Well with Arielle Lorre - 161: Doing the Inner Work with Gabby Bernstein

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

In this episode, I'm talking to Gabby Bernstein, an author, motivational speaker, and spiritual/thought leader about doing the inner work. From socially acceptable addictions like social media to things like drug addiction, we discuss the root cause of all addictions and how to heal from those. We also go into validation habits, infertility and loss, and how to find peace post-trauma. This is a great show for anyone interested in growth and connecting to your deeper self.   www.Athleticgreens.com/blondefiles for your free 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. www.Headspace.com/BLONDE for one month free of the entire mindfulness library. www.Thirdlove.com/blonde for 20% off your first order. www.Arrae.com with code 'blondefiles' for 10% off one time orders or 25% off your first month of subscription.   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening.

Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. So today I have an episode that was kind of a long time in the making. I am talking to Gabby Bernstein, who I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. She is somebody that I have wanted to talk to for a while now. I am always drawn to other sober women who have overcome addictions and adversity and really made something of their lives and found meaning. And she is just a great example of someone who has really turned her pain into her purpose. So Gabby Bernstein is a New York Times bestselling author, motivational

speaker, spiritual leader. She's the host of the Dear Gabby podcast. She has nine books, including The Universe Has Your Back, Super Attractor, and her newest release Happy Days, which is available now. And we get into so many things in today's episode. We talk about addictions, like socially acceptable addictions such as social media to things like drug addiction. We talk about kind of the root cause of all of these addictions and how to heal from them. We also get into validation. We talk about infertility and loss, which she suffered recently. We talk about how to find peace, post trauma, and so much more. So this is a really great show for anybody interested in growth and connecting to your deeper self. So enjoy Gabby Bernstein.

All right, welcome, Gabby. I'm so excited to have you here. Really nice to be with you, Sue Hart. I have been wanting to talk to you for such a long time. You first came onto my radar years ago when I got sober. We have that in common. And I just really resonate with your story. And I find, you know, the work that you're doing and your path and everything is so profound. So there's so much that I want to get into today. And we have a little bit of limited time. But to start, I just, wanted to ask you how you're doing. I feel like you are probably somebody who's really affected energetically and there's so much going on right now. And on top of that, you know, you are releasing a new book. You're doing probably tons of press and interviews and dealing with your own stuff. So how are you? Personally, I'm doing well. I have been living the practices inside this book. It's a book on recovering from trauma. So having these practices in my toolbox and accessible to me at all time. is extraordinarily beneficial when the world is in crisis.

And when my own stuff gets activated or we feel the call to show up for others. So I feel very on mission at this time. I feel like a strong mission to show up at my highest capacity to be of service in the ways that I can. And I'm also feeling quite sad. I'm honestly really sad about what's happening, the state of the world, the darkness in this world and what we're facing at this time. And that's the truth. And I'm also feeling really happy too at the same time. And I think that's actually an important thing to share that we can be witnessing the struggling of the world, but we don't have to be the victim of it if we are not in the direct lines of it because the more we take that on, the less we can do to serve and support and show up. So, trying to balance my genuine emotions of sadness with my capacity to be a force of support in the world. Yeah, it's like putting on your oxygen mask first, right, so that you can be there for

other people and taking care of yourself. And I actually heard another interview that you did recently where you were talking about a loss that you experienced recently, which we might get into, not to jump way ahead, but you said that you were ready for that. because of all of this work that you have done on yourself, for yourself, all of that over the years. And I think that that's so important to hear because it's so hard, at least for me, to find the discipline to do the things that I know are making me more resilient, stronger, all of that when things are good. But you find that if you do that, if you can access that discipline and work on yourself, when you do get to those more turbulent times, you have a stronger foundation. Can you talk about that a little bit?

