again in a heartbeat, even though it is terrifying. It’s so exhilarating.

I hope that a lot of people get to experience it. Skydiving is relatively easy to do and stay safe with during COVID, even though you’re usually strapped to another person. You’re interacting with less people. Believe it or not, I looked up Water Country in New Hampshire and they are opening. Their websites are all gung-ho about opening up and all their security measures. I have mixed feelings about that. It’s cool that life has going on despite all of the setbacks that we’ve had. As we talked about in other episode, it’s important to enjoy times like summer and water parks, theme parks, all of that are full of joy. I’ve enjoyed the idea of Disney World reopening and I’ve been seeing TikTok videos about that as well.

It’s cool in concept. It’s important for us as human beings to go, escape, and have fun with our families and our friends, but we also have to consider the impact that it has on us. Going back to the original idea for this episode, trying to reign ourselves back to that topic. A friend of ours that we invited on the show and he doesn’t have the equipment or the full setup required to do it with us virtually. He said, “Why don’t we do it in person.” Jason and I both considered it, but things are going to get bad again especially in Los Angeles where we live. I’m not comfortable doing that, but it’s also simultaneously uncomfortable to turn down things with friends. Jason, I don’t know if we’ve talked about you having to cancel your birthday party. Did we discuss that on the show?

No.

If you want to talk about that briefly and then we can continue in our way back to the behind the scenes or continue to weave it in.

Let’s do that.

We’ll weave in the behind the scenes as much as we can and appreciate the reader. You enjoy all the little story times, tangents, and lessons that we learned throughout our life. We don’t know these things unless you tell us. You need to write us an email or send us a social media post and let us know if you like it when we’re all over the place or prefer it when we’re hyper-focused on a message or a subject matter. Jason had to change his birthday celebration. His birthday was July 6th, 2020, he had plans on July 5th, 2020, a few of the other days, and because of what’s happening in Los Angeles, you had to pivot. What was that like for you emotionally, Jason? What did you do instead? You can also talk about some of our guests because I know they were involved with your plans.

Thinking that we have control or certainty over life is an illusion. Share on X

It’s apropos of what’s happening which is requiring us to be improvisational for us to pivot our plans, go with the flow, and change things in the moment. Enough people had expressed concern to me through text and messaging that they didn’t feel fully comfortable coming and being in a group setting. We’ve seen a significant spike in the number of reported COVID cases here in Los Angeles and other states as well. One friend of mine was immunocompromised. I understand. Part of it was letting go of an attachment to an idea of how I thought it was going to go because I love to take my birthday to celebrate myself. One of the challenges that I have is I don’t think I give myself enough credit.

I pushed myself hard still. I’m still unkind to myself at moments and I’ve always liked to earmark my birthday each year to have a day that’s just all about me. I have had some incredible parties, gatherings, surprise parties, adventures, and trips. Even since I was a little boy, I loved going all out, going gung-ho and celebrating my birthday. Part of it was a little disappointing, obviously because I’m used to doing that, but it is what it is. If we resist what is, we resist reality. We try and force, control or impose our will on life regardless of being in a Mercury retrograde period. Life is showing us very quickly that having attachments, expectations, thinking that we have control or certainty over life is an illusion.

I was able to let it go a lot easier than I thought, Whitney because it’s apropos of what’s happening in life, which is you can’t have expectations. If you have expectations, assumptions, or try and exercise control over life, life is going to kick your ass. I don’t mean that life itself is malevolent but I think there are some high-level spiritual lessons going around. Here’s where it gets good though. In light of not having the gathering with those people, although a few people did show up. My friends Taylor Estes and Adam Yasmin, two great guests we’ve had here on the show, they insisted on showing up. I’ve gotten a lot of great meals out of the deal. Friends have been like, “I want to take you out for matcha. I want to take you out for dinner. I want to make dinner for you.” In light of cancellation, I’ve had a lot of wonderful experiences so far. Even if things don’t go the way you expect, sometimes life gives you something even better.

That’s such an important message. I’m sorry though that some of your joy was not what you were hoping it was going to be but having that positive perspective of shifting things despite those challenges is important. I’m glad that you got to see some of the previous guests that we had. One of our intentions is to talk about how we choose guests in case you, the readers, are curious and to brainstorm some upcoming topics, I suppose. When I posted in this group, I had low expectations and that was an interesting thing to notice within myself how I assumed that the people who submitted to be on our show would not be to be blunt of the caliber that I would want.

