Good Life Project - Jess Lively: What happens when you let intuition take the wheel?

Episode Date: August 7, 2016

When you think of masculine and feminine, do you naturally think "man" and "woman" respectively?Our guest today believes everyone can harness both masculine and feminine energy to achieve&nb...sp;greater success in business and, ultimately, life.In this episode, Jess Lively unpacks how masculine and feminine, intuition and ego play together effectively. She explains why Oprah is the quintessential example of a woman who's exploited both the masculine and feminine energy and how we can replicate that approach.Jess now helps people live from values-based intentions through LifeWithIntentionOnline.com and The Lively Show podcast. She began her entrepreneurial journey making jewelry at the side of the pool at the age of 15. Jess JC was born and cemented the notion that a business at its core is a process of creating something from nothing and finding customers who will buy it.After completing her MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 2007, Jess grew her accessory business into a successful full-time career in Chicago. Later, she transitioned into business coaching.Knowing that her mission is to help people become more peacefully fulfilled by shifting their approach to life, she started her blog in 2009 to share that message and eventually a popular podcast, The Lively Show.Jess Lively shares a simple process for liberating an astonishing source of guidance available to us all - our intuition. According to Jess, when we listen to and allow that intuition to guide our decisions, we'll experience opportunities for growth and adventure others will ignore. In This Episode, You'll Learn:What the basics of building a business entail.How Jess’s “mess becomes your message” experience led to her current business success.Societal changes that impact how women relate in the marketplace.How entrepreneurs exist in a state of high ego and high intuition to create success in business.How we can liberate and tap into our intuition to make better business decisions.Jess’s step-by-step process for having a conversation between your ego and intuition.Mentioned in This Episode:Connect with Jess: LifeWithIntentionOnline.com | The Lively Show | TwitterWhen Everything changed by Gail Collins Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:35 Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So imagine stepping out of your day-to-day life and just dropping yourself into a gorgeous 130-acre natural playground for three and a half days of learning and laughing and moving your body and calming your brain and reconnecting with people who just see the world the way that you do and accept you completely as you are.
Starting point is 00:01:14 So that's what we've created with our Camp Good Life Project or Camp GLP experience. We've actually brought together a lineup of really inspiring teachers from art to entrepreneurship, from writing to meditation, pretty much everything in between. It's this beautiful way to fill your noggin with ideas to live and work better, and a really rare opportunity to create the type of friendships and stories you pretty much thought you'd left behind decades ago. It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and we're well on our way to selling out spots at this point. So be sure to grab your spot as soon as you can, if it's interesting to you. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. I grew up in this masculine business environment and I was miserable. I was like, there's something wrong here.
Starting point is 00:02:00 This is missing some huge piece of this. And then I realized, oh, it's just the feminine balance. We all have both energies within ourselves. If we can tap in and harness both, then the how, then the masculine energy, the email conversions are meaningful if you have the why. So what happens to you when you hear the word masculine or feminine? Do you immediately associate it with male or female? Is there an energy that goes along with each one of those? Is there a way that you're supposed to
Starting point is 00:02:29 be in the world? And what happens when you find a woman who you feel is embodying more of the masculine energy or a man who is embodying more of the feminine energy? And what do you do with that? And what about this thing called intuition or ego? These are all things that sort of weave through this kind of fascinating narrative with today's guest, Jess Lively, who is somebody who's out there in the world of entrepreneurship. She's a media producer, produces a really great podcast called The Lively Show, is working on a book, runs courses. And when we actually sat down to record this, she had literally started a chapter in her journey that was not public yet and that we talked about. And by the time this airs and you hear it, she'll be well into that.
Starting point is 00:03:12 So it'll be kind of a fascinating moment to listen to this conversation and then to jump over to her website, which you can find in the show notes, and check in and see what's going on with her. So really excited to share this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. It's fun to be hanging out with you on a rainy day in Manhattan. It's cozy though in here. It is. It's like our little like cave to a certain extent. And you're just passing through right now. You're in Michigan well. I was. We'll talk about that. All right. Cause I'm catching you at this really interesting time
Starting point is 00:03:49 where there's a huge amount of flesh, but I don't want to go there quite yet. We'll just tease that for now. I want to go back in time a little bit right now. Cause right now you're kind of sitting on top of this really kind of fascinating, shall I call it media slash education, mini empire. And you're a podcaster and course producer and a stuff producer. And from what I know, you've had a pretty hardcore entrepreneurial Jones since you were a kid. Yeah, I started when I was 15. So take me there. So I started at 15 at a pool making ankle bracelets like many 15 year olds do. And while I was there, these women came up to me that had a few drinks and they were like, what are you doing? I was like making some ankle bracelets
Starting point is 00:04:29 for myself. And they offered to, they're like, do you sell them? Would you, can we buy them from you? So I spent six hours, made $30 and figured I sat at a pool and I made money. This is pretty cool. So I started making other pieces, brought my makeup bag that was from old Navy with jewelry in it in high school to the teachers and students and took it into stores and got into 12 stores in high school. So at 15? At 15, yeah. Were you the type of kid that was always creating stuff even younger? Or was this sort of like the big moment?
Starting point is 00:04:56 This is when I started making money off of things I made. But my mom was a crafter. And so I always grew up in kindergarten going to craft shows with her and sitting in the back of the car with all the stuff jangling around like with the products and stuff. And we'd go to McDonald's. I remember going through the drive-thru and getting like cinnamon rolls and just having this fun Saturday with my mom. And she would also just take all these trips dropping off mop angels that she was selling to these people's houses. So the minute I made something and – What's a mop angel?
Starting point is 00:05:22 Oh, my God. It's an Ohio – This is not a familiar one. Yeah, this is very Ohio, not New York. So all contextual, right? But back then there are these mop angels that she had a demand for and they sound terrible. They're actually classier than they sound, I promise, but they're not that much classier than you're thinking. It's kind of in the middle. I love you, mom. But anyways, so she made these angels. And so I would watch her dropping the stuff off. It was just part of my life that she made stuff and sold it. So when I made stuff and people wanted to buy it, I didn't think twice about it. I was like, of course you do. This is how things are. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:54 Which is such a great lesson to learn that early in life also. I mean, when I was a kid, my mom was a potter actually. And I remember similar, like we'd go around to craft fairs on the weekends and set up like this whole display and she'd sell her stuff. Yes. You know, so it's like the seed was planted. Like you can make something from nothing and then turn around and offer it to people. Of course people want to buy it. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, it can be a bit of a double edged sword also because you just assume that you make it, you turn around, people buy it, everything's good, but that's not always the way it works. Not always, but you know, it's not much harder than that at the same time. And I think a lot of people make it this huge deal. Deconstruct that a little bit.