100%. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, I've been in sober recovery 16 years. I've been on a journey of really healing the root cause of my addiction, then remembering the trauma that was the reason for the addiction, then going on the steadfast devotional journey of trauma recovery and spiritual foundational growth to get to where I am right now. And every single step of the way for my, you know, I joke that this took me 42 years to write this book. But for the past 42 years, I can say thank you for all Gabby. Gabby, nice job. Thank you for showing up even in the darkest moments because being here right now, after having experienced a few months ago, loss of I was five and a half months pregnant and losing the baby. And then everything else that happens in life and all the

other things that we're witnessing on the news and everything that's going on in the world. I can say, wow, you know, you've been training for this, sister. You've done a good job. And it was all really worth it. because now you can live to tell what it means to live with freedom and inner peace no matter what happens. It'd be easy for me to walk around with my face on this cover and be like, yeah, freedom and inner peace because everything's working out for me. But no, I have freedom and inner peace even when things don't work out. So that's a testament to the work. That's a testament to the power of commitment and devotional practice. And I feel like the freedom and inner piece usually is kind of a result of going through those really challenging times. Like,

I want to talk a little bit about your sobriety, but I know for me, like being an alcoholic, being a drug addict, having to get sober, all of that seemed like it would be the absolute worst thing in the world. My superpower, you know, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I think it's so hard to have that perspective when we're going through it. But can you talk about a little bit like what led you to getting sober and what that looked like for you? Well, I was 25 when I got sober. I was a cocaine addict and pretty much falling apart. In the book, I share a story about how I'm in my white beat-up Toyota Corolla,

adhering to alternate side of the street parking regulations. And there's no way I should be behind the wheel because I'd just come back from the after party 30 minutes prior. And I'm hung over and I'm drinking this gatorade and I'm pressing play over and over on this cassette tape. And the cassette tape is a recording of a psychic reading that I'd had five months earlier. And I continue to hear the psychic's words over and over. And she says, you're struggling with drugs and alcohol. And my voice quivers. And I say, it's not that bad. And she goes on and she says, you can continue on with this path and have a lot of struggles. Or you can get sober and make a major impact on the world.

And I just keep replaying and re-listening and replaying and re-listening. And there's no way I can contemplate what it would mean to have a major impact on the world. But I held on to those words so tightly. And I can see that decision that I made at 25, much like how you were just referring to your sobriety as the greatest decision of my life because it was a path I chose. I chose a path of healing so that I could make a major impact. But first it had to start with me. So I got clean and sober. And for the first 10, 11 years of my sobriety, I didn't even know why I was an addict. I was like, everything was so great. How could I have been a drug addict? Why would I be a, you know, and then of course,

I projected it onto workaholism and codependency. And it was like, why, why, why, why, why? Only to be 36 years old and have a memory through a dream. And in the dream, I remembered being sexually abused as a child. And that was horrific and terrifying, but the acceptance of that memory really began the deeper dive of my recovery beyond sobriety and beyond spiritual practice, but into trauma recovery. And it is my belief, and I know I share this belief with Gabramante and other specialists in the trauma field that the root cause of addiction is trauma. The root cause of addiction is trauma. Trauma with a big T trauma with a small T. You know, big T trauma is like what I went through with remembering being abused. Small T trauma could be being told you were stupid or having

neglect in the household. But whatever it was, that's what we have to really get to the bottom of in order to truly live free from the addictive patterns, free not just from addiction, but free from, all the other ways that we as humans protect ourselves, right? So maybe you're not an addict, but you're controlling or you're constantly in a state of fear, you're living in hypervigilance, or you're constantly controlling every corner of your life, or you're having gastrointestinal issues, or whatever, the ways that you are protecting yourself from feeling the impermissible. So this is a moment in time right now where those of us who have the privilege of doing the

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The code is blonde files for 10% off a one-time purchase or 25% off a month on subscription. Hi, I'm Shenei Alexander, host of Press Send, a podcast and more importantly, a safe and hilarious place for candid conversations about the scary, funny, heartbreaking, but always intriguing questions that make us all human. Each week, me and a new best friend you haven't met yet, field your questions across any and all topics and offer our take on the matter with plenty of humor, heart, and badassery along the way. We launch a new episode of Press Send every Wednesday. We'll see you there. It was so interesting when I was, you know, reading the book and I wanted to ask you and you kind of just answered it, like what you attributed the kind of numbing out with the drugs,

with the cocaine, what you attributed that to before you had this dream, because I could relate to you so much in that, you know, I had a good upbringing. I didn't really have any big tea trauma that I remember until I started drinking and using. Then I was, you know, accumulating big tea and little tea traumas every day, which certainly fueled it and kept the addiction going. But I don't have any alcoholism or anything in my family. And so I'm kind of like you probably were for the first, you know, 10 years of your sobriety, 10, 11 years where I'm scratching my head going, I don't know. So I was interested in like what you attributed that to before you had the dream. Well, I knew that I had a severe codependency addiction before I became a cocaine addict.