That was a judgmental thought to have so it’s good to address these things within ourselves. I was pleasantly surprised at some of the people that are pitching themselves to come on the show. As our show continues to grow, we were pitched quite often. Jason and I had this policy of, “If we don’t know this person, then we don’t want to have them on the show.” It’s our way of quality control. We want to make sure that people come on the show that we know have a great message. It’s not necessarily what we believe because part of getting uncomfortable is challenging our own belief systems and being open-minded. What I mean is somebody that has a similar perspective.

For example, the objectives of a person that submitted to be in our show aren’t in alignment with ours. Without going into detail and compromising who they are, at first, I thought this is confronting because this person thinks so differently. They live so differently, they have a very different agenda than Jason and I do. That’s interesting. There’s still part of me that’s open to it, but then I thought, “The challenge here is that it feels like their perspective and their goals with their work is based around shame.” Jason, I assume you know who I’m talking about here. It felt like they wanted to limit people’s options versus broaden their horizons. Does that sound about right?

I think so. In particular ways, we do want to honor people’s belief systems. If you have read any episodes or it’s your first time, for lack of a better word, Whitney and I both have very liberal, open mindsets and open hearts in terms of wanting to be exposed to new perspectives, new belief systems, and ways that people see the world that are different than us. With this particular application that this person, my initial gut intuition or reaction was that feels judgmental. It feels like their belief system is coming from a place of restriction, limitation, or in a harsher way trying to oppress people in a certain way. There was something about it that to me felt instead of expansive felt constricting.

That’s a great way to phrase it. Is it ironic that we’re judging somebody for being judgmental to others? It’s an interesting thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I judge people through this time of Black Lives Matter, reflecting on my own biases, and how racism has showed up in my life. We’ve talked about this in an episode, I’ve been reading the book How To Be An Antiracist which is lovely. I prejudge that book and assumed it was going to feel like a textbook, but it isn’t at all. I’m a fifth of the way through or a fourth but so far it feels like it’s one man talking about his experiences and what he learned. He weaves in history and context but it feels very personal.

I enjoy the journey. It’s well constructed and it’s very different from a book like White Fragility which I talked about in a previous episode, which feels a little bit more like, “I’m being taught things versus listening to someone’s perspective and experience.” Both of those books have given me a lot to reflect on in terms of racism, how I’ve interacted with people, how we judge others and all these different factors that contribute. I try to examine that a lot. What am I feeling and why am I feeling that way about somebody?

I’m very grateful to have submissions from people that we don’t know because that’s part of it. Racism I believe can either be rooted in or encouraged when you’re closed off to people that you don’t know. When you’re judging someone you don’t know, assuming things about them, and putting on your previous experiences with other people on to somebody before you even have a chance to know them. As human beings, it’s an important thing for us to check ourselves whenever that comes up is like, “Am I making these belief systems based on things that aren’t even real?” Does that make sense to you, Jason? Do you think about that too?

I do. I also wanted to interject, Whitney, on what I believe in my philosophical lexicon to be the difference between judgment and discernment because you’re bringing us evaluating guests. What I believe is the difference and what I’ve seen show up for me over and over is that judgment has a very acute and specific energetic charge on how we’re perceiving something. As a situation would say in this exact context of evaluating someone like, “They believe in that? I can’t believe that’s their spirituality, religion, or belief system. No way.” You can feel there’s a constriction and there’s an energetic charge on a judgment. We’re almost shaming them back like, “I can’t believe you believe it. There’s no way in hell you’re ever going to be a guest.” A discernment doesn’t have that energetic charge or that negative context around it. It goes, “I don’t think they’re the right fit. My intuition is telling me it’s not a good fit and that’s okay.” I’m not leveraging any guilt, shame, and negativity their way. For me, in my spiritual philosophical lexicon judgment has a charge on it whereas a discernment doesn’t have that charge.

Thank you so much for sharing those differences. That’s true. When I first saw this submission from this person we’re referencing, I don’t have a problem with their perspective. As you’re saying, Jason, it doesn’t feel like a fit for the show and the messages that we’re trying to share in the world. It is an interesting gray area. Everybody’s opinions and perspectives are valid in a way, and yet there are a time and a place to share them and they might not be a fit. One thing that we work on is to avoid shame. In that judgment, as we’re talking about in the construction, oppression, and things like that, that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to talk about. Without getting into details about what this one guest wanted to come on the show to discuss, it’s certainly interesting but it’s almost like I feel protective over you, the reader.

In a way not to think that I have to protect you from something. Meaning, you’re not intelligent enough to take in information and discern it yourself. There’s a responsibility that comes with being a podcaster, being very clear about where you stand on things, and having a mission statement. Our work is based on openness, inclusion, not shaming people, and saying like, “It’s okay that you have those feelings, you have these urges, and you look a certain way or you feel a certain way.” What I worried about with this one guest is that there might be too much of like, “You might be doing this thing but you shouldn’t be.” I was fearing that that person would come from that, should and shouldn’t perspective if that makes sense.

