In the theme of freedom for Independence Day, I wanted to share a story about how I chose the word freedom in 2020 and how it continues to transform my life.
In today's episode I share:
Create Change:
I invite you to ask yourself to create a mid-year intention by asking yourself:
What word do I want to embody/experience for the next 6 months?
This word can be a feeling/emotion/sensation/visual- essentially anything that connects you to your body, your being, your north star.
Want to connect? Find me on theblueprintbyjz.com or Instagram
Have a question or topic request? I love answering your burning questions and discussing what you're passionate about. Think of me as your "down to talk about anything" in-house executive coach.
Send all questions and topic requests to hello@theblueprintbyjz.com
In the theme of freedom for Independence Day, I wanted to share a story about how I chose the word freedom in 2020 and how it continues to transform my life.
In today's episode I share:
Create Change:
I invite you to ask yourself to create a mid-year intention by asking yourself:
What word do I want to embody/experience for the next 6 months?
This word can be a feeling/emotion/sensation/visual- essentially anything that connects you to your body, your being, your north star.
Want to connect? Find me on theblueprintbyjz.com or Instagram
Have a question or topic request? I love answering your burning questions and discussing what you're passionate about. Think of me as your "down to talk about anything" in-house executive coach.
Send all questions and topic requests to hello@theblueprintbyjz.com
Jessie Anne Zayas 0:01
Hello, and welcome to self love stories. I'm Jessie Anne Zayas, and I am your host of self love stories. And today we're gonna have a little short story. It's going to be a mixture of life updates from myself and a story about intention setting yearly intention setting. And I know it sounds a little weird talking about New Year's resolutions or intention settings for the year in July. But why not? It's mid year. I know we're all recalibrating, we're in the beautiful summer moment. And we are present but also at bed very, very very fiery energy, I guess is what I'm saying. Right? I have an assertion and suspicion that we're all running a million miles in every direction, but also enjoying it, I think, right? You know, summertime for me. And what I'm witnessing is, It's vacation season. So kids are out of school, sun's out nature's beautiful water. Right, we're all just kind of in this beautiful dance with one another. And I also know that usually once summer ends, we're like shit, it's freakin fall on the holiday seasons about to be here. So I share that all because I think it's a beautiful moment right to kind of recalibrate with ourselves. But as I was leaning into this and thinking about it, I was present to what I've learned, and I wanted to share a story about New Year's resolutions and intention settings for the year. And in kind of the theme of Fourth of July, and to kind of bring it full circle and give you a little hint. The word I first chose was freedom. And it was so so powerful. So in theme of Independence Day in theme of resetting, even in medeor, choosing whenever we want to reset and we want to recalibrate, and in theme of connecting more to ourselves more to our emotions more to our being more to our essence, you know, what are different ways from a self love perspective? Can we connect with ourselves, grow ourselves, learn about ourselves, and most importantly, love ourselves. And really, you know, live that best life for ourselves. So excited to dive into that and talk a little bit about intention setting. And last but not least, I wanted to give you all a life update. So stay tuned for that. I want to share a little bit at the end in terms of where I'm at what I'm doing and all of that fun stuff. So let's go ahead and dive into it. Alright, so a few years back, I want to say this is pre pandemic, on the precipice of pandemic. So I want to say this is 2019 going into 2020 Before we knew of this thing called COVID-19. And as we were moving into 2020 I'll be honest, I was racking my brain of who I learned this from and I honestly cannot remember but all that to say it has profoundly changed my life. And what I mean by that is I remember going into 2020 You know this whole space about talking about New Year's resolutions and yada yada yada and all this stuff. And I was coming off of SVP of marketing publicly traded company in New York City I was actually about to relocate for another VP of marketing position in Chicago. I wasn't happy all I wasn't happy. You know you for me, my experiences I got to that quote unquote, part of my life I got to that made major milestone, that accomplishment and it just it's like that sold a bill of goods, if you will, that that I didn't realize I signed up for and I was unhappy. But you know, knowing what I know now and you know, hindsight being 2020 I was also coming from a disk very disempowering place and what I mean by that I was very out effect with life like life was happening to me, versus me, directing guiding life and I use the words directing and guiding very intentionally because I think also the overcorrection of this can be a very controlling way of living your