Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #199: Get in Touch With Your INNER COMPASS With Wayne Dyer’s Daughters, Saje Dyer & Serena Dyer Pisoni

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  Seeing challenges as blessings Embracing self love and forgiveness Finding purpose everyday  Resources: Read The Knowing Website: https://www.sajedyer.com/  Instagram: @saje.dyer Twitter: @serenadyer Instagram: @serenadyerpisoni Facebook: @officialserenadyer Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Get your TAJA x Heather Monahan candle & use code: Creatingconfidence15 at checkout! Show Notes:  There is a Knowing inside of you that is calling out to be heard! But how can you get in touch with that inner compass? Saje Dyer and Serena Dyer Pisoni, teachers, authors, and daughters of famed motivational speaker, Dr Wayne Dyer, join me today to share their insights into the quiet voice that guides us. If you are like me and are a total newbie into spirituality and divine healing, you need to hear what these brilliant women have to say about growth, love, and happiness. You will be blown away. I know I was!  About The Guest: To millions of readers around the world, Dr. Wayne Dyer was the beloved “Father of Motivation”―but to Serena, Saje, and their six siblings, he was simply “Dad.” When he died suddenly in 2015, the sisters were blindsided by grief and felt unprepared to navigate life’s challenges and conflicts without his guidance. The experience launched them on an adventure from loss to understanding as they came to realize and metabolize their father’s teachings with a new urgency, intimacy, and power as they applied them to their lives.  Serena Dyer is the sixth of Wayne and Marcelene Dyer’s eight children. Serena attended the University of Miami, where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and now lives in South Florida with her husband. She spends her time traveling, reading, blogging, and working to combat child trafficking through several local organizations. Saje is the youngest of the eight children and graduated from NYU with a master's degree in psychology. She is a mother to her little boy Julian and she enjoys traveling, learning, and spending time with loved ones.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There is actually no way to happiness. Happiness is always available to you in your situation that you're in. My dad always used to say to us, do not process life as you assume it should be, process life as it is. You know, if life is going as we assume it should be, it's easy to be happy. As soon as, you know, the wind changes and we're thrown something that we do not assume to be good and it's not the way that we want our life to go, that's when it becomes challenging. And as soon as you start resisting, whatever life is, you is bringing you. You're creating more and more resistance. How do you break down that resistance and still find happiness? One of them is by no longer assuming that life should be a certain way. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I am so excited for you to meet my two guests today, which is a rarity, but these two ladies had to come together because not only are they the authors of the knowing, which we're about to get into, but I want to tell you a little bit about each of them. Serena Dyer Pesoni is the author of Don't Die with Your Music Still in You. My Experience Growing Up with Spiritual Parents. She has been a contributor to Huff Post, positively positive. And her sister, Sage Dyer, is the author of Goodbye Bumps. She's a featured speaker in the 2014 Game Changer.

Global Summit. She was part of the National PBS special with Dr. Wayne Dyer. And yes, these are two of Wayne Dyer's daughters. Ladies, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. So I was, it's funny, Serena, I was just on with Sage earlier before you got here and I wanted to share some behind the scenes on what happened. So to take this back a few months ago, I got a DM on Instagram from Serena. And she was letting me know. that she had written a book with her sister's stage and they wanted to send me a copy. And in podcasting, we get, you know, books are sent to us all the time. So I said, you know, first I checked her out.

I'm like, okay, she's not a psycho. Great. All right. Here's my address. Please send me a book. And I get the book. Okay, this is such a true story. I get the book and I literally have stacks of books in my house because I get so many

books sent to me. I put it in a staff and I forget about it. I just forgot. And I move on in life, blah, blah, blah. months later, here we are, and I was just telling stage this, I had a friend who's been seeing an energy healer, and she saw me at a spring class the other day. And she said, you look so stressed out. I really want you to go to this energy healer. And I thought, I'm up for whatever. Like, okay, throw it at me. It can't hurt, right? I'm like, there's nothing bad that can happen from

