The bible story of Abraham and Sarah illustrates that whatever, purpose, God has for you, if you are, chosen, you can’t mess up your, destiny. God will fight for you.
This is Life Coach Myrna Young and today I want to encourage you and give you hope that regardless of what is presenting in your life at the moment, you can’t mess up your, purpose and destiny.
I Want to use the, bible story, of, Abraham, and his wife, Sarah, as the foundation for this revelation that if God Choses you, you can’t mess up your, destiny.
God said to, Abraham, “Regarding your wife Sarai, her name will no longer be Sarai from now on her name will be, Sarah, and I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants.”
Sarah, was chosen like Mary was chosen as the mother of Jesus.
God then told, Abraham, to leave his father’s house and move to a foreign land, so Abraham moved around and lived as a foreigner in many places. While living in these places he introduced his wife, Sarah, as his sister because he did not want the men to kill him to get his wife.
Apparently, Sarah, at 90 years old was still beautiful and desirable. Don’t we all wish, men would be fighting for us when we are 90 years old!
Abraham, was right because King Abimelech of Gerar sent for, Sarah, and had her brought to him in his palace with the intention of making her his wife.
But God stepped in! No one messes with God’s chosen vessel. God couldn’t have King Abimelech defile, Sarah, because then she would not be fit to be the mother of nations.
He appeared to Abimelech in a dream and told him “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married”
Abimelech responded that he was innocent, Abraham, told him she was his sister.
God replied “that is why I kept you from sinning against me, and why I did not let you touch her.”
The lord also released a curse on all the women of Gerar causing them to be infertile, because Abimelech had taken his chosen vessel, Sarah, to be his wife. Don’t mess with God’s chosen vessel, he will fight for you.
Abraham had to pray for them to be healed after, Sarah, was returned.
One year later Sarah became pregnant and named her son Isaac. She fulfilled her, purpose and destiny, by becoming the mother of many nations and God kept his covenant promise he made to, Abraham.
This story illustrates that whatever, purpose, God has for you, if you are, chosen, you can’t mess it up. God will fight for you.
You could make boneheaded decisions, like go back to an, unhealthy relationship, because better is not showing up. God will find a way to get you out, because he has a, purpose, for your life.
You could give up on your child because they have gone down the wrong path, but God can reach them in a dream and inspire them to fulfil the, purpose, he has for their life.
So, if you have taken the wrong turn in life, if you came to a fork in the road and you chose the wrong exit, just know that God will get you back on the right path, because he promised:
I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”
So be encouraged, you can’t mess this up.
Thanks for tuning into 5 min Fridays with Coach Myrna. Until next time Namaste .
Spiritual healing, for couples helps them to unblock their, chakras, by moving the energy away. And once they move the energy away, they're lighter, and then they can go on to have, healthy relationships.
My guest today is Brianna Colette, Brianna is an, intuitive, relationship healer and, soulmate medium, who helps guide her clients to connect with their inner self in order to focus more on a higher sense of, self love, as a means to grow stronger connections and relationships. Thus ultimately leading them to finding and experiencing the most preeminent of bonds: soulmate love.
Brianna is an, intuitive, relationship healer and, soulmate medium, who helps guide her clients connect with their inner self in order to focus more on a higher sense of, self love, as a means to grow stronger connections and relationships. Thus ultimately leading them to finding and experiencing the most preeminent of bonds: soulmate love. She is NLP Certified, a Karuna Reiki Master, and a certified Sound Healer Practitioner who really has a way of connecting with people.
Examining her clients' old belief systems allows Brianna to focus on any client’s possible wounds from childhood, inherited family dynamics, or fear surrounding vulnerability. Once Brianna examines their past, she helps her clients make peace with old wounds and break free from any self-sabotaging toxic patterns, guiding them on how to release fear and create the right conditions for a higher frequency of love.
Myrna: What was your journey to becoming an, intuitive, relationship healer?
Brianna: Thank you for that beautiful introduction, by the way, like, of course I live in this work every day and to hear someone else put it so beautifully and poetically into such a fabulous intro was like, very humbling. I'm like, yeah. So thank you, that was great. Well, as you can imagine, um, you know, I was not always in this work, like most people, like most of my clients, I wasn't given this template.
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I wasn't given this handbook for having a really healthy, dynamic relationship, I had to go through the bumps and the bruises and the mistakes, and really try to heal myself. I have a really interesting story, as most people do, who kind of step into the, healing intuitive, work. I witnessed a really violent murder. It was a murder of a family member. They were my next door neighbors. And I say I was there at the right place at the right time, because I was able to save some people's lives that night.
It was one of those things that you can't prepare for to become a, spiritual healer. It's one of those things that is a life altering event and changes who you are as a person. As you can imagine, after witnessing something like that, I struggled with, PTSD. I struggled with, depression, and, suicidal thoughts. That experience really tested all of my, coping mechanisms.
Taking a vacation to try to relieve stress or even, going out with girlfriends for some dinner and drinks. Those types of things no longer worked for me anymore. And so as I felt my, mental health, starting to degrade, I started to feel like I was slipping. It is the best way I can kind of describe your, mental health, when you don't know that it's happening.
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I did a lot of traditional Western versions of therapy which is what led me into all these different modalities that I now am certified in and offer to other people. I immediately felt the shift within, I started to not only have a logical understanding of why things were happening, or how things from my past were affecting me, presently, I started to really embody that change, and I started to feel better my, spiritual healing, had started.
And so through that process of, spiritual healing, as you can imagine, the things that used to hold an attraction for me, my old business, my old life held no interest. I felt a calling into, spiritual healing, and, intuitive, work. I surrendered into it and have been guided and led to help others to heal themselves and to really get to a place of, inner peace, and contentment and connection within, relationships.
Myrna: That's awesome. I guess that takes me down the path of the, Karuna Reiki master. How did you stumble onto that? You said you went to Western therapies. Did you actually have a, reiki, session and loved it or are you just graduated towards that?
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Brianna: I was at rock bottom, I was grasping at anything. If someone suggested it, I was like, sure, I'll try acupuncture. Sure, I'll try EMDR, I was really willing and open to anything on that journey, and I knew somebody who practiced, Reiki, and I had sessions with her. And of course, it was a different kind of, spiritual healing, that I had experienced. I mean, I've been going to traditional talk therapy since I was nine years old.
I was looking for something a little bit different and I had a lot of my, trauma, and a lot of the things that I've been holding on to for a really long time. Reiki, really helped me to break through. And so of course, I was like, I, when I healed myself, it was a good place, I have to learn how to do this.
What exactly is, Reiki?
Myrna: Reiki, is a Japanese holistic practice of connecting your, chakras, and using energy work. It's energy healing, And a lot of people who are familiar with depression, would say depression hurts. There's obviously a physical manifestation in the body of when our emotions cause us pain. We've all felt anxiety, those knots in our stomach, or fear in our chest where we can't breathe, so there's a physical, physiological response to emotional pain.
What, Reiki, does is a way of connecting into the emotional connection within the body, each of our, chakra, and throughout our entire physical body hold onto memories, they hold on to experiences, we hold it in our bodies. And so, Reiki, helps us to get rid kind of these emotions that are painful, and helps us to release them. The physical reality of having, Reiki, done on you is you really feel lighter afterwards, emotions not weighing on you so heavy.
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Myrna: I do, chakra meditation, myself so I'm very aware of, chakras. But one of the things that most stands out to me when I learn about the, chakra system, is that they're seeing that if you've got a blockage in your, chakra, that's where disease starts. So when you do the, Reiki healing, do you move the blocked energy? Or are you just dealing with emotions?
Brianna: They're all connected. Okay. And if you think about it, right, from a scientific standpoint, we're cells that are vibrating, right? We're all just energy bouncing around. And when we, feel at peace, you kind of feel really grounded and in alignment. When you feel stressed or worried about something you kind of feel off, right? You feel off balance, you don't feel like you're the highest version of yourself.
When we have energetic blockages energy is stuck in the, chakras, which are our energy computer. Energy stuck in your, root chakra, usually deals shows up as fear, or it can it show up in your solar plexus, as creativity. So each, chakra, has different pinpoints or different foundational bases.
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When we do have a blockage and one of those, chakras, it usually is related to something on an emotional level, because we are emotional, human beings that have that need for connection. And so usually, yes, you can relate back a blockage to an emotional issue that's happening in your life.
Myrna: So blocked energy starts as emotional, and then disease follows. All right. So I understand. I had a few interviews on the show about, Reiki, and of course, almost all my guests talked about the, chakras. So you have migrated your specialty to, you call it a, soulmate medium, which is what I love. But also what you're doing is you're helping people heal from their childhood wounds that are actually physically manifesting in their bodies.