There’s nothing wrong with discernment and trusting your intuition on things. Where there is a pause for concern is when we are feeling a negative, violent, shameful charge towards someone else. Judgment is something that is almost like a means of getting our attention whereas discernment, we exercise discernment all the time. When I go to the ice cream store, I’m not looking at the case going like, “Vanilla sucks ass, fuck vanilla. I’ll never get vanilla.” I’m looking at the case and I’m like, “I choose mint chocolate chip.” It doesn’t mean that I’m hateful or angry toward vanilla, chocolate, or rocky road. At the risk of sounding pedantic, it can be that same way with a lot of choices in like. We don’t have to be like, “I’d never do that.” We can go, “I know intuitively it’s not for me.” There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not for me.

With that said too, there are going to be guests that come on the show that aren’t going to feel right for the audience. Sometimes, I have this fear of people abandoning the show and choosing not to read because of one episode or one thing that we said. When I center myself in that, “Our ideal reader is somebody with an open mind and an open heart.” Sometimes people get triggered by something and it’s tough for them to move past that. Ultimately, the best that we can do on this show is to use our discernment, as Jason’s talking about here, and also retain our open minds.

MGU 96| Learning To Pivot

Learning To Pivot: It is essential for us as human beings to escape and have fun with our families and friends, but we also have to consider the impact that it has on us.

 

Somebody doesn’t feel right. The trick is then, how do you communicate it to this person? Hopefully, when somebody submits themselves for the show, they don’t feel offended if we don’t get back to them. I don’t know if we have to respond to every single person. It reminds me of when I was in high school, I was starting to have a lot of passion for filmmaking. I was probably a senior. I had this incredible mentor at my school who was the theater director. I blessed with this human being. He is cool because he was multitalented. He taught French, not only taught theater, he directed theater, and he also taught an acting class at my school but then he also became a mentor of mine as I learned about filmmaking.

When I was in high school, we didn’t have access to things like YouTube yet. Filmmaking was using all these old dated equipment and people weren’t doing it. We didn’t have iPhone. This is back in the Stone Age in a lot of ways so it changed in our lifetimes as we’ve talked about it. I was one of the only people in school that was making films and videos back then, whereas now, everybody’s got Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or whatever else. It’s so commonplace for people to make short films, skits, and things. I was one out of a couple of people that did stuff like that and the most passionate and active with it. My theater/French teacher said that he would be my mentor.

He created a whole special educational track like mentorship program for me. I think it was my senior year. What my big project was that I had to direct a short film. I found this script called Richard Freshmen. I have no idea how I found it. It was somewhere on the web, I downloaded the short film. I had to do auditions. I remember how challenging it was. The very first time I had to choose the cast and then turn people down. Should I call people? Should I personally go up to each person and say, “You didn’t get the part?” I don’t remember exactly how I handled it. I have a vague recollection of posting the cast list up on some bulletin board because I guess that’s how you did it.

It’s that cliché thing you see on TV shows and movies like the theater cast being chosen. I think that’s what I did but I remember how uncomfortable it was to have to turn people down. I was thinking about that as we’re going through all these submissions. All of these people are valid, they have great assets, and everybody has their strengths but some people aren’t a fit. It’s interesting, how do you choose not to go with somebody without offending them? That’s also an important thing to remember being on both sides of it. One thing that Jason and I do quite often is put ourselves out there for an opportunity.

The two of us work with brands, for example, and they’ll hire us for sponsorship campaigns or various projects. Sometimes we apply for things and we don’t get chosen for them. We do freelance work. Jason and I have a lot of different skills. Jason is very skilled at copywriting. I do a lot of social media marketing. The two of us have applied for different freelance gigs and consultant work. We’ve been turned down and we’ve had some raw conversations around how it feels to be rejected and have somebody chosen over you. It’s intense.

It’s hard because there’s also this idea that your perception of self is often very different than other people’s perceptions of you. The first month of quarantine, I had an opportunity that came through my agent to audition for a commercial and it was a digital casting. I sent in an audition video of me singing. It was going to be a commercial spot for a big brand and I was going to be singing. I had two auditions, I got put on avail, and I’m booking this commercial. I had that feeling in my bones of like, “I did this. This shit is mine. I booked this.” They were supposed to respond.