this, right? And she said, yeah, there's nothing bad. At worst case, you waste an hour of your life. I'm like, okay, I'll go. So I go to this energy healer. And first of all, she was other level, amazing for anyone. And I know there's people out there that don't believe in this stuff, and that's completely cool. I get it. However, I will say this woman is a game changer. There are certain people in the world that have gifts that you just might not have been exposed to you. It is my opinion. So anyhow, I am leaving her and she says to me, Heather, I just want you to remember one thing. It's all in the knowing. Don't forget. It's all in the knowing. And I said, okay, and I'm very much a visual person. So I'm,

know if I need to teach myself something, I have to write it down somewhere so that I, you know, I see the words to remind myself. So I get home, I have my to-do list out, and I write at the top. It's in the knowing. And I underline it and I put exclamation points, you know, to remind me. And then I'm sitting there that day and I'm working. And all of a sudden, I glance over the table and I see your book. And I literally, the knowing. And I thought, well, that's beyond bizarre. And obviously that could be a sign. So I picked the book up and I looked at the table of contents and I looked at the signs and then I looked at Serena what you had written to me about all the green lights. And I thought, okay, wait a minute. This is a sign right here. I've got to go to that chapter. So I went to that

chapter and I couldn't believe I was overcome with emotion and then I read that entire book in a day. And I absolutely loved it. So I messaged Serena back on Instagram and said, I finally read your book and I am dying to have you guys on the show. So thank you so much for coming on today. Well, I love that story. First of all, you do not look stressed. So I don't know what that lady's talking about because you look great. But when I saw your message and you said like, I'm so happy that you sent me the book and I finally read it and I'd love to have you on. I was like thinking to myself, wait, did I send you that book like months ago? Or I just couldn't remember when I had sent it. So then I was like, yeah, no, I sent it months ago and it must have just come, you know, come across your attention, really, at the right

time. Totally. Completely at the right time. And first of all, for anyone listening that does not know who Wayne Dyer is, and I just want to give a little context, Wayne Dyer is, and if you go back to my episode with Sarah Blakely, Sarah Blakely attributes the entire Spanx organization to Wayne Dyer. She used to drive around listening to Wayne Dyer cassettes in her 20s. She was unhaping. She was unhaping happy in life, not living her purpose or her potential. She knew it and she didn't know what to do. So she figured, listen to this man who, you know, for people who are in the personal development space, understand that he's really an authority, she would drive around and listen to hit your father's cassettes, because that's how old we are, Sarah and I. And she attributes 100%, that the Spanx idea

came to her after weeks of her driving around and listening to your dad's tape. So your father has impacted so many people in so many amazing ways. And it's so exciting now to see that you two are carrying on his legacy. Yeah, well, thank you. You know, Ellen DeGeneres actually has just reminded me when you said of Sarah Blakely driving around with the cassettes because our dad actually officiated the wedding of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia deRossi because Ellen also attributed, not all of her success, but some of her success to his cassettes in her car and just what that did for her belief in herself and her manifestation and all of that. So you're absolutely right. He's definitely impacted several well-known individuals as well as millions of, you know, not as well-known individuals.

And I think Sage and I are, we feel like to hear that we're, you know, following in his footsteps or somehow like, you know, stepping into his shoes a little bit. I think it's a huge honor, but I also think that it's really what he is kind of inspiring from the other side as well, not just for us, but for you and for so many other people that are continuing to get messages and inspiration from their loved ones or him from the other side. So it's actually a really cool. Yeah. And also, I mean, for us as his daughters, or I'll just speak for myself, when, you know, growing up with this father who so many people looked up to and he changed all their lives, you know, I, I recognized that as I grew up, but I also felt like he was just my dad. So it wasn't until

he actually died that I felt connected to and called to his work in a really big way and started really just digesting it, reading, listening to his tapes all the time I still do. And I get so inspired. So it's almost like his passing away brought us to a place where we could actually learn from his work in a totally different and new way and help to spread his message and our own message because it's become unique for us as well. Absolutely. And you know, One of the things when I thought about reading your book, and maybe this was the turnoff that I had why I didn't open it initially, was this idea. I didn't come from spiritual parents. I'm not a master at manifestation.

