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The Space Between Who You Were and Who You're Becoming · Your Body Knows

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Your Body Knows, a podcast for women ready to return to their bodies and reclaim their power, their truth, and their way forward.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Shanetta McDonald, a somatic life coach and writer.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each episode will explore the messy, beautiful work of healing, self-trust, and learning to feel at home in your own skin.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're in a season of transition or simply longing to feel more like yourself, this space is for you.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's listen in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Your Body Knows podcast.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, intuitive living coach, Jeanetta McDonald, writer, mother, veteran publicist, community builder, all of the things.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am grateful for you showing up here, listening in as always.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And today it'll be a one-on-one pod.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about something that happens to all of us, but that I don't feel people dive into the layers of that often.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that is transition.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We all experience it at some point or another.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you really think about it, life is one big transition.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is not secular, cyclical, excuse me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not linear.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is just like this winding, messy road of us just navigating certain circumstances, situations, uh, journeys.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks different for all of us, but there's a particular kind of transition that I think we don't talk about enough.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't the obvious ones um, getting married, having a baby, getting divorced, moving to a new city, you're starting a new job.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those are very obvious transitions.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm talking about is something that is a little bit more subtle, which is when your life technically looks pretty much the same, but inside and internally, you know something has changed, something has shifted.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you are not exactly who you were anymore, but you're also not entirely sure who you're becoming.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where I've been lately.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been thinking about transition a lot, as I mentioned, and I actually wrote an entire Substack about this recently.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So go to your body knows on Substack.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can read the long form of this.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take a different perspective here, but I want to talk about it here too, because I think there's something to be said about these things out loud that makes them feel a little bit different.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Part of this is because I turned 40 last year, y'all.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I will be 41.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: This comes out Thursday.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be 41 in a week from the time this airs.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say that 40 has been interesting.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel old.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I still feel youthful-ish.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not having some giant existential crisis about aging.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: In a lot of ways, I actually feel really good about my life.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel really hopeful.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I feel really alive.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: My life force feels a lot better than it did a year ago.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I have noticed myself looking backward a little bit more than I expected.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about, gosh, my 30s, uh, dare I say, even my 20s, um, who I was then, what I wanted, what I thought adulthood would look like, and all of the things I was convinced I needed to accomplish in order to make let's feel like I had made it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've also been thinking about this a lot as it relates to motherhood.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I see how small my daughter is.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: She's four and a half, and she has so much life in front of her.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk about this often, but when we're children, as many of you know, life feels so long.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: School feels so long, everything feels big because that is our world.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our world is revolved around our little families, our little friends and school and so forth.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um to see the expansiveness of age, uh, circumstances shift in our lives.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It it it, if you take a step back and look at it, it's really eye-opening.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when I in particular look at my younger self, that younger version of me, I feel a lot of tenderness towards her.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I also sometimes look at her and think, girl, what were you doing?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: What were you wearing?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: What why were you doing this?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a whole other topic.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think that's the part of getting older.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You start to see your younger self with a little bit more perspective and compassion and empathy, hopefully.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can recognize the things that she got right she got wrong, and the things that there that she could not have simply known yet.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like it just wasn't in her timeline to be aware of that yet, whatever that is.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you're in your 20s, you're making decisions that feel incredibly permanent, that feel that way.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say some of them are permanent, but not all of them.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, you're usually choosing a career, you're figuring out relationships, deciding where you want to live, trying to become financially stable.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and generally trying to construct some version of an adult life.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily realize how much of what you're doing is based on assumptions about what your life is supposed to look like, or what you want your life to look like at that point in time, not 10 years from then, 20 years from then.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: At least I didn't.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had ideas about what success meant for me, what I wanted my career to look like, um, about relationships and money and adulthood and where I thought I should be at certain ages, all of that bullshit.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then you get you older and you realize that there is no point where you officially arrive at adulthood.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're all in it, and it just looks different for everyone else, for everyone.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, no one hands you the key.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: You just keep becoming.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the answer.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: You just keep you're you there's an unbecoming, and then there's a becoming.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think perhaps what lies in between that is the transition, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of like, I'm unbecoming this version of myself, and I'm becoming something else, which, if we are like you, will always be happening.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been one of the biggest revelations of getting older for me.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think that there would eventually be some version of myself who had everything figured out.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that she, I, would know what she was doing.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: She would feel confident about her decisions.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she would have a pretty solid idea of what the next five or 10 years were going to look like.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that woman exists.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that exists for any of us.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't work in corporate America anymore, but I hope and would imagine they're not so asking the question of where do you want to be the next five to 10 years?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they are.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But who can answer that truthfully?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: No one.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am increasingly convinced that the goals will always shift because life keeps changing.