Self-Trust in Action

In this solo episode, Ashley shares what shifted after stepping away from social media, why space is essential for creativity, and how self-trust becomes the foundation for real growth.

From redefining core values to building something new, this episode explores what it means to move forward with intention— even when it’s messy.

Ashley also opens up about:

•  The five core values currently guiding her decisions 
•  Why constant visibility can disconnect you from your voice 
•  The truth about building something from the ground up 
•  How her perspective on her parents and her own story is evolving 
•  Why you might be the thing holding yourself back 
•  And what it actually looks like to protect your energy, your work, and your life 

If you’ve been feeling stretched thin, questioning your direction, or trying to force something that doesn’t feel right, this episode is a reset.

Key takeaway: Growth is self-trust in action.

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Further Forward: Honest Conversations on the Art of Becoming, is hosted by Ashley Mitchell. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Further Forward Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley Mitchell, and thank you for tuning in to this solo episode. So much to talk about. So many things going on. Number one, I'm just happy to be back in front of the camera on the microphone. I took a little bit of time for myself last week. I was starting to feel heavy and compressed and um spread thin. And so I decided to not publish anything, Substack, podcast, nothing online. I took a big break mostly from my phone. I didn't have any conversations that I didn't absolutely need to have. And everything was just very, very low-key. I was just trying to recover a bit of my personhood, certainly my creativity. It feels for me in my body like in order to be creative, in order to keep producing, in order to be honest, to see myself, to see others. I need space. I need time to wander. I need time to move through the world with no expectations around timing or output. You know, I just sometimes just need a switch of energy. It doesn't have to be long, but it just has to be present, right? And I know that about myself. And so I took that space before everything crashed and burned last week. Um I it also made me think, you know, every time I take a break from social media, I feel like a completely different person. It feels like, and I shit you not, it feels like my brain restores itself. Like something happens to my whole being that changes how I wake up and face each day. And it occurred to me, um, you know, that it's, it's, it's like, it's almost like a grift. And I'm not saying that I'm getting off of any platform. It certainly is helpful. It's helpful sometimes for work. It's helpful to keep in touch with people. And but the level at which we are on and scrolling and mindless is not helpful. And that's where I feel like it's a little bit of a grift or a scam because we've created this urgency. We've created uh this need to be visible. Uh, we've created this space where we're all trying to be heard on all kinds of things. And again, it has its high points, but it also has very, very low points. And I realize that a lot of us are, you know, waking up every day and vying for attention. And I'm like, whoa, this doesn't feel right. I'm not trying to win an algorithm. I'm trying to live my life with integrity. So I have to sometimes go back. What does that actually look like? How does that require me to show up? And quite frankly, if there's nothing to say, if there's nothing to share, if there's nothing that's overflowing from my well, then I need to just say nothing. And I need to be okay with it. Algorithm be damned. Uh, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know, I don't know what else to say about it. Uh, a couple weeks ago, I was working on my core values. It's something I haven't done in a little bit, but I was reading a book and it was talking about core values, and I was like, you know what? I need to go down this list. And I started with 17 words that resonated with me. And then I went through, and you know, a lot of the words are interrelated, and especially, you know, you're doing this for you. So if a word feels similar to me, um like being brave and being courageous, right? I'm gonna pick the one that most resonates with me.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And so I started with this list of 17 and I broke it down to five: health, growth, mastery, meaning, and service.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Those are those are the guiding principles with which, at least for now, right? They are likely not going to be my forever words as I ebb and flow through this life, as I grow, as I change. But for right now, these are gonna be the guiding principles. These are going to be how I can create boundaries, right? Boundaries isn't always necessarily putting up a wall around your life, letting no one in. It's it's what am I saying yes to? What is it gonna cost me? What am I saying no to on the other side in order to make this yes happen? And then the the layer underneath that is, right? What are you measuring that up against? And that for me is, you know, the it's the set of core values. Does it contribute to my health or well-being? Is it making me healthier? Is it helping me grow? Is it helping me find mastery in the crafts that are important to me? Does it create meaning in my life and allow me to create meaning in the world? And is it connected to being of service in some way? So if you haven't done that for yourself, gonna recommend, gonna encourage gently, and reach out if you're looking for some resources. But if you type in core values into Google, it's gonna give you a list of words that you can choose from. Most recommendations are gonna tell you to choose three to five words, right? If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. So you have to whittle it down to something small enough where it's meaningful. Um, so a couple of other things. One, this movement class that I've been building, that I've been working on, we finally had that workshop a few Sundays ago. It was called Move with Your Body. And I really wanted a space for women to do Pilates Fusion. So my iteration of that is