All of this is very new to me at 47 years old. So I felt a little, well, gosh, they're lucky. I mean, they had the number one guy as their guide in life. I mean, geez, wish I had that. What's so funny is your book is the antithesis of that. and I'm so grateful I got that message to read it. Even starting with, I had no idea, Wayne Dyer wasn't always mystical. And when I started reading about his initial journey and the August, you know,

1974 situation that occurred that really changed his life, I'm hoping that you can share that so people can relate to. It hasn't been all flying around and happiness and harmony for you guys your whole life, nor his. Sage is the one who discovered that connection. that synchronicity between the day that kind of changed his life, you said in August of 1974 and what that meant for us after he passed away. So before she tells briefly about that, I just want to say that you're absolutely right. I think that one of the things that people probably

assume is that if you have spiritual parents, you have all of the internal sort of connection to just everything happening for you and everything kind of just falling in your lap and things just being really easy. And so often I think people think that, well, if your dad is Wayne Dyer, compared to, you know, the asshole that I had as a parent or the absentee parent that I had, then you already have it made and you already have. And in some ways, I think, you know, there's a truth to that in terms of having the exposure. Yeah, the exposure to like higher consciousness type of topics. But it was not until we had to, you know, really kind of learn and apply it for ourselves that we really understood that, you know, having this spiritual parent,

both of our parents actually are very spiritual, having these spiritual parents is great. But if you can't do the work yourself, it doesn't matter. And it's just like having terrible parents. They are not going to make or break your life. You have to do it for yourself. Yeah. And an example of that is our dad had a terrible, had a terrible father. And he became so spiritual.

And we had wonderful parents. and it wasn't until he passed that we sort of really started embracing that. So sorry, Sage, what were you going to say? No, I was just going to say we also described it in the introduction as it's a return to our knowing. So we're sort of born without these egos and we spend our lives building up these boundaries and walls that, you know, sort of make up our ego. And so to get in touch with your knowing, it's returning to that place that you have built

up walls against. And so that's what the book is about. And we built up the same walls that other people build up and they're individual to our own experiences. So we just kind of go through how to help you get in touch with your own knowing and how we did it ourselves. Because like you said, it's not a book that like, oh, we were just born this way. And we had these great parents. So everything was, you know, it was very much a returning and still is a returning to my highest self, my knowing, all of that. But for our dad, I'll try to make it a brief story because it's long and complex.

but our dad passed away on August 30th of 2015. And when he died, I felt like I was at a crossroads of I had grown up with all these incredible spiritual teachings and highly spiritual parents. And he always talks about how death is just a transition from the physical to the non-physical and how I should just think of him as being in the next room because that's all it is. It's just, you know, we can no longer see him because our bodies are limited by our five senses, but there's so much more than what we can perceive. And so I grew up with these

ideas, but I had never been challenged to really believe them and have faith in them. So when he died, I felt like I was at a crossroads of, okay, but yes, I know that this is what you said and this is what I was raised to believe in. But at the same time, I can't see you. I'm grieving for you. And I don't know. I don't know that you're still here with me. I can't know that for sure right now. When you want more, start your business with Northwest registered agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest registered agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local local law. and can help you in your business every step of the way.

