Dear Diary

Dear diary,

My first big publication came out last week - a feature in Goop called “11 Professionals Helping People Find More Satisfying, Successful Careers” to be exact. I have been waiting for this feature to come out for nearly a year now and I’ve learned so much along the way that I wanted to write down the two big takeaways so I don’t forget them…

PATIENCE, young grasshopper.

You truly cannot move at a faster pace than the greater intelligence behind life. TRULY. Every step of the way, IS the way. A few months back, I found myself absolutely exhausted of my running script around this Goop article - thoughts of questioning when I thought it would come out, hopes that it would be a gamechanger for my business, fears that I was holding too high of expectations - and it dawned on me, “Jessie! There is nothing holding you back in life… ever! Your thoughts are making you feel like things should be happening faster or life would look different if only things would be happening when you think they should, but beyond your thinking there is the flow of life that you can trust… stop spinning about it, it will come out when it’s supposed to… enjoy what’s happening now.” It’s amazing when you think you know something deep down then you get smacked upside the head with an aha that takes you deeper. And guess what happened once I saw this, yet again, for myself? It felt like I was pulled back at warp speed into observation mode of the unfoldings of the last year anticipating Goop’s release and of course, I could see how all of my experiences, my insights and realizations, HAD to happen BEFORE the article came out. If it was released when I was originally expecting it to, I wouldn’t have been ready. I would have managed because we always rise to the occasion, but it holds so much more impact and I’m so much more peaceful, now. Takeaway? I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again… LIVE IN THE FEELING OF HINDSIGHT.

FOREBODING JOY IS A REAL THING.

Shoutout to Brene Brown for this heads up! The day Goop came out I was so excited I could hardly get out of bed fast enough. If the evening before (when I got the official YES IT’S COMING OUT TOMORROW!) was any kind of indication of my mood, the big release day was going to feel like my first visit to Disneyland mixed with Christmas eve as a youngin, the moment I turned around to my husband on bended knee, college graduation day and my wedding day all wrapped up into one. I went to the computer before the Goop newsletter was sent out, carefully typed in g-o-o-p dot c-o-m, scrolled down the homepage with baited breath and BOOM!!! There it was… the perfectly curated intro to the article, scroll scroll scroll, then…. my face. In one of the top online magazines on the internet. Cue excited feelings aaaandd….. nothing. What took the excitement’s place?! Everything that I would have never thought would be flying through my mind. Fears, worries, stress. ALL made up. Brene Brown says, “Our actual experiences of joy—those intense feelings of deep spiritual connection and pleasure—seize us in a very vulnerable way” and boyyyy was she right! To be completely honest, I have brushed by this feeling before but it’s never sat with me the way it did the day of the release. All day I felt like I was walking a tightrope of extreme joy and gratitude, then my foot would occasionally slip into doom and gloom. Luckily, with what I know to be true about my mind, I was able to witness it all and consistently stay in the moment because I so desperately didn’t want to miss any of it by being distracted by the nonsense trying to run the show upstairs (shoutout to the hubs for stepping in as a sideline coach!). All of this to say, I am incredibly grateful I was able to witness myself in the experience because it was the first time that JOY churned up fear in a real way for me. Staying out of the muck of my mind while chaos is going on around me?! I can ride that wave til the cows come home, but this was a new one for me. The takeaway? FEARFUL THOUGHTS ARE TRULY NONSENSICAL AND THERE IS NEVER A GOOD TIME TO ENTERTAIN THEM.

With that, I will leave you for today, dear diary. Moving forward, let’s remember that you’ll be learning new things every day for the rest of your life and you don’t know anything til the moment that you know everything.

XO,

Jessie

One Of The Keys To Life...

Really feel out this statement: Your emotions get in the way of every great thing in your life.

On first reading, does that feel true for you? Read it one more time: Your emotions get in the way of every great thing in your life.

Not so long ago I was putting some new thought into redefining what I do and how I explained my work to the world because I was finding my old descriptions were getting lost on people. Saying that life is actually an illusion and it's all being created on a moment to moment basis by your thinking, is quite meaningless to people when all they've asked is, "What do you do?" As I searched and bubbled on the question "Why me?" considering there are a million and one self-help gurus, therapists, healers, reiki masters, etc for people to choose from when feeling in the dumps or needing help to make change in their life - this is one of the lines that bubbled up:

Your emotions get in the way of every great thing in your life.

The more my intellect put that statement to task, it became more and more clear to me how true it was. I have absolutely experienced it in myself and I have definitely witnessed it in my friends and acquaintances around me. And I'm not talking about the beautiful, love-filled emotions that connect you to the heart of others and your surroundings, I'm talking about the emotions that fill with you with worry, fear - the emotions that make you feel guarded.

