Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Koya Webb - Get Loved Up Founder & Author of Wellbeing Rituals | The Hidden Cost of Success: Why High Achievers Burn Out and How to Listen to Your Body
Transcript
- 0:00Track and field was your ticket to travel, Inspire, ticket to have purpose.
- 0:04What happens when your ticket gets taken?
- 0:06When that happens, you have to ask yourself, am I going to let this break me, or am I going to let it build me?
- 0:12And for me, when that happened, I let it build me.
- 0:15Today's guest is Koya Webb, a wellness entrepreneur, spiritual teacher, and author.
- 0:20She helps people create healthier, more purposeful lives through wellness, spirituality, and self-love.
- 0:26In this conversation, she shares her journey through adversity, emotional healing, and personal growth.
- 0:31You are not a victim.
- 0:32You are a creator.
- 0:33What does that mean?
- 0:34The first time you're harmed, you are a victim.
- 0:36However you were harmed, whatever happened to you, after that, it can build you or it can break you.
- 0:41And then you say, based on that, this is how I'm going to move forward.
- 0:45So you become a creator.
- 0:47Why are we so afraid to feel our emotions?
- 0:49I think we're afraid of judgment.
- 0:51We have a negative relationship with full expression.
- 0:55Most people are not fully expressed.
- 0:57I believe we're here to express.
- 1:00My fitness pal is a success story partner.
- 1:02Now, there's this thing that happens when you start paying attention to what you eat.
- 1:06And I think we can all agree that we want to care about our health and our wellness and our nutrition.
- 1:10But more often than not, we just kind of think we eat clean.
- 1:13We think we eat healthy, but we're not really, really paying attention to every single meal and what makes up every single meal.
- 1:20But just by paying attention and starting to log and track what you eat, you start making better choices without really trying.
- 1:28And that surprised me because when I first started using the MyFitnessPal app, and I've been using it for a while now, it's a nutrition tracking app, and I started logging what I was eating,
- 1:37It started showing me my macros, which means how much protein, carbs and fats I was getting.
- 1:41And then I started to understand why some days I felt good, high energy.
- 1:45Some days I felt like garbage because those three things, proteins, carbs, fats, that's what your food is made out of.
- 1:51And the balance between them affects everything.
- 1:55So my fitness pal app truly changed my life when it came to managing my food, which managed and helped everything else.
- 2:03Now on the premium version of the app, it breaks down those numbers by meal.
- 2:07So not just seeing one calorie number for the day, I can see what's happening at breakfast versus lunch versus dinner, where my protein actually lands, whether I'm eating enough earlier in the day or piling everything on at night and all of a sudden,
- 2:20When I'm crashing at 3, 4 p.m., well, I can take a look and see, it's not so surprising anymore based on what I ate or what I didn't eat.
- 2:27So that's what I mean when I say that MyFitnessPal is a great app for awareness.
- 2:32It's not obsessive, it's not stressful, it's not time consuming, it's actually the opposite.
- 2:37Guessing is stressful.
- 2:38When you have all the information, the food you eat, your nutrition,
- 2:42becomes way easier to keep up with.
- 2:44Also, a lot of people stress out that logging food is gonna be very time consuming.
- 2:48It's not.
- 2:49And if it was annoying, I'd stop.
- 2:50But what I love about the app is that they've made it super, super simple.
- 2:54They've removed all friction in food logging, right?
- 2:57They have the largest food database out there.
- 2:59So whatever I'm eating is already in it.
- 3:01I can voice logs, so I can just say what I'm eating.
- 3:04They have a barcode scanner that handles all the package stuff.
- 3:07They have a tool called Meal Scan, which lets me point my camera at my plate and it breaks down all the macros and then logs it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever.
- 3:15And the app remembers my regular meals.
- 3:18And I'm really just in and out of the app in seconds.
- 3:20And on top of that, it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables.
- 3:24So my workouts, my nutrition, they're all in one place.
- 3:27See, food is the foundation of everything.
- 3:29your energy, your sleep, your weight, your recovery, your performance, at work, at home.
- 3:34And I really believe that when you start to pay attention to what you eat, every single part of your life improves.
- 3:39And to be honest, for me, it's the most useful tool because when I see the information, when I see what I'm eating,
- 3:45and I feel the effects of having good nutrition and good food at the right time, the decisions on what to eat become obvious.
- 3:53Not because someone told me to eat better, it's because I have the data.
- 3:57And the data makes it super, super easy to stay on track.
- 4:00So please do yourself a favor, go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott.
- 4:05That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase letters, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.
- 4:10That is podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott, for 15% off.
- 4:15MyFitnessPal Premium.
- 4:21Koya, you said track and field was your ticket to travel, ticket to inspire, ticket to have purpose.
- 4:28Then one day walking to class, your back broke.
- 4:31So what happens when your ticket gets taken?
- 4:35I think we've all experienced like having our hearts set on something and then it's all of a sudden taken away from you.
- 4:44And I think when that happens, you have to ask yourself, am I going to let this break me or am I going to let it build me?
- 4:52And for me, when that happened, I'm going to let this break me.
- 4:55I let it build me.
- 4:56And I didn't at first, though.
- 4:58I was depressed.
- 5:00I was crying in classes.
- 5:01I got sent to the counselor.
- 5:03And...
- 5:05I got sent to a yoga class.
- 5:07Let's talk about a yoga class for an athlete, not someone who does yoga, because I do yoga now, but I didn't then.
- 5:12So I go in this yoga class as a tight athlete.
- 5:15I can't even touch my toes.
- 5:16I can long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin, heptathlete, but I cannot touch my toes.
- 5:20I'm not flexible.
- 5:22So all this bliss they're talking about, I would find in yoga class, I did not feel.
- 5:26No one looked like me.
- 5:28I'm the only brown girl in class.
- 5:29I'm like, I don't belong here.
- 5:30Right.
- 5:31And so I was very like felt out of place.
- 5:34I felt unflexible and it didn't make me feel any better at first.
- 5:39But then when I stayed with it during my first class, the teacher came with me and she said, she saw me struggling.
- 5:45She was like, Koya, don't worry about the poses, just breathe.
- 5:49And she took this deep inhale with me and exhale.
- 5:53And I felt these chills all over my body.
- 5:56And for me, chills on my body is a spiritual yes.
- 5:59Growing up in the church, I had this connection with God and that was the alignment for me when I feel the full body chills.
- 6:05And so when I felt that, I was like, all right, this hurts.
- 6:08I don't feel like I belong, but I'm staying here because I felt I got that spiritual sign.
- 6:13And when I tell you it built me, after a year of yoga and recovery, I came back and was ranked 13th in the nation, helped lead my team to a conference championship.
- 6:28And then I end up going to L.A. to train in the Olympic Training Center.
- 6:34That's all another story.
- 6:35I didn't get there, but it healed me so much that I was able to do everything that I set out to do before I got injured.
- 6:43But I had to go in that valley.
- 6:45So I think it's important when you feel like your ticket is taken, you lost the relationship, you lost the job, you lost whatever.
- 6:51Don't let it break you.
- 6:52Even if you feel broken in the moment, allow it to build you.
- 6:56How though?
- 6:57How?
- 6:57That's the question because your identity was athlete and it seems like almost every conversation on this podcast comes down to, okay, this was your identity.
- 7:08It didn't work out.
- 7:10And then on the other side of it not working out and you having to figure out what that new identity is, is the huge success, is the win, is the exit, is the enormous audience that you've built now on this message.
- 7:24But it's really hard to understand the difference between somebody who that same event happened to, who came out of it in a good place on the other side versus that person who, in your case, you were an athlete, you were a track star, your body breaks.
- 7:42How many people, I'm sure you can think of a few, where that happened and they never recovered?
- 7:49So many people, so many people.
- 7:51And in my book, The Last Chapter, I talk about the art of surrender.
- 7:57You don't know when you're in it, when you're depressed, when you lost a job, when you go through it.
- 8:02You don't know what the next job is going to be.
- 8:04You don't know if you're going to heal from the injury.
- 8:07Right now, my knee keeps going out on me.
- 8:09I don't know if I'm going to heal through this or not.
- 8:13But every day I still wake up and I do yoga because I know that healed me before and it can heal me again.
- 8:19And then I just have to surrender.
- 8:21And you said, what helps you?
- 8:23And I tell every single client.
- 8:26One day at a time, one breath at a time.
- 8:29If you're always reaching towards the finish line, then how are you going to sprint like you need to sprint in that first hundred meters to get you there?
- 8:38You're going to get exhausted before you get there if you're thinking about the finish line when you start the race.
- 8:42You got to get out of the blocks.
- 8:44And I'm using track terms now, but.
- 8:46I love the sports analogy, so go for it.
- 8:48When I started to learn how to run, I could always run.
- 8:51I was naturally, I chased the bus.
- 8:53That's how I got good at running track of field.
- 8:54I was chasing the bus, right?