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But so I just felt like some part of me knew that if there was meaning in this life and there was meaning in his death and that it was on time, there would be meaning in the day he died. And I kept looking for it and I couldn't find it initially. You know, it didn't add up to any significant number. It didn't, I couldn't think of any significant date that thing that had happened on August 30th. But I decided to read his book I can see clearly now, which is a memoir that he wrote, he wrote it when he was like 73 and he died when he was 72 and we were all like, are you even writing a memoir? I'm sorry, he died when he was 75. And we were all giving him a hard time. Why would you write a memoir? You're going to have to write another one in 10 years. Like your work is just getting greater,

you know, but he said, I just feel called to write this book. And Serena and I were out there with him when he was writing. And he was writing like eight hours a day. He just said, I have to write this book. I don't know what it is, but something's coming through me. He died a couple years later. It was his last real book that he put out. So a part of him knew that his time was coming up on him. But in that book, there was a chapter about his relationship with his father. So when our dad was little, when he was born, actually, his father walked out on his family. He had two older brothers.

He was the youngest. And he was an alcoholic. And he just didn't come home when our grandma got home from the hospital. Our dad spent his life hating this man, hating him, but also wanting to know him. you know, and he could never find him. And he said that as he became a teenager and so on, he would have nightmares about finding his father and beating him up or screaming at him. And he became obsessed.

And he eventually learned that his dad had actually died. He had been still searching for him for a few years and his father had been dead and nobody had even informed him that his father had died. So his search had been in vain for the past few years. But learning that his father had died did not bring him. any sense of healing or sense of forgiveness, he's still carried around this hatred, this dread, this anger towards his father. And so he was then in search of his grave. He said, if I can't find him while he's alive, I want to find where he's buried. And he set out to find where he was buried.

And through a series of really crazy coincidences, he actually found where his father was buried. This is back in, you know, the 70s. It wasn't a Google search and a phone call away. It was a lot more complicated. and he wound up finding where his father was buried and he went there. It was in Biloxi, Mississippi. And he went to his father's grave and he went there with the intention of pissing on his father's grave, of screaming at him, of all of that. Yeah, literally kissing. And he went there. He got out of his car.

He went up to the grave and he did all of that. He got his anger out. He screamed at him. How could you leave my mother, my dear mother, who had three boys and they, and they, the 1940s, you know, right after the Great Depression to fend for herself. Our father wound up in orphanages and foster care because his mother could not afford to care for all three of her children. And so he just had all this resentment about that, that he was trying to pour out onto his father. And after he did that for however long, he went to walk away, feeling no better or no

worse, just the same. And he walked away from his father's grave and he walked back to his car. And when he got there, he was about to leave, and he felt this overwhelming sense that he needed to go back to the grave. So he turned around and he walked back to the grave and tears started to pour from his eyes as he just felt this powerful force of love coming over him that he had never experienced in relationship to his father before. And from his mouth came the words, dad, I forgive you. I forgive you. And he was just overcome with love, lightness, forgiveness, and just emotions that he had never experienced for his father. And when he walked away from that grave after that second experience of going back and saying, from this moment on, I send you nothing

but love, I forgive you, I love you. He developed a whole new relationship with his dad. His entire life turned around. Our father wrote his first successful book that went on to be the best, selling book, non-fiction book of the decade of the 1970s. He got into a new relationship. Everything about his life turned around from that day forward. His career took off the date that he went to his father's grave and forgave him was August 30th, 1974. The same day that he died, that he left his physical body, August 30th, you know, 50 years later or whatever it was. And when I read that, I could not believe that in my dad's own words, he said, if you were to ask me, the most significant date of my life.

I would say it was the events that took place on August 30th of 1974, the day that he forgave his father, his whole life turned around. Now I'm coming to find out that this is the same day that my dad chose to leave his physical body. And I'm like, this is incredible.

You know, this wasn't just some random day. It was something divine. And then I thought, what is he trying to tell us by leaving his body on August 30th, by choosing that to be, you know, his return to get home. And I felt like what he was trying to tell me personally was, you know, August 30th in his life marked the day that his relationship with his father did not end.