And so I could understand that there was fear of not being sick. safe, but I couldn't put it into words at the time. And getting clean and sober, I was able to do with the step work really recognize my patterns and recognize my fears, but I really don't think I began true genuine deep dive recovery. Well, not genuine, it's all genuine, but heavy lifting recovery until I remember the trauma. And so, yeah, actually, when you dissociate, you build up stories that are not true. You build up totally false base stories of your history and your path and you just kind of pretend like things are good. I wanted to ask you another thing that you talked about in the book were kind of these psychosomatic manifestations, you know, physical manifestations of trauma.

And I think everybody is experiencing trauma at this time and everybody has experienced trauma over the last couple years. And like you said, it's not, it doesn't have to be this big T trauma. I think that's such a misconception that it has to be something like sexual abuse or death in the family, whatever it is. So what are some of those physical manifestations that you experienced and what were some of the steps that you took, which of course you talk about in the books,

so everybody go read that. There's some here though, for sure. I mean, so there's a chapter in the book called hiding behind the body. And that's a chapter about how when we have impermissible fear, rage, shame, feelings of unworthiness or inadequacy, which we all have in our own forms as children.

We tuck them away and bury them. And then we build up all these protection mechanisms to fight against that feeling. And in our case, we had a big protector, which was our alcoholism and drug addiction. And some people, it's even can go as far as physical symptoms.

Because what is known in the space in the work of Dr. John Sarno, who I recognize in the book, is that physical symptoms of pain often are the psychosomatic effect, have a psychosomatic effect, which is that there is the impermissible feeling underneath them, feelings of rage, shame, and adequacy, being unlovable, fear, terror, really. And so we will often, one, live in a state of hypervigilance and chronic anxiety. And then, of course, from a physiological perspective, that creates tension in

the body and creates inflammation and creates then, therefore, stressors that create gastro-issues, create migraines, back pain, fibromyalgia, all the different kinds of autoimmune stuff that can be, obviously we all know from a Western medicine perspective, are all the effect of stress for sure. And stress has a major effect on these conditions. Why is the stress there is the bigger question? Why is the anxiety so chronic is the bigger question? Why is the constant state of fear creating the problem here? And so as we start to begin to pay attention to the body, we can see,

all the body's ways of reacting as another way of protecting ourselves from feeling those impermissible feelings. And in the book, in that chapter, I start to give some very gentle practices for starting to open up to the unconscious feelings that we don't allow and bring them out onto a journaling exercise that also involves bilateral brain stimulation. And so that's a beautiful practice inside that chapter, as well as grounding practices for the body while you're going through this. Because you may not be ready between many years to really get to this seat of safety. And so this book is a journey. It's a book that the reader is going to come back to year after year after year because this year, they may be ready to do some of the soothing exercises. And then next year, they might be able to go deeper and start

to look at their rage. And then a year after that, they can look at their shame. And it's a slow journey. I don't want the reader to rip off the Band-Aid too quickly. But the psychosomatic effects that the trauma had on my body were gastro issues for years. neck pain, back pain, skin conditions, so much, just so much. And my body is free now. Thank God. I think everybody listening to this is like, hmm, gastro issues, very relatable. I feel like everybody, myself included, has gut issues. And I'm wondering if there are any tips that you have for kind of being able to discern between what is the stress of living in this hyper-stimulated society where like we wake up, we're on our phones, we're, you know, probably in

fight or flight 24-7 because we're always accessible and working all the time and, you know, there's no boundaries. How can you discern between the stress of that and then the stress of something that might be more buried within like a trauma? It's both for all people. So the stressors of the world have just magnified the fight-flight response that we've been living in in that chronic state. And they've also magnified the impermissible traumas that we've not been able to face. For instance, how many people do you know and do I counsel daily who are just constantly looking for validation through their social media feed? Why? Because they don't feel lovable and adequate from their fucking childhood, right? Or how many people are in a constant state of, I got to keep up,

I got to keep up. Why? You know, with their social or with their Instagram or whatever. Why? Because they don't feel like they're good enough unless they're overly producing or they don't believe that if they don't do it they if they're not the one to do it nobody else will or they have impermissible feelings of not being seen by their loved ones so now they need to be seen whatever the storyline may be the ways that we use technology are a direct reflection of the unresolved traumas in our life period so it's just another way of shining light on the impermissible. When you think about it, it really is so similar to a drug. I mean, the parallels are exact. And even I catch myself, like, I know when I'm picking up the phone to numb out.