Brianna: For me, personally, I was really searching all the time for love. And I was really putting myself in, unhealthy relationships, when the murder happened. A few weeks later I was dumped by my then boyfriend, I was having a really hard go of it. completion, I was searching for solace, or love and happiness everywhere else outside of myself as well as, spiritual healing. And through that process of, spiritual healing, I started to realize what it is that I need to look at within myself.
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I was able to heal myself and transmute the, trauma, and step into this place of like, oh, so this is what it takes to get here. This is what I needed to heal to be able to experience this. And I just felt really passionate that Like, I wish that someone had explained this to me, or shown me how to heal this because I spent so much, so many broken hearts, so much energy, so much time trying to figure it out. And so that's what really called me into this kind of work.
Myrna: Alright, so that explains why you became a, soulmate medium. But what I was talking about is still connecting the, chakras, to past wounds. I loved your statement,
We are healed from the scars and not the wounds.
So you help them to unblock their, chakras, by moving the energy away. And once they move the energy away, they're lighter, and then they can go on to have, healthy relationships.
Healing Childhood wounds
Brianna: It's like we kind of, we have the ability to create whatever it is that we want in life. But unfortunately, a lot of our blocks are limitations that we perceive. And for me, my, my work is about asking what are the templates that you received in childhood? What was normalized for you in relationships? Did you grow up in a household where yelling at each other was something that was just normal, right? Or did you grow up in a household where being emotionally distant was something that was just you know, status quo?
Did you grow up in a home as a child, where you took on the responsibility of worrying about everybody else, except for yourself? Because there was chaos, you know, so these types of foundational experiences when we're young shape our belief systems, about the kind of relationships that we're having into adulthood. And for me, and in my personal experience, and experience with so many clients, when we can heal and unlock the things that are maybe not so healthy, or are limiting us and our belief systems or behaviors, we can unlock and heal and really learn?
Oh, this is actually the better way to show up. Oh, this is actually what's healthier for me. These are the types of partners that actually give me what I'm looking for versus recreating the same like, you know, what is the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. This is how we change the dynamics of our life in our, relationship.
What is a soulmate medium
Alright, so now this is my question that I wanted to ask, soulmate medium? Also what is the definition of a, soulmate?
Brianna: A lot of people don't even aren't familiar with what the term, medium means. Oftentimes, what people perceive when they hear the word, medium, they think, psychic. That is not completely different psychics and, mediums, are not the same thing. A medium is somebody who is a channel, I have the ability and have learned how to channel, intuition.
We all have that kind of like inner knowingness that's called clear sentient, where you can feel things . And that's what, intuition, is. So obviously a, medium, can feel things and experience things on various levels, whether you can like hear the you can hear you can receive messages. For me personally, the way that I work with clients when I say, soulmate medium, is I can help to intuitively connect into what they are feeling.
I can help people to see the blind spots. Sometimes we insulate ourselves from the truth. Sometimes we might be in denial about things. Sometimes there's a cognitive, right, we've isolated ourselves because it's too painful to deal with the brain is really intelligent that way, it compartmentalizes things and we can't even see ourselves clearly.
So what I say is in terms of a, soulmate medium, I can intuitively tap into what is really going on underneath the surface that we need to heal. We need to connect into to elevate and upgrade out of so that you can experience this higher frequency this higher soulmate energy of love. And I do a lot of work explaining to people what even a, soulmate, is. But ultimately, being able to connect into getting people out of behaviors that are there, they're settling, or they are caught in patterns of dysfunction, which is the antithesis of what a, soulmate, is.
Spiritual healing from past trauma
All right. So I'm listening very intently. So what I got out of that is that someone comes to you broken because of past trauma, past relationships, you're able to intuitively help them to see there to see what the dysfunction is. And then once they are operating, that's the full throttle for a different word, then you they will be able to attract their, soulmate. Is that correct?
Brianna: Oftentimes with clients, I see a lot of my unhealed broken parts are attracted to your unhealed broken parts, you know, and that's where we get a lot of compounding happening, right? We attract what we are. And so I help clients to leave behind that old version of where they're playing small, where we're accepting less than we deserve, where we are making excuses for other people's bad behavior or, unhealthy relationship, dynamics.
Let's upgrade out of that. Let's start operating in this place of like, integrity with how you treat yourself self respect, self love, because everything comes from from within us, right? So if you're, if you're able to feel really aligned with yourself, know you what you deserve, know what you should be receiving, you're going to attract someone who's also done that kind of work.
Finding your soulmate
Your, soulmate, will be operating at the same frequency because you're like, oh, yeah, I want to be able to trust somebody to and I've worked through my own, trauma, I'm not going to put up with someone else's raggedy BS, you know, like, you want a partner that meets you at where you're at. And so if we can leave behind those old behaviors and belief systems, then we will attract our, soulmate.
I work with anybody who is desiring to fix whatever kind of, relationship, they're in, whether that's heteronormative, whether that's, homosexual, like anything under the sun, if you have a desire to fix, and heal and upgrade the way that you're showing up in your, relationships. You're my kind of person. I oftentimes and one of the things I'm really good at is helping single people who are or people out of divorce or out of a relationship who are having a hard time letting go. I help couples to heal, spiritual healing.
Relationship reset
That's what, relationship reset, is the, spiritual healing, program that I am working with right now. It's designed for people in relationships who are committed they know that this is a person that they want to have a future with and and work things out; but are feeling maybe there's blocks in their communication.
There's things that are kind of bubbling to the surface after kind of the honeymoon phase wears off, where you're mirroring some unhealthy dynamics back and forth to each other and just get to a place of being able to show up. Within in that relationship feeling really supported and aligned and really clear about what your future feels like together, they need, spiritual healing.
Myrna: Let's talk about, relationship reset, spiritual healing, for couples to find how they are showing up, what their blockages are? You know you people say they're great baggage from relationships. Tell us about your coaching program, how can listeners connect with you and sign up for your coaching program?
Conclusion
Absolutely. So, the, relationship reset, right now is a group coaching program, where I am taking people through these foundations of, you know, these really important baseline. I believe, characteristics of what is involved in a healthy dynamic and a healthy relationship like decide whether that's intimacy, whether that's trust, whether that's healthy communication, and helping each of them pull back the layers to see where maybe that they've got some stuff from the path that is preventing them from having really effective communication or, you know, feeling safe to really open up the path of intimacy.
It's a retreat program where I will go over the the fundamentals the foundations and then there's also one on one time with me to be able to go a little bit deeper for, spiritual healing.
So to go check out and learn all about my different offerings, whether it's, relationship reset, whether it's my other programs that are downloadable you go to my www.Briannacolette.com that has all the information on all the ways you can connect with me. My Instagram handle is @briannacollect. I welcome any anybody who's looking for more information or feels like this resonates happy to jump on a call.
Have faith that, something greater, is coming and even though you can’t see the entire staircase just keep putting one foot in front of the next and you will eventually get to the top and finally your, something greater, will be here.
The Lord said I give you the, promised land, a land filled with, milk and honey, but before you enter this, promised land, I will make you wander in the, wilderness, for 40 years.
Maybe you are in the, wilderness, at the moment, don’t despair hold onto the promise that you will walk in the, promised land, because, something greater, is coming. Or maybe you only have one half of the promise, you only have the, honey. Life is sweet. Have you ever heard the phrase, barefoot and pregnant? It means you are pregnant with hope. It means you are happy but broke. Your happiness is the, honey.
God promises if you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.
You can be happy that you have love in your life. That’s the, honey, but you want the, milk. The, milk, represents what you need to grow stronger. It’s how you rule over many things. You don’t want to be, barefoot and pregnant, you want more. You want to be both wealthy and pregnant. You want, milk and honey. All you have to do is Ask, Seek and believe that, something greater, is coming.
Transform Your Mind Podverse.fm
The Chinese Bamboo Tree
Your, something greater, will come at the right time. Don’t think because you don’t see any evidence that God is not working on your, something greater.
Think of the, Chinese bamboo tree. A, Chinese bamboo tree, takes five years to grow. It has to be watered and fertilized in the ground where it has been planted every day. It doesn't break through the ground for five years. After five years, once it breaks through the ground, it will grow 90 feet tall in five weeks!
You will be blindsided by your, something greater. Your rapture will come suddenly. One day you will be walking along the street and you will get a phone call. You got the promotion or you got approved for a business loan to start your own company.