- 8:56And I just, you know, I was always late, so I was always running.
- 8:59And I just got faster and faster.
- 9:01But the success on running something, whether it's 100 meter, 200 or 400, is getting out the gate fast.
- 9:08Yeah.
- 9:09Your head is down.
- 9:10You're looking literally just four steps in front of you.
- 9:14And you want your stride to be as long and as powerful as you can in those first four steps.
- 9:22Because that's going to place you for the rest of the race.
- 9:25So when you get injured, when you lose, like, you have to, you're going to be in the darkness, like you are for the first step.
- 9:31Some people close their eyes and they just pounded out those first four steps.
- 9:35So that's like when you have something tragic happening.
- 9:39You're just not going to be light.
- 9:40It's going to be dark.
- 9:41You're going to be crying.
- 9:41You might even be depressed like I was.
- 9:44But you gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other.
- 9:47And the more that now I teach people to lean into breath and the breath healing, because I realized that that's the one free tool that can help us regulate our nervous system when we aren't sure, we're confused.
- 10:00It can keep us regulated enough to get us out the gate, right?
- 10:04Because if we don't get out the gate and we're staying at the block, you're never gonna run the race.
- 10:08And depression is stuck at the block.
- 10:10Depression is or self-judgment, limiting beliefs.
- 10:14It keeps you right there.
- 10:15You haven't even started the race.
- 10:17But in order to get out of the block, you have to breathe.
- 10:20You have to know that there is something greater than what moment you're in.
- 10:25And not only does that take faith and breath, but it takes putting one foot in front of the other.
- 10:31When you're so caught up in the current situation and that's clouding your judgment and your vision and, and it's very hard for you to see the future, which is really what you have to do.
- 10:43Breath, I guess, is just forcing you to sit with your thoughts, like with your thoughts and have clarity about where you're going.
- 10:50Is that, is that how it works?
- 10:54Think of the breath as like a remote control for your nervous system.
- 10:59So your nervous system is your best friend.
- 11:02A lot of people, we don't listen to our nervous system, right?
- 11:04But it's your best friend.
- 11:05And it's built.
- 11:06Our bodies are so smart.
- 11:07Our nervous system is built to keep us safe.
- 11:10So when we go through, you know, traumatic things, our nervous system is like, oh, my God, that was traumatic.
- 11:16I need to make sure you don't do anything like this.
- 11:18Never have a job.
- 11:20Never have a relationship.
- 11:21Never try to run again because you might get injured.
- 11:24You might get hurt.
- 11:25So your body's like, OK, I'm going to keep you safe from that because it hurt you.
- 11:30So what the breath does as a remote control is like, I'm actually safe.
- 11:35It's normal to have injury.
- 11:37It's normal to go through breakups.
- 11:39It's normal to lose.
- 11:40I'm actually, I'm good.
- 11:42I'm not okay.
- 11:43I'm depressed.
- 11:44I'm sad, but I'm going to get through this.
- 11:47So the breath helps regulate your nervous system to say, hey, I'm not dead.
- 11:52And this is not going to take me out.
- 11:53So when you learn to regulate your breath,
- 11:56Take those inhales and exhales.
- 11:57It calms your system down.
- 11:58But when you experience trauma, a breakup, someone yells at you, or maybe you're in a car accident or something, your body constricts and it tenses up.
- 12:06Your nervous system is on alert.
- 12:08And if you don't regulate it, you will live out your life like that.
- 12:11That person's trying to hurt me.
- 12:13I'm going to lose this job.
- 12:14I'll never be back on the track.
- 12:16That is your body's way of protecting you.
- 12:19So you, as a sovereign being over your body, have to let your body know, like, what happened was human and I'm okay.
- 12:27It's almost like you have to parent yourself like you were a parent of a child.
- 12:30Like when they fall down, what's the first thing you say?
- 12:33You're okay.
- 12:33You're okay.
- 12:33You want to assure them that I know that hurt.
- 12:37But let's get up and let's see what happened.
- 12:39Right.
- 12:40But all they feel in the moment is trauma.
- 12:42So they're crying.
- 12:43They're like, ah, something happened.
- 12:45And so when you say you're OK, you're like, oh, they're like, OK, am I OK?
- 12:49OK, I'm OK. And then they start and then you start to actually process.
- 12:53So that happens to us as adults when things traumatic happen.
- 12:56We ask, am I OK?
- 12:57And we need to have something to say, yes, you're OK. Keep moving forward.
- 13:02So many people have traumatic events happen to them.
- 13:04They never process because there's so much going on in our lives.
- 13:08There's so much noise, noise, noise, noise, noise.
- 13:11And I know that a lot of what you teach is not about religion.
- 13:16It's more about some of it.
- 13:17But one thing that religion, any religion does, is it forces you at some point in your day to sit alone with your own thoughts and process.
- 13:27And a lot of people are more secular than they have been and probably more than ever.
- 13:33And there's no point in their day when they just sit and process and sit with their own thoughts.
- 13:39Regardless of what you want to pray to and what religion you are, that practice not being part of your life is so incredibly hurtful.
- 13:47Yes, I 100% agree.
- 13:50And speaking of that, I was raised religious, but now I'm very spiritual because I respect all religion, right?
- 13:58Whatever people use to develop a greater connection with collective consciousness or absolute consciousness, whatever you want to call that, God, like whatever name, um,
- 14:10I feel like we're all different cultures, all different nationalities.
- 14:14Everyone has a different name.
- 14:16I don't think that's the most important thing, the name.
- 14:19I think what's most important to understand about spirituality is the energy.
- 14:24And that energy, we're all energetic beings, so it's in plants, it's in your clothes, it's all of us, we're made of energy.
- 14:30So when you connect to that energy, that all-encompassing energy that I personally call God, you might call it something else,
- 14:38That's where your power is.
- 14:40So the first chapter in this book, there's seven areas of well-being.
- 14:44And the first area and the most important area is spiritual well-being.
- 14:49That's where you start.
- 14:50That's where I start.
- 14:51It is the most important.
- 14:52Healing your relationship with yourself is healing your relationship with God.
- 14:56Because most of us self-abandon.
- 14:58We don't listen to our intuition.
- 15:00To me, we are spiritual beings first.
- 15:02And when we leave these bodies, we go back to that collective consciousness.
- 15:06So what if during this time, the goal is, can you tap into that spiritual connection while you're in your body?
- 15:12And no matter what happens in your body, no matter what happens in your life, like,
- 15:16I'm a spiritual being.
- 15:17I'm a cool.
- 15:18I'm okay.
- 15:18Because that's the I'm okay right there.
- 15:20When you connect spiritually, that is connecting you with this collective conscious that is beyond your body, beyond this lifetime.
- 15:28And that's why spiritual well-being is first, because it gets you through whatever happens in your human experience.
- 15:34It's so funny how that seems to be, especially for people that listen to this podcast.
- 15:39Everybody's very ambitious.
- 15:40Everybody's getting after the next thing, trying to build, trying to succeed.
- 15:44And spirituality, it's the first part of your book of your sort of wellness journey.
- 15:50It's probably the last thing that most people think about.
- 15:52I agree.
- 15:53And what's funny about that is we're 80 percent religious in the world.
- 15:59And I think it's even 80% Christian.
- 16:00Out of like all the people in the world?
- 16:02At least the U.S. And what that tells you and what that tells me is that there's been a lot of religious trauma, right?
- 16:09There's been a lot of people using religion to control and manipulate.
- 16:13And that hurts your relationship with the divine, whatever you call the divine, the most high.
- 16:20And I feel like that's what's happened to people.
- 16:22It's not that we don't want to be spiritual anymore.
- 16:24Again, the body is keeping score.
- 16:27And if the body is saying, you're bad, and you're this, and you're a sinner, and you're all these bad things, if you felt that when you were growing up, I mean, just think if you were a child, and every day your parents told you, like, you're bad, and you need to repent for that, because if you don't, you're gonna, something really bad is gonna help, you're gonna just go to hell and burn up, and you're demonic.
- 16:51That is trauma.
- 16:53So the reason I feel like so many of us do attest to a religion, but we don't prioritize spirituality is because of religious trauma.
- 17:02And it is my intention to help people heal through that and develop a healthier relationship with the divine.
- 17:08So if somebody is so caught up in the day-to-day and like they have no free time, they wake up, they work, and I'm kind of quasi describing myself, but they wake up, they work.
- 17:19They're trying to figure out how to prioritize their, their wife, their husband, their kids, and it's already tough.
- 17:26Where do they start?
- 17:27Like, where do they start?
- 17:28And, and I want you to, cause a lot of, a lot of the things that you teach,
- 17:33are things that founders, ambitious, career-driven people, they should all pay attention to, but they're the least likely people to respond well to that message because it's always like an afterthought.
- 17:44It's always later, it's always I'll do.
- 17:46And then what happens is I see these people after they've built their company and they've exited and they haven't focused on anything but the money.