Starting point is 00:06:30 Well, I mean, if you make something and you sell it, then that's a business at the core, but a lot of people think they need to have 35 things in order to start a business versus like, if you can make something and you can get someone to pay you for it, you're in business. Like, let's start with that instead of, do I have the right branding, the right website, the right domain and all of these other pieces. I think if people simplify it down, they can get started a lot quicker and they'll iterate from there. So agree.
Starting point is 00:06:55 I think so often I wonder if all that like desire to get all that other stuff up and perfect. It's just fear speaking. Yes. Procrastination so that you can try to remove uncertainty. Yeah. That stuff kills us. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:09 But there's something interesting too, which is that, you know, I know you, you work with a lot of entrepreneurs also. And one of the big things that I've learned is that, you know, essentially you can build something by doing one of two things. And sometimes both, which is either removing a pain or delivering a delight or, you know, and there's a pain or pleasure. Right. So your early experience sounds like it was really very much on the delight side of the spectrum. Yes. Yes. It's a great way of looking at it.
Starting point is 00:07:32 Which is actually the much harder sell as a general rule. Yeah. Although people like to wear jewelry. So I guess I kind of- They do. Had a little bit of an in just that people were in the habit of buying and wearing jewelry. Yeah. How much of it do you think at the age of 15, was it that they loved what you were doing versus here's this like really cool 15 year old kid who's making something and it's really awesome. Okay. Well, looking back on the product, I would say that maybe, but then again, I wasn't there to sell it at the store. So surprisingly, there must've been some actual
Starting point is 00:08:00 demand for the product, even though looking back on it, I can laugh at it and say it was not that good. They were not really buying. I mean, they had to sell it in the store. So although I did a lot of consignment in the initial early stages too, so they didn't have tons of risk on the line with my seed bead jewelry. Right. So how do you go from being the 15 year old kid who's making stuff at the pool to then being selling stuff on consignment at local stores? I just walked in and asked if the owner or buyer was there, and I would show them my stuff. I learned a whole little system of you compliment the person behind the desk, and you act like a customer initially,
Starting point is 00:08:35 because they're trying to woo you to buy something. So you just have a friendly conversation while they don't know that you're trying to sell them. And then you compliment them on their products. You ask if there's any local designers, and then they're thinking about any local designers they may or may not have. Then you mentioned you are a local designer, and then they ask about your product. It's kind of like I've created a little system over the course of doing it. Not intentionally, not manipulatively. That's just what I found to be effective. Right. But were you split testing this in shots? No, no. Because I'm curious,
Starting point is 00:09:02 where does that come from? First, even the idea that I need a system. I didn't even have a system. No, it was not that. It was not that plotted out. It just became the way over the course of doing anything. You know, when you learned how to, I don't know, make cookies, you might have as, you know, as you make cookies, there's a recipe to follow. But as you create your own recipe, you create your own system as you go. It sounds very step by step and very methodical. But at you create your own recipe, you create your own system as you go. It sounds very step-by-step and very methodical. But at the time, it was just the natural way of creating those effective connections that led to people buying.
Starting point is 00:09:32 Yeah. It sounds like your brain works that way, though. Sort of like, let me try this. I do like frameworks. And let me sort of like tweak and then optimize. I think I like to be able to figure out what I did that worked and why. And then now I can share that stuff. So that now I have a list of points that people can now use. Right. Which is kind of fun
Starting point is 00:09:50 also, because it seems like your brain is wired to work sort of like on the analytical framework side, but also on the artistic expression free form side. So yes, actually, that's a really great point. My dad was an engineer and my mom was an art major. So maybe there is that aspect. I was a designer of jewelry, but I went to business school when I graduated, excited jewelry business. I think that's interesting because a lot of people might say, you have a jewelry business, you should go to art school and learn how to do better art. And I said, I have a business, I need to learn how to own a business. So I think that while I was in the business school, I was very much the ill fit. I was very unhappy with the super uber analytical nature of it, but I've definitely always been
Starting point is 00:10:26 split brained in that way that the creative and the business side go hand in hand for me. Yeah. Is there one that you kind of lose yourself more easily? I am much more drawn to the personal growth and development of things. And out of that comes creativity. The business is what facilitates that to continue to thrive and help more people. So if you could hire somebody to a hundred percent take over something for you, what would be the first thing? The business. I would focus 100% on the content of my message and the work that I'm in the impact I'm having with my clients. 100%. I love it. I'm fascinated by so many subjects and I'd love to have more time. And I have a team of seven now that I've pretty much delegated out the majority of the business
Starting point is 00:11:10 tasks. Right. All right. So we need to fill in some gaps here because we go from 15 year old and then to go into business school and having a jewelry business to now having a team of seven doing something very different. Yes. So, so you got, you went to school and you had this jewelry business and this was, you were in Chicago at the time? I was growing up in Michigan and then I went to the University of Michigan Business School because as a business owner, I thought I needed to go. And it was a highly rated program, but for iBankers. It's very great for New York financial analysts. It's a totally different approach to business.
Starting point is 00:11:38 I did not do the research to find out, is this the right fit to grow your own business? Is the right fit to be an accountant or an iBanker? So that was really hard. There's not a, I mean, now there is more to a certain extent, depending on the school, but there's still not a huge emphasis on sort of smaller scale entrepreneurship or even entrepreneurship in general. Yes. Actually, it's funny.
Starting point is 00:11:57 I've just came from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I lived as like 10 years later as a 31 year old after college, having gone to Chicago and Austin and then come back for literally nine months or a school year. And I just spoke at the center for entrepreneurship, which did not exist when I was a student there. And it was interesting because the professor I was speaking to was saying that there's a lot of interest in entrepreneurship. Now I was entrepreneur of the year at my business school because it was the only entrepreneur on the ballot. They had to vote for me.