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My something greater is here
A year ago I was looking and the top 200 list of podcasts and visualizing about seeing the Transform Your Mind Podcast on the list. Never thought about it again then out of the blue I get an email that my podcast has made the top 200 list actually #36! My, something greater, is here!
Whatever you are dreaming and praying about, your, something greater, is coming. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.
Don’t get frustrated because it is taking longer than you think your, something greater, is coming and it will show up at the right time.
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How I got my something greater in Love
About 15 years ago I was just ending a bad relationship, I had been praying to God for years to send me the right man, but I kept hooking up with the wrong men so my relationships did not last. I walked into a train one day going home from work and standing at the door doing a ticket check was my, something greater.
We both knew immediately, because who you seek is seeking you. He was looking for a wife and I was looking for, something greater. Eleven months later we were married. We are coming up to our 16th anniversary. But when I left my house that morning and chose what I was going to wear, I did not know that God was directing my steps, because he knew that by the end of the day my life would change.
How many of you know that the window to the heart is through the eyes. The first attraction is sight! So what I was wearing attracted my husband's attention!
That was my husbands first day on that schedule that is why I hadn’t seen him before. He had just changed shifts. He did not know that God was directing his steps also. He asked God to send him someone nice, a quality woman and he did.
There are no coincidences in life every moment is preordained.
Have faith that, something greater, is coming and even though you can’t see the entire staircase just keep putting one foot in front of the next and you will eventually get to the top and finally your, something greater, will be here.
Kushal Choksi, 911 survivor, shares his story of surviving the collapse of the, World Trade Center, and then asking the universe why he survived. What was his, purpose, when he stumbled onto, Sky Breath meditation, and, breathwork, as a healing modality from, trauma; he realized that he had found his purpose.
Kushal's new book “On a Wing and A Prayer” tells his story.
Kushal’s thriving career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs was forever changed on September 11, 2001 as he made a split-moment decision to abandon his office and the co-workers who refused to leave the World Trade Center. Managing to narrowly escape, he witnessed the magnitude of death and destruction up close and was plunged into lengthy depression where he found himself believing life was meaningless.
His search for a renewed, purpose, began with a reluctant trip to a, breathwork, workshop and eventually turned into a decades-long journey of spiritual discovery, mind-blowing metaphysical experiences, and a fierce devotion to the life-altering benefits of mindfulness and meditation.
Today, Kushal and his wife run Elements Truffles, a New York-based artisanal chocolate company built on values of Ayurveda, sustainability, giving back and ethical trade. Kushal is a trainer of personal development, meditation, wellness, and leadership programs for the Art of Living Foundation. He has taught secrets of breathwork and meditation to thousands across the US, Europe, and Asia. And he serves on the US board of the International Association for Human Values (IAHV).
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Myrna: How did surviving, 911, on, September 11, change your life? How did that tragedy make you more receptive to a new spiritual path of, mindfulness, breathwork, and, meditation?
Kushal: Great question. I think, you know, as I recall, the day started as any other day where I was on my way to work. And as I was coming out of the, the subway, in the bowels of the, world trade center, that's when the pandemonium broke around me and I froze. In that moment, I didn't know how to process all that. People were just running around, saying things that they understood, or they perceived, someone was saying a bomb had gone off.
Nobody really knew what was happening. Only one thing was evident, there was a fear, there was massive fear in the atmosphere. That's all I really remember that it was unsafe to be outside. I stepped out and as I was looking at the building, trying to process what had just happened, another plane crashed into the South Tower. Of course, in that moment, it became clear that this was a more deliberate action.
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And what followed after that, people jumping in front of me, just to end it willfully, or the first responders going in, almost walking into their own end, you know, and it was all kind of very unexpected and very difficult to process. It felt like a scene from an apocalypse movie that you can almost imagine, but you never think you would be part of it, or you would be living it. And as I was running away from it, the second tower just collapsed. And by a stroke of luck, I had just jumped on a ferry on the other end of the island that was leaving Manhattan.
I ended up being the last person on the last ferry that left the island that day. At that moment, I realized that I turned into a statistic, that I was now a, 911 survivor. And, you know, that day kind of prepared me and laid a foundation for what was to come in my life. Part of me was feeling very grateful, very happy that I had, I made it out alive, and I survived these horrific attacks.
So, there was an enthusiasm to finish the unfinished business. I used to work on Wall Street now, that American dream that I have come to pursue as an immigrant, I had to go out and create a new dream. An event like this was a wakeup call to find, purpose in life. It was something that shook me up from my reverie and made me ask a bigger question. What is my, purpose in life?
This was a life changing event, I talked to many people and I say maybe, 911, was an event for me, but I feel everyone has their own, 911. Whether they were when their world crashed. It was that day 20 years ago before a pandemic like what we've just been through?
Myrna: Yes, we all we all walk away from something. So, you weren't at work yet when the planes crashed into the, world trade center? You were just coming out of the subway. Obviously, it wasn't your time. Were you running late for work? Were you supposed to be at work on time?
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Kushal: No, the security person was asking us to go back in the building. Because, if you stepped outside, just on the other side of that glass door, it was raining cement chips, that insulation from the wall that glass splinters, embers from the sky, it was like really unsafe. And so, he was asking people to stay inside, but in that moment, I decided to step out and go. A voice from behind me tap on my shoulder and say, Just go. And so yeah, that was my clothes in the dryer moment, because the building collapsed a few minutes later.
The aftermath of 911
After, September 11, I think I can paint a broad brush and what I had was, depression. I think, depression, follows lack of interest, but for me, it was it was exactly the opposite. I was feeling so grateful that I had a second lease on life. That I felt I had to go after whatever was unfinished with even more gusto. I have tremendous force of life in me. It's just that I began questioning the, purpose of life, what's really the point of this life. I was I was doing well in my career. I got married to my soulmate but what was my, purpose in life?
So, I wouldn't really call it depression, but it was just, sometimes you are on autopilot. You're on a conveyor belt, and you were just going with the force of life and then something hits you with a club in your head and makes you question is this conveyor belt right for you? That was the first time I questioned my, purpose in life.
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Myrna: All right, you found your, purpose, by going to a, breathwork, workshop and, breathwork, meditation, and that started your decades long journey in spiritual discovery. So why do you feel that proper breathing was so important to healing trauma? I don't know if you felt that you were traumatized from that, but if we don't want to use the word, trauma, why do you think that, breathwork, is so important to healing?
Kushal: I must confess that in the spirit of being very open and honest, that I did not go to that, breathwork, meditation, looking for, purpose. I was almost pushed into it against all my reluctance.
And so, the first time I meditated with, breathwork, with this teacher, this spiritual master, I was blown away. I had read all about keeping your mind in the, present moment, not thinking of the past or future just being in the, present moment. It was a fantastic, very well-read intellectual concept, lodged firmly in my head. But the first time did, breathwork, meditation, it became a tangible experience. That what it is to be in the, present moment, or what it is to have a mind without thoughts, or mind without an impulse. And that was the first time I experienced that.
Myrna: That is amazing, because most people take time to get there.
Kushal: I personally had tried it so many times before, and it didn't go anywhere. I want to come to that, why that was the case. This time, I effortlessly got there. So, then I started looking for scientific validation. That left-brain person that I was, I started looking for all the scientific underpinnings of that practice, or that, breathwork, meditation, that I experienced. And then I realized that it was real deal.
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I think the balance of both, left brain, and, right brain, is important. I think that brain is logic, analysis. Intensity, right brain, is more flow state, you know, calm music, you know, all of that emotion. So, I think a balance of both a judicious balance of both is very important. Either end of the spectrum, you somewhat lead an unbalanced life. And you want to, I think you want to be walking the razor's edge balances boredom.
Myrna: Why do you think that proper breathing aka, breathwork, heals your, trauma? Does it have to do with being in the, present moment, is that the doorway?
Kushal: There's a deeper scientific kind of effect that's happening on our nervous system. You know, any life experience that you go through, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, it leaves a lesion or a scuff mark on your nervous system. It leaves like a, an impression in your system somewhere. Let me give you an example of something so simple as wanting to have a coffee in the morning.
First day, somebody offered you a cup of coffee in the morning, oh, you say it is the greatest thing. And next day, when you look at coffee, you remember the experience you had before. And you say, I want coffee. Third day, you are going to go and switch on the coffee pot. And the next day, if you don't have coffee in your apartment, that's going to make you feel miserable.
Sky breath meditation
So something as innocent as a coffee has created a pattern, or a conditioning of your mind. Some of the traumatic events, or some of the events of loss or anything of that nature does a very similar thing. Seeing something similar that evokes that emotion, keeps taking you back to that emotion. You know, for the, for the longest time, every time I would remove my shoes at the airport, it would take me back to the morning of, 911.