- 17:54And then, you know, their third ex-wife and the kids hate them and, and their mental health and their physical health, they have no spirituality.
- 18:02And then at 55, 60, 65, now they're chasing after it.
- 18:07They're trying to get all these things back.
- 18:10And I haven't really figured out how to drive home the importance of all these other less tangible, less for them real things, even though they are very real, but they don't feel real or as important when you're stressed out about all the emails and the calls and the do we make payroll next month and I want to get that promotion.
- 18:32How do you talk to these people?
- 18:33How do you get them to understand the importance of all these intangible, deprioritized in their mind things so they don't wake up when they're 60, 65, 70, and then have that regret?
- 18:44That they didn't focus on that stuff their whole life.
- 18:47Hindsight is always 20-20, right?
- 18:49And so just knowing that the way I speak with entrepreneurs and business owners, it starts with awareness, right?
- 18:56And so a lot of them are not aware of just how much they're neglecting themselves.
- 19:02They've just been doing it for so long.
- 19:04They think, hey, if I eat a healthy lunch, if I get a massage, then I'm doing good.
- 19:09That's self-care.
- 19:10They don't actually understand how...
- 19:14how much self-care they need to be well.
- 19:17They don't really understand well-being at all.
- 19:20I mean, I've studied it and it can be tough to understand because our...
- 19:27I want to say our whole world is set up to keep us on this hamster wheel of work, succeed, scale, and do all this to provide, especially men, you know, and now men and women, because women not only have a baby, you provide too, right?
- 19:44And so this is what we see on TV.
- 19:49So this is what we aspire to.
- 19:50So we got to understand we're constantly being marketed to on how we should live.
- 19:56And that way of marketing is unsustainable.
- 20:00And it's built on consumerism.
- 20:02You want to buy more.
- 20:03You want to succeed more.
- 20:04You can have a bigger house and make your family happier.
- 20:07Yeah.
- 20:08You're doing all this to have a bigger house and make your family happier, but then you're not spending time with them.
- 20:13So they're actually not happy.
- 20:14And then, like you said, you're in your third wife.
- 20:16Because you didn't understand that spending quality time, which social well-being is in there, is more important, even more important than bringing $1,000.
- 20:28Now, she might like that Gucci purse, but I bet if you took her to dinner every Friday and asked her how is she doing,
- 20:37she would love you even more.
- 20:39She would love you even more.
- 20:41And that's what's most important.
- 20:42And that's what a lot of successful people don't understand.
- 20:45They feel like they're doing the right thing and they have good intentions to do the right thing, provide for themselves, provide for their family, their mother, their father, their everybody.
- 20:53They wanna provide, they have a really good heart, but without the right awareness of like how wellbeing actually works, they unfortunately sacrifice their wellbeing, building wealth,
- 21:05And then once they get the wealth, they got to use that to then build their well-being.
- 21:09Oh, so silly.
- 21:10I know.
- 21:11But it's mostly because of lack of awareness.
- 21:13So my job, that's why I'm here, my job is help people realize how you can have both and how you do actually have to prioritize your well-being.
- 21:21Because guess what?
- 21:22When you are well-being.
- 21:24Your partner is well, your children are well, your people in your job is well, because you've understood yourself more.
- 21:29So if you can figure out how to sleep, how having more sleep will make you more productive, then guess what?
- 21:36You'll set that up for your workers and coworkers and make sure like, hey, I need y'all to get we're not going we're not staying out to 2 a.m., 4 a.m.,
- 21:44We'll stay up till midnight and go stay up till 11.
- 21:46But then you want to at least get six, eight hours of sleep.
- 21:49Come back, be fresh, right?
- 21:50You won't jet set as much without getting enough sleep because you know eventually that takes your HRV down.
- 21:58You don't get enough sleep.
- 21:59You're going to be cranky.
- 22:00And that actually hurts your productivity more.
- 22:03So I really talk to corporations and bigs about productivity and how the goal is to increase your capacity.
- 22:11And to increase your capacity to deal with chaos, to deal with workload, to deal with family, you have to increase your well-being.
- 22:19And to do that, you have to be intentional about how you set up your day.
- 22:22And so then once they are aware of that, then I help them structure the day so they're getting enough sleep, they're getting the right food,
- 22:29They're doing conflict resolution with people at work and at home, and then they feel a lot better.
- 22:34But without that awareness, they won't have it on their own because it's just outside of the language that they're used to.
- 22:40Life at the Speed of Play is a success story partner.
- 22:43Now, this is a book by Mark Pincus, the guy who founded Zynga.
- 22:46I've actually had him on the show.
- 22:47I met him in person and Reid Hoffman wrote the foreword, calling him one of the best idea people in Silicon Valley.
- 22:53The book is Life at the Speed of Play, Launch Products People Love.
- 22:57About 170 pages.
- 22:59It's already a national bestseller.
- 23:00It's his framework for figuring out whether an idea is actually worth going after before you put serious time and money into it.
- 23:07not theory, the way he actually does it, and he's repeatedly built successful businesses.
- 23:11On top of that, you can read it in a weekend.
- 23:13It can change your entire life and give you the right direction if you're an entrepreneur.
- 23:16So right now, if you go to getmarksbook.com slash success, you get two copies for $32, that's $16 each.
- 23:23Mark is paying for the second copy himself because he wants you to give it to somebody, a friend who's been sitting on an idea, someone who needs to push, whoever.
- 23:29That's getmarksbook.com slash success.
- 23:32Mark with a K, buy one, second one's free.
- 23:35My fitness pal is a success story partner.
- 23:37Now a quick story, a few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a very heavy recording week.
- 23:41So five episodes back to back.
- 23:43By Wednesday, I could feel it.
- 23:44I felt tired and I pulled up my food log in the My Fitness Pal app and I could see why I felt tired.
- 23:52I was heavily under eating.
- 23:54I was not keeping up with my meals.
- 23:56My macros were all off.
- 23:57On weeks like that, staying on top of your fuel and your food and what you eat is the difference between being sharp on episode five and being flat.
- 24:05And that's the kind of thing you only catch when you're paying attention.
- 24:08And that's why I keep logging every single meal I eat in the MyFitnessPal app.
- 24:12It's not because I'm obsessing over numbers.
- 24:14It's not because I'm trying to diet.
- 24:16It's because I'm trying to have an awareness about what I eat in the day.
- 24:20And the app makes it so easy to maintain that awareness.
- 24:23I can point my camera at a plate with meal scan.
- 24:26It'll tell me exactly what I'm eating, all my macronutrients, proteins, fats, carbs.
- 24:31There's an intermittent fasting tracker.
- 24:33If I want an intermittent fast, it keeps my eating window honest.
- 24:36And it all syncs with my watch and all of my fitness apps.
- 24:39And it just runs in the background.
- 24:41See, food is a foundation for energy, sleep, recovery, performance.
- 24:45It is the one input that you cannot skip.
- 24:48So do yourself a favor, track what you're eating.
- 24:50It'll make you feel better, perform better in everything that you do.
- 24:54Go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase for 50% off MyFitnessPal premium.
- 25:01That's podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT.
- 25:04How did you disrupt it?
- 25:06your own worldview and then actually incorporate these things because it's one thing to learn it.
- 25:11And I always talk about this on the podcast.
- 25:13Like we are in this, we are in this place in, in, in podcast content and, and just in the world where especially people who listen to this, they'll consume and they'll read another book and listen to the YouTube video and they just won't do anything.
- 25:28They won't actually change their life.
- 25:31And I always say if, you know, it's not to my benefit, but if you just write one thing down and never listen to another podcast that I do ever again, and you go do that thing and it improves your life, like that to me is, you know, for me a job well done.
- 25:43That's all I care about.
- 25:45I'd rather you not listen to this show ever again and just take this one idea and then actually do it.
- 25:51But nobody does anything.
- 25:53They listen and then they go back to the status quo.
- 25:55They forget about it.
- 25:56So I'm asking as somebody who,
- 25:59that changed her life and was that burnt out executive entrepreneur, how did you actually do it?
- 26:07Number one, you have to realize that implementation is more important than information.
- 26:13implementation is more important than information.
- 26:15So you can, as you said, get all this information, but if you don't implement it, it's just information in your head.
- 26:22So the way I did it is first awareness.
- 26:24So being aware that, let's just talk about recently, because I've been doing this for years.
- 26:30This is my second book.
- 26:32And I,
- 26:33And my mom transitioned and she was my best friend and we were very close.
- 26:39So even though I knew all those rituals in the book, it didn't stop me from being dysregulated.
- 26:44It didn't stop me from being angry.
- 26:46It didn't stop me from wanting her to be here.
- 26:49So here I am writing this book.
- 26:51Here I am, just got married.
- 26:54I got married in November.
- 26:55My mom transitioned in February.
