Bloom Your Mind

Ep 02: The Land Inside

• Marie McDonald

Share episode

We all have the stories of our past, of our own lived experience, and of the legends that we inherit and hear from our family and our cultures, and we all get to decide what we make it all mean.

This episode is about the ideas we make real through tending our the land inside of us first. It highlights a story of the resilience of two people who built a house three times over again on the same piece of land where two homes burnt to the ground, because their interior land was so strong. This story is about their ability to be in a moment, to process their experience, and to keep going so that they could embrace the life that was waiting for them. 

 What you'll learn in this episode: 

  • The resilience to go through many iterations of an idea before it sticks
  • Why belief is a daily, dynamic practice that helps prioritize mental resilience
  • The stronger the land inside is, the more the outside world will reflect it
  • Why we default to the familiar and less of what's coming from our own brain
  • Why true change requires the hard work of believing in our ideas first 
  • How to light up the playground that's inside you 

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

 Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

What is up my friends? We are back with Bloom Your Mind episode number 2, and today my friends, I am recording from my home podcasting studio, which is in my home office. And I'm really excited about it because we've been setting this place up for months and I really have just been looking forward to being in this creative space.

So, you can just picture me happy as a little clam recording this for you from home. And I'm so excited about our content for today. I am going to start today's episode with an epic tale that is near and dear to my heart, one that comes from my family history. And then we're going to talk about land. We'll talk about two types of land.

The land that we tend outside of us, metaphorically, and then sometimes quite literally. And the other land, the land that's inside of us, and we'll talk about how our brains tend to think about and prioritize both of those spaces. Now, I'm going to offer a new way to think because when we have an idea, and that's what we're here for, right?

To make your ideas into real things, whether those are ideas for what you want or creations that you have in mind that you're envisioning, we're here to make those real. And when we have an idea, it starts in sight of us before we can ever put it out into the real world, and sometimes we skip the step of building up the resilience of the seed of an idea, and we just start, you know, blazing forward, take an action towards what we want.

I do this all the time. We often do this, and it often is the reason that ideas don't end up coming to fruition out in the world. Why they end up fizzling out inside our minds and our hearts. But it makes sense if we think about right, like how animals are born, how people are born. You have to have all the right elements to thrive, to incubate, to just state right, and become strong enough to enter into the outside world.

For a seed that's planted in the earth, has to have the right conditions, the right soil depth, the right amount of sunlight and water, all the things that. The environment for the seed to emerge or like until you're starting a fire and as you're clicking that flint, well, maybe that's in the movies.

Okay, In the real world, let's say you're using a lighter and you are clicking it over and over, you still have to have the right type of kindling. You have to have space for oxygen to flow in and out for the fire to start. And an idea is the same way. In order to bring our ideas out into the external world, we have to create first an interior environment that will protect them and let 'em thrive.

So, at the end of this episode, I'll offer a practice that you can adopt to start tapping into that inner strength and resilience, and then we'll build on that in the next episode. And I'll share the ways that I've seen people accelerate their success in making their ideas into real things in the world and changing their lives.

But we're going to start with story time, and we'll start at the beginning. So, it's the early 1980s and my parents bought a piece of land they bought it at, what my dad loves to remind me, was a ridiculously low price, and it was out in a mountain town in the high desert. It was about nine acres right next to a pin cushion protea farm.

If you don't know what that flower looks like, you should look it up. It's quite amazing. And they decided that they wanted to build a house on it. Well, my dad had never built a house on his own. He has since built hundreds of houses, but he taught himself with this first one by doing it. He also learned to play the guitar by cutting out a cardboard guitar and emulating the chords as he watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

In a group of his neighborhood friends, in the background, his dad was howling with laughter at their bowl cuts. So, there's definitely something pretty indomitable and mavericky about my dad's spirit, which I have to say, got some pieces of. 

But like, think about building a house from the ground up and figuring it out as you go. That blows my mind. Learning how to build a home as you do it. 

So, my mom and my dad, they bought this land. They had the idea for building this house, and in the meantime, they had these two kids. My brother was a five-year-old son, obsessed with his Star Wars guys and me. I was two years old. My first freckles were showing through, and you know, had a bowl cut too, just like John Lennon.