life. So over controlling over managing, over course correcting, but I was on the other side of it. I was in a beautiful way in the passenger seat of my Life. And as a really, really good friend once shared those visualized, I was telling her this, she's like, Well, it sounds like you're in the passenger seat of a Corvette with the top down with your hair flowing. And I was you know, I was making good money, I was doing such amazing things. I was having fun going on amazing vacations, you know, not worried, you know about money, health, love life, you know, but there was like, a whole there was a deep unsatisfaction is it unsatisfaction or dissatisfaction? I don't know. But I was not satisfied. There was this longing for more this hurt this pain, the sadness of is this. It's like, I want to do more with my life. I want to make more impact. And don't get me wrong. You know, my jobs have been fun, right? I've worked in the intersection of entertainment and hospitality. So the they were fun jobs, right, like, talking about good times food and booze, right? So you know, you know, it's not like I was over here working in, you know, wheeling gas or supply chain management, which by the way, no knock on that by no means. But I want to share the comparison in terms of like, quote unquote, outside looking in, I should have been quote unquote, happy. Right. And so I share this all because going into, that's where I was in this 2019 going into 2020. And it's so interesting, because as I was learning about instead of doing new year's resolutions, which is a hyper achiever, High Achiever love to put some stretch goals in front of me and and see, see how hard it's going to be to accomplish them and accomplish them and move on to the next thing, right. So it was taking a completely different approach with going into the new year. And the most important thing for me in this different approach was no longer the doing, like what am I going to do? What am I going to accomplish? You know, we're usually New Year's resolutions are very goal oriented. I came from it with a question. How do I want to feel? What do I want? I'm body? What do I want to be? What is my being next year? When you're around me? What is my essence feel like? When I walk into a room, what is that? Feeling that emotion, that vibration even right, that you're that you feel from me. And the word that really kept on coming up for myself was freedom. And why did that come up for myself, there were a few things going on, I still didn't feel like I was being my full authentic self at work. feel misunderstood. I felt like
Jessie Anne Zayas 8:04
there was a new part of me that was growing and expanding. And I didn't even know how to bring it into these spaces that I was embodying. And if it didn't feel empowering, it felt disempowering. But I knew the empowering feeling would be to be free and free to be who I am, who I'm becoming. And I think that's a really important distinction, right? Because I think a lot of times we're one we're in this transition point of becoming something right becoming a different version of ourselves, or, you know, we start learning a new thing, learning a new idea, principle, philosophy, healing tool modality, a new way of thinking, approaching context, I mean, think about the whole gamut of ways that you've changed your opinions or habits or yourself throughout your life. And there's this moment where you're kind of in the middle bit, that kind of butterfly moment, right, where you're still in the cocoon, but then you're starting to kind of like, crystallize, right? And you're starting to kind of like, formulate into this butterfly, and then you're starting to get out of the cocoon a little bit. And that part can be a little scary, right? Because you're still fresh, and you're still raw, and you're still kind of figuring that all out. And I think a lot of times, from a societal belief, we feel like we need to kind of fully be embodied or fully there 100% before we step out into that new persona, if you will. But that's just it. We're in constant flux of change are constantly changing. And I think that's the lie that we end up telling ourselves like when I get to this point, and then I will do this, like it becomes a very macro story, we end up telling ourselves but if we take it back down to this moment of, I'm becoming something new. I'm starting to have new beliefs, new wants, new ambitions, new needs. I'm still becoming aware of those But I want to start sharing them and I start, I want to start embodying them, and I want to start becoming this person and showing up as this person now, not when I quote unquote, have it all figured out. But now, so there was that. There was also even though my quote unquote job came with freedom, right, so I know, for example, you know, a lot of people don't have the freedom to, you know, own their schedule, or be able to go to different doctor's appointments or vacation, and so on and so forth. And I wasn't at that very fortunate and very grateful that I had a lot of that quote, unquote, autonomy, that freedom. But freedom for me was freedom to choose that now that level right was freedom to choose what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, who I wanted to be in service of. So now it was becoming