- 26:57self-guilt of not like being there of not knowing it was all of a sudden it was unexpected and the way I went from like wow this bliss is something I was looking forward to all my life you know being married and then this traumatic grief all of a sudden and
- 27:19It sent me on the biggest spiral down that I've ever experienced in my life.
- 27:25And here I was with all the tools.
- 27:29sitting in depression again and wanting to burn it all down because I felt so angry.
- 27:39And what happens when you experience trauma, loss, again, it could be loss of a person, a breakup, a job, is when something rocks your world, is you're dysregulated.
- 27:50You're not your highest self.
- 27:51You're not thinking with your executive mind.
- 27:53So when we talk about neuroemotional coaching, there are three states that,
- 27:59There's survival state, emotional state, and executive state.
- 28:04If you're in survival state, and that could be loss of a job, loss of a person, heartbreak, whatever, and that's where depression is, you're just trying to survive.
- 28:13You can't make executive decisions.
- 28:15Right.
- 28:15So I'm not a big executive decision for myself, for my marriage, for anyone, because I'm in survival state because this bucket of grief that I wasn't expecting just hit me over.
- 28:26So until I process that, it's affecting me.
- 28:30It's affecting my marriage.
- 28:31It's affecting my family.
- 28:32It's affecting everyone.
- 28:33And so I think awareness of when you're not OK, even if you're a good person, even if you know everything, we got to be honest.
- 28:42with ourselves when we're not okay.
- 28:44We gotta be honest with our friends and our partners when we're not okay.
- 28:48So I had to tell my husband like, I'm not okay, of course you do.
- 28:51But like acknowledging yourself that I'm not okay and getting the support that I needed to process my anger and my rage and my pain.
- 28:59And I went back to breath work, which is now why I teach breath healing because that is the one free tool.
- 29:06I have over 50 rituals in that book, but the breath is...
- 29:09And I don't talk about the regular inhale, exhale.
- 29:12I did the conscious connected breath, deep breathing for an hour, two hours a day to really remove the anger, the constriction that I had in my body from this event.
- 29:25And.
- 29:26And so what people have to do, one is be aware when they're not okay, and then start with the breath, which is a free tool to regulate their nervous system until they can get back into first emotional state so they can actually talk about their emotions and process in them.
- 29:41And then they can get to executive stage so they can actually make good decisions.
- 29:44But when you make bad decisions, you leave that marriage, you leave that job, you don't
- 29:49Do something you didn't expect to with your kids.
- 29:51You're not there for them.
- 29:53That takes a lot longer to repair.
- 29:55And what happens is a lot of us, this experience in trauma is human.
- 29:59We're all going to lose someone at some times.
- 30:01We're all going to lose a job.
- 30:02We're all going to go through breakups.
- 30:03But if we making decisions in survival say that's what rocks people's world.
- 30:09And so when I work with people, if they're in, I meet people in their darkest hour and I'm like, come on, let's go.
- 30:14Let's start with the breath.
- 30:16Let's start breathing.
- 30:17Cool.
- 30:18Now let's talk about your emotions.
- 30:19Cool.
- 30:20And they're able to process them and then they can get back to their highest self, their spiritual self, the person that knows what to do and why they're here.
- 30:26And confident.
- 30:28confidence.
- 30:29That is your highest self.
- 30:30That is, to me, your spiritual self.
- 30:33And so the humanness, though, is real too.
- 30:36And it experiences trauma.
- 30:37It experiences loss.
- 30:38It experiences separation from people.
- 30:42And you have to process that in order to get back to your executive state.
- 30:46And so that's what I help people do, whether it's a parent or an executive, same thing.
- 30:51We all have the same nervous system.
- 30:53that is going to go haywire if we experience things that are not in alignment with, this is not what I thought was going to happen.
- 31:00I did this huge event.
- 31:02I thought it was going to be this.
- 31:03How did I get $100,000 in a hole?
- 31:05I went for one night of just fun gambling and all of a sudden I just lost a million dollars.
- 31:09You know, you don't prepare for those things.
- 31:12And so you have to have something in place that can get you back into your fullest expression when you're knocked down.
- 31:20I'm just thinking about all the times when I should communicate what's on my mind, have the hard conversation, and you just feel like you just don't have the willpower to do it.
- 31:30But then other times, I'm just sort of verbalizing like we drift through these states sort of unconsciously.
- 31:37So one day, and with your story, speaking about how you're going through this and you want to communicate to your husband, you should feel obviously comfortable and confident communicating to your husband how you're doing and you'd be fully understanding that.
- 31:50But if you're in that survival state, maybe you diminish, you shrink yourself and you don't feel comfortable saying things that would be, you feel like they may be received in an awkward way or they may not be communicated in the way that you want to communicate them.
- 32:06I hope I'm saying this right.
- 32:07You just, when you're in a survival state, you just don't have the confidence to represent yourself the way you should.
- 32:11Some people don't have the confidence and some people think they're fine.
- 32:16Like me, I normalize microaggressions.
- 32:19I normalize trauma.
- 32:20But you're very healthy and you do this for a living.
- 32:23I do this for a living, but I still was normalizing things that I shouldn't.
- 32:27Right.
- 32:27I'm literally like someone could say something very disrespectful and it affects me.
- 32:32My body's keeping it for a negatively affects me.
- 32:34I'm like, oh, it's fine.
- 32:35I'm OK. That is me normalizing disrespect.
- 32:40Right.
- 32:40And I did it for so long just to survive that it became common.
- 32:45So but my body is like this was disrespectful.
- 32:48That was hurtful.
- 32:48And you didn't say anything about it.
- 32:50You didn't process.
- 32:50So what happens is like sometimes we don't have the confidence, but sometimes we're.
- 32:55we're not aware how much we normalize trauma and we normalize what our body is picking up as a threat.
- 33:02Like when we argue with our partner, which we all do, I do too, our body is picking up as a threat.
- 33:09This person loves you, you spend the rest of your life and literally your body is picking up threat from this person I love, threat, threat, threat.
- 33:16And that's why it's so important to learn how to communicate.
- 33:19And something that we've been working on in our marriage is just like,
- 33:23Don't wait.
- 33:24As soon as you feel like we have like once a week, like on Sundays where we get together and we talk about like, how was your week?
- 33:32And we share how our week was.
- 33:33Was there anything that was challenging?
- 33:35And we share our challenges.
- 33:37We share our wins every single week.
- 33:39And it helps us process because if you do it every day, it can be a lot.
- 33:42It can be feel like nagging and too much.
- 33:44But if once a week you just check in, then that gives you and your partner trauma to process.
- 33:49And so I think it's really about being aware.
- 33:52And for some of us really beautiful souls and good souls, we have normalized being okay.
- 33:58You've heard of high functioning depression.
- 34:00That means we can still go because we've normalized.
- 34:03I don't have time to process things.
- 34:05The fact that I just lost someone I love because I got to still work because I still got to feed everybody.
- 34:12I still got to take care.
- 34:13So we're used to moving along and not processing our trauma and our grief.
- 34:18That's what I was trying to figure out.
- 34:20Like, is there something that somebody can pinpoint in how they conduct themselves or how they act?
- 34:26Is it lack of...
- 34:28So, for example...
- 34:29is lack of confidence in communicating with somebody.
- 34:33Is that a signal that you're in a survival state?
- 34:36Maybe six months ago, you felt like having that hard conversation was easy and you leaned into it.
- 34:42And now you're thinking about that hard conversation with your spouse or with a coworker.
- 34:48And the thought is just overwhelmingly scary to have that.
- 34:53Does that mean that you've, without even knowing it, slipped into a survival state and there's a lot of healing and nervous system regulation that you have to go through and you don't understand why you feel so different about that same hard conversation today than you did six months ago?
- 35:07Exactly.
- 35:08When you don't have the confidence to speak your truth, it will keep you in survival state because you have to be able to communicate how you feel.
- 35:17But this is how I help.
- 35:18It's a flywheel.
- 35:19That's what I mean.
- 35:20So like maybe flywheel isn't the right word.
- 35:22It's like a hamster wheel.
- 35:24It's like a trap.
- 35:25Like so you don't have the confidence because you are in survival state and you can't get out of survival state because you don't have the confidence to communicate to get you out of that shitty situation that you're in.
- 35:35So then you're just stuck.
- 35:37So what I talk about in the emotional well-being chapter, if you don't feel like you can communicate, which is totally normal, I don't always feel like I communicate because it's like you don't want to hurt someone or you don't want to say it wrong or you're thinking like, ah, I'm so much in my feelings.
- 35:48This is definitely going to rub them the wrong way.
- 35:52Transformational letter writing is one of the rituals that I talk about in my book.
- 35:55It's one of my favorite emotional well-being rituals.
- 35:58You still got to get these feelings out of your body or else your body is in high alert saying,
- 36:04I'm pissed and I'm not okay, right?
- 36:06So what you do with transformation, you're honest.
- 36:10You would not say this to the person.
- 36:11You would not say this to your partner, but you're honest.
