Claim Your Awesome

Powerful Insights From a Month of Intentionally Slowing Down

• Jessica Hook • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Imagine freeing your mind, slowing down, and truly savoring every moment of your life... Sounds dreamy, right? Well, this week, I'm sharing my journey of doing just that. I took a four-week hiatus from the podcast, embraced stillness, and discovered a profound connection with my essence and the universe. The revelations from this period were life-changing and offer a fresh perspective on growth, expansion, and abundance that shatter the narrow constructs of our ego-centric ambition.

I'll guide you through the incredible process of manifestation using the vibrational frequency of gratitude and intuition. We'll unlock the secrets to taking consistent action, leading to a rewarding and enjoyable life. Trust me, you don't want to miss this!


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Speaker 1:

Hi guys, it is so nice to be back. I had to take a bit of a hiatus from the podcast at the end of the summer. My kids were done with camp but school hadn't started yet and I was also running a six week group program that I was creating a lot of content for and I just wanted to be super intentional about my time and enjoy the summer. So I just gave myself permission to do just that and really take some time off, do the things that I needed to do, but not feel like I needed to be doing all of the things I've shared on the podcast before how literally life changing and powerful it is to slow down, and that's exactly what I want to dive into today. I had some really incredible insights and shifts and downloads that came through in just the four weeks that I took off of the podcast, and these insights happen because I chose to slow down, and I really want that to be what the message today here is. At least, to start off is, when you prioritize slowing down, invite more intention, ease, joy and abundance. Everything just actually gets so much easier when you go in it with that intention, because really manifesting anything you desire starts with slowing down. It's about connecting to your essence, hearing your own inner wisdom and then trusting yourself to take inspired and aligned action, and that cannot be done when you're living on autopilot, right Stuck on the hamster wheel. So let's break free of that and start experiencing the life you came here for, okay. So I always say, if you want to go fast, slow down. Can you get to your desired goal in the constant hustle, of course, but it will inevitably lead you to burnout or worse, leading you to a goal that actually isn't even aligned with your bigger vision of your life or your soul's purpose. So this leads me to my first insight from the past month Slow down, to go fast, is not just about achievement.

Speaker 1:

It's about growth and expansion. So when you prioritize and be intentional about slowing down, you can actually hear your own inner guidance, your intuition, and this is beyond wise. This is your essence guiding you, and your essence is connected to God, the universe, life's energy, your highest being the oneness of all things. However, you perceive that that lives inside each and every one of us. It knows the desires of your heart and it wants to show you the way, but it can't show you the way when you're just stuck on autopilot. When you're not listening, when you're not tuning in, you can't hear that guidance. So you literally have pure consciousness showing you the way to everything that you want, right? But often we cannot hear that or we unconsciously let the ego, the mind, run the show.

Speaker 1:

Instead, when you consciously choose to slow down, with the intention of opening yourself to receive that guidance, opening yourself up to fully trust and surrender to the energy of life, you grow, your consciousness expands and the achievement which I have put in air quotes is greater than you ever imagined. It is bigger than the limiting constructs of the ego. And that is when you finally see and experience the magic. Because right now, if you're trying to create something from the ego, from the mind, that view is so limited. That view is based on any past experience, your current reality, anything that you know to be true in this moment. But life is so much bigger, so much more powerful. You are so much more capable. There are all of these things conspiring to work in your favor that the mind cannot make sense of. So trying to construct an outcome from the mind alone is gonna be so much harder and not even give you the same amazing, beautiful outcome, an outcome bigger and better than you ever could have realized. If you just surrender to that and I get it slowing down is so freaking hard.

Speaker 1:

In the past I would have had such a hard time with this. Even if I slowed down. I would constantly be thinking I need to be doing, I should be recording my podcast, I should just stay up late and get work done when the kids go to bed. My mind is so good at trying to motivate me into action. It's so good at motivating all of us into action, or I should say, trying to motivate all of us into action and again, using air quotes around motivate, because it just doesn't work. And I can tell you this and you can take an assessment or look at something that you want to do, something that you feel like you need to do or should do, a goal you have. Do you beat yourself up about needing to go to the gym? Or beating yourself up about your body should be different. How is that working out for you? Really ask yourself and be super honest right, there's no judgment. I can almost guarantee it's not working all that well, if at all.