It actually changed to take on a whole new meaning, a more beautiful relationship developed, one that was pure love. And I felt like what he was saying to me was, this is now the day in your life that marks the same thing. Your relationship with your father did not end on a August 30th. Instead, it changed to take on an entirely new divine meaning and that I can still continue to have a relationship with him, even though he's not here in the physical from this day forward. And it can be even more beautiful. And once I really internalized that notion, everything started to change for me. I started to receive signs from him. I started to feel him around me and I just moved from like a lower level energy of grief with there's nothing wrong with grieving

and I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I think it's important. But I was stuck in sort of this lower energy and when I shifted my perspective on his death to having this grand meaning that was on purpose, my energy shifted. I was, you know, calculating at a higher field and I started to connect with him in a way that I wasn't able to before. Serena, for you, you didn't have that comforting. You were going through your own personal struggles, and you weren't necessarily seeing the signs at the same time. Is that right?

Yes, I was going to say, actually, that's exactly right. And what Sage was saying was like, for her, it was a reminder that her relationship with our dad changed. For me, having, you know, that was in 2015 that he passed away, and now that it's 2022, and it's been six and a half years, essentially. And I have gone through so much in the last six, and a half years that I talk about in the book. But just to touch on briefly, becoming a mother for the first time, my husband being arrested, indicted for his business, losing all of our financial assets,

him going to trial, being sentenced to seven years of prison, that getting overturned at the last minute, giving birth to three children in that time, really struggling with body image and depression because of just a little weight gain from childbirth. And then to top it all off, my teenage stepson passed away from an accidental drug overdose. So that's really just like a very brief snapshot of just the highlight reel, really the low light reel, if you will, of everything that I experienced. And so for me, I believe now with the gift of hindsight and having kind of immersed myself more into this spiritual work, like Sage was saying, kind of starting to calibrate on a higher energy level, for me, what that represented his act of forgiving his father and changing his life

was the knowing that I needed to discover for myself or I needed to return to, which was self-forgiveness, self-love. Because when you grow up in a spiritual household like we did, one of the greatest benefits is that you are taught from a young age to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. One of the downsides of growing up in a spiritual household is that you are taught to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. In other words, you don't get in life what you want. You get what you are. And when all of these things were happening to me in my life back to back, to back, I could not help but feel as though I must be bad. I must have attracted this. I must have done something in a past life or carmically or energetically

to align with all of this bad stuff. And because I had that experience, of growing up with, you know, believing that you have to take responsibility for everything that happens and because all these bad things were happening and I identified myself as attracting them or creating them, I started to carry an enormous amount of shame, of shame and guilt. And so when my dad forgave his father and his life changed, I know that for Sage that was sort of symbolic of the idea that her relationship with our dad could change and take on a new meeting. And for me, it was symbolic in the sense that I never had to forgive anyone really before, but I especially never had to forgive myself.

I never had to deal with shame and feeling as though I somehow was bad, you know, because I never had anything bad really happened in my life before everything started happening at once. And out of that whole experience of learning sort of like self-forgiveness and self-love, I came to understand that I had a choice in this. I could continue to view these things as bad, or I could choose to view them as experiences that I signed up for before I incarnated in this lifetime in order for my soul to grow. Because what Sage and I were sort of raised on was this idea that you come here

and your time in your body as Heather or Serena or Sage is your time in the classroom and that when you are done with the lessons, you go home. And we sign up. We sign up for these experiences, is what we were raised to believe, so that we can grow. And you don't grow by never being challenged or by living comfortably and safely. But in every single single, situation or experience that happens in your life, you have that choice to view it as a reason to stay stuck, to stay the victim, to stay feeling bad, to stay carrying shame, to stay carrying guilt, to not forgive yourself or others that have harmed you. Or you have the choice to view all of those things, all of those experiences as rungs on the ladder that is placed

before you at the time of your birth, that is your chance to climb your way up toward God consciousness or divine love or Christ consciousness. But you also don't have to. You also don't have to climb that ladder. And each time something happens and you choose to view it as bad or your fault or somebody else's fault, that's your choice and that's fine. And you can stay there. Or you can change the entire way you are looking at. at everything that has happened to you and say, this is not because I am bad. This is not because I attracted bad things. In fact, these things are not even bad.