- 36:14I feel disrespected.
- 36:15I feel like you don't understand me.
- 36:16You don't listen to me.
- 36:17You don't support me enough.
- 36:18We don't go out enough.
- 36:19You know, your job.
- 36:20I feel like my job doesn't, you just write down everything you feel because your emotions matter and you want to write it all out.
- 36:28But if you dump that on a person, they're going to be defensive and they're going to come back and they're going to battle you.
- 36:33But you need to get that out of your system.
- 36:35So I highly recommend journaling.
- 36:37If you hate journaling, voice note it.
- 36:40Get it out of your system.
- 36:40And then delete it.
- 36:41Do not send it.
- 36:42Don't send the letter.
- 36:43Don't send the voice note.
- 36:45But get it out of your system because what happens is that if it's...
- 36:48inside of you is causing harm inside of you and it's causing dis-ease in the body.
- 36:53Most cancers are caused by separation of self and deep-seated resentment.
- 36:59And what is cancer?
- 37:00Separation of cells.
- 37:01So when we separate from ourself, we separate from people, we are causing this separation, this chemical process to start happening in our body.
- 37:11But when we start expressing ourselves, we're releasing cancer.
- 37:15that energy that could be stored because our body's just trying to keep us safe.
- 37:20So I recommend writing it, journal it, saying it.
- 37:23And then when you get to executive state, communicating it, but not communicating it.
- 37:28If you feel nervous about communicating, there's a reason you feel nervous about it.
- 37:32So my suggestion would be process that first with a therapist, with a friend or with yourself, but listen to your body.
- 37:40There is a reason your body is saying, if I say this,
- 37:45You're probably right.
- 37:47There's a chapter in your book, and I want you to speak about it only as much as you're comfortable with speaking about it.
- 37:53It's chapter three.
- 37:54It's about you being a creator, not a victim in your own life.
- 38:01And if people want to explore a little bit more about what I'm alluding to, they can obviously get the book and read about it.
- 38:06But you almost cut this chapter out.
- 38:09It's a very emotional chapter and a very difficult chapter.
- 38:16Explain the idea first before anything else.
- 38:20So you are not a victim.
- 38:21You are a creator.
- 38:22What does that mean?
- 38:24And how does that idea and how did that idea help you get through different periods of your life, including the one in this chapter?
- 38:38I love this question because when you are harmed, the first time you're harmed, you are a victim.
- 38:44However you are harmed, whatever happened to you.
- 38:49After that, it can build you or it can break you.
- 38:55And if when it breaks people, they keep replaying the harm over and over and it keeps looping in their head and they keep experiencing it.
- 39:07over and over and over and over again.
- 39:09It's like a loop.
- 39:10It's like being on a hamster wheel.
- 39:12When you say, man, that sucked.
- 39:16I can't believe that happened.
- 39:18This is how it made me feel.
- 39:19And you're just honest about how it impacted you and your humanness.
- 39:26And then you say, you know, based on that, this is how I'm going to move forward.
- 39:31I am going to talk about it.
- 39:34I'm going to be mindful about it.
- 39:36See, you're doing something about it.
- 39:38So you become a creator.
- 39:40And you start creating a world in which you're raising awareness about what happens to you, whether it's loss of a relationship, loss of a loved one.
- 39:47Like, you know, me losing, it helped me gain a closer relationship with my father and my sister.
- 39:54My mom's love, I embody it now.
- 39:57Like, she's living through me.
- 39:59I carry her legacy with me.
- 40:01I wear her ring on my neck.
- 40:02Yeah.
- 40:03And I could be a victim of how she was treated in the hospital that made me so angry, how she was treated by family members in her past that made me so angry.
- 40:13Or I can let the legacy that she left me in her DNA and with her lived experience fuel my very existence.
- 40:23And that is honoring her.
- 40:24So instead of being a victim, which I have plenty of things I could still to this day be upset about.
- 40:30I am a creator because I'm using her life and her legacy to create more love and abundance in the world.
- 40:35So it's just a choice.
- 40:37One causes separation and one causes unity.
- 40:42And I invite people to choose, choose love, choose unity, choose to be a creator after no matter what happens to you, it can build you.
- 40:54So let it build you instead of break you.
- 40:57How do you first approach when something stressful, traumatic, negative happens in your life?
- 41:02That's, you know, even the thought of, of like dealing with it as opposed to just repressing it.
- 41:12And that alone can be difficult for people.
- 41:15So I think that I want to help people who are listening understand the first step they have to take, which is probably the most difficult step when you're trying to deal with something difficult that you've had to overcome.
- 41:26First step is just breathe.
- 41:28Second step is cry.
- 41:31Third step is throw an adult temper tantrum.
- 41:34Right.
- 41:35We knew what to do as children.
- 41:36We didn't get food.
- 41:38We didn't get what we want.
- 41:39We scream.
- 41:39We yell.
- 41:40We cry.
- 41:40Like we were so brilliant as children because we knew how to just let frustration out of our body for whatever we were frustrated from.
- 41:49But adults, we have to be polished.
- 41:50We can't get upset.
- 41:51We can't get mad.
- 41:52And I'm not saying go off on people or just throw, you know, fall out in front of your partner.
- 41:57They make you upset.
- 41:59But I do think it's important to have time to breathe, like take them in the moment.
- 42:03Just.
- 42:04take a deep breath, right?
- 42:05If you're at work, if you're in traffic, if you're in the moment, breathe and create a healthy boundary between whatever you experience.
- 42:12And then from then, when you meet to release, we're so scared, afraid to cry.
- 42:15I remember going two years, not shedding a tear.
- 42:18Like cry for what?
- 42:19I got things to do.
- 42:20No, I cried every day for three months.
- 42:23This was like, I want to say six years from now.
- 42:26But I've learned how to cry.
- 42:27So yes, when mom transitioned, I cried every day, morning and evening for the three months.
- 42:33And I didn't know I had that many tears in my body.
- 42:36So I think crying is very healthy.
- 42:38And it's a way I say tears are pain leaving the body.
- 42:42So allow yourself to cry.
- 42:43It's okay to cry.
- 42:44It's very cleansing.
- 42:45It's very purifying.
- 42:46So breathe, cry.
- 42:48And let's talk about this adult.
- 42:49They have rage rooms, right?
- 42:51So if you get mad, instead of going out, go to the rage room, get your pillow, punch your pillow, you know, go out in the woods, go hiking, just go in the middle of nature and just, just yell and then hug a tree.
- 43:04You know, there's so many things we can do to process so that energy is not sitting in our body.
- 43:09So I would say those three things,
- 43:12Breathe, cry, go out in nature and just yell, scream or throw an adult temper tantrum.
- 43:20I like that.
- 43:21Why are we so afraid to feel our emotions?
- 43:25You know, I think we're afraid of judgment, like how someone is going to judge or maybe even how we're going to judge ourselves.
- 43:31You know, I think we have a negative relationship with full expression, whether it be dancing or singing if we can't sing or just being our full self.
- 43:42Most people are not fully expressed.
- 43:45And it's something that I talk about in my work a lot.
- 43:47So where someone can sing or not, I invite them to sing.
- 43:50Where someone can dance or not, I invite them to dance.
- 43:52Because if you look at nature in animals, everything is expressing itself in a beautiful way.
- 43:57And I believe we're here to express.
- 44:00So we have been trained to walk a certain way, dress a certain way, look a certain way.
- 44:05That's not natural.
- 44:06We are primal beings.
- 44:09Like, look at our ancestors.
- 44:10They dance, they sing, they ate good food.
- 44:12They were like, I gotta be this big.
- 44:15You know, they, they actually back in the day, the thicker you are, the good, the good, you were, you were being treated good.
- 44:22The more wealthy, you were healthy.
- 44:24And so, I mean, I think whatever size people want to be, that's their business.
- 44:28But I do believe love yourself wherever you are on that spectrum.
- 44:34Like, do you love yourself big or small?
- 44:36Do you love yourself?
- 44:37Do you love yourself no matter how much money you have in the bank?
- 44:40Do you love yourself in all the different stages of your human experience?
- 44:45That's what's most important is just to develop a sense of self-love and respect.
- 44:49And most of us really don't know how to love ourselves properly.
- 44:53We're not taught how to love ourselves.
- 44:55We're taught, achieve, do this, look this way.
- 44:59You got to be pretty.
- 45:00You got to be, women got to be pretty.
- 45:01Men have to be successful.
- 45:02Now men and women have to be pretty and successful.
- 45:05And if you're not, then you're losing, right?
- 45:07Versus be yourself, express yourself.
- 45:10How do you feel today?
- 45:11What do you want to do today?
- 45:12Really, that's what the soul is here to do, is just express, just like nature, just like animals.
- 45:18They're just here expressing themselves fully.
- 45:21And that's what creates beauty in the world.
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- 48:39I think what can also come of all these moments where you...