Speaker 1:

So again, when you slow down, when you quiet the mind, you can connect to that deeper part of you that knows that is way wiser than the brain, that can guide you in a profound and actually quite easy way. And isn't that something we all want? More eat. So how can you start to do this? How can you start to slow down? And it starts with giving yourself permission to do so, even if you haven't experienced this for yourself and you're still buying into the belief that fast is better, doing more is better, going, going going is better. Right, like how can I get to my goal faster? Or simply like there's no time to slow down. These are all beliefs and stories that you're telling yourself. So can you give this a try this week? Maybe you give yourself permission to slow down for one day, for a couple of days, for a week again. Just get curious and playful. See if this is something that you can just try. You don't have to be married to it, right. So can you give yourself permission to slow down, to quiet the mind and intentionally connect? And when you slow down, when you quiet in mind, when you allow yourself to just be, you naturally connect. I don't want you to think it's some hard thing, that you have to go searching for this thing deep inside you. To connect to it is not that hard, it is not that complicated. Just be open with it, be open to receiving, just be open to the experience.

Speaker 1:

And maybe this is as simple as starting your day with intention. Right, choose an intention that actually means something to you. Maybe your intention that you set in the morning is to feel more peace and ease. Maybe it's to witness the joy and magic of the day, to see the evidence of abundance in your life. Whatever it is, start there. It literally will take you two minutes. Take some deep breaths, connect to the present moment, feel the energy in your body and set your intention for the day. Literally, starting your day in this way consistently will start to positively impact your day, your life, your mood, everything way faster than you even realize. And then you'll be like hungry for more, like it feels so good to feel good. How can I get more of this?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this leads me to my second major insight that I had over the past month, and if you cannot tell, ease is huge for me. One of my personal ongoing intentions is let it be easy. I love ease. It feels so good to me. I'm always open to receiving more ease in my life. It's a huge value of mine and I've done a lot of inner work to really embody ease and it's really become more of a natural state for me, which I love. But I will you know when I just add that I am still a human. I'm not perfect. I'm not walking around just like floating on a cloud all the time right things still come up. But I have come such a long way in my own journey around this, just going from so overwhelmed, so stuck in like overthinking and stressed out, to just feeling really so much later and so much more at ease and so much more content and it really is just a beautiful place to be in and I'm so happy about that and it goes really beyond me. I think that's really what motivated so much of my own work, because I'm like, oh my gosh, just feel so good. I want other women to realize that they can have this to, that they can experience this in their life as well.

Speaker 1:

So I was reflecting on this idea of ease and when I first started to really experience ease on like a whole different level in the things that have happened as a result, I was just getting really curious about how it kind of all unfolded and I was just being very reflective and thoughtful about the you know, about the whole process and I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but before I started kind of my own journey into personal development and into meditation, that sort of thing. We were at the start of the pandemic. I had two young kids at home. It was a high stress, high emotion environment. There was not an iota of ease in my body in those moments. And yet, even though all the things in my you know, external world were not allowing ease, through meditation I discovered that it is not our external circumstances that give us ease, but it's our internal state that creates what we perceive in our physical reality Right. So through meditation I was able to connect to the ease that comes with being so connected to consciousness, to God, to my higher self, to the universe. You can insert whatever word that you want, but in that connection going inward, slowing down, getting quiet, connecting I found that the ease is already inside of me, it's already inside of you and once you access it there, you're no longer dependent on the external circumstances to give you that, so sure you could say well, no, when I'm at the beach. I am at ease and I would say, maybe, maybe not. Maybe for you, yes, maybe not for someone else. Right, I'm not sure if I shared this story before, but some friends and I rented this gorgeous house in Mexico when we were in our mid 20s.

Speaker 1:

It came with a private chef, a driver, even a pool boy. We weren't making any money, but my now husband wanted at an auction for half the weekly rate. So we were able to afford it. And when I was there, I found a journal of the owner's wife and she describes how miserable she was. She was unhappy and unfulfilled and I just couldn't understand it. From what I could tell, she had it all. What was there to be unhappy about? Right, we create our internal suffering and that affects our reality, our day, how we show up for our life and, ultimately, what we are able to manifest. What I realized is that ease is the best emotional state for manifestation.

Speaker 1:

When I started to experience more ease, I started to experience more abundance. That was even what I initially named my business abundance with ease, because the abundance came easily. And let me be super clear that abundance is a state, it's a feeling, just as in my Mexico story. You can have all of the things, all of the physical, you know things, all the things that money can buy, and still not feel abundant, as I'm sure many of you are well aware of. But this is what I got wrong and this is the huge insight I had over the past month. It isn't abundance with ease, it is abundance because of ease. And I want to say it again because I want it to be super clear it isn't abundance with ease, it's abundance because of ease.