These things are opportunities for my own personal growth, for my own ability to become closer to God. And that took me a very long time to understand that these were not things that were happening to me because I was bad or I deserved them or carmic I was doomed to have them, but instead, these were opportunities to grow. And I really believe that in every person's life, we have that ability to make that choice for anything that happens to us. I don't want to minimize or mitigate what Sage has gone through in her life or what I have

gone through. Everyone has their own challenges and struggles. However, you losing your stepson, to me on that, you know, losing a child, seems to be one of the hardest things that someone can go through. And when you wrote about this, or I don't know, Sage, maybe you wrote the chapter about Serena going through it, I believe is the way it was told in the book. But that whole chapter and that experience and how beautiful it turns out to be was just, it was so emotional to read and so beautiful and loving.

And I just, I was so, I'm so proud of you of being able to come through that. other side and see the good that is there. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were able to change that experience? Yes, because, you know, when my stepson passed away, so I met him when he was 10, and I was, you know, immediately in a relationship with his dad, within two weeks of meeting, we were together and have been ever since. And so I, Mason was a part of my life for the last nine years of his life from the time he was 10 to 19. And I, I did not always have a great relationship with him. he and I were 13 years apart. And so a lot of times we fought more like siblings.

And in the process of losing him, the experience I had with his death was so completely different than the experience I had with my dad's death. Because with my dad's death, it was pure sadness and grief that he wasn't here, but there was no aspect of that grief that was based in regret or guilt. When my stepson passed away,

and I think this is the case for like any parent or step-parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle that loses a child. essentially that they love, the guilt is ever present because for me, at least, all I could do was think about the times that I was not good to him. And all I could do was think about the times that I could have been better and I knew I could have been better in those moments and I still chose not to. And I was consumed with self-loathing because that's all I could think about when he died was I could have been better. I should have been better. And I should have been better. I wasn't. And I honestly will say that the reason I was able to transform that experience from

one of extreme pain to one of love was, A, because my husband, my stepson's father, who raised him as a single father his entire life, he was so encouraging of reminding me that when my dad died, just two years before Mason did, that I was aware that in order to connect with my dad from the other side, I had to become like where he was now. I had to connect with him from a place of love because that's where my dad was now, was only a place of love. And my husband was so encouraging in wanting me to remember that Mason would not want me to feel anything but love for him, from him, and that I was punishing myself unnecessarily, that, you know, I was a good stepmom and that I was focusing on these small things. So my husband offered me such grace in encouraging me to remember

that I could connect with Mason even now that he was on the other side from that place of love. And that if I felt I needed to ask for his forgiveness, I could do that. And so I did. And so I ended up having this crazy dream after I wouldn't even allow myself to feel comfortable mourning him because I felt responsible for his death, even though it was an accidental drug overdose and I wasn't even in the same state. I still felt as though I had pushed him away so many times that that overdose was somehow partially my fault. And so I didn't even feel worthy of grieving for him because I felt so responsible. And so I couldn't think about Mason in the place of joy or love because I didn't feel like I deserved to think about him in that place. And it wasn't until a week or two

or three weeks after he died of really self-punishing that I had one moment as I was falling asleep where I remembered a really funny experience that he and I had. And as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about him from that place of joy from this funny memory. And he came to me that night in a dream. and it was definitely a full real visitation, not just a dream. And I asked him if after he died, if he saw all the mean things I had done as his stepmom in his life. And he said, yes. And I asked him if he could forgive me. And he said yes.

And I asked him, it's going to make me cry if he loved me. And he said yes. And I asked him if he knew that I loved him. And he said yes. And at the end of that, at that exchange that he and I had, he said to me, Serena, I just want you to remember one thing. New teachers are emerging. Then he just disappeared. And I really thought, I woke up, I wrote the dream down, I woke my husband up, I told him all about it. And I felt a sense of relief. And I really thought that what that meant was that I was going to become a new teacher on some big stage and that I was emerging.