Think about how often an emotion is the thing that stops you from moving forward, from connecting, from risking, from being your ultimate self. Let's start off with the glaringly obvious moments where it stops us: Asking for a raise or promotion, a major audition, having difficult conversations with our partner, having difficult conversations with our children or family member, having difficult conversations with our friends, buying a house, moving out of our current living situation, taking the leap into a new career, socializing at a networking event... this list can go on and on. Then we can boil it down to the minutiae of our daily living when an emotion gets in the way: Seeing an old friend at the store unexpectedly (and most often, avoiding them), witnessing a stranger being emotional and not reaching out, adoring something about a stranger and not letting them know, eating a treat, NOT eating a treat, saying no to intimacy with your partner (this one hauls in a plethora of emotions that can get in the way: too tired, too overwhelmed, too much on the mind, too little time, putting it off... etc), getting out of the house to exercise, reaching out to a friend to catch up... seriously, this list can also go on and on.

For a lot of you out there, with most of your daily experiences, your emotions are holding you back from acting out of your wisdom.

Why?

Because with every thought, comes a feeling. To say it differently, you are feeling your thinking 100% of the time, not the experience in front of you. When it comes to moments where we have to risk, be vulnerable, connect without expectation - we jump right into fearful, insecure or judgemental thoughts, and guess what that does? Well, because feelings go right along with those fearful, insecure or judgemental thoughts, that thinking looks really real in that moment, and even though you've made it up, you believe it more than your wisdom that was about to take you into action.

Now, will your wisdom misguide you? No - never. Your gut instinct, your wisdom, is rooted in who you are before all of your thinking. On top of that, like a wave in the ocean, you are a part of a greater intelligence behind all things, a Universal Mind that is keeping you afloat even when you aren't paying attention. And who you are, who every single one of us IS at our core, is pure love, understanding, peace, joy, appreciation and gratitude. If you don't believe me, think of a time when you're most peaceful, joyful, or relaxed - got a picture in your mind?

Now check in with the feeling in your body... feels pretty good, right?

You just experienced in real time, a feeling that came from your thinking (and if you just plowed through reading this, go back and invite some beautiful experiences into your mind, I don't want you to miss out).

When you're in that peaceful place, that is what I call having a neutral mind, it's what you auto-correct to when you aren't being deceived and distracted by your thoughts. And when you're in neutral, wisdom has room to bubble up. By the way, sometimes our wisdom will tell us to hold back, don't go over there, don't make that call, don't talk to that person - but it's always for our highest good, guiding us down the path of least resistance EVEN in the face of life seemingly showing us bold resistance. Your internal experience does not depend on your surroundings or circumstances, you don't have to take my word for it, just listen to the feeling inside of you after reading this - your own wisdom will tell you.

So to bring this right-to-the-point lesson full-circle: Life is too beautiful, exhilarating, fulfilling, loving, moving...  for you to miss out on connection and being your true, ultimate self 24/7. Emotions will happen, thinking will grip you... you're human! My thinking still grips me! I just allow it to pass within moments these days as opposed to hours or days later, because if it doesn't feel good, it isn't true. When you allow that gripping, insecure thinking to pass, the feeling that fills you up - the warm and loving emotions - will change your life. And from there, you have the freedom to choose what is best for you, always. You have the tools to master your behavior because you aren't living in your own reality that no one around you is even privy to.

I will leave you with a quote from Sydney Banks, the beautiful human being who had the insight into how our minds truly work:

If people could learn to stop reacting to their experiences in life, we'd all be fine.

So simple. So true. Let that sink in. Re-read it. Realize it for yourself. To the extent that you understand that you don't have to take your experience or your thinking or feeling seriously, you are protected from being destabilized. You just observe it, and you're back to neutral.

So for this week, do me a favor and be a witness to your internal experience. That's it. Don't stress about doing anything about it or working at anything. Just witness it... that in itself is going to bring beautiful shifts in your experience of life. It will look a little more like this...

My Grandma Adell in all of her glory...

All my love and see you next week~

Jessie

Wisdom & A Roller Skating Rink

When was the last time you followed your wisdom, your gut instinct, to do something you really wanted to do? Something fun, out of the box, and completely for yourself? It's tricky, I know, because often times we get the pull to do the new adventure, then our made up thoughts come in the picture and clobber it with 'logic' as to why you shouldn't do it: You don't have time, you don't have the money, you've never been there so what if something happens to you? Maybe you've never done it before so you make pictures of what your experience may be like, what you'll look like or what others will think.

Oy vey - thoughts are exhausting, am I right?!

Well let me tell you, more than just the immense amount of joy you'll be met with from following through with what your wisdom is nudging you to do, is the magic that you'll witness all around you - the beauty of life and how it unfolds, all because you followed your soul-pull.

I recently followed through on a soul-pull to go roller skating, and I'm telling you now, what I experienced ended up being far beyond the joy I could've ever imagined (though I had a feeling it was going to be pretty darn magical). I grew up roller skating, so my nostalgia was through the roof. From the woman at the admission window (who had blatantly been working there for decades) inquiring if I'd be paying 8 bucks for a skate ticket or 13 for a skate and rent - said with her perfectly frosty pink lipstick and a 'honey' with every interaction. To the 80's carpet, the disco balls and the smell of nacho cheese and feet... I was in heaven. I got there right at the beginning of Open Skate and the throwback tunes were already bumping and skaters of every age, cultural background and skill level were zooming, falling and timidly holding on to the carpet wall, simultaneously and blissfully - let me repeat, I was in heaven.