Starting point is 00:12:25 So it wasn't like it was earned. It was literally the default. But now there's so much more interest. But I will say he says that it's trendy. It's a class to take. It's not still necessarily a burning passion for the majority of people in the course. But at least that center now exists because of interest and awareness of small business. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:42 I mean, it's so interesting. And there are increasingly centers like that that are coming to schools at the same time, even those very often, what I've seen, the focus is very much on like venture capital backed, scale it big and sell entrepreneurship rather than organic, right. Sort of like, here's a way to actually build something where you're doing meaningful work. You're serving a need, you're enjoying what you're doing. You're making a nice, comfortable living and maybe you scale it to a bigger size, but maybe you don work, you're serving a need, you're enjoying what you're doing, you're making a nice, comfortable living. And maybe you scale it to a bigger size, but maybe you don't. I wonder if that's because there's like a cost benefit analysis where they
Starting point is 00:13:13 think that people wouldn't actually invest in the cost of an MBA to do something like that. I wonder if that's part of it. Or there's people like your friend, Marie Forleo, who's doing it great online. And she's really good. I would have loved that. I mean, if I could have done that and saved myself all the time of business school, I learned other things. And actually the business school experience created the seed, that pain of that wrong fit was actually what propelled me to do the work I do today. So because of the, it's hard to call it negative experience, but because of that experience, I do the work I do today. So for that, I can be eternally grateful. Would you do business school again? It's so, no, no. But I would say that I was able to see the masculine energy approach to
Starting point is 00:13:51 business and life in that way, in that space. And I found it lacking. I knew it was not fulfilling. I knew it was not joyful. I knew it was not peaceful. And in that pain, I realized there had to be another way. And that sparked the 10 year journey I've been on or 11 year journey since then to find the other way. And that's now what I help people with. So had I not had that really negative, you know, mess becomes your message experience, I'd be doing something kind of creative, but not ultimately as meaningful. All right. So I can't leave the masculine energy approach out there lingering. So take me deeper into it. Okay. So I recently was on Pat Flynn, smart, passive income podcast. Are you
Starting point is 00:14:30 familiar? Sure. It's fine. Okay. So love Pat. I have loved his show and I've gotten so much inspiration and resources and just been able to do such a great job with my, the business side, the function side of my career. And I just recently was interviewed for his show and I was very excited to deliver the same level of content to that audience that I'd received from the greats that are now my friends too, which is crazy to even say like Lewis Howes and all those types of people. And I'd gotten all this great insight from them. And I wanted to deliver equal, did the interview and felt like I questioned whether my message, my conversation with him was as valuable or whether
Starting point is 00:15:06 people would perceive it to be as valuable. And then realizing what I spoke about was intuition. And in my work, the foundation of all of my work boils down to intuition versus ego, because I think if you don't solve the root there, everything, any other framework, any other motivation, any other action you take will either be one that creates pain or one that creates intuitive fulfillment and joy. And so we spoke about it, and I knew this sounded so woo-woo to his audience and his message because I've heard it for years on his show. I knew this was out there, and I worried that people would find it because it didn't convert their email conversion by 2x, that it's not as valuable. And what I realized after then doing another, I did a fizzle interview that same week, same conversation came up intuition. I can't avoid it.
Starting point is 00:15:50 It's just, it's so important to me, but again, question the value. And then I realized at a dinner, I shared something extremely important. The problem is our society does not see intuition or feminine energy as, as important as masculine because the society's focus is on masculine energy. You can take the terms masculine and feminine and throw them out. You can call it yin yang. You could call it how, why energy. I don't care what you call it, but those terms really for me resonate.
Starting point is 00:16:19 And I realized that I grew up in this masculine business environment and I was miserable. I was like, there's something wrong here. This is missing some huge piece of this. And then I realized, oh, it's just the feminine balance. We all have both energies within ourselves. If we can tap in and harness both, then the how, then the masculine energy, the email conversions are meaningful if you have the why, but the feminine energy, the intuition as a piece of that, the creativity of feminine energy, that is what creates the joy and meaning. Then you use the masculine energy to implement that
Starting point is 00:16:50 idea, creativity or intuition. So we're kind of missing the why piece. And that's what the masculine energy thing is all about. But I'm so excited to get this out there because I think that more men and women that have both. And it's kind of like right now we're sorry, I'm so excited about this. We're kind of like dribbling on a basketball court with one hand, either we're predominantly masculine energy or feminine energy, and we're not able to do the crossover. And it's like, of course, like I grew up playing basketball. If you can't do a crossover, you can't do a layup with both hands. You're immediately limited and lacking and going to get blocked so much. But if we can learn how to do both as men and women, I think we're going to be
Starting point is 00:17:24 infinitely more powerful and fulfilled. You mean example of somebody that you see out there who's really flourishing and building something cool, who you feel actually has a really nicely balanced sense of both. Oprah, because I think about women and I was thinking about women in society and how we are like the powerful women out there, like not to get political. I'm not in any political association, but like Hillary Clinton, to me, has a very masculine energy. Even Martha Stewart, who has an innately, quote unquote, feminine brand, or like it's all about housekeeping. She is a very masculine leader in her energy. And Oprah is someone that I think has a huge driving why behind what she does. There's definitely that, but she also implements
Starting point is 00:18:03 at a large level as well. Are there any male examples that come to mind that you think have a really solid balance? I think that you might be one of those people, I would say, in that I think you have a strong why of what you're doing and you're still able to implement on a large scale. There's not as many, actually, I haven't thought a ton about it, but I hope to one day find a guy out there who can go out with me because when I think about this, I don't want to go out there as like the girl with the chick energy pushing the chick stuff on the dudes or the women. I don't want it to be for women exclusively. I've also realized men are less likely to listen to two women talk on a podcast than women are to listen to two men talk on a podcast.
Starting point is 00:18:41 Because men assume that there's nothing for them to learn if they're talking about motherhood and it doesn't apply. But a woman will listen and either reflect on her fatherhood. Let's say there's fatherhood versus motherhood on a podcast. Two males speaking about fatherhood, two women speaking about motherhood. Men aren't going to listen. I can tell you as a female podcaster, men will not tune into that episode nearly as much as women will listen to two men talk about fatherhood. A female, because of our society's historic background, have had to listen to men speak to them because that's been predominantly the people in career and power in the majority, not the exclusive. But females will say, how can I apply this? How can I bring this to my partner? How could I reflect on this from my own childhood?