And I had no idea that what that really meant was I was going to continue to go through a lot of difficult experiences that I could choose to look at as teachers and that those were going to be emerging in my life. And I will say that Mason needed less time in the classroom than I would have liked than my dad needed at. his, it always makes me cry when I say this at his 75 years, that anytime a child or a young person dies, it's so painful because we want them to have the full life. But I had to, I had to get to a point of really believing that his soul just needed the 19 years that he was here and that he left when he was meant to go and that I could choose to view my relationship with him as one of perpetual self-loving and guilt or as one of the greatest, if not the greatest teachers that ever emerged in my own life. Because what I now know that I would not have known,

had I not been Mason's stepmom and, lost him is that none of the judging, none of the criticizing, none of the hurtful things, none of those things are things I would ever do again. Instead, if I could have just one day of just loving him from a place of loving really everyone now from a place of no judgment, that's where I'm living, you know, that's where I essentially am living my life from now, or at least I'm trying to, or I'm trying to remember to. And Mason gave me that gift. Mason's role in my life was helping me to get to that next ladder of just wanting to come

from a place of love more and more and more to everyone that I meet. It's such a powerful and beautiful experience. And this book is so full of. so many stories around your personal struggles, both of you, your parents. There's so much realness. That's what I so appreciate. Not only the lessons are incredible and not growing up knowing about these lessons, right, it's hard to even process it at first. So, Sage, when we're talking about the 11 lessons to understand the quiet urges of your soul, what are some of the important takeaways that you want readers to bring through their life with them? One that just pops out that just

came to me. I mean, I think they're all really important and we spent a lot of time like going through our whole lives and digging out things that could not just be relatable for us, but for everyone. But one that just thought of when you asked me that was, you know, we've all heard the quote a million times. There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way, you know? And I've heard that my whole life, it never really resonated with me until one day I had gone through a struggle, nothing like what Strina is talking about. But when I found out that I was pregnant, I had been married for about a year. I had gotten off the pill. I knew what we were doing, but I did not think I was going to get pregnant, at least not, you know, like I knew that I could,

but I didn't think that I would. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. So I took a pregnancy test one morning because I was feeling off and I was pregnant. And I felt immediately really scared and just like, oh my God, what did we do? And then I felt a lot of guilt for having this feeling of being scared and not just being excited and happy that this new life had chosen me to be its mother and that I just felt like I should be being happy that this child is inside of me and somehow feeling what I'm feeling. And so it was just this whole tumbling down this road of feeling scared and then guilty

about feeling scared. And, you know, I also during that time, I just, fought into all these things that motherhood was going to do that were going to be negative in my life, like that I would, could never have a career again. That was the idea that I thought I was 29 and Serena and I had written most of this book, but we hadn't finished it completely. And we had kind of fell off the wayside from it. Ironically, when I found out I was pregnant, because I bought into this idea that I could never have a career once my child was born, And it made me call up Serena and call up our publishers that we had been in contact with

and call up our literary agent and say, we got to do this and we've got to do it now because I have eight months until my life is just over. And I can only be a mom from that point forward. I just thought that this was true, you know. And so because of that, we got our book out there and we finished it while I was pregnant. And it didn't get released until, you know, last year. but because this was three years ago that I got that I became pregnant, but we did finish it during that time. And we got our publishing deal and all of that. And I just, I bought into this idea that I would never travel again and I would never be able to do anything for myself and just all these things. That's all I could think about. Instead of thinking about the opportunities that were before me, that I was going to grow that, you know, this was a blessing and all of that. I just was only seen it one-sided at that time. But then fast forward to when my son was born and just it Turns out not that none of that was true, because some of the things that I was thinking about are true. I mean, you don't get a lot of time to yourself. I don't travel unencumbered anymore and things like that. But what I realized was that none of it was anything to be afraid of because it