You're picking up a drink. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, and I think that there are so many other things like that, you know, where somebody listening might say, well, I don't have a problem with drugs or alcohol, but there's shopping. There's food. I know that food is like such a huge one for people. Yeah, sex, whatever it is. We all have addictive patterns. I would say all protection mechanisms that we build up to push down these child parts, whether they be work or TV or drugs or gambling or even things that may be socially acceptable, like work, you know, or just being popular on social media are all forms of running.

And this is addressed in the second chapter of the book. It's like why we run. and then becoming brave enough to face what we're running from. Because if we don't have the bravery to look into and tap into what we're running from, how could we heal? Because we can't heal what we cannot see. What are some ways that people, you know, you keep talking about impermissible feelings and that's something that I really relate to

because that was why I started drinking and using because I felt things that were impermissible. unacceptable to me. I could not deal with it. And, you know, like we're talking about, we're so conditioned to reach for a distraction when those feelings come up. So how are some ways that people listening can deal with those feelings when they do arise? I think it's important for me also to point out that what you had said earlier was I didn't know I was using. I didn't have any problems in my life, right? But here we are right now and you're like, oh yeah, I had impermissible feelings. Right? So, so there was a belief system at some point, whether it was big T trauma or small T trauma

that activated a belief system within you that you were not adequate or lovable. However, the language you would use to define that. So while people may be like, I had the best parents ever, where I had the best upbringing, a teacher could have told you you were stupid. A guy could have broken your heart too young and then you just, you know, can never feel like you could ever be good enough. There's so many ways that we disconnect from that love within us. Now, if we've been brought up with a secure attachment to our parents, we actually less likely to be addicted, less likely to be in these sort of fight-flight responses

because we were taught resilience as children. But if there was any kind of insecure attachment as a child, whether it's neglect or it's anxiety in the household because that anxious attachment can create problems or avoid an attachment where your parent is sometimes there and sometimes not or not reliable, that insecurity can affect how we act and live as adults. So it's not like you can't grow up with a good childhood

and feel secure and not have problems, you know? There's still stuff that will be there. There's still lingering behaviors. And look, some of us have them more than others, but no one is immune to the human condition. No one. We've all lived through a trauma just now. We've lived through something called COVID.

We're living through war. we're living through horrific imagery. So we're all traumatized. And there's light at the end of that. There's work. There's profound healing modalities. There's profound practices. All of which I share in this book,

I share the spiritual methods, and I share the therapeutic practices that are the most profound trauma recovery practices in my personal journey that I've experienced. and I introduce them. I introduce them in ways where I can say, okay, do this now to experience this. And if you want to go further,

there's therapeutic support, right? So it's not just like, oh, you have to go get a therapist. And you can do these practices in real time with me. And that's so valuable to be able to be just shown, wait, I'm not alone. And there's a path. Man, I would have killed for somebody to show me this book

six years ago. I'm curious when you had this experience when you started writing the book, did you feel like it was kind of an insurmountable thing? Or did you feel like you were on the path and like this was part of your purpose? Oh yeah.

I mean, I've known my whole life that I was here to be in the pursuit of freedom and in the service of others. That's it. I've known that even unconsciously as a younger person. So what I remembered the trauma,

I knew right away, I wanted to write about it, but I knew that I could not write about it until I was on the other side of it. So memory happened in 2016 and the book's out in 2022. I'm curious, I've heard you talk about like your thoughts become your life, right? In AA or in 12-step, it's your actions become your thoughts, which become your life. So I kind of want to talk about this. Like I've heard it both ways where your thoughts dictate your feelings, which dictate your behavior, leads to your actions. But then there's also this perspective that now you change your actions and the

rest follows. What has your experience been with that? Well, I know we're not supposed to speak and promote 12-step in these platforms, but it's really hard for me not to because it saved my life, frankly. But I will say that when you're in an acute trauma, like hitting bottom with addiction, the first step is abstinence because you can't start to get to those root-caused thoughts until you've removed the pattern and abstained from the pattern that is so destructive

and ultimately killing you. So the abstinence is the first step, but that abstinence without the spiritual practice, without the devoted stepwork, without the commitment to changing your perspective and healing your beliefs about yourself, is just going to be white knuckling it. And it's going to give you, and that goes for anyone, right?