- 48:45express yourself, sit alone with your own thoughts.
- 48:47It can help you really figure out what your goals actually are and not someone else's goals.
- 48:54What are your goals?
- 48:55How do you want to live your life?
- 48:56And I don't think enough people think about that until it's too late.
- 49:00I think that the same reason why we don't express ourselves, the same reason why we don't... We are so driven by other people's expectations of us.
- 49:09It is so difficult because...
- 49:12The jobs we do, the person we marry, the place we live, these are all more often than not, not even our ideas.
- 49:20It's like, what did our parents say we should do?
- 49:22Like, what did our guidance counselor say was a good career?
- 49:25And then we wake up one day, again, at like 50, 60 years old and realize our whole life has been someone else's.
- 49:31And we're so, because we're so, we're either distracting ourself from thinking deeply about what we want our life to look like, or we're,
- 49:40The same reason why we're scared to express ourselves or to tap into our emotions.
- 49:46We're scared of just sort of going against the grain and doing things differently than what we think we should be doing.
- 49:52And that's the same personality.
- 49:55It's going to lead to a life that we don't actually enjoy.
- 49:58And I feel like more people...
- 50:01It all comes down to confidence.
- 50:04It all comes down to confidence.
- 50:05If you can feel okay being yourself, you can feel okay having that tough conversation.
- 50:11If you can feel okay saying, hey, I don't want to do this job.
- 50:14I don't want to be a doctor or a lawyer.
- 50:18On the other side of that hard thing is a life that you actually enjoy.
- 50:22Absolutely.
- 50:22I need you to write a book called Confidence is a Cure.
- 50:25But that's really it.
- 50:28But you can't, but you, your work is the first step because to be confident, you need to heal.
- 50:35You need to be regulated.
- 50:36And then you can have all these hard conversations and make these tough decisions.
- 50:39Exactly.
- 50:40To be confident, you have to be self-aware.
- 50:42It all comes back to self-awareness because self-awareness is the missing piece of the puzzle.
- 50:47Because some people can be confident and confidently wrong.
- 50:50That's very true, too.
- 50:52Even because they're like, I'm confident.
- 50:53I want this job.
- 50:54I'm confident.
- 50:55I want this relationship.
- 50:55They think because of how they've been marketed to.
- 51:00That's why self-awareness is so important.
- 51:02And the work that I do is because you sit there.
- 51:06No social media, no outside.
- 51:08No distractions.
- 51:09You put your hand on your heart.
- 51:11And we talk about different things.
- 51:12What feels the best?
- 51:13What really feels good?
- 51:15And I pay attention to movement.
- 51:17I pay and I'm empathetic.
- 51:18I could feel energy.
- 51:19So if I feel an energy shift, I'll say, I noticed when I said this, you moved or you took a deep breath and we go deeper.
- 51:27A lot of people don't have someone to actually notice them and notice when they're actually abandoning themselves.
- 51:34We do it all the time.
- 51:36And a lot of people got a lot of confidence, but they got confidence following other people's dreams.
- 51:41They have confidence following what they saw or
- 51:43someone on social media have.
- 51:44Well, I need to do this because that's what I need to be successful.
- 51:48So they might have the confidence, but without the self-awareness, they're not aware that
- 51:52scaling in this area is not even what you really want.
- 51:56I had a friend, you know, I'm gonna talk about myself.
- 52:01Cause I did something similar, but hers was more exciting.
- 52:04But I got a beautiful home.
- 52:06And at first I wanted to wait to get a home until I was married and pick it out with my husband.
- 52:10That was my vision.
- 52:11But I got to a point where I decided to do some deep healing work and I wanted a home because I was paying, you know, 5,000 a month in Cali.
- 52:21And so I got this home.
- 52:22Beautiful home.
- 52:23My dream home, saltwater pool, island kitchen, jacuzzi stub in the master suite.
- 52:29All these things, right?
- 52:29Everything that I wanted.
- 52:30Fireplace, all the elements, right?
- 52:33And I realized that I love the saltwater pool, but I want to be next to them.
- 52:38You know, so I thought what I thought would bring me the most joy, like having this home.
- 52:44Now I'm grateful that I have property, but really I cannot wait to have a home on the beach and it doesn't have to be as big as my home that I have now.
- 52:53And so was I confident when I bought it?
- 52:55Yes.
- 52:56Did I have the funds?
- 52:57Yes.
- 52:58And it was a huge accomplishment for me because I did it all by myself, but I'm
- 53:04At the end of the day, once I became self-aware, and we don't have to, we were here to make mistakes, right?
- 53:08I know, but you can never figure out what you actually want.
- 53:10Until you try, right.
- 53:12So it's like, you know, I just want everyone listening to know you don't have to do it perfectly.
- 53:16You don't have to be figured out, but you do have to be honest with yourself.
- 53:19And you do have to be aware when like, OK, I made this choice.
- 53:22A lot of us make a choice and we just try to be like, OK, well, this is my choice.
- 53:25And this is why we try to explain why we did a thing, even though we know we actually don't even like it anymore.
- 53:31We try to intellectualize why we made the decision that we make.
- 53:36I can intellectualize why I bought the house all day.
- 53:37But at the end of the day, is that the thing that brings me the most joy?
- 53:42No.
- 53:43And that's where self-awareness is most important.
- 53:45It's like, I like it.
- 53:46I'm grateful for it.
- 53:47We'll probably keep it.
- 53:48But do I want a house on the beach somewhere?
- 53:50Yes.
- 53:51Yes.
- 53:52And be okay with the fact that the first thing wasn't what you expected it to be.
- 53:57Right.
- 53:57And it really was, but it just wasn't my highest desire.
- 54:01And I didn't know until I tried it.
- 54:03Or let's say you get married and you realize, actually, I don't want to be married.
- 54:07I want to be single.
- 54:08But instead of actually communicating that and being honest about that, you go and cheat on your partner.
- 54:12Right?
- 54:13No, just be honest.
- 54:14You want to be out in the streets?
- 54:15Right.
- 54:18And be out in the streets or be honest and say, hey, I want to be here, but I want to have multiple partners.
- 54:23Some people are a lot of people are just not comfortable being honest with themselves about what they really desire.
- 54:31But if they were actually honest with themselves, they'd be better off.
- 54:35Their partners would be better off and the world would be a better place.
- 54:38If we get actually really, truly becomes more self-aware and be more honest with ourselves.
- 54:43I wish more people would go through this healing process so that they, again, I just keep coming back to the word confidence because the only way that I know how to describe it.
- 54:53I want this book.
- 54:54All of the way that you live your life, the person you marry.
- 54:59It's so wild to think that people can't even have confidence in how they speak to themselves.
- 55:08Yeah.
- 55:10That's insane to me.
- 55:11Well, I think people don't realize that our thoughts are being like, okay, if you think about the way social media works, right?
- 55:18They pick up on the algorithm of what you like and then they feed it back to you.
- 55:23People don't understand marketing is doing the same thing.
- 55:27It's picking up on your deepest insecurities and...
- 55:31and feeding it back to you and saying, hey, if you get on this app, okay, right now, for instance, the world is, we're marketing marriage and children, right?
- 55:43Marriage and children, that is the American dream, right?
- 55:48But is it for everyone?
- 55:49Is marriage and children- Of course it's not for everyone.
- 55:51Exactly, but is it highly marketed to everyone?
- 55:54So much so that if you don't do it, you feel like you're outside of the social norms.
- 56:00You think something's wrong with you.
- 56:01Exactly.
- 56:02And so when someone feels that based on everything around them, based on belonging, you know, even like if, let's say, you want to be the president or something, how often have we had a president who's not married?
- 56:13Maybe we're a kid.
- 56:15So when everything that you think that is successful is literally outside of yourself, then you are on this hamster wheel of being something that you're not in order to belong.
- 56:31Most people are striving to be something that they're not in order to belong.
- 56:36How can you be happy?
- 56:38Because being ostracized by a community is like the number one fear that anybody has, right?
- 56:43So this is why people are scared of like public speaking.
- 56:46This is why people are scared of jumping on stage or why people are scared of even posting on social media because they're scared that they're going to stand out and be different.
- 56:55And they're not going to live up to these maybe real, maybe not even real expectations that all these other people who...
- 57:02I don't know why you care about everyone else's expectations and opinions of you, but we place everyone else's opinion in such high regard that we let them influence and dictate how we live our life.
- 57:15How do you remove yourself from that game that everyone else is playing?
- 57:21In order to be confident, you have to realize in order to be confident in who you truly are on a soul level
- 57:30You have to realize that every great person in the world has been ridiculed.
- 57:36Think about it.
- 57:38Every actor, president, most, I'll, you know, my husband tells me not to speak in absolutes.
- 57:44Most, I'm listening, baby.
- 57:47Most have been ridiculed, put down, torn apart, most of the great leaders.
- 57:54So if you want to fully express yourself and be the greatest version of yourself for yourself, for your family, and for the world, realize that you're gonna be ostracized.