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: You change, your priorities change, your relationships change, but your interests change, hobbies, seasons of life, your bodies change, our bodies change.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the things that used to matter enormous enormously, excuse me, can suddenly feel completely irrelevant.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I know somebody out there gets that.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could do an entire podcast, or perhaps two on the changes my body has undergone in the past year, since having a child in the past 10 years.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is wild over here.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, makes me a little emotional.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think one of the things we don't talk about enough when we talk about personal growth is that grief can come with it.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something I talk about so often with those that are closest to me, is how, in particular, the past year and a half, maybe to two years, I've been navigating and holding space for grief, which I didn't even know I was experiencing um for so long.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, what was this about five years ago, perhaps when a lot of commentary and resources around grief came about, and they always dealt with like the loss of a loved one.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the definition and intention around grief, uh, the meaning of grief, excuse me, is very, very expansive outside of that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And now we know grief lies in so many parts of our lives.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I just remember it feeling like a foreign thing and be like, I don't experience grief.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that looks like.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe grief is everywhere.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, grief with the loss of what I thought my family would look like.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have grieved friendship breakups um in the past year, the actual loss of life for someone that I did love and care about.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um just a loss of a grief for the loss of a body that feels very different than it did a few years ago.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um we talk about growth as if it's always exciting, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you evolve, you become more yourself, you leap by an old patterns, you step into a new new chapter, you um, you do the thing, you get the thing, whatever it is.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yes, all of that can be true, but sometimes becoming more yourself also means losing access to a version of yourself that you actually loved, or a version of yourself that maybe you weren't ready to let go of, or a version of yourself that you had to let go of that was really fucking painful.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um growth is not always great.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um in the long run, uh, it ends up being what's best for us, but it doesn't always feel good.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that's something to acknowledge.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can outgrow a friendship and still miss that person.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can outgrow a career and still miss the identity that came with it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can outgrow a city, a relationship, a dream, or a way of living and can still feel nostalgic for it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes we interpret that nostalgia as evidence that we made the wrong choice.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was just having a conversation with someone.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I did a solar return chart reading, um, astrology chart reading, highly recommend.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, shout out to Daria Burke.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: She referred me to her astrologist, and uh, he's wonderful, had an amazing session with him, and I spoke about the grief that I've experienced in the past few years and um how I'm trying to hold space for that and also continue to walk forward.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that includes grieving uh, but also knowing that the decisions that I've made, the decisions that others have made around me, um uh is for the best, you know, and we make the best choices that we can.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We think if I am so sure this isn't right for me for me anymore, why do I miss it?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because missing something doesn't necessarily mean you want to go back.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that it mattered.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and again, this means not just relationships or friendships or uh jobs.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It means everything, every area of your life, and especially that internal part of you that you're no longer able to allow or you are accessing it just doesn't make sense for you anymore.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever part of you or your life that you have outgrown.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as I approach 41 in a week, uh, there are a lot of things about my younger life that I genuinely miss.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not a lot, actually, just a few.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there is a certain kind of possibility in being younger, you know, um, things I hadn't experienced yet, things I hadn't learned yet, and versions of myself that I hadn't met.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to romanticize my younger life by any means.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there were plenty of things that time, that time that I would never want to experience again.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and I can still appreciate that part of me.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I talk about like this previous version of myself, I'm talking about a year or two ago, you know.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, with some changes in my life, I have come up against or started to think about like, gosh, maybe I should have done XYZ differently.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, maybe I could have could, you know, once the coulds and the shits come online, then I know um that's something that's not healthy for me and it doesn't work for me because in that previous version of myself, in the previous versions of ourselves, we are who we are.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do the best that we can.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um the how life unfolds is how it's meant to unfold.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we can honor who we used to be without trying to resurrect it or to dissect it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then there's another side of transition, which I think can be even more comfortable, and it's the fact that you don't necessarily know what comes next.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: None of us knows what's gonna come next.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also recording this before the partial lunar eclipse this week.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Something could get eclipsed into or out of our lives.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have no idea.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're so comfortable with beginnings and endings because they're easy to identify.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you it's easy to know, okay, I'm gonna get the job, I'm gonna move, I'm getting married, I'm gonna have the baby, I'm gonna end the relationship, I'm gonna start the business.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um those are clearer befores and afters, but some transitions don't work that way.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just know that something has changed.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know that the way you've been doing things doesn't work anymore.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know that you want something different.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um or that a certain identity or goal or relationship with yourself has just run its course.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you may not know what replaces it.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the difficult part.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really uncomfortable.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're so conditioned to solve things that we don't know what to do with the transition that doesn't have an obvious solution.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say we, I mean me.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have been conditioned in all the work that I've done.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's been an unconditioning, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: A deconditioning, I guess.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of the times when I speak to clients and work with clients around this, it's what have you learned to do in this situation?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you want to do in this situation now?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Most of my clients who come to me are in some sort of transition.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a subtle transition, it could be a big transition.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they usually come to me with one issue, and that's not the issue that we end up working on.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be I don't know for a great example.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a client claimed to me around visibility.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say, okay, let's talk about visibility.