Your Happy Hour - Intrapersonal Intimacy

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Welcome back to Your Happy Hour with Friday Feels!In this episode, I (your host, Nicole Karmine) explore this month’s theme of 'Contracting with Kindness,' through a reflection of my personal experiences and insights about energy exchanges, the root of kindness, the acceptance of change, and the importance of community, self-love and the small things that allow us to flow with the joy of creativity and fun in life.How are you being open, intimate, kind with your self?Friday Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well whatever it is, this moment is just for you. Welcome back to another episode of your happy hour with Friday Feels and we are still on the theme of Contracting with Kindness. This is week three of the theme and after two attempts of trying to get a guest on for this week it seems that the universe is nudging me to have a bit of a solo

take on this theme and it really got me thinking about why did I pick this topic in the first place. Well when we did the pre-planning for the season I think that a hot topic for me was energy exchanges and at the time I was living in the Ardèche, doing a work away and looking after a wonderful woman Paula's dogs for six months in the middle of nowhere in the southwest of France. And it really got me thinking about how we engage in the world around things that are different than money and how do we contract with each other not in a space of how society is set up that it has to be in the switch of cash or EFT or PayPal or whatever the latest lingo is these days but rather from a place of bartering with

your energy with your time with your talent with your skill and it got me thinking about what the energy is with which you do that so for example i was doing work away looking after the dogs, helping with the garden, helping clean the house in exchange for accommodation, electricity paid, all of that and having a life in a space that I never thought that I would have in the beautiful vineyards of the Adesh. So work away is this really cool platform which I'd love to give a shout out to today and I can explain a little bit more of what it is but there are lots of these different ways of living in the world. Home exchange is one of them and some people do woofing and so there are alternative ways to contract in the

world and do so with an exchange of kindness. You have to come with the right intention and right energy to do these things otherwise you might feel some kind of resentment for putting yourself in situations that are very outside of your comfort zone usually. But all of this took me to a place of really understanding what contracting means with kindness in relation to other people and that it really actually starts within yourself. I know it's a standard cliche that everyone's talking about but it's a cliche for a reason and I really had to learn that I needed to contract with kindness with myself first before I could do so with other people. Now I've been on quite a journey about contracting with people in the world. I have definitely been in

contracts that were in sour like having a tenant in an apartment in Johannesburg that I had to blacklist because she wasn't paying her electricity. I've definitely been in contracts that have been amazing. For example, contracts of leases that I've stayed in places that have been wonderful and given me life and experiences. I've been in work contracts that have been fantastic, that have given me opportunities to learn and grow in exchange for my time and my energy. Definitely looking back on some of those, I know that I gave a lot more time and energy

than maybe I was getting back financially, but I was growing so much as a person. And so it's quite an interesting thing when we start analyzing the exchange of our energy and time with ourselves and then with others around the world. I've definitely been in some contracts that have not ended so well. For example, a marriage contract that ended in a divorce and that was not an easy one.

That was not an easy contract to say, I don't want to be in this contract anymore, even though I signed it at a certain date and time. And that maybe things have changed for me. I also believe that on the topic of contracting with kindness and thinking about that from a space where it starts with ourselves a lot about kindness and about Learning how to be in the world I think is about acceptance and a big one is around acceptance of change now change is always too hard

But this is the reason we have contracts in place. If something changes, if something happens, if this, if that, this is how we are going to handle it. The interesting thing is that the moment that you are in that situation, the if has happened, the when has happened, you are already a different person from the time that you've signed that contract. And so you really have to come to that new space, being a new human, having changed,

having transformed with kindness, with acknowledgement of the things that you had decided before. And I think that's often the hardest part about this topic. The hardest part of being human, I think, is acknowledging that we've made decisions that have brought us to a certain place and time in our lives. I know that that was hard for me and it's very very easy in those spaces to blame other people. But when we come into the world with a sense of kindness, a sense of fairness and acceptance, we learn that we have to allow ourselves to adjust and we have to allow ourselves to

not be so critical because the truth of the matter is that kindness can only start with others when it starts with ourselves and we are the worst critic of all. Maybe I'm speaking for myself today but I know that what has really happened for me is as I've learned how to exchange more fairly and kindly with the world, what has come to light for me is my judgment of things and I really had to realize that that started with myself, that started with the inner critic, the very very very judgmental critical mind that I had of the things that I was doing in the world and that I wasn't even allowing myself the grace and the gentleness and the tenderness to be human, to feel, to

not get it right all the time, to make mistakes. And I think that's the hard part about going through the world with a kind heart. And when we speak of someone that has kindness, if we say, oh, that person is a really kind person, what is it that we mean? What is it that that person is exuding that we refer to as kindness? And I've often thought about this. And I, to to me it came down to the fact that that person does not judge you. When you are with somebody who is allowing you to be fully yourself, your silly, crazy, magical, wonderful, but sometimes difficult self in that moment and