That was an impression that, 911, had created in my mind, and now, any such related events, were taking them back to past, not letting me be in more in the, present moment.
The practice that I learned, this technique is called, Sky breath meditation. And what, sky breath meditation, does is harnessing the rhythm of your own, breath. It clears your nervous system of this debilitating impression. Impressions that hold you back, impressions that take you back into those moments that you don't want to go back to.
So, the impressions make us, tied to our pass. So, what I experienced with, sky breath, was without effort.
You said a very beautiful thing earlier that I want to comment on, you said that you required visualization to move from, left brain, thinking to, right brain, thinking. Visualization, is an effort. Yes, not thinking of something or resisting thoughts is an effort. And as you know someone who is focused so much on, transforming the mind. You can't control your mind from the level of your own mind.
Myrna: Exactly. You got it. You know, that's the nature of the, mind. You cannot control it with your thoughts. Mind, does not subscribe, doesn't listen to effort. Your body listens to effort. If you want to build muscles, you have to put effort, but, sky breath, is complete effortless.
Kushal: So, what this, chi breath, did was without effort, it cleared my impressions and effortlessly took my mind to a place which was meditative. I had I tried so hard to meditate but when I closed my eyes all the profound ideas about what I wanted to have for dinner, all these trivial things which entered my awareness to the point that I cannot meditate. But now, sky breath meditation, changed all that through the simple act of, breathwork breathing.
Myrna: All right, awesome. All right. Now, you also talk about, Ayurveda, what exactly is that?
Kushal: Ayurveda, is just science of life. It's also colloquially known as the sister science to, yoga. Yoga, focuses on body and mind. Ayurveda, focuses on nutrition, what you put inside your system. So, it focuses on achieving harmony, and balance, through your food, your food is your medicine. But unlike a lot of the trends these days, eg. keto or, paleo where you do certain things, and you definitely don't do certain things, Ayurveda, is not restrictive.
Myrna: I don't know why I have not actually investigated, Ayurveda, because Deepak Chopra and Sadhguru teaches about, Ayurveda.
Kushal: Ayurveda, has to do with the planet, it has to do with how we work with the seasons, it has to do with the time of the day. It's all about bringing that balance, bringing that harmony in your system, through eating right at the right time, in the right amount. I realized that as I went deeper into my practice of, meditation, my nutrition automatically started aligning, aligning with what I recommended.
Okay, and it was very beautiful, it didn't say, do this, don't do this, it was never about that. And the minute someone says, don’t do this, I want to do that. So that's why, Ayurveda, really resonated with me, because it said, do everything, just do it in the right amount at the right time. And mindfulness is about being aware, being mindful of what you do and eat.
If you look at it scientifically, mindfulness, is a frontal cortex activity in your brain. And the research shows those people who practice, mindfulness, their frontal cortex is more developed. It is the thinking side of the brain. Mindfulness, keeps you at the surface level.
You turn off your mind, without effort. Turning off also requires effort. So, meditation, is not an act of doing anything but it's just being and then you are in that state. You connect with yourself and, meditation, happen.
Use a tool like, Sky breath, or some, breathwork, techniques allows you to connect with yourself and the more you are in touch with yourself, the more resilient you automatically become. The more aware you are at every moment, the more what is important and what is not becomes very clear. So, you may have these memories, like for example, if you like how you asked me earlier, take us to that day, 911, 2011 I can close my eyes and I can see every little detail in crystal clarity, but does it does not have the same emotional garbage or that negative charge that it used to have.
Book On A Wing And A Prayer
On A Wing and A Prayer
Myrna: Tell us about your book On A Wing and A Prayer where you can they can get your book. Tell us about your website, tell us about your handle on social media, so they can connect with you and, and how they can actually connect with you to learn, sky breath meditation.
Kushal: Sure. The book is available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can get it from my website, the links on my website, it's my first name and last name www.KushalChoksi.com.
As a Life coach Stephanie M Hutchins empowers her clients with the knowledge that the fires from their past, traumas, did not destroy them, instead they provided the fuel for, post traumatic growth, and, transformation.
Stephanie M. Hutchins, PhD, is the author of Transformation After Trauma: Embracing Post-Traumatic Growth, helps individuals overcome trauma and cope with stress. She is a Certified Life Coach, Stress Management Coach, Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, and Yoga Instructor. She also owns Serotinous Life, a company that helps individuals overcome stressful and traumatic events.
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After being violated in my childhood by 8 different men and being told that it was my fault, even though at one time I was attacked from behind at knifepoint. I was able to get the knife away from my perpetrator and run away to safety. And then to top it all off, you know, once I finally found a man who tried to show me that I was deserving of love and respect. A week before we closed on the house, we were going to be moving into and start a long life together, I found him dead. And everything started to spiral out of control.
I know that place of, hopelessness, I know that place where you just can feel that life will never get any better, because I felt like that for a long time. And I spent many years of my life contemplating suicide because I just never thought that life could get any better. But it has. And so, I went from experiencing all of these intensely traumatic events through a huge span of my life to now having, completing my PhD. I've traveled around the world, I have many loving relationships, and I am now able to use, post traumatic growth, and what I've learned in my own healing journey to help others.
I often reflect, what if I would have put that bag over my head and say, I've been marked, by that, trauma, and now I'm forever tainted, and my life will never be any better. But the reality is, this is a very harsh world that we live in, and none of us would escape its wrath. we all will have some form of, post traumatic growth, we are not going to leave this earth untouched.
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Myrna: You are correct, you could be talking to somebody in their 80s or 90s, or 70s, or whatever, and they will still be crying and feeling the emotion of, trauma, that happened 30 or 40 years ago. And that's because they haven't dealt with it.
Every time it comes up, they probably stuff it down or whatever. And what you said, is correct. Why would you let that, trauma, ruin your life? Because when you're in that place, and one of the things we know, as coaches, is that when you're not blaming someone, when you're having negative emotions or blaming somebody, you become a victim. We should all have, post traumatic growth.
When I wrote my book, Out of the Snares: A story of hope and encouragement, I coined the phrase, do not be a victim, be a player and play with the cards that you've been given. A whole bunch of bad things happened to you called, childhood trauma, and you used that, trauma, as for fuel for, post traumatic growth.
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Myrna: Now you also have said that when people experience, trauma, they develop negative, coping mechanisms, and you help them replace the negative, coping mechanisms, with positive, coping strategies. Can you give us example of replacing and negative, coping strategies, with a positive ones?
Stephanie: I guess first I would like to address, reframing, because I used, reframing, before I even knew it was a technique. The first thing I want to help them, reframe, how they look at their, coping mechanisms. There's a lot of people very ashamed of their past, trauma, and don't engage, post traumatic growth. They are ashamed of what they've done to survive. They used unquote, negative coping mechanisms, and instead of looking at them with shame and disgust, look at them with gratitude. For all the ways they kept you alive.
If these, coping mechanisms, give us even a moment relief from our pain or gives us a moment distraction from the past, from the memory of, ptsd, we hold on to these, negative coping mechanisms, like:
Alcohol
sex
cutting yourself
Drugs
Coping Strategies for Post Traumatic Growth
Anyone who's reading this, If you have any of these, coping strategies, I think the first thing you need to look at is understanding of how they're serving you and release some of the shame and guilt you have for, coping. Because all these, negative coping mechanisms, like cutting yourself, overeating, drinking, sex, all these things what they do, they change the chemistry of our brain. Every single one of those activities release a whole host of feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain that light up our brain and make us feel good.
When we're in pain re require a, reframe, for, post traumatic growth, to take place. It requires looking at that, trauma, differently and then understanding that even though that behavior may have served you up to this period of time and it's been beneficial, it may no longer be serving you as well today.
People who stop using drugs and drinking alcohol, all turn to cigarettes and sugar. You are looking at yourself to stop the habit, you need to look at what are you gaining from it.
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Stephanie: So, there's usually one of two things that are triggered by a desire to seek pleasure or avoid pain. I really encourage anyone who's has habit of when you are triggered to engage in these habits, they are sensations that come up in your body is realizing that it triggers chemicals in the brain. Physical activity will elicit release a feel-good neurotransmitter. Laughing is amazing, I encourage people to do all the time.
Past trauma provide fuel for post traumatic growth
Myrna: I love this question that I have here. As a Life coach you empower your clients with the knowledge that the fires from their past did not destroy them, instead the provided the fuel for future growth and, transformation. How does, trauma, provide the fuel for, post traumatic growth?