Well, one morning, early in the morning, my mom was working as a psychiatric aid in hospital. She just driven down to work at like 7:00 AM in the morning and my dad had played a gig the night before. He had stayed out late, so he was still asleep upstairs in the house. He had almost finished building. The project was almost done. 

He says the laundry room had some finished carpentry left to do, a couple things here and there, and there was like this big pile of clothing waiting to be folded in there. You know, family-style where you've got the big normal adult clothes and then all the little weirdly shaped little baby and kid garments you can imagine.

Well, he was woken up early in the morning by a high-pitched hissing sound. He got up and he walked his sleepy feet down the stairs of the house. Following that sound, he walked down into the main room of the house that he had just built, and his body coming into that room, sent a swoosh of propane that had been leaking from under the door of the hot water heater back underneath that door where it was pushed up to the level of the pilot light and exploded.

He was thrown across the room and when he opened his eyes, the room was on fire. He got himself up, he started trying to hose it down. He just couldn't put the fire out with the amount of water pressure that he had, and he looked over at the laundry pile and he saw those pieces of clothing start to go up, and they knew it.

He knew he had to get out, so he ran up the stairs and there's this legendary moment. Where he looked across the room at his 65 Stratocaster and he made a choice. He kept running up the stairs, got me under one arm. He got my brother under the other arm, and my dad got us outside to safety and then he ran back inside for his guitar.

But there he is, my dad outside the house watching the home that he built from the ground burn up. And my mom got the call at work from our closest neighbors. My dad had made it down there. They were about a half mile away, and as she drove back up this windy desert town highway, she was stuck behind a slow truck and saw a column of dark black smoke rising from the mountaintop.

There was only one house there on that mountaintop, and it was hers when she got home. She helped my dad get into the helicopter to be life-flighted to the hospital, and as it prepared to take off, they share this memory of a bank of fog lifting, and they saw the roof of their house collapse. My mom had two small children, a part-time job, only the clothes on her back and a lot of uncertainty about whether her husband would be okay.

My dad spent the next year healing his body that had been burned, and they rebuilt their life from nothing. And then as they did that rebuilding. My dad rebuilt the house on the same spot. It was a little bit different this second time, and about 20 years later there was some high-country electrical fires.

They had lived there in that second iteration of the house for 20 years, and I got a call from my parents. I was living up in the Bay Area and my parents said it had burned down again. The house was gone. Burned down for a second time. When I went to my parents' house a few months after that second event, there was a tapestry hanging on the wall and a card sitting on my mom's desk.

They said, the barn has burned down. Now I can see the moon on the card. The tapestry said, “we have to let go of the life we have planned to embrace the life that's waiting for.” I just remember time slowing down a little bit for me in that moment. My parents had recreated this life after losing everything that they had built twice, and they're going through this incredible loss, and my mom was still orienting her mind around the life that was waiting for her. 

Now what's new that she could, see? Where's the moon? They quite literally had built a barn the second time that my dad used as a music studio, and it had burnt down, and she was looking for the moon. And my dad, as they rebuilt this life again, he rebuilt the house a third time on the same property. I get you not, and it was different.

Again, each iteration was different, and that is the legend from our family. So, we all have the stories of our past, of our own lived experience, the legends that we inherit and hear from our family and our cultures, and we all get to decide what we make our past mean.So, here's what I choose to take from this legend.

I choose that my parents have been able to envision and create house three times on the same piece of land because their interior land, their ability to be in a moment, process their experience and keep going. That's something that they have cultivated over time, and because their inside is so strong, their ability to witness their thinking, manage their emotions, and choose nothing that happens on the outside world is stronger than that internal land that they've cultivated.

I mean, my dad could easily have decided it was not meant to be, or that he wasn't meant to build houses at all, but he didn't. His inside world was stronger than what happened outside of him, and he made a choice. The reason I tell this beautiful story of these incredible two people is that making that choice is the first step for all of us.

When we have an idea for something we want to change or create or do in the world before we get into action, our first step is to cultivate the resilience that it'll take for the idea that we have to go through iteration, after iteration to maybe burn to the ground and erase all our progress. 