They do not criticize you and they do not judge you They still stand within their boundaries. They still stand strong as a human with who they are in the world But they do not Take who you are and throw it back in your face in a way, I think that is true kindness. That is a human seeing another human for what they are. And you know, as I've walked along my journey, I have realized more and more that we are these divine souls, we are these divine beings, these creators,

this wonderful spiritual experience that we are having in a human body. And sometimes we forget that, right? We forget that we are having this crazy experience. We come here, we don't really know what is going on. But before we arrived, there are certain contracts that were put in place. You chose to be here. You chose to exist on this earth in this era in 2025 on the month of May having this conversation with yourself in the mirror every day and there's a reason for that there's a reason that you signed up for this you signed a contract and I really believe and I'm coming to realize and to discover that perhaps the biggest journey

of all is that we signed a contract to come and have understanding, to come and have acceptance, to come and experience the fullness of being human and not to judge it, let it go to release it to let it be and This life you chose a certain body. You need to learn how to love that body. I often speak to clients about the concept of interpersonal intelligence and interpersonal intimacy Which is something I still have to work on every single day, is the self-love.

The fact that you cannot necessarily love from outside in, if I can say that, but you have to love from inside out, took me a really long time to realize that, and a lot of people pleasing in the midst of that but once I got to put that aside and I realized that I need to love me, I need to enjoy my company. If I love being with me, other people will love being with me and if I can be alone and enjoy who I am and love who I am sensually, physically, mentally, sexually, in all ways that is being human and not to be an island necessarily because we all need connection that is why we are here because the beauty is what I realized is that when you do go in there and you contract with kindness first with yourself

and you learn empathy and you learn about the critic and you learn about How hard we are on ourselves, but you get to love yourself despite that I but you get to love yourself despite that, I think the very next step is realizing how beautiful and valuable community and connection is. And to me it it was just this awakening to the collective, the fact that we are helping each other, the fact that we signed contracts with each other from a sole perspective. And perhaps you have a different view, perhaps you've had a different experience and I'd love to hear about that. This has been mine and in my discovery I have realized that we've had have to embrace being kind with one another in order to fulfill these contracts, in order to understand

that sometimes it is the person that is pushing your red button, the person that is causing you trauma in your life, that is fulfilling the role exactly like they need it to. That is being that person that needs to help you see where you can grow in your life to be yourself, to love yourself. And that's hard, right? That's hard to then come at that person with kindness. But then when you realize that you resonated with that, you pulled that person into your life, there's a reason that they're there.

You can have kindness with yourself and acceptance for where you are in order to change and You can have kindness for where they're coming from in the fact that they also helping you and helping themselves grow so I think it's a really difficult topic and You know we throw around this theme contracting with kindness with such ease But it's really quite a deep theme and a very cool theme to be almost ending of the season. We've got one more theme left in the Mirrors of the World next month in June and I think that's a really nice way to segment out of this theme because they

work together so well. They really walk hand in hand and so I wonder what you're feeling when you're listening to this, you know, how are you contracting with yourself first and foremost in the world? Before you are signing any contracts with anyone, before you are thinking about what kind of kindness you have to give anyone, where does it start for you in your heart and in your space? And you know I always say to clients one of the best things you can do for yourself is look yourself in the mirror and say I am bold, I am brave, I am beautiful and I'm bright and whatever that mantra is for you but you know being able to really look yourself in the eye and Say that fully and mean it

That contract starts with you first being able to make promises to yourself that you actually keep Like I am going to go to the gym and then you go to the gym. I Think a lot of people have on this podcast I think a lot of people have on this podcast spoken about atomic habits or you know, it's really the small habits that build the life and I think that's really also a very small way, but a massive way in which we contract with ourselves in kindness. It's always the little things that you let slip that actually ends up really impacting you down the line. And I think sometimes we also forget, and I am such a victim of this, you know, in such a, you know, right, the right word.