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to you?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, let's let's dig in, let's let's see who you've been, who you want to be, so forth.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the real issue came up that she's looking for clarity.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So she's in this big transition period.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks she's looking for visibility and transition on her own, and she really wants clarity.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's because we want a plan, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: We want, we want the thing, you know.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and also I say that because we we can do our best to uh to work to get the clarity, but clarity doesn't always come in six weeks.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always come in three months.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It took me two years to get clarity around a certain subject.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and sometimes if we aren't able to get the clarity, God towards higher power, or whatever you believe in, just pulls you out of that sage situation or puts you into something else, uh, puts something else in front of you to help expedite that because maybe you don't have the ability to do that on your own.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but often we want someone else to tell us what the next move is.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most of my clients come to me asking me, like, I need you to tell me what to do.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I completely understand that impulse because we all have it, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I like knowing what I'm doing.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I like a plan.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I like being able to make a decision and move forward.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm learning that there's a difference between having direction and demanding certainty.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And those are not the same thing.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had another call with a client.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a group coaching call that I conducted and it was a visioning exercise I led everyone through.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Yeah, I got such great clarity.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: This woman, I got such great clarity on it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't know if it's my vision or vision I've seen of others, like this this life that I've seen others live.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, you can question that.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can remain curious about that.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, well, that that just confuses me because if it's not my vision, then who, you know, and and she just got so overworked and overwhelmed.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think it's because we just put this finite uh this big responsibility on trying to get out of this transition or trying to get through this transition.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: The only way we can get through this transition is to get a straight answer, to make a decision.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's just not always what's required of us.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is just a season of curiosity, of wayfinding, wayfinding your way through life and seeing what you like and what you don't like and just taking it easy and not doing much except for that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't always need to know where you're gonna end up.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot believe I'm saying those words out loud, but you don't always need to know that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is where intuition becomes really important because when you're in transition, you might not get some giant, big, undeniable message telling you exactly what to do next.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Often that never happens.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Intuition is much, much, much more quieter than that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: For me, intuition is the feeling that maybe something isn't right, something is off, something is different here, something doesn't feel good.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's that recurring curiosity, so just continuing to be curious.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's also when you keep thinking about something that you can't quite explain.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like something just keeps coming up for you.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's also when you feel a little bit more alive, when you imagine doing something, even if you don't know why.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm a big daydreamer with good reason.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if I catch myself in this a good fantasy land, I'm like, there's something there.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I drawn to this?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is information.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And even when it's harder, information of like, I don't want to do this anymore.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's all information.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes it does come a bit clearer, but oftentimes it's it's much more subtle.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um we underestimate how much information we actually have when we're willing to pay attention to ourselves, when we're willing to sit in the discomfort of transition.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that there's just so much noise.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is always someone telling us what we should be doing next, i.e., Instagram, TikTok, if you're on that, whatever it is.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's always another person our age who seems to have something figured out.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: There will always be another career path.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you want a different partner, there are many partners out there.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in abundance and partnership if that's what we desire.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's always another business model.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's like there's always something else, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, we can spend a lot of time trying to figure out what our life should look like based on what everyone else is doing, just like that woman in my workshop.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, there is a softer voice inside of us that's saying, actually, I don't want to do that.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's right for me.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think part of growing up is learning to trust that voice, not blindly, because not every feeling is an intuitive, is it is part of your intuition.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm definitely not suggesting that we should make every major life decision based on a random feeling we had on a Tuesday afternoon.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think there's something to be said for becoming.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm being curious about where your internal signals were telling you.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just listened to um Risa Tisa, I believe, the woman who had that very impactful uh TikTok story a couple of years ago.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's on um She's a Lucky Pod podcast this week.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she talked about listening to her her intuition and acknowledging whatever it is, whether something felt good or bad or right or whatever it was.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and she also talked about how sometimes we talk ourselves out of things, right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: She mentioned that when she had thoughts or feelings around red flags around her ex-husband, that she would question herself and say, maybe, well, maybe that's not, what if that, what if that's not true?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: What if I'm not right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so conversely, now she's asking herself, but what if I am right?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: What if that is true?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: What if that, what if that does feel right for me?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I think for all of us, start to question yourself, like what do you feel right now?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: What feels heavy?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Energizing, what are you craving?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are you no longer willing to tolerate?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps coming up in your thoughts?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: What are you interested in all of a sudden?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: What parts of your five life feel alive and what parts feel like obligation?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions can tell you a lot.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just did a deep dive.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's Virgo season, y'all, and I'm a Virgo son.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So Virgo season started Sunday.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got this intrinsic feeling to just clean out my follower list on Instagram.