Stephanie: I love, reframing, of our thoughts, but in order to move forward and not look at all of the devastation that was left behind from the fire of my past, I couldn't move forward without, reframing, and focus. One of the very first things, I have my client do when we get to the, reframing.
I have different steps in my programming, to get to, post traumatic growth, when we get to the, reframing, stage the first thing that we always have to look at is, reframing, the, trauma, itself. Reframing, the meaning behind it, what it's meant for your life. So instead of looking at what they lost from their, trauma, and what would no longer be; looking at what they gained from it. Depending on how recent the, trauma, was it might not be accessible to them in a month, but to think about what they've already gained.
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They have to be able to shift the narrative and the meaning behind the, trauma. You have to see what's possible by listening to the stories of other people. And once I saw that it was possible for somebody else, I knew it was possible for me too. And as I kept listening to story after story, I understood how to use past trauma for, post traumatic growth.
Myrna: True, your story has no power if you keep it in yourself. You've got to share In however way you choose.
Stephanie: Yes it does help others and I think that each time we share either our own story it really starts to shift our story In our own mind and it releases its hold on you.
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Myrna: This is a powerful interview, all right we get to the point now where we talk about your book It's called “Transformation After Trauma: Embracing Post Traumatic Growth.” Why did you write the book and what do you hope people walk away with after reading?
Stephanie: My major mission was to give hope for, post traumatic growth. I felt that I was alone in this world so long that I just felt that's something was terribly wrong for me to experience so much bitter pain. I felt so alone that nobody understood me and so in my book, I was very vulnerable about sharing my story and the, coping mechanisms, I used that used to bring me a lot of shame. So One of my one of my missions is to make people see and feel like they're not alone by themselves with their suffering.
And so I not only share my story, but I also Important incorporated all the tools that I used through my healing journey. Particularly my self-care practices. And so it's all about getting actionable tools to not only align with hope, to help them keep that glimmer of hope alive while they're going through suffering but this book will help them build that belief along the way that it's possible for them to emerge from the darkness and the pain even stronger than they were before.
Myrna: That is powerful. How can I listeners and readers connect with you and get a copy of your book?
Stephanie: Amazon has all three forms of the book, type in, transformation for trauma, and it'll come up. My website is www.serotinouslife.com and you can connect with me on Facebook @serontinouslife
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There are 4 types of, trust, that make, relationships, flourish. These are care, competence, consistency and character. In this episode of 5 mins with coach Myrna, I teach how to develop these areas of, trust, in your, relationships.
Care – When we care about your partner, we put our emotions in their hands, they, care, about what's best for you and not what's best for them. They, care, about your wellbeing. Examples of, care, are: going beyond the call of duty to help you move, accompany you to a doctor’s appointment etc.
Here are some ways to show you care:
Write them a powerful letter full of love and hope.
Take care of some of their responsibilities (for example, watch their kids, do their laundry, cook them dinner, or go shopping for them).
Call often to remind them how much you love them and how you are always thinking of them.
When you visit, bring a book to read aloud or a movie to watch together.
Bring them pictures of your times together and hang them where they can be viewed all the time.
Spend time reminiscing about the fun times that you've shared (as children, in high school or college, or on vacations). Remind him or her that there will be more good times in the future.
Competence – The second type of, trust, is, competence. You trust that your partner is competent to handle financial matters. If you are sick, competent, to handle your, care, and make decisions that are best for you and not best for them. You trust their opinions and recommendations.
Romantic competence entails a conscious awareness of both emotional needs and appropriate actions for meeting those needs within a well-functioning, relationship, And because their, relationships, are still fresh, their emotions toward them are likely quite high.
The definition of, competence, is your skill or ability in a specific field or subject, or being able to do something well or to being sane enough to stand trial in court. An example of, competence, is when you can, trust, your partner to make the financial arrangements of the household.
Character – When we talk about, trust, we are usually talking about a high moral compass or the, character ,of our partner. We look to these people when we are not sure what is right and follow their lead. These people practice what they preach and are valuable in, interdependent relationships. They have good reputation, strong opinion, and down to earth advice. They are trustworthy.
What are examples of, good moral character?
Legal judgments of, good moral character, can include consideration of honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, respect for the law, integrity, candor, discretion, observance of fiduciary duty, respect for the rights of others, absence of hatred and racism, fiscal responsibility, mental and emotional stability.
Consistency – Your partner shows, consistency, when they are reliable, and you know that they always have your back. They may not be the expert, but they are reliable present and available when you need them. They have been with you through highs and lows.
Someone who is, consistent, always behaves in the same way, has the same attitudes towards people or things, or achieves the same level of success in something. He was never the most, consistent, of players anyway. If one fact or idea is, consistent, with another, they do not contradict each other.
Consistency, in, relationships, is a combination of behaviors that include dependability, and a true desire to have a companion and form a serious, relationship. People who are more, consistent, with their interactions with one another, such as having predictable behaviors and good communication, have longer and healthier, relationships.
People come into your life for a reason a season or a lifetime.
Some people come into your life for a season bringing change and excitement, but the, relationship, ends like all seasons do.
Another person might come in for a reason to help you learn and grow or to support you through a difficult time. It feels like they have been sent to guide you through.
And they are lifetime people they stand beside you through thick and thin loving you even when you have nothing to give them.
Love is a gift without any strings attached.
Remember you are also a season, reason or lifetime partner to someone else and your role may not match theirs.
Pure trust, is when you know that another person has your back.
You develop, trust, by asking for what you want.
Tell them how you want to be loved.
Communicate the areas where there is dissatisfaction.
Build, trust, by telling your partner what would make you feel loved.
Thanks for tuning into, 5 mins with coach Myrna, I want to invite you to join my private Facebook group called Lifecoach so that you can be inspired all week long.
Passion, is something that is designed to fulfill us when we're operating and interacting with ourselves, and almost acts like a fusion energy that is constantly replenishing itself as it's being utilized. There's a difference between liking to do something and being, passionate, about it.
Billy F. Wroe is a native out of Sacramento, CA, with over 25 years of experience in retail, recruiting, sales, management, and analytics.
As an inspirational speaker and empowerment coach, he has worked with individuals, groups, and companies to help optimize productivity in leadership communication. Over the years, Billy has adopted the leadership concepts inspired by Stephen Covey, John Maxwell, Brian Tracy, Les Brown, and a host of other phenomenal inspirational speakers. His advanced comprehension of emotional intelligence has guided him in creating content that resonates with the heart of the human experience.
As a dedicated husband, father of 4, and friend, Billy possesses a gift to connect deeply when building rapport. By identifying with his audience, not as an expert, but as a compassionate mentor, he embraces vulnerability when sharing both his faults and successes during interactions. Rather than telling people what they need to do to achieve their goals, he focuses on guiding them to discover solutions for themselves.
Billy: My story is one that is filled with emotion from probably the time I was born, I was really a very emotional child. But I didn't know how to navigate the emotions that I would experience. So a lot of times as a child, I would lash out, throwing temper tantrums, being stubborn and being hard headed. And over the years, as you get older, you learn some tools along the way.
In my 30s I started reflecting on my childhood and asked the question what was that all about? And as I reflected on my childhood, I really came to the overarching theme in the experiences that I was having in life. And really, it was I was the child who reached out and said, Hey, person sitting by yourself, do you want to play?
The person who if you can't stand up for yourself, I'll stand up for you. And the overarching theme became that I really just wanted to help people. But in order to help people, you have to understand people. And in order to understand people, you have to understand yourself. And that's really how I began to discover my own, passion.
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We aim to make sure that our books are impactful, but also simple to read at all reading levels. Check out books like the Credit Bible, Power Mindset Mastery, Creating Generational Wealth and much more.
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Myrna: Yeah, that's a good story. So you, went back and looked into your childhood. Did you get into a lot of trouble? Is that the reason why you were reflecting on your childhood?
Billy: Yes, quite a bit of trouble. Not anything criminal or anything like that, but just just random childhood shenanigans. The leadership part, I've actually been a natural leader, and my oldest son is a natural leader. But from the job perspective on how that leadership manifests from speaking to leaders and helping guide them on how to interact with their teams, to the job aspect of it, really, the job is a construct.
So when looked at, fire your job, it's does not specifically mean go in and, quit your job, so that you can start working and making money in your, passion. It isn't about firing the job like modalities that many of us hold on to either. Fire your job, means fire your job like mentality so you can discover your, passion.
Myrna: Okay, that's good. Yes. Because, one of my first books that I wrote was called “Minding your own business” in which I shared how to start your own business and be an entrepreneur. But what you are talking about, is the mentality, right?