Starting point is 00:19:19 They'll find ways to adapt that information. But right now, men don't, I think, and this is broad strokes, but I don't think that men see that unless the woman is delivering in a masculine energy context, that they have as much to learn from women. So they're less likely to pay attention. And it's funny, I'm trying, I mean, obviously, no matter what comes out of my mouth, it's biased. But I think that you are someone who has both. I think you are a very balanced energy person. Thank you. I'd like to, I would like to feel that I am. But again, he's like, when you're inside the jar looking at you, you can't really say in my brain as you're speaking, I'm kind of scanning my friends who I know who are both
Starting point is 00:19:52 men and women who are out there who have an audience in some level and how their audience breaks. Like I know our audience is actually predominantly female. And maybe it's because you have both balance. Maybe. I don't know. Cause we've never, it's never been my intention. And in the brick and mortar companies that I built before this, the customer base or a community has always been about 70% women. And again, it wasn't with intention online. My framework that I teach is the balanced approach. And I didn't see it from the masculine feminine when I created it. I found a broken system of the way masculine energy was run, running our lives of personal
Starting point is 00:20:33 growth and development. I knew it was missing a piece because I had all this stuff and I wasn't happy. How do the achievements I had the vision board, the goal list all achieved, still miserable, something was lacking. And that was the values and the intuition and all these other pieces. So bringing that in, I think women are quicker because perhaps they have this latent, maybe perhaps even sometimes underdeveloped power or strength within them of that energy of feminine. They know that something's missing quicker, I think, than the men whose predominant energy may be masculine. And they may not find the suffering as intense to be missing that other energy that's underdeveloped within them. So I think women are quicker to go, this is broken,
Starting point is 00:21:09 this isn't working. I want to find more fulfillment, peace and joy. And that stuff comes from the why and the feminine energy. So I think they're coming to you because the businesses you've done have spoken to that deeper why. So to me, it makes perfect sense in this really beautiful way. And I think what's cool is if we can get this out there. And like I said, I'd like to circle back. I want to find a guy to come out there with me because I don't want this to be about female energy. I want this to be about a man and a woman both saying we are both more powerful because
Starting point is 00:21:37 we have access to both. And everyone listening gets to listen to someone that has their same self-identified gender is not the right word, sexuality, whatever it is. Like, I don't want it to be about masculine and feminine as like an exclusion, like me being feminine sharing this. I want it to be both. And so that no one has to filter the message through someone else's voice. I want a man to be able to listen to a man talk about it and a woman talk about it and vice versa. And so much.
Starting point is 00:22:00 I do think you're right. I think. And again, we're like, we're talking broad strokes. So we're labeling a whole bunch of people who can be labeled, but just why not? And it doesn't have to be about your sex. It could be about your transgender is beautiful. I'm asking a feminine just in, in the context of a certain energy, a certain sort of like a certain lens on the way that you experience move into and engage with the world and with people in the world. And I mean, there, there are, you know, there are sort of like there are clear differences. At the same time,
Starting point is 00:22:29 it's interesting because in my mind, if you really want to have that conversation where everybody is open to everything that you're saying. Wouldn't that be amazing? I think you're right though. I think guys immediately, the idea of the minute you even, I think, bring masculine versus feminine to the conversation, a lot of guys are going to be like, so you want me to be more feminine? Yes. And it's not about that. And it's not right. It's absolutely not about that. And also the fact is you're already more feminine. You're just not embodying that part of yourself. It's not like we have to like get more that way. It's like, no, we all have pieces of both, but we, I think, I think you're right.
Starting point is 00:23:03 I think dudes tend to, to bury that more because we're right. I think dudes tend to bury that more because we're taught probably- Society tells us too. It's not okay to be that way. And for women too. I have so many women friends that are business owners of seven figure businesses and their husbands have taken on, in some cases, really supportive roles in their family. So the energies are switched. And actually I've had conversations with them, like personal conversations with them about how they feel uncomfortable because of society's expectations of women. But at the same time, society's expectations of CEOs are different. So they find this duality within themselves at times difficult to manage. masculine energy to the, at the exclusion of their feminine, because the society is, if you're in career and business been taught and to like really develop overdevelop the masculine
Starting point is 00:23:49 with an underdeveloped feminine energy. And they're kind of burnout stressed out and it's yin and yang. It's like the, it's like that sign it's in both it's the seeds are here. And if we can just do the crossover when the time is better served to cross over to the left side of the court versus the right, how much more effective? And it doesn't have to be every day. It'd be moment to moment. What is this dribbling requiring of us? Like what's the most effective energy to use in this circumstance? Right. So I'm going to ask you a little question then, but it's, it keeps popping into my head. So I got to offer it out the word feminism. Okay. That I've been terrified as a 31 year old person who was never, I never felt limited.
Starting point is 00:24:27 I had my dad tell me I could be president. I never felt like I had, I always associated feminism with a chip on their shoulder and they were mad at me. That's how I felt about feminism. I stayed away from it, but I realized in recognizing this as a message after these interviews, I was like, all right, if I'm going to bring up the word feminine, I'm going to have to understand feminism. So I'm still in the very early stages, but I've started reading this book called When Everything Changed, which is documenting
Starting point is 00:24:51 women in America from 1960 onward and what has happened over time. And as I was reading from this pretty non-biased perspective, I understood where some of the anger came from. I understood where people, when I heard about the injustices that were happening and the ridiculousness of the system at the time, like a woman in the 1960s couldn't pay her boss's parking ticket at the courthouse because she was wearing pants. Now she looked like Grace Kelly wearing the most beautiful outfit I've ever seen, but a guy in a sweatshirt and jeans, like a worker with muddy stuff could walk in with pants and pay a parking ticket. She had to have her husband pay the ticket because she wasn't wearing a dress and she looked like a model when she did it.
Starting point is 00:25:33 And I was like, that was in 1960? What about her wearing pants made this ticket unpayable? And also as a business owner, this is crazy. I, and this is where I understand where the energy, the frustration comes in. And I would not be able to have my own business. I would not be able to have a credit card in my own name. If I had a, I make a great living right now. If I was under 30 and I made this, I'm 31 now, but at under 30, my income would not count on our mortgage. If I was married, getting a house. If I was over 30, only half of it would count. And the only way all of my income can count towards the mortgage is if I was proven sterile or over 40, because they were so assumed back then that you were going to watch your children,
Starting point is 00:26:15 that they would not count your income if you hadn't had any by the time you had the income. I couldn't believe this. And so given all of that, and even the fact that women got the Equal Rights Act, we were put on as a way to stall it and delay it for African Americans. It was a way initially for them to repeal and not pass the bill to put women on it. It was a man doing it to stall it, not for women to get rights. It was a way to bury a bill rather than pass it. It just thankfully passed and then changed everything from there. Anyways, I just learned a lot, but I now understand more of where they're coming from.
Starting point is 00:26:49 But I don't know. That's my answer to your question. Got it. Feminism versus embracing the feminine. I haven't gotten as far in the book. Might not be versus, by the way. Yeah. And I don't know the current modern feminism.