It's the first step, and it's also a daily practice to prioritize our mental and emotional resilience, our vision for what we want the world to look like after our idea is out there, and we have to be more resilient than what's happening outside of us. It has to be more resilient than creating an external image of ourselves that looks good, or an external image of our project that looks good and that the outside world can see. Because we're taught that what the outside world can see is more important than the internal world that we're experiencing. And I want to challenge that today and offer to you that it is as important to focus in and to tend the land inside of us.

It is a balance, the two of them, to tend the outside land and the inside land. And the stronger our inside land is, the stronger the outside will be. 

So, here are some examples of what I mean … what, the heck do I mean by the land outside versus the land inside, and then what we can about it? 

So, let's say you're thinking about an idea for something you want to change in your life, in your career, in relationships in yourself, in who you are, or something you literally want to conceive of and create and put in the world.

So, you've got this beautiful image for what you're envisioning in your head. You can just imagine what it would be like if this idea were a real thing. And the first thing your brain's going to want to do is to meet expectations. 

So, as we create a vision for what we want, our brains are wired to make that vision look like what we think people are expecting to see from us, what people want to see from us or what we're supposed to do, and that is normal, because we want to be accepted by the crowd. That's how we have evolved, is to not want to be rejected by the crowd, and our brain extrapolates, that us sharing an idea that's new and different might put us at risk of that. 

So, we are taught to want what other people want, what we think other people want to see, instead of looking deep inside us to see what we think and what we want and what we can imagine that may not resonate with what's already out there.

So, tending the land inside of us requires us to notice when we're trying to meet what's expected of us and tap back to ask what we want, what we think, and I'll talk more about that in the next episode about desire and how to cultivate the fire of that juicy wanting that we have. 

So that's the first thing. Your brain is going to want to meet expectations. And the second thing is that your brain is going to want approval. We all do from a very young age. 

So, okay, you got this idea for what you want and maybe you're excited about it and you start to share it. You're going to get a dopamine hit when people hear your idea and they like it right away, they're going to be like, “girl, you're on track,” and you're going to want to keep going on that track.

That's what we do. We'll begin to share more of the parts of the idea that people like and shave off and share less of the parts that people don't respond to, and you know, we do this really unconsciously, so we're not even aware that we're sculpting and augmenting an idea that matches what is being affirmed outside of us.

And let's think about that for a moment. Why do people think we're on the right track? Well, it's because what you're saying or sharing immediately resonates. We get an immediate reward when we share creations and ideas that resonate with what people have seen before, and as we follow those signifiers of approval, and we're going to start shaping what we're creating by doing more and more of what's familiar to people and less and less of what's coming from our unique brain.

Less and less of what's unique and new and different, because new and different requires that we do the harder work and the pretty consistent work of believing in our ideas ourselves before anybody else can get what we're up to and doing that reinforces us doing things that replicate the status quo and what already exists.

So, the third thing that we're going to do, we're going to want to meet expectations and get those hits of approval for all the dopamine that our lizard brain loves. And the third thing is that we're going to have our own reactions and thoughts and feelings along the way. We'll be reactive, often fear-based.

We'll repeat our old patterns unless we can stay aware along the way of what's happening in our minds and our bodies. As we put ourselves and our ideas out there, we got to train ourselves to notice what we're thinking and feeling so that we can choose to override those automatic thoughts and feelings that are fear-based and that are not helpful to getting our idea out in the world, and to encourage the thoughts and feelings that are going to fuel our creation coming into real life.

And y'all, the outside's going to be pinging us like a text message ping, like all of the automatic pings that we have, and we get so used to things outside of us asking for our attention. And we are socialized and acculturated to respond right away to the things around us needing our attention. Don't get me started on that.

You do not need to answer a text right away until you want to. But also, let's just think about, the outside world is doing that right? And we have to discipline ourselves or practice tapping into the internal world with the same balance, with the same importance.

Focusing in is a practice and a habit, so balancing that awareness of input from the outside, with an awareness and attention to our inner world, it's hard. We got to tap back in. 

But here's what I offer to you … when we turn inward and we really begin to ask ourselves and understand what we want, who we are, what we can create, what is our desire, and when we unleash it even a little bit, all of the outside world will flow and bloom in a more incredible way than it ever has.