- 58:05You're not going to be, you're going to go outside the norm because the norm has been trained to act and move in a certain way for the profitability of a few of us.
- 58:17For the profitability of a few of us.
- 58:19And if you are normal.
- 58:24Then you are part of that hamster wheel that we're all when you're part of the matrix, as they would say.
- 58:31So be willing to be abnormal.
- 58:34Be willing to be ostracized.
- 58:36Be willing to be talked about.
- 58:38Be willing to be rejected.
- 58:40Be willing to be.
- 58:43completely annihilated.
- 58:45Like I go through annihilation all the time.
- 58:48I, my entire life, and it has not stopped, no matter how many books I write, no matter how much I love God and how much of a good person I am, I am, and I remember my dad told me this when I was a little girl, and I was so mad at him.
- 59:02He's like, Koya, life isn't fair.
- 59:04I was like, well, why not?
- 59:05I'm a good person, I do good.
- 59:07Life is, I'm like, and once I actually listened to him,
- 59:11Life is not always fair, but you, what I learned, well, I needed a caveat to that to give me hope, right?
- 59:24And what I tell myself, life might not be fair, but you can be fair to yourself.
- 59:30And I think every person listening to this, the only person that can love you exactly the way you need to be loved is yourself.
- 59:38And until you learn to love yourself and take care of yourself, you're always going to be looking at it for it from the world.
- 59:45And the world is not set up to give it to you.
- 59:47The world is set up to take care.
- 59:50Not because it's greedy, because it's set up.
- 59:53That way, yeah.
- 59:53That way, right?
- 59:55And so I think if we are just honest with ourselves about that, we see it.
- 59:59We see it in the government.
- 1:00:00We see what's happening.
- 1:00:01We see people dying around the world.
- 1:00:02We see this.
- 1:00:04We can't close our eyes to this, right?
- 1:00:07So if we're willing to be honest and confident in the fact that this shit ain't set up for everybody to win and be well.
- 1:00:14And we are outsourcing all of our validation to everyone else.
- 1:00:18To a toxic system.
- 1:00:20And to a toxic system.
- 1:00:21We are literally outsourcing our happiness to a system that's not built to keep us happy.
- 1:00:27It's built to keep us wanting and striving.
- 1:00:30But what if we reverse engineered the system and we started to live for ourselves, we started communicating with each other, support each other, lift each other up versus compete, you know, collaboration over composition, then that's when the world starts becoming a healthier phase.
- 1:00:45We're not fighting over land.
- 1:00:47We're making sure everyone has land, everyone has healthcare, that's when we heal.
- 1:00:52But it starts within first.
- 1:00:54It starts within ourselves, within our partnerships, within our families.
- 1:00:58How many of us, we have torn up families?
- 1:00:59We're fighting over what?
- 1:01:00Money.
- 1:01:01Control.
- 1:01:02Things that don't matter at all.
- 1:01:05But again, we're following a system that is unhealthy.
- 1:01:10And until we change the system within ourselves, within our families, we're not going to be able to change the system in the world.
- 1:01:19We got to understand it first.
- 1:01:20In order to change something, you have to understand it.
- 1:01:22Most of us don't understand how we're being manipulated through things.
- 1:01:27The government, through religion, through all these things.
- 1:01:30But once you start to understand it, then you start to push back against it and you have the capacity to push back against it.
- 1:01:37It sounds pessimistic, but don't assume that anybody has your best interests in mind except you.
- 1:01:43Right, because they can't.
- 1:01:44No one is not pessimistic because it's true.
- 1:01:48If it wasn't true, maybe be pessimistic.
- 1:01:50Like, everyone's evil.
- 1:01:51I mean, everyone can be a little bad, but everyone's not inherently evil, right?
- 1:01:55To me, I think everyone is actually inherently good.
- 1:01:58But I feel that when there's separation, that's where the darkness comes, the evil comes, the separation.
- 1:02:06And if we start to think about like, how can I, when I feel dark or when I feel like negative, how can I shift that?
- 1:02:16then we can help other people shift it.
- 1:02:18And that's why I do the work that I do, because it's like I feel I have to be honest about it within myself first in order to help someone else move through it.
- 1:02:26But if I'm not honest about all the emotions I feel, the anger, the rage when it comes up, how am I going to help you move through yours?
- 1:02:33If I'm not, if I'm looking, oh yeah, that's your problem.
- 1:02:36Let me help you with your problem, right?
- 1:02:37And you can't even be and live it yourself.
- 1:02:39No.
- 1:02:40How can I realize that?
- 1:02:41No, rage is a real emotion.
- 1:02:42We have it for a reason.
- 1:02:44In the emotional well-being chapter, I talk about your emotions, your ambition.
- 1:02:47If you have rage, the rage is there for a reason.
- 1:02:49There's a healthy boundary.
- 1:02:50Yeah.
- 1:02:51Something that you're doing is outside what feels good in your body.
- 1:02:54Let's talk about it.
- 1:02:55Let's break it down.
- 1:02:56Now, do we need to remove ourselves from that situation?
- 1:02:59Do we need to change the situation?
- 1:03:01Who do we need to communicate?
- 1:03:03Then we can work on it.
- 1:03:04Well, first, we have to be honest about it.
- 1:03:07I want to bring up one last idea that's actually from your first book.
- 1:03:11So the first book was entitled Let Your Fears Make You Fierce.
- 1:03:17In that book, there's an idea.
- 1:03:20You say fear is our friend.
- 1:03:21It shows us places that we need more love.
- 1:03:25This is the fear is in my mind, like the opposite of confidence.
- 1:03:30So it you're, you're saying that fear is a signal that shows us what we have to focus on.
- 1:03:37Explain that idea a little bit more because maybe, maybe fear is what we look at.
- 1:03:41We lean into and then through it.
- 1:03:44figuring out what is scaring us, then we then we get the confidence we can use to go take on everything else.
- 1:03:50And I I'll give you a personal story.
- 1:03:52And I think that this is this ties into what you're speaking about with fear and you tell me.
- 1:03:57But growing up, I was so scared of.
- 1:04:00speaking in front of the class, like giving presentations.
- 1:04:04Now this is what I do for a living.
- 1:04:06And when I first started this podcast, I started a virtual.
- 1:04:10So you don't really think about the audience at all because you're just in front of a computer recording on a Zoom.
- 1:04:15And then eventually I was asked to speak in front of a very large audience.
- 1:04:19And my first speaking gig was at Inbound that Housewap put on, which is like 10,000, 15,000 people show up to this thing.
- 1:04:25And there were sponsors like, hey, Scott, do you want to come out and speak?
- 1:04:28Um, so I did it.
- 1:04:29I was nervous as hell.
- 1:04:30I've said the story a few times, like I, it all went fine, but I was, you know, I was very stressed out about this, but like the back of my chair was soaking wet with sweat.
- 1:04:38It was absolutely gross.
- 1:04:39Um, but then what I did after that was I basically reached out to as many small event organizers as I could find in South Florida.
- 1:04:47And I said, hey, just have me on stage for 10, 15 minutes.
- 1:04:50I just need exposure therapy.
- 1:04:52I need to speak as much as possible to get over the fear.
- 1:04:55So for me, fear was a signal of something that I had to overcome, lean into, and now I speak no problem on stage.
- 1:05:02It's tons of fun, I enjoy it.
- 1:05:04But that was how I interpreted that idea.
- 1:05:07I leaned into the fear and that turned into my job and my career and it took the podcast to the next level.
- 1:05:12Now I can speak, now I'm writing a book, now I'm doing all these fun things.
- 1:05:17How does somebody outside of, in my mind, I thought I was a little crazy for purposefully signing up for things that scared the shit out of me.
- 1:05:25But how does somebody lean into the fear, use fear as a signal for where they have to improve, where they have to focus?
- 1:05:33First of all, congratulations that you did that.
- 1:05:35I think that's so brilliant.
- 1:05:37And I think it's a beautiful story because it just shows that if you want to overcome it, you can.
- 1:05:44But you do have to do the work.
- 1:05:46So in the first book, I talk about fear and I list the acronym.
- 1:05:49Yeah.
- 1:05:50There's one acronym that fear is false evidence appearing real.
- 1:05:56So what was the false evidence?
- 1:05:57That you're scared and you have sweat on the back of your chair.
- 1:06:01It appears real.
- 1:06:02Like, no, this thing is really scaring me.
- 1:06:06And the other acronym is face everything and rise.
- 1:06:11And that's what you did when you set up all of these speaking.
- 1:06:15You faced the fear and you were able to rise because the false thing is that you can't do it.
- 1:06:22And that's not the truth.
- 1:06:24But when you face everything and rise and set yourself up, you just spoke on many stages.
- 1:06:29Or maybe you could have got a therapist.
- 1:06:30Or maybe you could have just built your confidence in different ways by like practicing in your house.