Moonlight Rollerway, Glendale, CA - aka: HEAVEN

As I'm sure you can gather, my joy was through the roof. I went by myself and couldn't have had a better time bearing witness to everything going on around me: the sweet interactions between lovebirds, the care of a parent coaching their little one, the bliss of a senior skating circles around us all; And the gift of the quiet nature of skating itself, the space it allowed for me to reflect on my state of mind as I watched everything unfold around me.

So where's the lesson in it all, you ask? Well, I had a few bubble up for me. To begin, it is truly remarkable that when I listen inward, when I honor my wisdom and follow through with what it tells me, how any concerning thoughts about life simply melt away. When I am overwhelmed with joy and filled to the brim with that loving feeling, any concerning thinking that may normally plague me is either absent, or it moves through my head before I even have time to take it seriously. I can observe those thoughts passing through my head like the ticker tape at the bottom of a news cast, as opposed to a headline at the top of a newspaper. Additionally, when I'm in this joyful space, I am naturally and effortlessly brought to the moment. I become so open-hearted that I feel as though someone has cracked my chest open to reveal a glowing heart, and the feeling lasts as long as I choose to stay in it. And as you can imagine, when I'm not in my own world of thought, when I'm present and open-hearted, every interaction with the world around me is smooth, kind, understanding, effortless and even humorous. Can you think of a time, activity or vacation that makes you feel this way? How does remembering that thought make you feel? Isn't it amazing that just thinking about that wonderful experience brings you peace? And you're still sitting in the same spot, nothing has changed but your thinking (I'm looking back at you with a wink).

Speaking of life being more humorous when you're full of joy, I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear watching the kiddos in the rink. It was so wonderful to watch them fall over and over and over, and continue to get back up on their feet without a thought. Not only were they determined to be good at skating, but they effortlessly threw themselves into tricks and new moves without any hesitation. The ultimate lesson in following my wisdom being played out right in front of me.

As we age, we create so much thought around our experience - for example if we fall from skating, we create thinking that we're not good at it, so we stop. And not only do we stop, but we make up a story around that fall that lasts with us for the rest of our lives and affects decision making as long as we believe it. From that point forward, we will no longer skate because we 'always' fall - even though it was a one time experience. But who knows, maybe you had some fearful thinking in your head before you started skating that you may fall and embarrass yourself, so the fall is now evidence for that made up thinking (and heck, maybe you fell because of a tiny rock on the ground, or you turned around too quickly, or were human and lost your balance for a split second!) Isn't that incredible? It's amazing how many of us have created an entire world of thought around one experience, and that lasting thought (or thoughts) is then a cemented belief about ourselves, or that experience, for the rest of our lives. When really, it's a news headline thought that we've believed, and it's stopping us short from having new wonderful experiences because we have those lenses on anytime a similar opportunity comes up for us.

You see, as you may be beginning to understand, we live and experience our thinking, not the world around us. The more we can understand that, the more we aren't plagued by thoughts - we see them for what they are, let them pass, and come back to the moment. Life becomes more rich, full of color, peaceful and oh-so-enjoyable. Is there an activity or experience in life that you would like to have but the only thing that stops you is your thoughts about it? Are those thoughts true? Are they really true? How would you feel, and what would you do, if you didn't have those thoughts? It seems simple, because it is! With different thinking, we have different experiences of life.

Finally, with today being Martin Luther King, Jr. day, it feels fitting to share my final insight that brought tears to my eyes as I skated around this ol' skating rink. Humans want to connect. We want to help each other. We want to lift each other up when we fall, literally and figuratively. Without our prejudices, our judgements, our divisive and dividing thinking, we have the same goals of living a love and joy filled life - that's it, plain and simple. And guess what, if you take away that individual thinking, the individual reality we each live in, what are we? The same. We may be in different skin suits, but on the inside, we are totally and utterly the same. We are One. Seeing all of the people that came together to enjoy some skating on a simple Friday afternoon: From the two East Indian girls clinging to the walls and watching everyone take turns to give them pointers on how to skate better, to the African American mom helping her daughter skate and having every child gravitate towards her for help because her energy was SO welcoming. From the Caucasian senior citizen having a lovely lone skate willing to help anyone struggling around him, to the Armenian teenage couple that had the biggest smiles on their faces after he gave them pointers. Witnessing a new friendship evolve between the Asian group of twenty-somethings and the Mexican group of twenty-somethings in the matter of two hours. Every falling child and adult was lent a hand by another in the rink, every human being having the time of their lives and becoming fast friends with each other,  I couldn't have been more proud to be witness to the love that is real between us all. What a gift.

So with all of this, dear readers, I hope you begin to honor yourself and follow what your wisdom tells you when you listen inward. And for the love of god, take your made up thoughts a little less seriously! Doing so will begin to effortlessly shift your energy and your experience of life, and therefore the world around you, as we are living a life from the inside-out, always.

See you again next week.

XO,

Jessie