You can stop the pattern. There's plenty of people out there. They're like, oh, you know, I got off. I went on a diet for four months, but I always fall back off, right? Or I got sober for nine months and now I'm back and fell off and went out. Why? Because you are not looking at why you're using in the first place. So it is the thoughts that are the root cause of the behavior.

But removing the behavior first is a gentle way of being able to clear space so that you have more energy and more awareness of your own internal condition. Because it's pretty hard to do spiritual and personal growth work when you're hung over and fucked up all the time, right? So I think they kind of go hand in hand. But in the case of acute, really habitual, addictive patterns, whatever they may be, abstinence is a first step, but it won't last unless we do the deeper in our work. How are you doing today?

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talk about that. I think there will be a lot of people listening who can relate or who who need to hear how somebody got through something like that because like we've been talking about this whole time. We are all going through such a hard time right now and it's hard to remember in that moment how it can be kind of preparing you for the next thing or how there's something bigger and better to be revealed on the other side of that. Yeah. So I spent 2020 in and out of nine different IVF treatments, which is if you know anything about IVF, that's a lot. for a year. It's almost every month doing treatment.

And it was really, it was a lot. And month after month, I wasn't getting the embryo. And finally, I had a spiritual intervention where I listened to my inner guidance system and heard, they're overstimulating you. I literally heard that in my mind's eye and inner voice. And so I went to my doctor and said, stop what you're doing. Let's do a low stim round. And that worked.

I got a healthy boy embryo. And then I very quickly got carried that baby that the pregnancy was I did the implantation. He implanted perfectly. Everything was going great. He was growing. Everything was looking beautiful. Five and a half months pregnant just out of that horrific first trimester. And I was in my 20 week scan.

And that was one of the most traumatizing moments of my life to be able to be in the room with my husband. And the doctor saying to me, do you me? any other embryos and we're like, no, we just got one. All you need is one. And then witnessing like doctor after doctor come into the room and just the heartbreaking knowing that something is wrong. And within 48 hours having to have a DNA and a go of the baby that was alive in me, you know, he wasn't even, it wasn't like he was, yeah, it was, it was rough. So what was most miraculous about bad experience and continues to be was my resilience and my faith within days of the once I was past the surgery and home and everything was kind of confirmed and settled I noticed this part of me

that was so loud that kept saying this soul came to you for this moment in time to teach you something great and there's creative possibilities for the soul to come back if that's what's necessary or what's going to be of the highest good and i'll be honest with you coming home to a three-year-old who is beautiful and red curly hair and so smart happy and perfect to me made it a lot easier to have my son oliver at home but even as i recount the story now it's just it's so heartbreaking to lose a child and at the same time, it's so heart-opening to know that that soul had a chance to be in your body and to experience your love and that it can come back, that the same soul can come back in different

ways, whether it be through a pet or whether it be through an adopted child or whether it be through another form that could be possible for me. So my bravery to do the work that I've done to write this book and to be the woman that I am today was the pillow of faith that I could fall into after that experience. And it was so profound to witness myself in that seat of recovery that was so steady and so strong, really strong recovery that held me up and moved me through and allowed me to still stay open to possibilities even after trauma like that. I'm so sorry.

I mean, I feel like that's that's one of those things that is probably the most unimaginable things that somebody can go through and you went through it with so much grace. Happens a lot and we don't speak enough,

but it happens to so many people men and women, of course, the men are experiencing their own experience of trauma. But it really gives you a new level of gratitude. for what you do have. And whenever I notice that I'm sweating the small stuff, I say Owen, that's the name of my son. I say Owen, because his soul came here to remind me to that there's no time for small stuff. As we witnessed these women in crisis, women birthing in these bomb shelters,

the orphans that are being, I'm sorry, so disturbing to me, the orphans that are being displaced and the children, it's just like no fucking time for the small stuff. People just listen to me when I say that. Just lean into all the greatness and all the privileges that you have and do whatever you can to help people that don't have them. Seems like we keep getting these big things, you know, signs from the universe, whatever you want to call it, not that like a war or a pandemic is a sign from universe, so much more than that. But these huge reminders of exactly what you're saying, you know, not to sweat the small stuff. And I feel like so many of us still kind of have blinders on to that for some reason,

not to be like totally pessimistic. I think in so many ways a lot of people have been kind of cracked open and are doing the work and getting a new perspective and all of that. Well, I will say this. There's hope because one that's listening to us now at like the almost the 40 minute mark of this conversation is part of the solution. because they have the bravery to listen and the bravery to go there

and they're listening to a podcast that's talking about trauma and addiction and recovery and miscarriage and loss and it's like, I want to reframe miscarriage that was not my story but the loss of a baby in utero and whatever that is.