- 1:06:35You know, there's so many ways you can face everything and rise.
- 1:06:38I love that way that you chose.
- 1:06:39And it doesn't have to look the same as my way or anyone else's way.
- 1:06:42But whatever you decide, how are you going to face everything and rise?
- 1:06:46When I was dealing with my grief, how I faced everything was doing the breath healing.
- 1:06:51You know, a lot of people going through traumatic things, they might journal, they might write.
- 1:06:56And the reason I give people all the rituals I do in this book is because I realized after my first book, people need more practical tools they can do every day and they can kind of pick from because there's no one size fits all.
- 1:07:08You know, so well-being rituals is a companion for people to flip through and say, what ritual can I use today to help me feel better?
- 1:07:17to help me feel more confident, to help me feel more connected to myself.
- 1:07:23Because that's really what it's about.
- 1:07:25When we experience fear, we almost feel disconnected from ourselves.
- 1:07:28When you couldn't speak on stage, you're like, I want to do this thing, but I feel like I'm so terrified by it that I'm feeling a disconnection from this desire in my heart.
- 1:07:37But when you faced it, you were able to do it.
- 1:07:40So it's really about noticing the fear, acknowledging the fear, and then facing everything and rise.
- 1:07:47And this line, it shows us the places that we need more love.
- 1:07:53Why do you say that we need to focus on these places as opposed to run from them?
- 1:07:58Like, for example, with me.
- 1:08:01Yeah.
- 1:08:02Why is the advice not, Scott, you're not cut out for public speaking.
- 1:08:06Go focus on what you're already good at.
- 1:08:08Right.
- 1:08:09Because I think that...
- 1:08:11At the end of the day, we are innately talented, you know, like they would say, oh, if you're not a certain height, you'll never dunk, you know, and things like that.
- 1:08:20But we've seen people that can dunk who are not a certain height.
- 1:08:24Right.
- 1:08:26They say, oh, a person can't run this fast.
- 1:08:28And then what do people do?
- 1:08:29They break the record.
- 1:08:31We've built planes.
- 1:08:32We've built cars.
- 1:08:32So we're always praying.
- 1:08:34proving that there's a way when there when there's a will, there's a way, you know.
- 1:08:39And so I think that's what this human experience is about.
- 1:08:43Just seeing like, how much can I do?
- 1:08:45And in the last chapter of our book, The Art of Surrender, the subtitle is How Good Can It Get?
- 1:08:52So we get to ask ourselves, how good can your life get if you step outside of fear?
- 1:08:58If you look at fear as your friend, you can actually see how good life can get for you.
- 1:09:04And not as a life sentence.
- 1:09:06Fear is not a life sentence.
- 1:09:08Fear is just feedback of where you need love and support.
- 1:09:12And if you're willing to pour that love and support into yourself, you can go to the next level in your life.
- 1:09:18So Wellbeing Rituals, where is it?
- 1:09:20If you're on YouTube, it's here.
- 1:09:22It's available now.
- 1:09:23So we'll put all the links in the show notes.
- 1:09:25You can get it on Amazon.
- 1:09:26By the way, you have an all-star team of people that wrote these great little praises for the book.
- 1:09:37Dr. Brian I've had on.
- 1:09:38Mel Robbins, we're doing a little interview in Boston in a couple weeks.
- 1:09:43Jay Shetty, Trent Shelton.
- 1:09:45I don't know Queen Afua.
- 1:09:47Queen Afua is my spiritual mother.
- 1:09:51She has this book called Sacred Woman.
- 1:09:54And when it comes from to healing the womb and healing from trauma, which I wrote about in my first book, she is the queen of that.
- 1:10:00And when you are growing, I think it's really important to have mentors and people that you looked up.
- 1:10:06She's one of my greatest mentors when it comes to well-being.
- 1:10:10In some of your content, you speak about having the person that believes in you before you actually achieved the thing and you've had all these great people in your life.
- 1:10:18It's such a powerful idea and so, so, so important to have people that bet on you before you're even betting on yourself.
- 1:10:25Absolutely.
- 1:10:26And at the end of the day, you've got to bet on yourself because at the end of the day, most of my life...
- 1:10:31I didn't have people.
- 1:10:32Like growing up, I was a weird ball.
- 1:10:35Like I was this nerdy girl who was also an athlete who was trying to do all these things.
- 1:10:41My coach was laughing at me.
- 1:10:42He was like, Koya is so funny.
- 1:10:43She'll just say the most outlandish things, but then she'd do them.
- 1:10:48You know, and so people like, I'm going to London.
- 1:10:50I drive in New York.
- 1:10:51I'm going to drive in London.
- 1:10:52Like I just have a vision of something and I just, I don't have any boundaries.
- 1:10:57I just figure it out and get it done.
- 1:10:58And I think that is...
- 1:11:01the spirit of inventors and creators.
- 1:11:03And I consider myself an inventor and a creator.
- 1:11:06You are.
- 1:11:07And you're helping.
- 1:11:09You're helping your peers.
- 1:11:10You're helping all the other inventors and creators that are good at that, but bad at the rest of their life.
- 1:11:15Right, right.
- 1:11:16And I think...
- 1:11:17That's why community is so important.
- 1:11:19We don't all have to be great at everything.
- 1:11:22We can just be great at what we're great at and you be great at what you're great at.
- 1:11:25And we come together and we support each other.
- 1:11:28That's the way humanity should work.
- 1:11:29We shouldn't be so separated.
- 1:11:31We just need to respect each other, respect our cultures, and then come together and share and celebrate versus trying to have everything one way.
- 1:11:41And I think, again, the way the world is set up is for everyone to march at the same beat of the drum.
- 1:11:47And it's just not natural.
- 1:11:49The first thing that this book speaks about is that burnout is no longer a personal failure.
- 1:11:57I don't even think you understand how real that line is.
- 1:12:01I speak about identity a lot and so many people, again, this audience, when things don't go right, when they feel like I haven't put in 14 hours today yet, I'm an abject failure, which is not true.
- 1:12:16Or, you know, the deal falls through or the person quits or they don't raise the, there's so many things where they just think that,
- 1:12:25I'm not good enough and I'm not a great person because this thing didn't work out or I wasn't able to work as hard as I thought I could or I didn't show up the way that I know I can show up.
- 1:12:35What's your message?
- 1:12:36I mean, there's a lot of different, very tactical strategies.
- 1:12:38You mentioned a few of them in this episode, but what is the message to that high-performing person that continuously just shits on themselves because they feel like they don't bring 150% of themselves to every single thing 24-7, 365, and they get burnt out, and then they hate themselves even more for that?
- 1:13:01I think the way that I moved from burnout to building a global embodied leadership community is to realize that burnout is just dysregulation.
- 1:13:16It's just a sign from your body that you've overridden it too long.
- 1:13:21Right.
- 1:13:22And so sometimes when we're pushing for success, if we keep overriding our need for rest, our need for nourishment, then the body's keeping score is adding up receipts.
- 1:13:34And eventually we experience burnout.
- 1:13:36So burnout is not failure.
- 1:13:38It's just a sign that you've been dysregulated.
- 1:13:41You've been doing things out of alignment.
- 1:13:42Right.
- 1:13:43Saying yes to things you want to say no to, self-abandoning yourself too much in your relationship, in your job.
- 1:13:49So again, burnout is just a sign.
- 1:13:51It's not a sign of failure.
- 1:13:53It's a sign of dysregulation.
- 1:13:54And if people realize that, they can say, okay, well, how can I regulate?
- 1:13:58There are the rituals for the regulation right there.
- 1:14:00Through journaling, through breath work, through...
- 1:14:03time in nature, through moving your body, all these things are scientifically proven to help you be well.
- 1:14:11So again, that burnout is a sign of dysregulation.
- 1:14:14You start to do the rituals of regulation.
- 1:14:17You start to feel more balanced.
- 1:14:19And then...
- 1:14:20When it comes to embodied leadership, you start to get more clear on what is my capacity?
- 1:14:25How much do I want to talk to my partner?
- 1:14:27How much do I want to travel?
- 1:14:29How much time do I want to spend with my kids every day?
- 1:14:32And not based on what society says, but based on how you really feel.
- 1:14:37And that's when you start living a really juicy life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
- 1:14:46I love it.
- 1:14:46Koya, thank you so much.
- 1:14:48Where can people connect with you?
- 1:14:49Koyaweb.com, social media, Koyaweb, K-O-Y-A-W-E-B-B.
- 1:14:55The last thing I have to ask you, because I ask everybody, you've gone on this incredible journey of healing.
- 1:14:59You've had some highs, a lot of lows as well.
- 1:15:03You've navigated all of it.
- 1:15:05If you could go back and tell 20-year-old Koya one piece of advice, what would that be and why?
- 1:15:11Girl, love yourself first and most.
- 1:15:20Every single day, start with the breath, look in the mirror, and be your best, most fully expressed self every single day.