I definitely do this on a daily basis too. I forget that it's the little thoughts. It's every little thing in your life. It's energy. At the end of the day, a contract is an energy exchange and the way we cultivate our energy in kindness with ourselves is so, so important. So I put it out there for myself and I put it out there for you listening to go into this week contracting with kindness with yourself.

And in any situation where you are maybe signing a contract or signing on a dotted line, think about how that energy exchange is impacting you. Think about the power that you hold in that, the lesson that you learn in that. And whether you are coming to that contract, to that moment, to that action, to that thought with love for yourself. And I wish you all the most beautiful contracting moments in this week. May they be full of

acceptance, non-judgment, openness, safety and a lot of space for that inner child to be and feel safe to play. And on that note, we would not be able to get to play in this space and have these amazing conversations and open talks about these things if it wasn't for our partners Riverside FM and RSS.com. So thank you to you guys for providing us the space, for helping us share content in the world so easily and for being our partners, our contracts that we signed, our energy exchanges with so much kindness.

And if you are a podcaster, a live streamer, a content creator, or whatever it is out there and you are keen to check out Riverside FM, let us know. They've given us a really cool discount for our audience so you can let us know on the socials at firedayfields.co and we'll send the discount code to you and happy to help you put together your podcast or whatever kind of project or production you are looking to create. Similarly with rSS.com which is our distribution platform for this podcast. And then I also just want to say a big shout out to Workaway. Like I mentioned earlier, it would be remiss if I didn't mention them in this podcast on this theme. They really have an amazing platform that they've created that people can connect in the world.

And they are hosts and they are hosts and they are workaways. And let's say you have a home somewhere and you are building some chateau in the south of France and you're needing help. You can always put your place up there, you tell your story, you show your availability that you need and workaways all around the world can find you. It's kind of similar to the concept of woofing. Some people are familiar with that I really love this app though because

they Make it really easy for WorkAwares and hosts to find each other so you can almost connect and and and have conversations with hosts in your area which for me when I was in a very small village in Dakhdesh it was really valuable to to be like, hey I'm not in this space alone and it's nice to go have a drink with someone. So a really big shout out to you guys for bringing the feels, for connecting people around the world, for showing that it's possible to live and work and move in different ways that don't necessarily require tons of money, but

just in a beautiful exchange of talent and skill and time and energy. So, big shout out to Workaway. Do check them out. And then I want to also move into a little section of the gems this week. It's just me and my jam, but I wanted to say that my biggest jam this week Was just a reminder to have fun. I think it's really easy when you're an entrepreneur sometimes as well to get lost in your own world of working and Not to really look beyond your comfort zone even though you're a traveler and an adventurer and an open-minded person sometimes it's easy to hermit and I want to say thank you to the friends and beautiful people in my life for helping me see new places and discover spaces and also for the amazing

music that I've been able to create. I've got a new song coming soon so I'm really excited about that. I'll keep you posted on the socials and I have the privilege of performing this Thursday with an awesome musician who I met and again you know being able to contract with kindness with people in this way as artists and between artists and audience it's just a beautiful experience. So my jamus really just have fun. I hope you're having an amazing time out there whatever you get up to and fantastic feels for this week and a happy happy happy Friday. And then very very last but definitely not least it's the stack. It's time for the real reading list and I've got one that is on the pile that I have not yet read but has been so recommended to me. It's called A Course in Miracles. It was written collectively by the foundation

of inner peace and it is just such a practically beautifully well put together guide on being human, put together guide on being human, on being gentle and graceful and kind and loving towards ourselves and what the service is of being human in this world. I'm really excited to read it. For those of you who have read it and have any comments or anything you want to share with me, please reach out. I'm really keen to get connected with community on this topic and on this book. And yeah, we're going to be adding that to the stack for the week. So on that note, I will say a cheerio and a farewell and I really wish you all the most

beautiful, kind and light-fulled week ahead of you and may it just be full of joy that you create in the contract with yourself. If you haven't just yet follow Friday Feels on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn. You can share with us all your feels this week by tagging us at fridayfeels.co and you can also find the website at that handle. And now as you ease into this weekend, take a moment, celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you. You know the truth about life and work is that it's hard, but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in

while we are in it together. So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week. And of course, keep it raw and real. Until next time.