If you're still listening, you're brave. And if you're still listening, it means you want to grow and it means you want to feel free and it means you want to bring that presence of freedom into your life. And it means you want to be an elevating force in the world. And it means you're a fucking rock star.

So there's hope. There's hope. The listeners are hope. Somebody is listening and they're going through something similar to what you went through or any kind of challenge and they don't have that spiritual foundation that we've been talking about. And they feel like they don't have the tools, but they want to be free. Obviously, get happy days.

And all of your books and, you know, listen to you in so many interviews. And you're such a kind of guiding force and all that. But do you have any tips for somebody who's like in it right now? And they're like, well, fuck, I don't have any of these tools. And I don't have any of this foundation. I don't know where to start. Such an easy answer. Go read this book. Go read the book. Go read the book. Read it again. Read it again. Practice the principles. Come back and read it again. Bring the principles to your therapist, to your coach, to your partner, to your moment to moment life. This is a profound book that has the ability to show you exactly how to get out of your suffering. If somebody, you know, it's that parable of like, you know, the guy's drowning and God sends him a helicopter and he's like, you know,

someone, somebody comes in a helicopter and he's like, no, God's going to save me. And somebody comes in a boat. No, God's going to save me. So when he comes in a raft, God's going to save me. And then he dies and he's like, God, where the fuck were you? And God's like, I sent you a fucking boat, you know? This is my boat and I'm giving it. And honestly, I just, if I could, I would literally give it to people. I would just hand it out.

I want to just, I mean, I do hand it out. I often walk through the streets and just hand out. And also, if anyone can't afford this book, email support at gabbyrnestein.com, and I will send you a signed copy of it. but if you can afford the, you know, $14 or the $999 ebook or whatever it is, take yourself on the journey because the answers are right there. And it sounds like a kind of shitty response.

Like, oh, why don't you just give me the tip right now? Well, it's a journey. It's a journey. It's a resurrection of who you are. And it's a slow, steady process. And there are so many methods I can share with you right now. But I really think if you're asking me how to somebody get the tools to change, then just read the book.

It's like a strange answer, but I can say it with conviction. Well, yeah, and it's like don't deprive yourself of that experience, kind of. Totally, totally. I mean, like I said, if you're still listening, then there's a reason. I don't think that we are led to these kinds of conversations or a podcast unless, I would say you read it when you need it. So if you're still listening, then there's a sign. This is a sign. This is a path for you.

I have kind of an unrelated question, or maybe it is related. but you just strike me as somebody who is so clear on their purpose. And maybe, you know, you knew it from a young age and then you kind of like shut it out and ignored it for a little bit and, you know, went off the beaten path a little bit and then you came back. And one of the questions that I get so often from people in my audience, especially now after I think the last couple of years, people are reevaluating their lives and what's important and if they're really happy in this situation that they're in. And a lot of people ask, like, how do I find my purpose? Everyone says follow your purpose and your passion, but what if I don't know what that is? Do you have any tips for somebody listening who is maybe not happy where they are right now and they want to follow or find their purpose and they don't know what that is? Well, I'd ask them what brings you joy. What do you do for fun? What do you do for, what do you do in your life that brings you joy that elevates you, that expands you, that makes you feel connected and present and then do more of that. And it's not because that thing is your life purpose.

It's because that thing brings out your purpose, which is to be an expression of joy in the world. Love that. Well, I always like to ask my guests, what is one thing we should stop doing today and one thing you should start doing today? Stop judging and attacking others. Start looking in word. Love it. Consice, straight to the point. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I had so much fun talking to you and I just will continue to admire you and you're such an inspiration to all of us. Thank you for going here with me, love. Congratulations on all your recovery and everything. Thank you. Well, it's beautiful. Thank you so much.

I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there, or over on my personal page at Ariel Lurie.

Thank you.