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Billy: Yeah, absolutely. If you carry you into your job, and you carry you home with you. So therefore, you if you're truly hiring your, passion, in your life, you're carrying that, passion, into your job, and you carry that, passion, home with you, however, the identity that you have, and that's really why our, passion, is tied to is our identity.
Myrna: You say that passion has an identity. So how do we find our identity for a, passion?
Billy: Oh, okay, so we're gonna fast forward to a portion of the book. In the book, there's a tool that I provide called the, passion identity tool. When I was a kid, I used to read these books that were like, choose your own adventure books, and you'd be able to read to a certain point that would give you a choice A or choice B. And based on where you went in the book, you would turn to 20 pages in or wherever the book told you to turn for the choice you made.
And that's kind of how this, passion identity, tool works. It really flows through the basics of an activity, and it looks at it sees the priority level. So the first priority level that stops you are the non negotiable activities, the activities that you have to do. A non negotiable activity for us would be breathing, we don't have a choice, whether or not we want to breathe, or now we require oxygen.
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So then once we get to those core activities, we move to, passion. And really, passion, is something that is designed to fulfill us when we're operating and interacting with our, passion, and almost acts like a fusion energy that is constantly replenishing itself as it's being utilized.
There's a difference between liking to do something and being, passionate, about it. I like to watch sports on TV, but I'm not overly, passionate, about it. And so, if I liked to play ball when I was a kid, part of that is what did you like about playing ball?
Did you like the team aspect?
Did you get like the adrenaline from running?
Did you like scoring the touchdown?
Did you like the strategy behind it? Because just because you like to play ball as a child doesn't mean that playing ball is your, passion, there can be something underlying that being fulfilled that you haven't yet connected with.
And so if it is the strategy aspect, like for me, I love things that are centered around strategy. So if I like to play ball and I'm like, thinking about how I can maneuver the ball past three players to get a touchdown, I have to be able to to break that those layers down and fill those layers back to identify that what I'm in love with is strategy, and then figure out how I can bring that strategy, whether it's into my job or into my life in a manner that it gets the fulfillment.
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And so a lot of times people will think that our, passion, has to align with our job. My, passion, is my profession as an analyst. I look at data all day long. But I'm not overly, passionate, about analysis and things like that. But what I am interested in is how things work. And being an analyst allows me to engage with that core.
I used to take apart toys now I take apart numbers. And so it's being able to identify not just the activity, but what that activity is driving within you, and what is creating that resonance between you and the activity. Because then you can then take that activity and say, here's how I'm going to apply it to this.
Myrna: I get that, it's almost like the reason I became a life coach, because I wanted to help people understand that the mind is, very important to any kind of success. And I've always liked in my past, if I were to go back and say, What did I like? I always like when somebody comes to me and asked me for help us with is when a problem. I really, really enjoyed that. And I'm you know, and I am, I am a curious person. And that's basically what you are, curious you wanted to know how things work do you hired your passion and became an Analyst.
I was thinking when you said, fire your job, meant quit your job. That's not what you're talking so right?
Billy: No, fire your job, does not mean quitting your, job. I share that in the first chapter in the book. We look at, firing your job, as living beyond our means. I addressed living beyond our means from the perspective of financially living beyond our means, like putting ourselves in bed, being behind living pay check to pay check and all those different things.
So when I say, fire your job, I'm talking about job mentality. The way the book is written, I have four chapters that deal with what I call the layoffs. And it's really alleviating those job, like mentalities that will inevitably drag us away or lock us into an activity that is not related to our, passion. So going back to living beyond our means, if you have bills that are due, and you're at a, job, that you're miserable, that the bills are still going to be due.
So you'll make decisions and sacrifices to stay in that, job. Even though you know it's toxic and it's not healthy for you, you'll stay in it. You'll stay in that relationship, even though you know it's toxic and not healthy for you, you'll stay in it. Because whatever the bill is, whatever the gain is that you need, is that important that you'll stress yourself out and jeopardize your health and your well being to do so.
So that's when I say, fire your job, what I mean and once you get to that aspect of of that mindset, then you can begin to bring on the behaviors and the foundation that will allow you to, hire your passion, and truly make that a priority in your life.
Myrna: All right, well, let's be practical, Mr. Analyst. Okay. So you've just described like up 90% of the population. That is, you know people, hating their jobs, but they have to stay there because they have bills to pay. So, what is your solution? We know that they're not, passionate, help us to bridge the gap. I mean, I'm pretty sure you go into it in detail in your book. But you know, just give me the concept.
Billy: The concept would be is know your worth. I left a, job. So I was an analyst, making decent money. And this is part of the journey of writing this book, I walked away from a, job, I had not enough money in savings. I had no opportunity on the table, no offer of employment. So I wasn't one foot here, one foot there.
Sometimes you have to fire your job and walk away
I literally walked away from a, job, and went to zero. Now, that's not my advice for everybody. But the reason I can do that, and the reason I was able to do that freely, with really no fear was because I understood my worth. I knew what my value was in the marketplace. That's the benefit of being an analyst. You know how to analyze numbers and see the value and it's like, hey, this skill set is valuable, I can market this anywhere.
I went like a month without a, job. But a month later, I had a, job, and I was making more money, I was in a lower cost of living environment. And since then, my financial stability has skyrocketed past where I was at when I was miserable. So practicality really what it is about is knowing your worth once you understand what your value is, you will not allow yourself to offer it at a discount.
I want to live this, passion driven lifestyle. And so I don't turn off that inspiring voice, that leadership voice that guide that nurture that mentoring. I don't turn that off. When I'm doing analytical things. I incorporate them into what I'm doing. When I go to work I bring that, passion, with me. When I leave work I bring that, passion, with me so my, passion, is always with me.
Myrna: I understand your, passion, is to help people or to mentor them or to support them. What do you want readers to walk away with it from after reading your book?
Billy: I would love to have readers walk away with is almost like a custom experience is hearing stories, not just my stories in my experiences, stories from other people as well. And those stories igniting reflection in themselves about their experiences and their journeys and their successes and their failures. Because I feel like that's what inspires belief in the fact that we can truly lead with our, passion.
I would really love to see leaders or readers to leave with is that level of confidence that while I've gone through some things, whether you're 18 years old, or you're 70 years old, I've gone through some things, and I've come out stronger because of it. Now I'm going to purposely use that strength. That's what I would like them to come out with.
From the perspective of the book, it really is broken down into sections the first section being:
The layoffs – removing behaviors that don't serve our, passion, operate them normally as a distraction to our, passion.
The second level is, Hiring your passion. The interview section and when we start talking about the foundational things in which we can establish our, passion, upon.
Then there's the now, which is when we start adopting it and hiring, passion, mentality things that are really going to help deal with what I perceived as The insecurity/Boehner ability of exposing something that we care about.
That's for me what the book really is about. It's about how to break down some of the constructs we may have founded our truths upon.
People can find me on all social media platforms at 1stWR O E, which is first row. And I was if you're interested in the book, you can go to 1stwroe.com. And actually, if you subscribe to the page it will give you the access to the first chapter of the book. I tell people I'm an advocate of you should try before you buy, if you like the first chapter, you will love the book. If you do not like the first chapter, do not buy the book because it's not a quick fix. It's not a one size fits all fix. It is very customized to the readers experience.
A, friend in need is a friend indeed, because a lot of us have what they call fair weather, friends. They are only around when the sun is shining when money is flowing and they can feed off of you, but as soon as you fall on hard times or as soon as you have storm clouds and have nothing to give them, they disappear. You call them and they are suddenly too busy. But the, Bible story of Job, shows us what, friends, are supposed to look like. Why, a friend in need is a friend indeed.
The Bible tells the story of a man called, Job, who is described as a good man who loves God. Satan challenges God, saying that, Job, is only good because he has a happy life. God allows Satan to put, Job's faith, to the test by causing him to suffer. Job lost all his wealth, his kids, and his health.
Job’s friends, came when they heard he was sick and lost everything.
They sat with him for 7 days and 7 nights saying nothing because his suffering was too great for words. Sometimes, friends, offer you comfort by just being there for you.
But when, Job, continually berated himself his, friends, finally responded.
The first, friend, to respond to Job was Eliphaz and tried to minister to his spirit.
He told, Job, that he had encouraged many people, that His words strengthened many people and prevented them from falling. He suggested that, Job, used those same words to strengthen himself.
Coaches and even pastors can help others, but find it difficult to help themselves mainly because when you are going through trouble you can’t look in.
Remember if you are the picture you can’t see the frame.