So, tending that interior world, the land inside of us is actually the thing to do that will create the outside results that we want in a much more effective, real lasting, and most importantly, amazing-feeling way. 

So, whether your idea is a habit you want to change, a big move you want to make in your life, or literally an idea for something that you want to create and put out there, tapping into your inner world with as much attention as tending that outside land is the place to start. 

So, let's talk about one thing you can do this week to tend the land inside of you. This is fun, y'all. This is like playground homework because there is a whole playground inside of you. There is all of this energy inside of you that you can tap into.

I remember when I was a little girl, maybe like seven or eight, I remember lying on my bed and just creating this buzz. It was like a train of energy that I would just shoot around my body. It was like blue light, and I would shoot it around and I would lie there and giggle and move the energy around my body in a way that felt like I was on a playground.

I remember just lying there looking around the room and watching the way a piece of paper I had taped to the wall curled off of it in this beautiful way. I was just loving being a human in a room, in a body, zipping my energy around. And then, you know, we move on, we grow up and there are all the things competing for our attention outside those pings.

All the things ping that we need to do and ping that we need to take care of and ping all the things we should be noticing and should want, and ping all the expectations that other people have, and ping all of their reactions that they're having the signifiers for the they approve or not. And we stop naturally noticing that energy inside of us.

Often, we stop tuning in and tapping into the energy that's lighting up our alive. It's animating us, but we can practice the opposite. Now, when I meditate, I don't follow an app or someone else's directions. I just try to do what I did when I was eight. I feel like that's the smartest, wisest instruction manual that any of us can have been that of an eight-year-old.

I just create that buzz of energy and shoot it around my body, make it fun. I make it light like a playground because that's a match for who I am. For me, it's got to be light, it's got to be fun. And then I bring that energy of loving, buzzing, play into my day with me when I'm doing my work, I follow that energy around as I'm coaching clients or doing public speaking or training. 

I ask myself: can I feel that feeling I had when I was a girl of the joy of looking around the room and seeing the beauty of a piece of paper curling off the wall? I may be working or leading or parenting, but I ask myself, am I in this experience right now? And if not, how can I be more in it? How can I bring that little buzz of aliveness to more and more moments in my day? 

I don't know how to name it, but I know how to be in it, and I know when I'm in it, I'm aligned with what I value, who I am. What I believe and the way I want to spend these precious moments in my life when I'm recording a podcast, or writing an email to y'all, if I feel like I'm trying too hard to say it right, I will not use it. I'll throw it out. Pretty stubborn about that. Pretty stubborn about a lot of things. 

I used to do my work all day trying to do it right, and now I start over if I'm trying to get it right, trying to say the right thing in a conversation with someone. Or in my work, and instead I reorient and go back to a place of service, playfulness and just being real.

So the first thing that you can do to tend the land inside of you is to play. You can tap into the energy that's actually animating you and get curious about it. What does it feel like? Only you can know. What memories do you have of the moments when you felt most buzzy with life? Where were you? Hiking in the mountains somewhere in the world, swimming in the ocean, talking to a child, maybe just sitting in a bedroom like I was staring at the wall. 

What makes you feel the most alive? Think of it, and then generate that feeling of buzz of energy and play with it as much as you can. You can do it for one second, five seconds, five minutes, an hour, however long you want, but you could just call it in, in a moment right now, anytime you can during the day, how can you tap into that animating energy of a aliveness in as many moments as you can?

Let it be like a wildfire for you this week. Clearing space for something.

This is the first step to tending the land inside as our attention is constantly pinged and rewarded by outside affirmations, feedback, expectations, all the things. When we want to make an ideal reel, it's up to us to listen to our own inner experience as attentively to tend that land inside, just as often as we're reacting to the world outside. That is actually the thing that will make all of those outside things bloom. 

So that's what I got for you today, and next week we'll talk about what you want, about how to find out what you want and separate what you want from what you think you're supposed to want, and how to light up that wild desire so it can fuel what you want into becoming.

That's what I've got for you today, my beautiful friends, and I will see you next week.

Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.