has enriched my life in a different way. And I'm just in a different phase in my life. So when I heard this quote again, after I had gone through all of this and my son was born and I was like, actually, I feel a sense of happiness, a sense of happiness that I couldn't imagine. for myself pre-having my son. And I heard the quote, you know, there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. And it resonated with me in this whole new way that, you know, I had this idea that I really bought into that the only way to happiness for me was going to be to stay without children, traveling, doing whatever I wanted. I live in New York City, just living this life that I thought was so great. And that that was the way to happiness for me. And now the road

that I was on was no longer the way to happiness and I was no longer going to be happy. But what I actually came to find out was that there is actually no way to happiness. Happiness is the way that happiness is always available to you in your situation that you're in. My dad always used to say to us, do not process life as you assume it should be, process life as it is. Because if life is going as we assume it should be, it's easy to be happy because we're like, oh, this is what's supposed to be happening, so I'm having a good time. As soon as, you know, the wind changes and we're thrown something that we do not assume to be good. And it's not the way that we want our life to go. That's when it becomes challenging. And I read this thing recently that said,

well, all it said was dance with life. And I thought about that. I was on the treadmill. And I was like, yeah, you don't, as soon as you start resisting, whatever life is bringing you, you're creating more and more resistance. And sometimes you're in situations that you just don't have a choice. So how do you break down that resistance and still find happiness in those ways? And one of them is by no longer assuming that life should be a certain way. You know, when you find yourself in a situation that goes against the grain of what you believe your life needs to be, challenge yourself then to say, how can this serve me now? Because so much in our lives, we look back and we say, oh, this thing that I thought that was going to be so awful, this breakup, this job loss, you know, whatever.

I thought it was going to be the worst thing that ever happened. But it turns out it was a blessing. If you could see that when it's happening, you save yourself, you know, all those years of thinking that this shouldn't be happening when in reality it might be just a gift packaged in some wrapping that you didn't know at the time. And so when I heard that quote to wrap it up, there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. I also thought, you know, that's the same with my purpose. Like I had this idea that because I was pregnant, my only purpose was going to be to be a mom and that I didn't find my other purpose, my career type purpose, you know, quote unquote. So I never would. But what I realized is that there also is not just one purpose in our lives, you know,

that we go through our life and I think our purpose can shift and take on entirely new meanings depending on where we are in our life at that time and that you can find purpose and everything that you're doing. And if you're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 and you still don't feel like you've found your purpose to just sort of shift that on its head because I don't think it's one thing that you're going to find. I think that you can live a purposeful life every day or most days. Same way with happiness. You know, there is no way to one purpose. Find your purpose every day. And so, I now find purpose in being a mother, while I also find a lot of purpose in, you know, we wrote this book and doing these interviews. And there are other things that I still want to do in

my life that I now know that I can do and that I can have a different purpose every day, every year, every decade of my life. It's like, then when you retire, what is your life have no purpose anymore? There's just a new type of purpose that you can dive into. Wow. This book and you too, first of all, I hope you keep writing and I hope that you will write a book for teenagers because it would be wonderful to be able to empower younger generations earlier on. I'm getting this information at 47. I feel like I totally could have used this when I was 14 like my son is. So I hope you guys will consider writing something for younger people out there.

They need this information. It's so good. It's such an easy read. And it's so powerful. It's so relatable for anyone like me that these are new concepts, you know, that you're not used to growing up with a spirit. guide in your life, this is the book for you. And certainly anyone that's ever dealt with any kind of loss, it's incredibly comforting and, and just really, really powerful. Where can people

find you, Sage and Serena? We're both on Instagram. I'm sage. Dyer. My name is spelled with a J-S-A-J-E, because my parents wanted to be complicated for me. And my website is sagedire.com. Yeah, I'm on Instagram and Facebook and all of those. social medias and we always respond and replied everybody. So all the typical social media pages you would be able to find us on like I found you. Well, I'm so glad you did find me the knowing 11 lessons to understand the quiet urges of your soul. Please get this book. Had a huge impact on me. So grateful for both of you. Thank you. We're so grateful to be here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Love and all green lights. Until next time.

I'm on this in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.