They said, “We’re still making decisions. We’re still waiting.” It ended up being 1.5 to almost 2 weeks between being put on avail and waiting to hear. My mind is going crazy like, “Did they choose me? Did they not choose me? I thought I slayed that audition.” I thought I did well on both the audition and the callback. I ended up getting an email that the production company said the client has chosen to go in a different direction, which was a relief, to be honest with you. The fact that the client scrapped the creative and went in a different direction, my ego was like, “Someone didn’t get picked over me.” There’s almost something that’s more of a relief when a client goes into a different direction and no one gets picked versus like, “You didn’t get chosen.”

Everyone is like, “If you’re going to be a talent and you’re going to be an actor, performer, musician, or artist. You’ve got to have thick skin,” but I’m a sensitive person. Auditioning, singing, doing music, and doing acting, it’s always been a very difficult thing for me because I’ve had to learn and keep relearning how to not take it personally. It didn’t mean I sucked. It didn’t mean I was less good than someone else, although sometimes it does mean that, but they look at you and go, “They’re not the right fit.” They don’t necessarily have a reason for it. It’s an intuitive thing. It’s a lesson that certainly Whitney, as you alluded to, I keep getting over and over again.

It comes up in so many different ways. As I was thinking about this process when you post like, “I’m looking for podcast guests.” As I did and you’re flooded with people. I had this desire to acknowledge everybody. I want to make sure that everyone feels valued in their way. There this moment of like, “Gosh.” How do you acknowledge someone, but also not make them feel rejected? It also reminds me of all the different little ways that we can feel rejected by somebody, not getting a text back from them or not getting an email response to something. It goes the other way too.

We’ve invited guests on the show and they’ve never returned emails. This has been happening a ton as Jason and I have been branching out of our immediate friend group or acquaintances, people that we know and we’re easy. That’s where we’re at with the show as we are getting closer and closer to the 100th episode. We’re at a point where we’ve tapped out of those initial resources of our guests. There are so many people, there’s an endless supply of guests to have on the show. You, the reader, might be thinking, “I’ll submit to be a guest.” We’ll get to that point eventually. We have plenty of people, it’s just a matter of coordinating our schedules. We were pitching some people and it’s starting to feel brave about asking people to be on our show that we felt hesitant to at first.

There have been so many people who would never respond to our emails and still haven’t to this day or people that said that they would be on the show and then by the time you try to book them on the show, suddenly they ghost you. You mentioned this Jason, on an episode how one person you had texted three times and you felt like you were almost going to write this person off and then something shift like you found out you were texting the wrong number all along. That’s another side of this. It’s almost like coming from the ego where you’re like, “How dare that person not respond to me.” I’ve been in a position where I haven’t responded to somebody for one reason or another.

It could have been they ended up in the junk mail and I didn’t see it. It could be that I didn’t know them so I didn’t trust them. It could be that I had a ton of other priorities and I felt overwhelmed, I haven’t gotten back to them yet. It could be that I didn’t know how to respond because they didn’t know what I wanted. When I think about my experience and the number of factors that go into saying yes or no to an opportunity, that helps me feel more compassion. Jason, I’d love for you to share the story of figuring out that it was the wrong phone number all along or something like that.

It was their old number. They sent me a message back and they’re like, “This is my old number. I barely ever check it. Here’s my new number.” We got into a text stream, started talking about life, and then he hasn’t texted me back on the new number. I’m like eye roll.

First of all, I don’t understand this concept of old number versus new. Why do you still have the old number and how are you able to check it?

Even if things don't go the way you expect, sometimes life gives you something even better. Share on X

I have no idea. I didn’t get into that level of detail. Here’s the thing that I noticed though within me, and this is an ongoing thing that I still have remnants of this. I don’t want to call it an old mentality because it’s still there. It’s not just as potent as it used to be. For the longest time, Whitney, I have been motivated especially when I was younger by having a chip on my shoulder. I have found a lot of motivation in the past in feeling slighted, rejected, or overlooked by certain people, using that as fuel or motivation to do better than them, and using that as a big fuck you.

I have to be very mindful of things like this as an example of fueling my old chip on the shoulder motivation mentality. There’s a lot of examples in our industry of this of people that I’ve been introduced to, messaged, sent emails to, followed up with and never bird chirps. In person, they’ll treat me a certain way but then texting, emailing, or trying to connect with them on a business level or a creative level, it’s crickets. In the past, I’ve used that as like, “I’m going to do this new project and it’s going to be bigger and better. I’m going to be more successful and more influential than you and go fuck yourself.” I’ve had to be mindful of not letting that anger and that feeling of being slighted be the fuel for me because ultimately, it’s an unsustainable motivation. It can start to get a little toxic.