Starting point is 00:27:00 I'm not well-versed. I'm just learning about the history right now. So I'm still back in the 70s right now going through civil rights in the book. But I can see where the anger can stem from. But I still don't think it's useful in the context of masculine feminine energy. Because I could just change the terms and call it how versus why or yin and yang and get away from the feminism thing completely. And you also, I mean, when we started this conversation, you used the terms intuition versus ego. Yeah. Is that in your mind, the same thing as masculine versus feminine? There are different conversations. I think it's a little different. I'm more the Eckhart Tolle ego. So I would say that's like the lizard brain of Seth Godin or that part of us wants to keep us safe. But I do believe intuition. And if you look up as I started to dive into feminine energy and what that even looks like, because it's so under-informed in our society, one of the things
Starting point is 00:27:44 that's always listed is intuition as a feminine energy piece. And so I do think that intuition comes from that energy. And then the ego, I would just say is the part of us that wants to keep us safe, whether it's masculine, I don't think is necessarily on the same framework or relevance. Right. So how do ego and intuition play with each other or play against each other? So I always say that the ego feels like a fire hydrant that's one inch inside of your ear, firing all the thoughts that you think are what you really think. It's the things you want, think and feel, the inferiority, the superiority, whatever it is that keeps you separated and disconnected from a peaceful place. And the intuition feels like a water well,
Starting point is 00:28:22 typically within your heart or your stomach, literally within one of those places outside of your head most of the time that feels calm and peaceful. And the thoughts, if thought is water in both analogies, one streaming at you constantly spraying and overflowing and the other is peacefully waiting for you to access it. Or if you continue to ignore it, it will overflow, but it's a different discomfort than the fire hydrant. Could you exist in a state of high ego and high intuition in your mind? I think I do every day, right? I think I still have both every day. I have the intuition leading me and I have the ego's opinion about that. Yeah, because it's funny. I think, you know, intuition, I think for most people has
Starting point is 00:28:59 somewhere between really positive association and a really weird metaphysical association. Whereas ego for a lot of people, I think if you ask a hundred people just for what's your knee jerk response when I say the word ego, is it positive or negative? Say negative. And I think there's certainly the negatives, like you were saying, if part of ego's role is to separate you from others, that can be negative. It can also be a strong source of self-preservation when it's really needed. But maybe the intuition would tell us how to stay alive. Maybe. Right? Maybe the intuition would tell you to jump over that snake in the woods or don't go down that street. Right?
Starting point is 00:29:30 Maybe it's not the ego that keeps us alive as much as we think it does. Right. But it's the ego that keeps us apart. Yes. It keeps us separate. And literally, I'm using the term ego from an Eckhart Tolle perspective, which he would just say is the still small voice that thinks we're not one with all that is and like we're not at peace at every moment. Yeah. I mean, it's part of the exploration with this for me is always,
Starting point is 00:29:50 yeah, like I see that side of it. And at the same time, if you look at many of the greatest advances in cultural and society, they are originated by people with astonishingly huge senses of ego. It's true. So what happens, you know, when you, and that same sense very often ends up destroying the individual. And at the same time, it's the same energy, which leads to stunning changes in culture and society and benefits to millions. So it's sort of like, how do you, how do you, how do you dance with that fact to make that level of impact in the world?
Starting point is 00:30:23 Do you need to really have a very healthy sense of ego? Is that in some way, like what's the role of that and the ability to turn around and create a ripple that affects millions? Oh, it's interesting because I'm trying to think back. One of the people that comes to mind, and I studied briefly, I've not done an intense study, but read a few books on him, is Gandhi. And he had a huge ego when he was younger and as a lawyer, but he seems to have systematically, and I haven't heard, you know, who knows what the books tell versus what he was really like. So I think there's maybe open to interpretation, but he seems to have, from what I have read, and I don't know the whole story, so maybe someone out there might have a better
Starting point is 00:30:56 true story version of Gandhi, but he seems to have shed a lot of that ego in order to affect the change that he sought to make. But again, I don't know his like, what he was really like. Yeah. And if you look back at the story of the Buddha, also early life, you know. Strong. Yeah. And, you know, part of it is the whole, you know, when he reaches enlightenment, that's sort of like all of that becomes left behind to a certain extent. And look at the effect that Buddhism has had in the world. And you could probably look at almost any other faith too, although maybe not. I mean, then you also have people who come from a place of a staunching ego
Starting point is 00:31:25 and build giant cults. Yeah, that's true. The power can be... Right. They have a really big effect on a lot of people as well. It's not necessarily benevolent. But yeah, I think it's a really fascinating thing to just really dynamically explore this dance between ego and intuition. The word intuition also, let's talk a little bit more about that, because like you said, in your mind, it's sort of, and what you read and what you would experience, it's really sort of more associated with the feminine side that exists within all of us. Yeah, everyone has it. This is not missing for men. The feminine aspect of each individual.
Starting point is 00:31:55 I think I agree with that also. What's interesting to me also and a fascination around intuition is the fact that we tend to discount the information that comes to us through intuition as soft information. Therefore, it's not nearly as valid as something that's verifiable on a spreadsheet. Amen. That is so true because our society is masculine focused, right? So that wants to rationalize, improve and do pros and con lists. It wants to, and also I think the ego thrives, maybe the ego thrives on the masculine energy. So it's not that it is masculine. It thrives on it because it feels like it predicts uncertainty in a stronger way than the intuition. I'm just letting that sink in.
Starting point is 00:32:32 I know. Sometimes I speak really fast and I say that and then people are like, what did she just say? But so maybe the ego, and I'm just putting this together as we're talking to zoom back a little bit. Intuition typically, as we are here on this earth, we have signed up to grow and evolve. So even just as an evolutionary species, we're here to grow and evolve. So intuition will lead us into uncertain places. The ego wants to preserve our lives and keep us safe in whatever comfortable or uncomfortable, safe and understood place that we're in. The ego will even want to keep us in a bad relationship or a bad job out of the fear of, I don't know what's going to happen next
Starting point is 00:33:07 if I leave this bad job or this bad situation. It's also the thing that thinks that you can't handle it one more day, but keeps you stuck anyways. The intuitions, they're like either saying, just be here right now, it's fine, or it's time to leave. The ego is the one that has a hissy fit
Starting point is 00:33:20 about either option. So maybe what the ego is focused on is the masculine energy helps it feel safer. If it what the ego is focused on is the masculine energy helps it feel safer. If it's rationalizing something, which would be masculine energy, then it thinks it's, it's proven something more safe than the intuition, which leads us into a certain. The intuition is what keeps you from the dark cave at the same time. I agree. I think that we're just, I think the ego is not serving us. I would agree with that. And if we get, we get to take big and small steps towards the intuitions direction, we'll
Starting point is 00:33:48 be able to start to prove to ourself that there's nothing really to fear, but to have faith in that, that voice within. All right. So, so I know that part of your philosophy, your lens on the world is very much like mine also, and very much like Michelangelo and his. Yes. The David, right? It's like, you know, like I didn't create anything.