this reckoning from a career perspective, like, what would I feel most free about? How would that look like? How would the services look like? How would the company look like? Am I working for others? Am I working for myself? How would my schedule look like? How would what I'm what I'm doing? Look like, you know, even even from that perspective, so yeah, so there was a lot of these things going on in terms of authenticity in terms of career in terms of also living, you know, I just relocated to Chicago, when I took a step back, and even taking, you know, the whole story from my childhood, where I grew up with military parents, and I was traveling every year to two years, nonstop, non stop until, you know, I was finished with high school, essentially. And now I looked at my corporate career, and it was very similar. I was moving every year to two years, not where I wanted to be. But you know, in a fun, and again, I'm very grateful. There were some fun places, right? Dallas, Austin, New York City, Chicago, right. So there were fun places, but I wasn't choosing, it was being chosen for me. And then I was going Yeah, yeah, I'll go there. Right. And I'm very much sharing this because Chicago wasn't the place I can tell Chicago was in place, it was another place for me out there. So I share this all because there was for me what was showing up with this deep need of freedom. But why I wanted to share a little bit more about what was going on in my personal life. It's just a reminder that freedom looks differently from Freedom looks differently for different people at different times of their life, right. And so I share that because whatever word that you choose, either from an intention, New Year's resolution, even monthly intention, yearly intention. It's, it's what it means to you, and discovering what that means to you. So really taking a time to journal to sit with What does freedom mean to you? What does hear we'll do like another word. What does shining mean to you? Right? If like, if you want to take up space, if you want to shine bright, if you want to be your fully authentic self, maybe you choose the word shine, right? So what does shine mean to you? What does that look like? How does that embody? How does that feel? How does that move? How does that look like from a day to day perspective. And so here I am going into 2020, choosing the word freedom, which is kind of crazy, because as you know, what happened in 2020 was a lot of things that challenged and also made us more aware of the freedoms we do and don't have in this country. And you know, and I think a lot of historically marginalized communities definitely saw, right. So I also want to share that because there was a lot into that space and talking about empowering versus disempowering. Could you imagine choosing a word that were everywhere around you, you started feeling more and more of that chipped away. But here's the kicker. There is no goal of how this freedom looks like right? There's no like, quote, unquote, this is how I get it. Remember, I anchored on the feeling I anchored on what it meant to me, I anchored on how I would want to embody that how I would want to feel so that became my Northstar at every moment every day, how can I feel more free today? How can I create more freedom today? How can I take one step towards my goal of freedom, a larger goal of freedom? And so every day as I tuned into that, that vibration of freedom, that tone of freedom, that frequency of freedom, that feeling of freedom, literally that feeling of freedom, sitting with it, how does freedom feel? What action can I take? That's unknown alignment to this feeling. And it's always going to be an empowering action for me because it's a deep a deep root of what I want to be, again, not what I want to do, but what I want to be. And as a person as a human being. When you're around me, when you're around my energy, when you're around my presence, I want you to feel free. But as we know, we have to be the change we want to see in this world. So how do I liberate myself? How do I free myself? And so every day I took action towards that. And I'm going to fast forward and just share some some milestones from that year of how that ended up. Looking for me from a super tactical practical level, I started pulling out my calendar in terms of freedom. When did I want to be free? When did I not want to be attached anything? When did I not want to be taking freakin meetings, reoccurring meetings? Stand up meetings throughout the week, right? I want to free my schedule. What does that look like? Okay, that looks like blocking off time during these times. Because I like to do yoga, I like to go take a walk outside because I like to actually unplug and eat, you know, my lunch. So what can I how can I create more freedom here and my schedule, right? And then it started upgrading to other things. Like how can I be more free to if I want to fly to Italy next month, I can fly to Italy next month. But the job that I was doing, I had to be so hard to plan. So I had an advance for any kind of vacation or any kind of time off. And then I started thinking about to freedom to be more in service freedom to do the things that I actually enjoyed doing, which then led me to this path of entrepreneurship