Speaker 1:

Tap into the energy of ease and see how things start to positively shift in your life, because isn't that what you want at the end of the day to experience more ease, right? We think more money equals more ease, right? So ease is almost always this emotional state that we want to get to right. Even freedom equals ease, right? So how do you start to tap into this emotional state? I want you to start by imagining something that you want as already being done.

Speaker 1:

So say you want a promotion, you get the promotion, and now you can relax. Maybe you, you know, let your shoulders come down, just breathe a huge sigh of relief. Sure, you're excited and you know, you're so proud of yourself for getting that promotion, but you're just happy, it's over, right, you're like, happy to be on to the next thing. Now you can just live with this new promotion. Now you can just live as this new person of you that has this promotion and you feel at ease. Practice this, embody this. That is what will help you with your manifestations. Right, and you can do this with any goal. And again, the better you get at this, the more natural it gets, and that's what you'll find. The really fun part is, the more you practice this for your manifestations, you actually are going to just naturally feel more ease in your day, because now you have your intention set on ease. So, because of the law of attraction, you're going to just naturally attract more ease into your day. So it's a total win-win all around.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so here's my third and last major insight from the past month and in slowing down, I had this thought that I really wanted to dive into really understanding why gratitude worked so well for me when it came to my own weight loss journey. I talk about this a lot. I talk about the power of gratitude and how it did help me along my weight loss journey, but I was really just wanting to reflect on it more because I've used gratitude in other ways and maybe haven't had as much of a result, or other people don't find gratitude to be quite as powerful for them when it comes to manifesting. Side note, I will say gratitude is always a powerful, powerful emotion to connect to, just to start experiencing more joy, more abundance, really just like seeing the blessings that already exist in your life. Starting your day in gratitude is always a powerful way to start your day. Okay, I wanted to be clear about that because I didn't want anyone to think that I'm saying that gratitude doesn't work. Gratitude is so important, really, if you're especially just getting into manifestation or if you're just getting into the law of attraction, where it's really about positive thoughts attract positive things into your life. Right, gratitude is huge there. But what I'm specifically talking about is how gratitude really helped me manifest losing my baby weight, and I definitely have shared this story before, but I want to just briefly share it for context.

Speaker 1:

So I've never been good about working out or keeping a consistent routine when it comes to exercise and eating healthy. I was really struggling to lose my baby weight and I kept telling myself I'm going to eat better, I'm going to start working out, but I just wouldn't. And, honestly, this has been my pattern like my whole life, and I would really beat myself up about it. I would beat myself up about not taking action and I felt really bad about myself because I really did want to lose the baby weight. Like I wasn't feeling like good in my own skin. I really really desired getting healthier, and so this cycle would just continue, right, like beat myself up, not take action, beat myself up, still not take action. And again, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, right, it doesn't work. Like the brain thinks that in beating ourselves up, it motivates us, but it doesn't work. Maybe there are some people out there where that works for them, but from my experience for me the clients that I've worked with it does not work and it definitely doesn't work long term.

Speaker 1:

So, shortly after I started meditating, I was getting in the shower one morning and this is where the power of meditation, the power of tuning in, listening to your inner guidance, this is where it kind of comes full circle. So, instead of judging my body and judging myself, I got this intuitive hit. I had this voice saying what if you just show your body some love? Right? What if you just weren't so hard on yourself? So I started showering my body with gratitude, thanking it for how strong and healthy it is, for all it has done for me, and in that moment something completely switched inside my subconscious mind and it was almost as if immediately, I desired working out and nourishing my body with healthy foods. And I say this immediately. I wish I could remember a little bit more. Maybe I did this for a few mornings, but I promise you when I tell you that this switch happened for me seemingly immediately. It wasn't like I did this one morning and then a month later, I started working out. It was like it was very quick and Ultimately, I still have this workout routine. I still eat relatively healthy, even though I had a few extra drinks this summer than I normally do, but overall, I have been able to stick with this routine in a way that I never, ever have been my entire adult life, and that is like no small feat.