Starting point is 00:34:05 It was there and I simply caked away. And it's such a very yogic perspective. Like in yoga, you don't actually use the word transformation. You use the word Jivan Mukti, which translates to liberation or liberated being. And the idea is that you're not transforming so much as you're liberating that, which has always been there by pulling away all the crud, which is like covered it over. I just got goosebumps. So when you think about intuition, if we all have it, but we're not tapping into it, or a lot of us aren't tapping into it, and it is potentially this astonishing source of guidance in our lives, how do we liberate more of it? Oh, I love that you asked this. So actually, a week ago of the recording of this episode,
Starting point is 00:34:40 I realized that I'm going to share that. So what basically I have found the most effective way for me in a consistent daily ongoing deep basis is to write to it. And I actually am publishing a book called letters to my intuition. So you'll see all my letters from the last year and the last year I've gone through a lot of transformation and a lot of uncertainty. I can go into it more if you feel like it, but basically I did all of that and I was able to make all of this dramatic life changes from the place all of that. And I was able to make all of those dramatic life changes from the place of my intuition. And I use this writing process. So what you do, it's very simple. You can do this just by listening to this, or you can read the book if you
Starting point is 00:35:13 want to see how it works. And it looks physically a lot of people find I say it and they don't do it. If they read the letters, then they want to do it. Or they'll even get inspiration just from what the intuition told me because that's that voice is within all of us. But sometimes if we're afraid to ask the questions, if we hear it from someone else's intuition, it resonates at the same level. So you would write down, I did it this morning, actually, I wrote down a question, like whatever's on my mind in the morning, or whenever you're stressed out about something, why am I upset about blank? Or what is going on here? And then I wait, literally paying attention for me. I feel my intuition in my stomach.
Starting point is 00:35:47 Other people feel it in their chest and their heart, but I wait as if I'm waiting for you to answer the question or I'm waiting for a friend to tell me the answer. And I write down what I hear or sense within myself. I say here, but technically, I guess if you had to really think about it, you pause and you wait and then you sense or hear some answer and then you write down the next question you have. And it's literally a conversation between your ego and your intuition. And then you reread it because after you reread it, you're like, oh my God, that's the best therapy I ever can have. All of the answers we want are within
Starting point is 00:36:18 ourselves. And this is why those interviews I mentioned at the beginning, I have nothing more powerful to offer people than themselves. Every answer they're looking for is within themselves. We're just not taught that it's there. And we're not taught that we can access it before we have pain. We don't have to wait until it's so uncomfortable to make that big, scary move that we give in. We don't have to wait. We can lower the bucket into the well every day. We don't have to wait until the well's overflowing. but that's what we typically do. We wait till the house falls down on us rather than being proactive about it. Yeah. So if we can do that, I mean, then what I wonder is why don't we, and on the one hand you can say, well, we just never been taught how, and I buy that to a certain
Starting point is 00:36:57 extent, but I don't buy that as the bigger part of the answer. Like my intuition, yeah, is that we're actually scared of what the answers that are going to come back to us are because they may well tell us that the place we're in and the decisions we're making are not serving us. And we don't want to have to face the fact that that may lead to the need to make some changes. And we really don't want to go there because we have to step into the abyss. You're totally right. That's exactly why I will say this to people again and again and again, and they won't do it. That's why. This is the difference between what you just shared and why I'm so into it. I have taken baby step by baby
Starting point is 00:37:28 step and sometimes big steps, but I've done it over and over and over again to the point where now the faith in that voice is stronger than the fear of the ego. And if I can help people get to that place, their power is going to be truly unlimited because they're not going to be limited by hoping other people for thousands of dollars are going to give them the answers that are actually within themselves. Yeah. Huge believer that the process is in pretty much all of us. You mentioned that the last year for you has been filled with a massive amount of uncertainty and change.
Starting point is 00:37:56 So what's going on? So in the last year, this is we're in May of 2016. So in May of 2000 or April of 2015, I got a second dog on a whim, which was kind of surprise, which was like a small thing. Then moved on an intuitive, intuitive, like level and decided to move from Austin, Texas to Ann Arbor, Michigan, bought a house in three weeks, moved to Ann Arbor six weeks later, decided with my part of my husband at the time that we had different values and we wanted to live different lives. So we uncoupled very peacefully and positively.
Starting point is 00:38:28 And then that was six months ago from today. Then he left with, we had two dogs at the time. So he took one of the dogs. I now had this surprise second dog. I couldn't explain why I needed, but was like the perfect little companion for me during that chapter of being solo in Ann Arbor. Then decided to go on this trip to Europe. And one week ago, sold my house and all my furniture unexpectedly the week before I left on the trip. So as people are listening to this, I'm now on that said trip. We're somewhere in the
Starting point is 00:38:55 world. I'm not sure where I'll be at that point, but that's all been made. All of those changes have come through letters to my intuition and seeking that. So now my life is completely different. I had two dogs and a husband and a house in Austin now if no house no furniture The dog and my husband or former husband is in Oregon and the other dog is being watched by neighbors And I don't know where I'm gonna land next and how are you with that? I feel like my Ann Arbor experience was kind of my master's degree in life of following the intuition like I made all those choices And I really felt tons of peace and the uncertainty of that. But now I'm in the PhD program because all of those times before every other time in the last 10 years, I made intuitive choices. I've known why
Starting point is 00:39:33 I'm making them. I know where they're heading. They're trying to get me. Now the house sale literally is just can't everything float. It was intuitive, but I don't know where it's leaving. And this is the first time I'm going into the unknown without the idea of where it's going to take me. And I don't know where my career is going to take me. I'm completely living the unknown right now. And that's a new level I've never been at before. Is there fear inside of you right now? I think it could be if I try to take it more than this day at a time. So if I think about the past that can get sad, or if I think about,
Starting point is 00:40:06 or not sad, like I miss it, but sad that that was so comforting, that was so safe and secure and it already happened. So of course it's completely safe and secure. But even in that moment that I was there, the uncertainty was so much smaller. The future seems very scary if I try to take it all in right now,
Starting point is 00:40:23 but like this moment's fine. I'm great right here. I'm really enjoying this cozy room with you and this tea and this conversation. And that's what I need right now. It's just gotta be interesting living in the moment like that. It's all I can do at this point, right? Cause it's too much to take in. I have some plans. Like I can't wait. I'm going to go to an Eckhart Tolle retreat in Costa Rica in October. I have built a school with Pencils of Promise. I'll be going to Ghana in either November or early next year. So those things are kind of like on the horizon,
Starting point is 00:40:49 but I don't know where I'll be living or if I'll keep traveling. I don't know what's happening with my dog, Ellie, that's being watched by the neighbors. I have no idea where I'm going to be on this trip. I have a one-way ticket to Europe. I have a few parts of it that are planned with friends, but I don't know when I'm coming back and I don't know what I'm going to do in between the times when I'm not seeing the friends. Is there something that's, there's motivation is there's moving away from, and there's moving towards, do you have a sense of moving? It feels like you have a sense of what you're moving away from right now. I know what I'm moving away. That was at least known. Do you have a sense of what you're moving toward at this point? Or, or are you literally just like this moment is where you're
Starting point is 00:41:23 the entirety of your focus is? I'm trying to focus on adventure and flow. And what was interesting with the house sale, I was like, all right, I wasn't expecting this. I expected to come back from the trip and figure out where I wanted to move and then sell the house and then go do that. Like most people would do. The difference is once I got peaceful about the fact that that was the trajectory, because my ego, even in that, even in that decision, it was annoyed for three weeks before the trip, knowing that I didn't want to come back and stay in Ann Arbor. I was like, I'm not going to want to travel the world and stay here in this town. I want to go do something new, but I don't know what that new thing is. So I'm not going to make any changes. The minute I got peaceful about the fact that I'm going to
Starting point is 00:41:59 just come back and figure it out is when that house call happened. And the realtor's like, I have someone that wants to buy your house and your furniture, and she wants to close next week. And I was leaving the next week. And I was like, all right, if this is meant to be, this is going to flow and it can't be hard. There's can't be resistance. It has to work out and everything has to flow. And it did not. That's what I knew. I was like, Oh, there's a reason for this. This is, this is happening for a reason. I just don't know what it is yet. So I don't know if I've directly answered your question, but I know that the flow right now is very important to me.