that led me to this path of creating a coaching business of a consulting business of really going alright, I want to free up my life in a way that's going to make me feel empowered, that's going to make my heart full, that's gonna make me feel fulfilled, because that's another thing that was happening, y'all. There was no like deep fulfillment. Like I felt like I wasn't living my purpose like that. That was what was missing. So again, in terms of my purpose, not holding me down or making me feel disempowered. How can I look at seeking my purpose, finding my purpose, discovering my purpose from a terms of freedom, right? So I even looked at modalities that helped create that freedom for me, right, so I had an executive coach at the time, they were supporting me with values, my dreams, my visions, 1015 20 years from now, what does life look like I was bringing in that lens of freedom. I was also looking at modalities like astrology and human design, because that created freedom for me to seek out who I am and have that self discovery with myself, which ultimately was creating more self love, because I wasn't judging myself on how I was coming to this answer for myself, what would this look like? How would this evolve? Let me look at all the different tools that make me feel free to go on this journey to take the self discovery journey. So those are different ways of like how I brought the word freedom to life. And I'm proud to say almost every action I made in 2020 led me to creating this business, for me taking this big leap, which leads me to well, actually, before I get there, I was gonna say which leads me to my my update, but which led me to my next word of my next year. So going into 2021. And also, even 22. If I'm being honest, I started playing around with words like adventurer, and shining, right. And I share that because what was so fun about that evolution is like for me using the word freedom or choosing not using choosing the word freedom led me to this path of next year going like, Alright, I want to create more fun. And then next year, I want to create more adventure, right? And look at that, you know, it really ends up almost in a way like snowballing is when I'm present to be snowballing with goodness like snowballing with excitement snowballing with I don't know I'm just very present to this like childish energy like excitement. Like it's more. Actually, that's what it is it's spontaneity. It's getting lost in the wonder and getting lost in the trip getting lost on the journey. But always having that Northstar, so it allows you to kind of be last but never loss for you to hey, let me take the left on the row this time or let me take the right or let me keep on going straight. Because you know your Northstar is your word right? You know that that word is what's guiding you to create and choose empowering decisions. Because that word is what you want to embody. Oddie, it's what you want to be, it's what you want to create. So you have this agency over your life, with this feeling with this emotion with this being not with this doing Have you got to do all of these tasks to them get this feeling? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. To get this feeling, follow the feeling and create more moments that embody this feeling. Choose and create more choices, that embody this feeling, and follow it, follow it, follow that emotion, follow that feeling. And this might be a big shift for you. Because you, you might be similar to me, you know, in past life, very logical, very. Hey, let me make sense of this in my mind. But what I'm asking you here is, feel it. Feel it in your body. Find that word that you want to embody. That just makes you feel so good, that you know that if you felt that feeling, if you felt that emotion, if you felt that being that essence, vibrating in your body at all times, your life would be so much better for you. That word can be peace, that work can be love. That word can be power, that work can be compassion, that work can be spirit, that work can be magic. That word can be empowered. This word can be any word that you want it to be beauty, nourished. Wisdom, right? So just sit with yourself, what is how do you want to feel going into this rest of this half a year? What do you want to embody? What's going to make you feel so much empowered, what would be a major shift in your life right now, if you embodied a certain word in your life and took that with you at every single moment. So with that being said, I really want to invite you on sharing what this awareness is that you picked for yourself for the rest of the half of the year. And I invite you for the new year, I'll give everybody a friendly reminder. To choose a word instead of creating goals for yourself and not saying goals are a bad thing. But you know, I don't I don't buy into this whole new year's resolution. thing. But for sake of time, I'm not going down a rabbit hole. I'll stop there. But you are enough. You have everything you need. And from a self love perspective, right self love. It's about knowing yourself, loving yourself. Giving yourself radical acceptance, radical forgiveness, radical compassion, and creating joy, love, creativity, happiness in your life, but through you, through you, by you, created by you. Like if we look at self love, like a relationship, right, a loving relationship where we're nourish, nourishing it, we're not judging it, we're supporting it, we're helping it grow. We're helping it be the best version it can be while holding space,