Speaker 1:

So the emotion of gratitude vibrates at a high energetic frequency, which makes it powerful for manifestation, but in this exact circumstance, it was so powerful for me because I was able to use gratitude to activate my higher self in a way that felt believable. So let me explain this If you just stood in the mirror looking at your body that was out of shape, you probably don't love it or feel good in it and you try to say affirmations like I am fit, I am strong, I am healthy, I love my body, et cetera. It's not going to work because your subconscious mind does not believe it and your energetic vibration cannot be faked or forced. So you can't feel love for your body by saying an affirmation that you don't actually believe or connect with. So this is where gratitude is so powerful. So the reason in this moment my subconscious mind was able to get on board with this belief is because I truly was grateful. I remember in that moment, tears welling up in my eyes, being so grateful for the babies I carried, a nurse, being able to have the health and energy to care for them. Today it was all true and my emotional state of gratitude matched that. There was no faking or forcing that because, again, you can't fake or force energy. So manifesting doesn't just mean that the pounds literally disappeared overnight, right, and this is the third part of this equation, in where the magic really happens.

Speaker 1:

So in doing this, I activated my reticular activating system. So the reticular activating system, or RAS for short, is a network of neurons that sit in the brainstem. The RAS has a powerful filter that helps with focus and goals. Have you ever wanted to get a new car and you start thinking a lot about that car that you wanna get, maybe even a specific color, and then you start seeing it everywhere. You can thank the RAS for that. So I like to think of the RAS as the evidence finder and, in this case, as I reprogram my brain with my new truth of having a strong, healthy body.

Speaker 1:

The RAS gets to work. It filters out things that don't matter and focuses on what does. Hence, my deep sugary cravings pretty much went away overnight and I was actually excited to sweat my butt off each morning at 4 am. Like what? That was definitely not me, but it was now. I had tapped into my higher self, that version of me that was healthier, more energetic, stronger, fitter, how she felt, how she showed up for herself, the choices she made and that made it easy. It all became easy, and that is the real power of manifestation. It gets to be so much easier.

Speaker 1:

I've said this before. It's not that working out is necessarily that hard, like yes, I think everyone would say, oh, it's not super fun, it is actually hard work, but when you get into it you feel really good. You feel really good afterwards. It energizes you. The hard part is not doing it and then beating yourself up. The hard part is not living your most healthy, vibrant life for years and years and years because you're stuck in this pattern of not showing up for Yourself and your goals. That's the hard part. So this is where the power of manifestation comes into play to make the achievement of your goals so much easier and really just a heck of a lot more fun, because when you're showing up for yourself, when you're being consistent, when you're taking action, you feel so good, there's so much satisfaction in that and that is so much freaking fun.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I know I said that that was my third and final insight, but as I was writing up the notes for this podcast, I was reflecting on the different points that I wanted to share today and what came to my mind was wow, these are all things that I had been reflecting on for a while, wanting to get more insight, on wanting to share more insight with you and, again, because I intentionally chose to slow down, the answers were able to come to me, or I was able to do the work, focus on finding the evidence, like I mentioned right, using that reticular activating system to find the evidence, the answers to these questions, and so this really, truly is the final insight, and it's really that it's quite simple. Ask your intuition, whatever you want, guidance on whatever you want, clarity on wherever you want, focus. You are so much more powerful than you're giving yourself credit for because simply by slowing down, by tuning in everything that you want, an answer on you will be given. Just practice this muscle, tune into your intuition and have a little bit of fun with it. You may not hear it the first time or the second time, or sometimes you do hear it, but the brain doesn't want to listen to it. Right, it might not be the answer that you want to hear, but you have so much more power and if there is anything that I want anyone to take away is all of you have this ability inside of you. You have the ability to manifest the most beautiful life, to create and do and be anything that you want, and you're worthy of that, you're deserving of that, it's available to you, it's yours Okay.

Speaker 1:

So just set those intentions, practice slowing down, practice tuning in, practice connecting, and just start to see how things start to shift for you, in your favor. Because when you do that, when you set the intention that life is always working out for you, you will see that in fact, it absolutely is Okay. So I'm so excited to be back. October is my birthday month, so I always feel extra energized and invigorated in the fall around this time of year. I always say that this is like my new years, which I mean obviously, technically it is, it's the beginning of your birth year, but I feel way more ready to be in action and taking courageous steps, more so now than come January 1. I'm not really a huge New Year's resolution person, so yeah, so I'm just saying that I'm happy to be back and, as always, reach out with questions, comments. I love to hear from you and I hope you have a beautiful day and I'll see you next week.