Starting point is 00:42:29 And that's pretty much what I'm relying on exclusively. Yeah. It's funny when you talk about intuition, you use the word mind. When you talk about your ego, you use the word it. Yes. Like it's disembodied. You're so perceptive, which of course is what you're known for, but you're right. I try to disassociate the ego so I don't personalize it
Starting point is 00:42:45 and then shame myself for it. But the intuition is equally as universal, I would say. I think we all have that, that voice within us. So when you read my letters from Letters to My Intuition, the book, the voice that's talking to me is the same voice that will talk to you, or it will sound very similar. It's not like a booming voice of God. I know. I mean, some people, actually, I can't say what other people's not, it's not like a booming voice of God. I know. I mean, some people actually, I can't say what other people's experience of it would be like, but the answers that I receive are pretty, I think overall from seeing other people's letters universally, like reflective of what they find out too. Yeah. Cause it's interesting too. Cause when, I mean, kind of
Starting point is 00:43:17 jumping back to that, you know, popped into my head when you were saying that was conversations with God, that whether it's the same thing, is it all the same thing? Is it like you label it intuition? Somebody else labels it. Somebody else labels it spirit, somebody else labels it universe, but somehow it's just a conversation where you access something. I wonder if the thing that allows that to happen is also you having cultivated an ability to be still long enough for those answers to sort of emerge from the ether? Oh, that's a great point.
Starting point is 00:43:48 So when people say they can't do it, they'll try the writing exercise and they have too much going on in their head. They can't get out of their ego. Then I tell them to meditate because I say, it's not about having no thoughts. It's about what I really want them to do is get really, really, really good at understanding the ego. Because the minute you can just have this immediate, oh, that's my ego. And every moment you're like, oh, that was my ego. This thought was my ego. Then when you hear a different voice, you go, oh, that didn't sound like the ego.
Starting point is 00:44:13 So I ask people to meditate, not that they have even tons of silence, although that would be wonderful. But it's really the more you can get comfortable with the familiarity of the ego voice, then you can sense and totally tell the difference between the intuition. Yeah. And even just from a place of creating enough space so that you can actually realize that there's something bubbling up is most of us feel like every waking hour of the day so much so that there's no room for anything to come to us because we've just filled every spot. Yeah. You know what? I'm asking people to spend 10 minutes, maybe five to write four to eight questions to themselves. That's the time I'm asking for.
Starting point is 00:44:52 Yeah. It doesn't take long. I did it eight minutes before I came here. I did it after I ate breakfast, but normally I will do it in the morning. I'll do a 10 minute meditation again to just notice the voice I'll do of the ego. I'll do the gratitude journal, like write down five things I'm grateful for. And then I will write on whatever's on my mind. And I've recently gotten into that. Normally it used to take like this, this like come to Jesus
Starting point is 00:45:14 moment of I'm on my knees. I need to know an answer. And then I would do the letter. And that's where people usually start. And then two months later, something else will bring them to their knees and then they'll write the letter. But now I've gotten to the point of like, why am I waiting until I'm on my knees? Like, why don't I just go do this every day and just like write about it and just keep the flow going? Yeah. Well, that's the practice, isn't it? Right. It's like, I mean, so many people turn to meditation when they're on their knees. And the truth is that that's the worst time to turn to meditation because it's not a, it's not a momentary intervention. It's a practice. And the real power of it comes from the practice over time.
Starting point is 00:45:48 So it's like the best time to actually cultivate it is when you need it least. I'm not saying that if you're on your knees, don't start. Start. Yeah. Whatever your practice is. The best time to do it was a year ago. The second best time is right now. But it is interesting that when we don't have that immediate sense of pain, when it's not
Starting point is 00:46:08 observable and felt on a daily basis, we tend to- The ego's winning. We back away from the practices, not realizing that that's actually the place where it matters most to do it. Yes, because the ego's winning. It's saying, what I'm doing to function in your life is giving you what you want. We wait until the ego's way of functioning in life does not give us what we want. And we have enough pain that we decide otherwise that we're going to try something else.
Starting point is 00:46:29 We're willing to give up that perceived security from that way of living. And we open ourselves up to some other option. Yeah. You brought up adventure and flow. How did you arrive at those two things as guiding forces in your life? So with life with intention, the class that I teach, I teach how to live from values. But basically, intention is a very popular term. When I was using it years ago, it was very underused.