I’ll admit that I have that too. I was thinking that about somebody to be frank like, “We’re going to put all this work into our show and it’s going to reach all these people. This person that rejected me in the past and doesn’t talk to me anymore will find the show because it’s going to be so big and they won’t be able to ignore it anymore.” It’s that mentality and then sometimes you’ll get humbled and you’ll realize like, “You’re not as big or important as you think that you are want to be.” That’s okay too because coming back to that idea, Jason, that a lot of us can relate to is that desire to want to show your worth to somebody like, “How dare you to reject me. Let me show you how great I am.”

A lot of us have those feelings and that desire, but what does it do? That teacher I brought up, that mentor I had in high school, I often would feel that way with him because that’s going deep. Let me think about this. He was one of those people that I looked up to. He has such a special place in my heart but I remember at certain stages, he was a tough teacher at times, especially when he was teaching me French. I went to a small school in this small town. Our teachers would rotate around. He taught French one year or something because there wasn’t a French teacher to replace him or something.

I don’t know what the deal was but he was a challenging French teacher. It had a long-term effect on me because I felt so self-conscious about taking French but I loved the language. I stuck with it all throughout high school, I didn’t take it in college, but I loved French and yet I felt so much shame around it and my ability to speak it. I hesitate to speak French, even though this deep love and he has a deep love for it too. That’s why he was teaching it. He was so good at it but he had a shaming teaching style and a shaming directing style when he would direct these plays. That was part of his commitment to excellence.

He was somebody that upheld high standards for himself and all of the students. That caused a lot of people to respond and working hard to prove themselves. He was one of those teachers where I felt like I was always trying to prove myself to him and show that I was great because I never felt he saw that within me. As I tell these stories, I think of all these examples like another time, I did a short film for a project. I was so proud of it. He gave me a bad grade because the audio quality was bad. I felt so disappointed because I worked so hard on it and I was like, “I’ll never be good enough.” Those desires for him to approve of me and my work stuck with me for many years.

I continued to do short films for a long time after high school and college. I was pursuing this film career. One day, I had posted a clip like a trailer for one of my short films. This is 2009 or 2010. I posted it on Facebook and he commented something like, “Whitney, you’re such a talented actress.” He doesn’t type superficial comments. I knew he meant it. It was satisfying and that comments stuck with me all these years, but it didn’t have this massive effect in my life. My point is sometimes you’re seeking somebody’s approval for years and you finally get it and that’s it. It’s not like your life is suddenly perfect and everything is great because you finally won the approval.

If you think about this specific person that you brought up, Jason and for you, the reader, you could think about anybody that you felt rejected by, or you were never good enough for them. It almost could help to imagine them approving of you, saying, or doing something that shows they’re validating you. That’s just as good as getting it from them because your life isn’t going to change dramatically. That can get us out of this cycle of constantly trying to prove ourselves because what we’re looking for is our own sense of worthiness. It’s not about other people.

I’m glad you said that because that’s absolutely what it is. If we are strung out on someone else’s love, approval, attention, validation, it’s drug chasing. We’re chasing a feeling, high, or a sense of self. If we can transmute that desire into loving ourselves more, approving of ourselves more, giving ourselves that attention that we might be seeking from a parent, teacher, colleague, whatever it is. I’m so glad that you wrapped it up with that Whitney because, for me, it’s been the absolute truth. If I look back to the origin of this chip on the shoulder mentality and trying to prove myself, it’s from my relationship with my dad, which we’ve detailed in several episodes, the Father’s Day episode. My desire to succeed, be famous, rich, influential, or outdo everyone in my industry is going back to like, “See dad. I’m awesome. Love me. Approve of me.” Of course, he’s deceased now. I can’t get his approval which is good in a way. It means that in those moments that I still find myself operating from that chip on the shoulder, I can’t get his approval. I have to ultimately approve of myself as you’ve said. That’s what it comes down to is what we’re seeking is our own love and approval.

If the reader wants to be a guest on our show, submit yourself. If you don’t get chosen, don’t take it so hard. That’s part of the message here. As we continue to grow, that becomes a hard part of running any business, but it’s challenging on our end. In the past 24 hours going from, “We don’t have a guest for this week’s episode. What are we going to do?” We were scrambling because we’re very committed to staying on schedule and delivering what we promised you. Our promise to you is releasing a guest episode every Friday. You maybe don’t care that much, or you wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t pointed it out but part of our work here is to be very transparent about our process.