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there were so many people I follow out out of obligation.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, if I feel, if I have a feeling that I'm following this person, and mind you, I'm not even on Instagram that much.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but if I feel like I'm following this person out of obligation, whatever content or message, whatever they have to offer doesn't resonate with me anymore, then I I I can unfollow you.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it doesn't have to be a big deal, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those things tell us a lot about ourselves.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the questions that we're willing to ask, me in particular in that instance.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I what am I following this person out of obligation?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would love for my intuition to send me a Google Doc with a timeline and bullet points.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fantastic.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just, again, none of that, it doesn't work that way.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for me, it was just like a feeling of like, yeah, I think it's time to clean this out.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I I think I'm gonna start to show up in this space again.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to figure this out because this is just I I don't know half these people that I'm following.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, for many of us, sometimes we get a next step in the the process of listening to our intuition, but you definitely don't get an entire staircase.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's difficult for a lot of us who are used to being competent.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're used to figuring things out, and I say this to no end, figuring it out is not a tool.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Although many of us figure it out, but that's not a tool.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a tool that should be in your toolbox.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, transistin can be humbling.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can't always think your way through it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can't always figure your way out, figure your way out through it, and you can't optimize your way through it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes you just have to live it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage my clients to experiment, to try new things, to notice when they feel like they want to let something go.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then see what happens.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where I'm at right now.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I've done with clients myself over the past few years.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, this is where I'm at right now.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a perfectly mapped-out vision of my next year, let alone my next five years or the next decade.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I have ideas and I have so many things I'm curious about.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have things I want to know more of and things I want less of.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um this year, this summer, I've been, I'm actually on week 12.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've been doing the Artist Way 12-week creative program, and I have journaled every single day for the past 12 weeks.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this entire summer was a perfect time to do it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I would have had time to do this in any other part in my life.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it has really, gosh, given me not just the space to be creative, but this permission slip to be creative in all areas of my life and many other things.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's I started it because I wanted discipline around a particular thing, and I did feel like I was in a creative rut.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a spiritual program, which I didn't realize and I absolutely love.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I created a small community around it, and yeah, we've been doing it for 12 weeks, and highly, highly recommend.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll probably start another group for the program.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking we'll blink and it'll be the holidays, so probably at the beginning of the year.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I would say there are about 15 to 20 people in my group, and I would say a good handful of us have successfully been continuing to do the program.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Long story long, highly recommend doing it, doing it imperfectly, but just giving it a try.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um it also helped me to pay attention, to notice the synchronicities in life, uh, not just around my creativity.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I there was a time when I believed that clarity had to come before I made an action.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I needed to know what I wanted before I could move towards it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this program has convinced me less, has has convinced me that that's not true.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've gotten so much clarity from just doing, just taking the action and trying the thing.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have this summer written two essays this summer, written its minute two essays.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm launching a um a community for mothers soon.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll share more about that in soon.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have revamped branding, messaging.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've hired a finance coach.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken another coaching program.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I am taking a course around herbalism, which I'm very, very fascinated with right now.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have taken myself on 12 artist states, at least 12 artist states over the past 12 weeks.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that has been because I've just been willing to get curious and to be open.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I highly recommend it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to wrap, transition only asks us to be present.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: To not necessarily figure out anything, but to be present and to become willing to listen to ourselves as we evolve.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: We never finish becoming.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: There will always be another transition.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Different versions, things we outgrow, things we discover.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if we spend our entire lives trying to get to the point where we finally feel certain that we have everything or certain about everything, we're gonna miss a lot of the actual living.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something I've I've really been working through in journaling in my morning pages every morning.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that I talk about in therapy, that I talk to myself about.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Once I'm done recording this podcast, I'll meditate on this.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all I'm trying to remember is to live and to be present and that I can be grateful for the life I have and still want more, but also be okay to be in the transition without treating it as a failure or like this waiting period to figure things out, which I did for the greater part of the last few years.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the in-between isn't a problem.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It could actually be a place where we get to listen and just notice again.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am turning 41.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um glancing backwards, I'm looking forward a little bit, noticing what I've outgrown and what I'm so curious about.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for once, I am not trying to force myself to know exactly where I'm going, where I'm going, what I'm doing.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just paying attention and seeing what happens.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish that for all of you.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening today.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this was helpful.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Please rate, review, subscribe, join me for the next couple of episodes coming up.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have some really fun interviews.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't listened to the previous one, check out Daniel Prescott's interview that came out a couple of weeks ago.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: She is so fun.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So fun.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I have some some great guests coming up.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm back.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more consistent.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this was again something that you can sit with and think about as you navigate and just sit in transition.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is where the magic happens.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.