Jessie Anne Zayas 24:00
while reminding the other person that they are completely perfect, and enough the way that they are, and how we're also there to support them and help them while helping ourselves be that best version of ourselves. So when you bring that back to that self love lens, it's a relationship with you, yourself. Are you loving yourself? How are you growing yourself? How you nourishing yourself? How are you forgiving yourself? How are you celebrating yourself? How are you reminding yourself all the things that you love about yourself? How are you working on those things that might be disempowering for yourself right now, habits that might be disempowering careers that might be disempowering relationships that might be disempowering. So remember, it's just a Dating Yourself, it's the most important relationship you can have. Because when you fully love yourself, then you can fully love other people. So that whole thing is like we can free ourselves if we can liberate ourselves and we can help liberate each other So just remember that it's it starts with you, it ends with you. But in a beautiful way it radiates from you. And it completely can transform yourself in the people in places around you, which I love. So, and on that note, I want to share a quick life update. So I know I've been gone for a few months, and I give a loving, loving, loving. Sorry. I started this podcast at the start of my journey of taking the sabbatical, but I had in my mind, like, I'm gonna take this luxurious a Patagonia, and then I'm gonna, you know, poke around my business and grow it and share and you know, be more of service and create and all these beautiful things. And then I was like, at one point, I was like, Oh, my goodness, what am I doing? I want to take a break this was this was the purpose to take a break and check in with oneself. So I share that because that's where I've been, I've been on a year long self love sabbatical, I spent a few months in Mexico with my husband. And we got to spend some beautiful time with family members, because we unfortunately, with our jobs and careers, and moving every year to two years, we've unfortunately haven't been able to spend some luscious family time like we wanted to. And then we spent the rest of the few months in Europe. So got to spend a month in Turin, Italy a month in Budapest a month in Paris as well, which was magical, all of it was magical. So I want to share so much about this A about the sabbatical. Why I took it, how I took it, how I was able to take it and when I say able because I think that was the biggest thing that I wasn't prepared for was how much people were so shocked that I was quote unquote, like eight, like how were you able to take a full year off, right, not work, bring in any income and essentially save up for this year off. So I would love to share more about that. And my process around that. Why I took this year off. And as you can imagine you'll there was so many things I sense synthesized from this year, I was still taking on some clients, I was still practicing my coaching and consulting business and I was still growing it. But the biggest thing is I was really, really growing myself, there were so many things that I was in flux and kind of experimenting had some hypothesis. And I'm really excited to share a lot of the wisdom, a lot of the aha moments, a lot of the conversations that I had, that my wisdom was reflected on to me through those conversations, because again, you know, we're so central in our lives that sometimes we forget that sometimes, these moments, these actions that we create a lot of other people look at us and go wow, that was so bold, that was so courageous. And we don't even realize that because we're looking at it from a completely different place. So what I love about this, and what I'm so excited to share about the sabbatical story is just that the story of it, the story of why chose it. What ended up happening for me, what ended up shifting, transforming, and how much so much abundance came from it, like so much abundance came from it. And really the lesson of releasing and letting go of control and welcoming uncertainty and spontaneity. And wonder really, really, really grew me and really, really grew my world, my life, my business, my relationships, my community. So all that to say, I have so much so much so much amazing stuff to share in terms of sabbatical. Self love sabbatical. At this past year, my travels, what each country taught me even and the different people as well. So really, really can't wait to share more about that. So with that being said, here's to many more self love stories. And I leave you with this affirmation. I am open to receiving my highest good, better than I can imagine. Let's say that one more time. I am open to receiving my highest good, better than I can imagine. Well, I am so excited for all of us receiving our highest good better than we can all imagine. And I'm sending y'all so much love. And I can't wait for our next conversation. Bye