It’s so fascinating to go from 0 to 60, whereas zero was not having a guest and 60 is us having a flood of guest submissions. It was a wonderful learning process and still continues to be because not only did it show me how I was prejudging strangers thinking like, “They’re not going to beat up our caliber.” Being proven so wrong, I was moved to tears by some of the people that submitted because they are such remarkable people. They were detail-oriented and there was so much diversity as well. I was thrilled with that. We are aiming to bring more diverse guests on here. Diversity could be age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and geography. I want to bring on all these different perspectives to talk about wellness.

As we said in an episode, we don’t want wellness to be just for white people. We don’t want it to feel biased or slanted. We want it to be incredibly inclusive, everybody to feel represented here, and bring on these different voices. At one point, the submissions we received were very diverse. As we started to get more, I realized there were a lot of white women submitting themselves to be guests. That’s interesting too. There’s a lot of white women reading. Wellbeing appeals to that white women but I hope that it starts to appeal to a diverse amount of people and different types of people. That’s part of the reason we’re dedicated to bringing on diversity in our guests so that inclusivity is there.

We have accomplished our primary goal, which was to talk a little bit about the guest process, go on some tangents, tell you little stories about our lives that might be interesting to you. Another thing that we’re committed is to end our episodes talking about frequently asked queries, which is a new segment we started. If you are brand new to our show and you’ve made it this far, you’re our ideal audience. We’ve captured your attention for life. We’re very grateful that you’re here. We hope that you subscribe to the show. If you’ve read a few blogs and haven’t done that yet, the benefit of subscribing is that you get alerted. We have no idea how many people subscribe.

MGU 96| Learning To Pivot

Learning To Pivot: It is more terrifying to muster the will to push yourself over the edge than to give your fate over to someone else and have them do it for you.

 

Podcasters aren’t able to tell that. What we can tell is how people feel about the show when they leave reviews. If you are digging these episodes, no matter how many you’ve read, you can write us a review on iTunes, and that helps other people find our show. It’s what they call social proof. If you take the time, even a sentence or two about how you feel, that would be amazing. We love hearing from you. We love receiving emails from you. Our email is [email protected]. That’s our website address as well, Wellevatr.com. That’s the best hub for you. You can find our email there very easily. You can find all of our social media handles.

You can find links to all the resources. For instance, in this episode, we talked about some books and other guests. We talked about water parks, foods, and so much comes up. If you want to explore any of those things in more depth, we would love you to check that out. One thing we do in addition to the frequently asked queries we’re about to get into is to shout out brands we love. Each of us will talk about some brands that we’ve been enjoying. One that I’d love to give a shout out in this episode is Goddess Provisions. It is my favorite subscription box. I receive it every single month.

I got the box and it’s got this desert theme. It’s cool. I’m planning to do a TikTok video on it, a YouTube video, or a blog post. If you like our show, you will love Goddess Provisions. To tell you real quick about some things that are in the box, there is an amazing essential oil blend which they send in many of their boxes. This one’s called Chica Botanica, high desert wildcrafted roll-on oil blend. It smells amazing. Jason, you would love it. It has white Sage, purple Sage, all these three different types of Sage in it plus a great fruit and Cedarwood. It’s remarkable.

That combination sounds stellar.

Every time I talk about Goddess Provisions, I wonder why you don’t get this box because it’s not just for women, it’s for men as well. It should be called God(s) so it includes all genders. You could relate to being a goddess sometimes, Jason. The other thing that is cool, they sent a little essential oil pouch which is cute. It’s got cactus, suns, mountains, and stuff on it. I’ll be storing my essential oils in there because I have quite the collection and there’s a Crystal Bar Soap. There’s this company that’s called Crystal Bar Soap and they’ve sent three that I’ve received. Each one is a little different. This one has a dessert lover theme with rose quartz. It has a piece of rose quartz in it. All of the soaps, once you finish using them, at the end, you get a little prize. That’s the crystal or the stone of the month. I’m excited about it. It has a Cedarwood smell and it has rose clay in it, which is neat. Those are a few things that are in Goddess Provisions’ box. I love them. Jason, what’s the brand do you want to shout out?

I’ve talked about this brand briefly on our episode with Sunny about cruelty-free beauty.

It’s funny because the last time I mentioned Goddess Provisions was in that same episode.

I want to give a shout out to my friends Nadine and Ron Artemis, who are the geniuses behind Living Libations. I’ve been using Living Libations since 2009 when I first spoke at the Longevity Now Conference. We’ve mentioned that conference and our involvement over the many years on episodes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that conference is going to continue anytime soon, but a Living Libations is going strong. Nadine is a wonderful beauty alchemist and using high-quality organic oils, botanicals, flower essences, and crystal essences. I love their Maverick line of men’s products. I have used their Maverick essential oil and their deodorant.