When Eliphaz words didn’t work in consoling Job, his, friend, tried something else to help him deal with his pain and suffering.
He asked Him, doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence that God will turn everything around for your good that he is able give your back everything that the locusts had stolen?
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm — my great army that I sent among you. Joel 2:25
That’s what real, friends, do they comfort you when you are in pain.
Job, was in pain. He cursed the day he was born saying that his mother’s womb should have been shut and he should have been born dead so he would be spared all this trouble.
Eliphaz Job's, friend, continued to offer words of comfort to, Job, telling him that we are born for trouble as readily as sparks fly from a fire that though God wounds he also bandages. Though He strikes his hands also heal.
Friends, comfort you when your child is locked up,
Friends, open their homes when you don’t have anywhere to live
Friends, give you a shoulder to cry on when your world comes crashing down and you wish you were dead.
God asked, Job, to pray for his, friends, and when he did the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him back twice as much as he had before.
The final section of, Job, contains a storybook ending in which many of Job’s fortunes are restored. He receives twice the wealth he had before, plus a new brood of seven sons and three daughters .
The movies and TV is great at showing us a model of what, friends, look like. I have always wished I had 4, girlfriends, like the sitcoms, Friends, and the sitcom, Girlfriends, or even the movie Waiting to Exhale.
So Cultivate, friendships, because we all need, friends, and, a friend in need is a friend indeed.
If you have current, friends, who has bee there for you in your time of need, remember to pray for them.
Conclusion
This is Life coach Myrna Young and you are listening to, 5 mins with coach Myrna. I invite you to join my Facebook group called Lifecoach.
Join us next week for another episode until next time
In sales, you are the, Bait! Everything you heard is true! People buy from people they like, people they feel a connection to or with people who are like them!
I recently watched the movie “A River runs through it”. I should confess that anything with Brad Pitt I watch with a big smile on my face! Anyway, in the movie Brad and his brother were fishing in this river. Brad's brother was catching a whole lot of fish and Brad had not caught one. After some time of being a spectator in this fishing expedition, he shouted to his brother, “What are they biting on?” His brother shouted back, “Pimento Bugs”. Strangest bait I ever saw, these bugs had wings! But sure enough, when Brad changed his bait he caught the biggest fish ever! Know your, bait.
1: Use Your Attire as your, Bait, What to wear to an interview.
I will start with an Old Cliché “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” If you are going for an interview or meeting with a customer for the first time; look the part, and that is your best, use the first impression as your, bait.
I went for an interview once at Apple retail Store and I was very confused. Apple, Google and Facebook CEO's have all made famous the tea shirt and running shoes mode of dress. So I was not sure how to dress; but I decided on a suit. No tee-shirt and runners for me! Better to be overdressed than not get a job because you showed up in tea shirt and tennis shoes.
In the movie “the Pursuit of Happyness“, Will Smith was sleeping in bathrooms and homeless; but he made sure he had one suit that always looked good. That is all you need, one good outfit. What to wear to an interview, It is suggested that for the man the color should be blue, black or grey for a suit. For the ladies a pant suit or an A-line dress works wonders. Looking good is always, bait, to the looker.
2: Your Profile picture is also your, bait
Your profile picture is what everyone sees. Just a picture of your head and face, and they from that they form a judgement, whether consciously or not from your, appearance, In a recent LinkedIn training class, the presenter told a story about how he was about to hire someone for a service, then he noticed that their picture was dark and blurred. He said he decided not do business with them. He formed a judgement that if they could not spend $50 to get a good profile picture, then they could not be successful. You might say that he was too judgmental; but you never know what is costing you business. It is best to button it up and use your, bait.
I personally would never connect with anyone who didn't have a profile picture, because I made the judgement that they were either not active or not serious. Now I connect because I can offer my consulting services because they need Help! Spend the money to get a professional profile picture and it will pay dividends. Whoever you are trying to attract, your picture is one, bait.
3: The entire package or, appearance, is your, bait.
I could never understand the “shoe shine” concept. Why did men favor going to get their shoes professionally shined until it became a mirror and they could see their faces in their shoes?
Now I understand, those men understood the value of “the entire package”. You can't show up in an expensive suit, and your shoes are not shined! You can't show up in an expensive suit and your hair looks like a hippie; you can't show up in an expensive suit and your car looks like you bought it from the scrapyard. People form the wrong impression and then you have to work doubly hard for them to hear what is “coming out of your mouth”. Your entire package is your, bait.
For men, pay attention to the suit, shirt, tie, hair style, shoes.
For women, pay attention to your dress, your hair, your shoes and your pocket book! Yes, people now pay attention to what handbag you are putting your lipstick into!
4: Your Business card, your Website, and your Printed Materials is also your, Bait.
If you want to convey success, then you have to dress for success.
Has anyone ever handed you a business card that was printed at home on cheap paper? What was your reaction? Did you want to run out and purchase their product? I am sure you didn't. Or you ask someone who has a service you are interested in for a business card, and they tell you they don't have one. Not having a business card is one way to be sure that the prospect is not going to bite on your, bait.
I should even add a pin to this scenario. In the movie “the Pursuit of Happyness”, there is a scene in which a salesperson bent over backwards to get a contract with Will Smith to produce his story. He called him several times, he made him an irresistible offer, he tracked him down at the airport and when Will was about to sign the contract and he asked him for a pen, he did not have one! Will cancelled the deal. He felt that a salesperson should always have a business card and a pen if he is worth anything!
I don't know if you have noticed, but most of the leading roles for movies and television commercials are going to actors who sound English! It is like a “cool breeze” to listen to someone with a pleasant voice. You don't have to have an English accent; but your volume should be right and your pace should be right. As a Toastmaster, when we are speaking, we are gonged when we add fillers to our speech. Fillers are so, umm, ahh, etc. if you are doing a presentation, erase self doubt by not having too many fillers, your audience won't regard you as a subject matter expert.
Your, Bait is you! Once you make a good impression and the fish are biting; then you can get on with the business that you came to do, and that is to sell your product or service.
Ashley Bernardi opens up about losing her dad as an eleven-year-old and trying to save his life alongside her mother and sister as he suffered from a sudden death heart attack. She ignored the trauma, grief, and guilt from the horrifying experience for years after being told she was “so strong” in trying to save her dad’s life and attempting to move on. In her 30s, she suffered from a debilitating mystery illness that left her bedridden and unable to care for her three children.
It was then, in a state of despair and hopelessness, that she began to feel the pain and “mess” she had been ignoring – her illness, grief, and trauma – and found the true healing and growth that she had been searching for her entire life. For years, she had pushed her trauma aside to maintain a “mask” of strength for others, yet her feelings came out in other ways – in people-pleasing, alcohol use, in destructive relationships, and eventually, making the devastating effects of her mystery illness even worse.
Authentic Power, teaches us that our darkest hours are disguised as an opportunity to uncover and process, feel, heal, and grow from our mess.
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Myrna: What was your journey to finding your, authentic power?
Ashley: I was so horribly, physically ill. And on top of that had been diagnosed with, postpartum depression, after the birth of my third child, that I was forced, I had no choice, but to sit still and surrender to the pain, the physical pain, but also the mental image, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain that I had been bearing since I was 11 years old. But that's where the healing happens. That's where that little sliver of light in all that pain, I felt it, I saw it, I held on to it.
I taught myself how to move through and process all of this, trauma. And here I am today, that's what my book is all about, authentic power, give yourself permission to feel. And I say, authentic power, because that really starts with accessing the wisdom within by getting still turning off all the noise around us. Finding your own authentic voice of what it is that that your body, mind and spirit are calling you to process. And so that's where that's really where the story begins.
Myrna: Yeah, that's an amazing story. You're right, when you said that, you hope that everybody goes through the long journey as you. You talked about holding on to your pain, and then having it come out as disease, depression and people pleasing. You got healed from, Lyme disease, and you started meditating and finding the power inside of you.
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So, tell us why, authentic power? Once you start to feel and acknowledge your feelings, how does that transform to, authentic power?
Ashley: Oh, that's such a great question. So, this really goes into, has anyone asked you a simple question, how are you? We always say we're fine, right? Usually, that's not the truth. In that moment. It's like, well, I've got a lot of things going on. So, I think like in society, teaches us to mask our feelings because nobody really wants to know, right?
We have social media, Instagram, where we post all the great pictures of the family. There's just the lack of truth and vulnerability. And I found that in my own life, I was lacking that truthfulness to myself. And I was lacking being vulnerable with myself. And so, when I got truthful and vulnerable with myself, therein lies my authenticity, which is so powerful. You can actually create by going within and listening to that inner voice.