Starting point is 00:46:52 Now it's overused. So I try to differentiate what I'm teaching from other uses of like deliberate nature, being intentional or a goal. Sometimes people use the word intention to mean like a softer word for goal. So I teach values. And when you live from your values, your uppercase V values, because even there, I have to like define what I mean by values, because you can value a Ferrari or you could value adventure and flow and they're very different values. So when I thought about the trip, this is pre a week ago when I sold my house and my stuff, I thought, what do I want to, what do I want to experience
Starting point is 00:47:24 in that trip? And I wanted it to flow and I wanted adventure. So it was just fascinating because masculine and feminine to bring that conversation back around. Adventure in my mind speaks to the masculine energy and flow speaks to the feminine. So I'm excited to see what the flow brings to me and what adventures will come from the flow. Yeah, it's so interesting. I don't, that's one thing where I don't see, I don't see that dichotomy because when I think about a flow state, I think about musicians, I think about athletes, I think about artists. And, and when I think of the spectrum of people who drop into that state, like to me, at least I have to think about this more now, actually planted the seed, but my intuition is that, you know, flow is devoid that, that flow exists in a level, which is outside of
Starting point is 00:48:12 masculine versus feminine. Here's my thought. So the state, I love that you use the word state. You said when they're in the state of flow, then it's devoid. Well, I believe the state is the feminine, the act of what they're doing, whether they're painting or playing music, they're using their hands, whatever action they're taking is the masculine. So the state that they're in, because you can play music and you could be in your ego and you could be trying to impress people and you could be trying to force an outcome. And then you're taking action and you're playing music, but it's not going to resonate necessarily. It's not going to have that experience of flow for yourself or others.
Starting point is 00:48:43 But if you're in that intuitive place and then you take the action, people sense it, it's palpable and you sense in your experience of it is different. So I'd say that that would be my thought is that the state that we're in is the feminine. The actions we take are the masculine. And that's the difference. If we're just living out of the masculine energy, the ego is running the show because we're not even aware of the intuition and we're driven by things that our ego thinks will build us up or tear other people down. So it's kind of like having a machine gun, a very great tool, very useful tool in many situations, but it's shooting at shiny pennies because our ego's in control. If we can give that power of what target we're hitting and why to our intuition, it's a totally different experience.
Starting point is 00:49:24 I love being able to talk about this stuff. This is what goes on in my head all the time. My head is spinning. I'm like, I need to think about a whole bunch of this stuff. Yeah, because I spent a lot of time studying flow states. And so the idea of the fact that the state is the feminine and the action that sort of engenders the state is the masculine, but that it could still be ego driven within the context of creating a state of flow. I think that it could still be ego driven within the context of creating a state of flow. I think that it wouldn't be considered flow if the ego is in control, but if the intuition... Because one of the defining points of flow is there's a sense of absorption.
Starting point is 00:49:54 Yeah. So I think feminine is the state of being, and then the doing is the masculine. And that's what's missing in our society. That's why I think females tend to have maybe perhaps a stronger connection to the feminine. If they're missing it, they perceive a sense of lack sooner than men. But both are in caves. The reason civilization exists is for the women. And that, but the men are the ones that have to agree with that. Yeah. Right. So then in that case, the men created the civilized action, the, even the brute force of like men having stronger bodies to create what has been created over time when it was manual labor, like men created, took action, massive action, but they did so at the inspiration or the, the feminine was driving the
Starting point is 00:50:46 reasons for it, perhaps in gross generalization. So it's really cool that both energies are out there. It's great that there are masculine and feminine people. And even that I love transgender because it's totally showing it's not about the gender of the person, it's the energy. Like you can have more young energy, masculine energy as a woman, totally, or the opposite as a man, like whatever gender you are, it's irrelevant. I love the transgender is like bringing that out, you know, and making that us question does like having boobs make you, you know, a feminine energy person. It's like, no, it's not even about that. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I love that conversation is sort of like being out
Starting point is 00:51:23 there in a whole different level now also. Yeah. Is it that we have both? It's making a lot of sense. I love that conversation is sort of like being out there in a whole different level now also. Yeah. Is it that we have both? It's making a lot of people uncomfortable. You think so? Yeah. I mean, well, if you read the news, which I don't love to read because it's like, hey, here's a basket of bad stuff that's happening today. But yeah, just the fact that anything that makes people, anything that's important that makes people uncomfortable, I think it's better to have it out there and have a conversation around it rather than just have it just sit, you know, and faster because that's what it's going to do. Yeah. The other day I saw a friend who had a shirt on and said the future is female. And I asked her about it and she was talking about it. She was
Starting point is 00:51:54 saying there's this conversation around and I haven't seen it, but our conversation she was saying was a lot of people want to get down with the patriarchy and then they're like up with the matriarchy. And we both felt that's lacking. It's missing the point. It's not about there being a matriarchy or a patriarchy. It's about, okay, how do we just have both energies and like have a balanced culture that embraces both. Yeah. In everyone.
Starting point is 00:52:17 That would be awesome. And then I look at the presidential race in the United States right now, like, I know. And I don't want to go there too. Yeah, I don't either. I do think that there's, it's surprising to me that there's a lack of more female excitement around the female candidate. But I feel like for myself, I'm like, I don't resonate with the energy of the, I don't know. I don't want to get too political. I don't have much political leanings any direction. I'm not happy with where things are at in our political state. But I feel like right now for women to succeed in our society right now, they have to really
Starting point is 00:52:50 double down on their masculine energy in order to be perceived as equal to men and be able to deal with situations equal to men, which means you have to have masculine energy because you have to be able to approach things the same way a man would, which I think is grossly unconscious as a culture. So as we sit here, as people are listening to this, you will be off on your adventure and flow. Maybe I'll be back by that. This is in August. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:53:13 Because this, who knows. So as we start to come full circle, looking ahead, what, and you literally have a blank canvas in front of you. What's the single most exciting part of that for you? Faith came to mind. That's my intuition. Tell me. Tell me more. Faith because I don't know what it's going to look like. I'm not trying to control it. I know I would one day like to have a family in a pretty house. Like I had planned to do nine
Starting point is 00:53:37 months ago in Ann Arbor, but I have faith that I don't know if that's really going to happen. I hope it does. And I know I could like kind of cheat the system and make that happen and find a way to force that with masculine energy and just like fight, like push towards that as fast as possible. But at the same time, I don't want it to unfold in that way. So I'm having faith that by flowing it, it will come to me rather than me having to force it to happen. Which brings us totally full circle. So maybe this is a good life project. So if I offer that term out to you to live a good life, what comes up? Oh, I should have thought about this ahead of time, but let's see what comes up right now. To live the questions and have faith that the answers will be provided and to have faith that when we live from our intuition, the best outcomes
Starting point is 00:54:19 unfold naturally without us having to force them to be a certain way. And the faith that we can do hard things, even when there's the faith that we can do hard things even when there's uncertainty and that we can have extreme empathy for ourselves when the ego flares up and when it wants us to feel bad about ourselves or when it gets in control for a week, a month, an hour that we don't feel like we failed,
Starting point is 00:54:40 but that we just try to get back in the pose through empathy and just get back in the flow. That's what it means to me. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to,
Starting point is 00:55:03 I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.
Starting point is 00:55:57 It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.
Starting point is 00:56:24 The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. very.

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