My favorite one in their men’s line is the Maverick face cream. I’ve been using that for years. It’s so lush and so beautiful. It’s all unique but the one super unique ingredient is Blue Tansy. It has a wonderful earthy, floral, yet masculine scent to it. My skin loves it. It’s one of my regimens along with a healthy diet, exercise, sunshine, and all the things we talk about here on the show to keep myself looking good, looking shiny, and youthful. Big props for men and women, whatever your chose in gender identity if you want to look good, look, plump, look glowing, look beautiful. I adored Nadine and Ron and their entire line at Living Libations.

With no further ado, shall we get into the frequently asked queries?

Make it crazy. Pick up some good ones. I’m in the mood for some WTF.

If you’re brand new to our show and you haven’t read this segment yet, what we do is we pull from Google Analytics. These are the search entries, the queries, as they call it, that people type into Google that leads them to our show. The way Google works is you search for something and you get all these different hits, all these different websites that have that phrase. Jason and I talk about so much in every single episode has a transcript, sometimes the words that we say are related to these very odd queries. I also use this cool website called Exploding Topics, which has a lot of interesting things that people are searching for across the web. I don’t know if I have anything from there but I love organizing things. One way that I organize is by sentiment. I categorize these queries by funny, interesting, and serious. Which one would you like first, Jason?

Interesting.

I predicted you were going to say that. Some of these can be full episodes, they’re that interesting. I liked this one, but I wanted to save this. This is tricky. I’ll go with it because I found this one interesting. The query was, can anxiety make you itch?

Directly talking about my level of anxiety and stress, I have been battling eczema for three years and it has subsided thankfully. In the fall of 2016, I started to get these crazy eczema breakouts. The more and more research I started to do into eczema, I found that a lot of it was related to emotional stress and anxiety. To be honest, my lifestyle, my chosen work, and the projects I’ve taken on the past years have been stressful and I’ve chosen to have stress reactions to them. In a roundabout way, I definitely can say that my personal eczema, I can link that to a lot of emotional stress and anxiety in my life. I don’t know if that’s the itch they want to know about, but eczema is fricking itchy and uncomfortable.

We’ll never know and we’re not trying to give the perfect answer to these queries. We’re trying to talk about some interesting things. Speaking of itching, another one that I thought was interesting was the query Captain Itch.

I don’t even know where to go with that. As if you wanted a superpower and you were blessed with a superpower to make your adversaries very itchy. Instead of Wolverine claws, controlling the weather like Storm, laser vision like Cyclops or someone is running at you to battle you and you’re like, “I’m going to make you itchy.” They’re like, “No. Not this nothing but the itch.” That’s out of all the superpowers. You can make other people itchy on-demand. It sounds lame at first but effective in execution.

It’s funny. I enjoyed Jason’s take on these queries. For me where mine went was the name of a children’s book like Captain Underpants but then I found out that when you type in Captain Itch, the number one result is a quality motorcycle leather goods. One of their products are called the Crotch Cooler. You maybe need that Jason since you ride motorcycles. I wonder if they have any vegan products.

I do need the Crotch Cooler because during the summer months riding a motorcycle, the crotch does get itchy.

That seems to be the main result. The first page of Google is all about this company called Captain Itch. That’s a great name. I want to go to their About section. I also can’t wait to see their logo. What do you think their logo looks like?

A guy in assless chaps with some mask on. That’s too much of a Village People. I’m imagining one of the members of the Village People. Am I off? Anyone in the ballpark.

It’s a drawing of a dude with a handlebar mustache and long hair.

I was close with the Village People.

It’s a close-up of his face and he’s giving the side-eyes/French bulldog proud Frenchie face that we do all the time.

“He’s young men, if your crotch is itchy. I said, young man, don’t keep being bitchy. Get this rub and put it on your crotch and you can ride the Finn longer. Come and get some Captain Itch bomb.” You’re welcome.

I highly recommend going to the About section of Captain-Itch.com. I love how we’re plugging this company that doesn’t even look like it’s vegan. I haven’t looked in-depth at all but there’s a picture of a guy fishing, mentioned of leather goods. We’re trying not to judge because someone lives differently than us. It’s based in Tennessee. If you found our show because we plugged Captain Itch, welcome. I’m guessing somebody that’s searching for Captain Itch doesn’t want to read to our show but I could be wrong. We do not know. Does Captain Itch count as our funny query, Jason, or do you want a different query?

I think that counts. I’ve got to sing a parody of the Village People, so I’m satisfied with that.