And you mentioned a couple healing modalities that I use to access my, authentic power. Meditation is one of them. Getting quiet and getting still work for me and so was healing yoga. And then also during my healing process, I discovered something that I call the field framework. Which is a technique for me to really go into those messy and uncomfortable emotions, process them in real time allowing me to move through those emotions, and therefore kind of clearing the space again, for me to access my, authentic power.
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Myrna: So yeah, when you can feel, you become vulnerable and don’t have to be so strong. Women we feel that we should be so strong, it's a badge that we wear. We love hearing, Oh, you're so strong. Oh my God. Nobody wants to be vulnerable. Right? They want to be the Superwoman. And you know, women usually are Superwoman, looking after the kids, they're working, and taking care of their men.
Ashley: I'm so glad you mentioned that. It's so funny because my original title for, authentic power, was not so Strong, because I really felt not strong, despite wearing that mask of strength for so long. And that's something that we do in society. I did that before my health crisis, I wanted to look like Superwoman, I was the one that was pureeing the baby food and making sure my husband had dinner on the table every night, and people pleasing everyone around me, except myself.
When I had my own self, my own health crisis, I had to, I had to look at my own self-worth and value my self-worth, not what other people thought of me. And that really stopped me in my tracks. So now, I don't try to be superwoman at all. I get a lot of help and I put boundaries in place saying. I tell my husband dinner on the table is not happening tonight. I tell my team this project not going to get done today.
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Myrna: Awesome now I've read your book, I know that you felt a lot of, guilt, because on your father's death, because you felt that there's something that you could have done. So, what was it that you stuffed down for 20 years or so? Was it, guilt?
Ashley: That's a great question. It was 100%, guilt. I felt guilty because when my dad was actively having a heart attack, I didn't run to go by his side to give CPR. My mom and sister did, I ran to go call 911. I also ran to the neighbor to get help. So, for so long, I was like, what if I had gone and given him CPR to help my mom and sister? What if I had been the one to do that? There are so many what ifs. As a child I buried that guilt within me very, very deeply. I also buried the, grief.
So before, before my health crisis, which you know, really is was my greatest awakening, I see, Lyme disease, as my greatest gift, and I'm so grateful for it. It allowed me to really look deep and face my, grief.
I never visited my father's grave, alone. That's how much I did not want to deal with facing his death. I did not allow myself to grieve. I'm sure there were sometimes when I cried, but in the early days of, grief, it was just straight up in shock. My dad died very suddenly, it wasn't a slow death, one day he's there the next day, he is not. So, the, grief, was a very uncomfortable feeling for me. It was very, very scary, and I didn't want to face the fact that my dad was gone.
And even afterwards, in middle school, and high school, I would have friends come over, I wouldn't even tell them that my dad had died. They didn't know my dad had died. They had to ask other people like where's Ashley's dad? Oh, yeah, we heard he passed away. So that's what bearing, grief, looks like. But I can say now, here I am. 27 years later, just this year, because of all the healing work that I've done. I visited his grave by myself for the first time ever.
And I'm so proud of myself, because it was just an incredible way to show how far I've come, how long the journey has been. And when I did, it was so beautiful. And I found that it is possible to have relationship with your loved ones, even in death. And that's something that's very important. I want to stress that I thought that once my father was dead, he was gone, but I talked to him. I pray for him. I visited him, I cried with him at his gravesite.
Myrna: That’s awesome. What does it mean to have, authentic power? How did dealing with your, grief, give you, authentic power? Why do women need, authentic power?
Ashley: That's a great question too. Therein lies our truth. It's also about surrendering to your power because I would also stuff down my power. I'll give you an example. My entire life, I've been told that I'm too sensitive. Oh, Ashley's more sensitive than the average bear. And I thought that being sensitive was a flaw of mine. I feel everything. I'm an empath. I feel other people's feelings. And I what I learned when I went through my health crisis, when I began to really feel into this emotion was that my sensitivity is my superpower!
It was then I got really quiet and still and listened to that inner wisdom, which is our, authentic power. I use that sensitivity when I'm feeling a little bit energetically overwhelmed. I know that I need to go step away and be by myself for a little bit. I know that I need to go recharge, I know that I can pick up on other people's, emotions, and so, authentic power, can also help us accept and honor our gifts.
So, for me journaling helps me unlock my, authentic power, but that can also be done in a quiet meditation and walking through nature. This could be done in prayer, too. That is the inner wisdom, that could be from the Divine, it could be from your higher self, or it could just be from that, that within you, which is what your, authentic power, is.
Myrna: Yeah, that's awesome. A lot of nice little nuggets there. Yes. You know, I'm a meditator, myself, I meditate every morning. Sitting on my meditation cushion, I listen, and I get still.
How did you heal yourself from, Lyme disease? You were bedridden, you couldn't do anything for yourself. It dropped you on your back. Literally.
Ashley: I'll paint the picture of what it looked like and then I'm, I will share how I feel. So, this is what it looks like. I mean, for anyone who's had, Lyme disease, it can show up in so many different ways. For me it went undiagnosed for a very long time and wasn’t diagnosed until after I delivered my third baby.
This is how it started. I believe it was the summer of 2014. I started having symptoms that felt like the flu. I couldn’t keep any food down; I was nauseous all the time. Those symptoms didn't go away, and it kept getting worse. I had headaches constantly I started losing weight, I got down to the weight that I was before high school. I mean it was very dangerous. I seem to develop a food intolerance to everything I ate. Then I had so many weird things happen, my body would go numb, including my arms and legs. I would have muscle fat isolation so it would feel like I had things crawling on my skin at all times.
I saw so many doctors, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, postpartum depression, you name it. Then when I become pregnant with my third baby those symptoms mysteriously went away and I remember my OBGYN I am saying, pregnancy can do this. It really does turn off the immune system because it knows you're growing a baby inside you. The day that I delivered my third baby those feelings came right back.
I was sent home from the hospital four days later and it was downhill from there. I remember one time (and this is this was really my turn turning point in the journey) after continuing to see doctor after doctor, nobody could figure out what was wrong with me, the room started spinning and I started blacking out. I lost control my bowels and started Like urinating all over myself.
I just surrendered I said alright God you either take me now because I don't want my family to suffer anymore or we going to heal together. So, I started the healing process. Healing was the slowest, most excruciating, physical, spiritual, mental and emotional process I ever went through. But I will say that the physical healing was only like 20% of the work that I needed to do. The other 80% came down to me working with energy.
Symptoms of Lyme Disease
Finally, I was diagnosed with, Lyme disease. I was so far off the deep end physically that they couldn't treat me with just antibiotic pills. I had to have a PICC line installed to my heart. And for eight weeks I couldn't lift my baby, so we moved in with my in laws. I had I was on the highest dose of antibiotics Rocephin that they use to treat meningitis patients. I had a nurse come to my house, my husband would administer the antibiotic nightly, the nurse would come once a week and change my dressing.
I was not better after eight weeks; the healing took a full year. And this is where I say that, Lyme disease, was my greatest gift, because it allowed me to get still and finally address all these other feelings that had been buried since I was 11 years old. Those feelings of, trauma, and, grief. I learned about the power of, affirmations, and journaling. Every day I would write in my journal as if I was already healed. I would write in my like little book “I am feeling Awesome, my health is vibrant. I am well, I am healthy.” I would affirm it.
I found that journal the other day, the book is this thick of me affirming my health and wellbeing every day. And in addition to that, having a spiritual mentor and joining a church community and sharing my pain with others, being vulnerable and open helped with my healing. I could no longer wear that mask of strength because I was too sick. So, I finally opened up to my friends and loved ones what was happening to me.
Myrna: So, finding that community as well as the power of connection is the path to healing and finding, authentic power. You've talked a little bit about your book throughout the conversation. Tell us about your book “Authentic Power.” What is it that you want the reader to walk away with after they closed the book?
Ashley: The book is for anyone who is faced with any sort of adversity in their lives, you know, I described my, trauma. I'm not saying you shouldn't have to ever experience, trauma, like I've experienced, because every single person's, trauma, looks very different. It could be the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the end of something.
My book is for anyone who's looking to provide holistic healing in their lives and learning that these messy and uncomfortable emotions like, grief, trauma, despair, depression, that there could be a reason they might are there to actually teach us something.
I'm a true believer that these, emotions, that we feel on a physical level are meant to be addressed. We have something to learn from every single, emotion. I want my book to teach readers how to become aware of these messy and uncomfortable, emotions, and then get curious about why they are there. Check out Ashley on the web at https://ashleybernardi.com/