That leaves us with a serious query. Ending on the serious query might sound like a downer, but this one ties it in. This one is not much of a downer. Let me use this one. Are you ready?

Go for it.

The query was how to manifest someone to contact you? Which ties in retrograde. We were talking about Goddess Provisions here. We were talking about some things like manifestation falls into this category. Although we did on an episode talked about how manifestation might be a little, other bits of a privileged perspective.

Here’s an easy way, contact them first. I’ve been waiting around all day. “I’ve got my incense, my crystals, and I’ve got my vision board with all kinds of pictures of them. They’re going to magically call me.” How about you send the email first or you try and get in touch with their agent, PR person, or manager, whoever the hell it is. A real good way to initiate contact in the universe is to reach out first. Was that me being condescending a little bit? Maybe. That goes back to the rejection lesson too. It’s like, “There’s no guarantee someone’s going to contact you back.” If you don’t send an email, you don’t contact their representative, or you don’t initiate, you’re not going to get an email back.

You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there, take a risk, take a chance, try and initiate contact. There have been people over the course of my career that I’ve reached out to an email about supporting a book launch, supporting the launch of my TV show, and I was scared to death to email them. I was like, “I’m going to seem puny. I’m going to seem like, ‘Who’s this young guy contacting me and asking for a shout out?’” I have been pleasantly surprised where a lot of colleagues, heroes, and people I’ve held in high regard have emailed me back and have worked with me on things. The short answer is, call them, reach out, or email them first.

Fair enough. Sometimes you need some blunt advice and we have this mixture of spirituality and spiritual perspectives on certain topics. Some things are maybe a little bit more straight forward. Spirituality isn’t mutually exclusive. You can be spiritually minded and straight forward, but I would assume that somebody searching for information on manifestation wants to know, “What candles should I light? What affirmation could I say? What music should I listen to?” None of that stuff hurts. If you enjoy having a ritual like a conjuring type of thing that makes you feel good, great. There’s no harm in doing it. A lot of the things that I get from Goddess Provisions are based on things like that. I like burning incense, lighting candles, putting on essential oils, and I love the Feng shui of crystals and all of that.

We had a great episode about Feng Shui with Dana. If you’re into that, I highly recommend reading that. My perspective on a lot of these practices is doing it because it brings me joy, peace, and comfort but I’m not dependent on it. That’s part of your point, Jason, if I may, is that sometimes you have to not rely on those techniques and tactics. The manifestation might be more of you being purposeful, taking action, and not waiting for something to happen or wishing for it to happen. It takes a number of different things and sometimes it’s a coincidence. We think we’re manifesting it, but it’s simply because we’re thinking about it so much that we are taking action. I’m a big believer in visualization.

I’m redoing my visualization board. My practice is to have it as the desktop image on my computer. I’m looking at it for many hours of the day. Part of that is that it brings me joy to look at those things. It keeps me focused on my goals. It keeps me reminded of the things that I want, that I’m intentional about my schedule, and where I’m setting my priorities each day. I’m taking those steps and I’m staying in a positive mentality around something. That’s usually a big part of my practice when it comes to manifesting. I’m glad that you jumped in with that point, Jason. Sometimes you have to be courageous. You have to take the first step towards something instead of waiting for it to come to you.

There’s a balance of staying open and energetically aligned with the thing, the person, or the situation that you want to experience. Fortune favors the bold.

That’s a good note to end on. To bring it in a full circle, if you’re trying to manifest being a guest on our show or somebody else’s show, trying to manifest a job, an opportunity or something all the different things that we’ve explored. Maybe you’re trying to manifest a trip to a water park. You need to take that next step to making it happen, be unattached to the outcome, and the results of it. You also never know because timing is a huge part of this because something is no, it doesn’t mean it’s permanent no. It could be a maybe or not right now.

We are so grateful for you, reader. We hope that you send us a message. Speaking of rejection, we mentioned on every single episode that we would love to hear from you and only a small percentage of our readers take the action or the initiative to send us messages, emails or leave us at reviews. That’s not stopping us from asking. We’re going to continue to ask you and be unattached to when you do it or if you ever do it. You may continue to read the blogs of our show. You may choose to subscribe, you may not. You may stop reading after this episode.

We don’t know, but that’s not going to prevent us from continuing to do what we love. Thank you for those of you who do to take those actions. Thank you to those of you who don’t. Thank you to the new readers and the dedicated readers that have been with us from day one. We appreciate all of you, wherever you may be, we will be back with another episode. Next episode we will have a guest. We have the next five-plus weeks lined up with amazing people. We look forward to that. Thank you for reading. I hope you take great care of yourself in between episodes.

 

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