Matt Pilates and strength training. To do that work, to be in community, to journal, to uh have a little group share at the end. One, because that's the container in which I've grown and healed movement, journaling, conversation, these trusted relationships, being in rooms where I feel safe, safe enough to be free, safe enough to fail, safe enough to be authentically me. And the second part of that is we get into these routines with our movement, right? And sometimes it's hard to get out of our own way and to try new things and to move in new ways. And I really wanted as many members of my community as possible, as many women as possible to be in the room and experience something different in their bodies. Experience something that's connected to the pelvic floor, experience something that's connected to breath and spaciousness, just as much as it's connected to vigor and you know, the like hard stuff that a lot of us are used to. And so it felt really good. Felt really good to be doing that work. And then the extension of that is that I have a cohort of um about 10 women who I will see once a week for eight weeks to do this work as well. And so stay tuned because who knows what will come out of it. But I feel very much like this is a moment for me. I'm sharing this with you because I know that there are a lot of other women who are also coming into their own in a different way, who are building things, who are taking up space, who are exploring what it means to have wealth, to have assets. Um, you know, like we're there are a lot of us who are not interested in anyone's fucking table scraps anymore. And so I share with you where I am and where I'm going because I want you to know that, you know, I've been in this industry for over 10 years now. And I am just now feeling comfortable enough and solid enough in my point of view, in what I've learned and am learning, to now put something out there and stand behind it. So it takes time. It's messy. You have to lean on your people. That room was filled with folks who have been riding with me for a long time now. And they trust me, and I trust them. So, so it's helpful to hear their feedback. This cohort was put together by a very good friend of mine who believes in me and who believes in my work and and wanted to sort of help me solve this part of the puzzle. So if you're in this, if fighting for your stuff to exist in the world, please keep going. Please lean on people who are in that same messy place or who are a little bit ahead of you, right? We don't need to be competing. I promise you, your point of view, your method, your lived experience, who you are in the world, how you treat people, that is so unique to you. You have to believe that it matters, that it means something, that people will be attracted to that, that people will pay you for that. And I'm I'm here for you. You know? But yeah, it's hard and it's messy. And I've had a lot of worry and a lot of tears and a lot of insecurity. A lot of stuff has come up. Um, but also the longer I engage with other founders, other people's businesses, other studios, no one knows what the fuck they are doing. Okay. This is the this is the real T. No one knows what they are doing. Everyone is just figuring it out piece by piece. And they're just in different parts of the journey. And no business is perfect. You know what I mean? It's not. There are people, there are shitty leaders running profitable businesses and really wonderful leaders running not profitable businesses. And it's so a part of my stuff is just like learning how to just move forward, just take it one step at a time. You know? Another thing is, uh I've been keeping a secret from almost everyone. Oh my dear goodness. So, part of why I need space and will be taking space in the coming months is because I've been working on something very special to me. Last year, I went to Krapallu to take a writing workshop. And this workshop was about telling your story. It was led by three female writers. It was a group of us women in a room doing different writing exercises to try to uncover what our stories are, what we want to write, whether that's memoir or creative nonfiction or potentially fiction, whatever. But it's it was designed to help us uh just sort of like parse through and mind through what that could look like through various exercises and conversations over the weekend. And I knew going into that that I wanted to write something having to do with me and having to do with my dad. And I didn't know quite how to put that together. And so leaving that workshop, I had a few tools in my tool belt. And you know I'm a journalist, so I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing. And then my wonderful husband, shout out to Mark, he surprised me one day with this um session with a writing coach. And so I talked to her and was like, you know, this was my experience. This was this was who my dad was. This is how I experienced him. This is, you know, how I've moved forward from uh my upbringing. This is what I've carried forward.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

This is what I want, the story that I want to tell folks. And she was like, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

So, y'all, I signed on to work with this coach and I have been working on a book.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Been working on a book. Like, how fucking cool is that?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

How and I I didn't want to say anything because again, going back to this culture of social media and and being online and being visible, I want to know how I feel about it first before I go running my mouth to anyone who will listen. I need to hear myself. I need to write the pages and sit with the pages. Is this something I want to share? Am I writing this for me? Am I writing this for someone else? What is what is happening, right? And coming out of that container with her, I'm really confident that this is something that I not only want to keep going with, but definitely want to publish, definitely want to tell this story. And if you are subscribed to my Substack, you've probably noticed that my writing over the last couple of months has been more memoir-esque. I've been telling more stories about my family, about my upbringing, and synthesizing it and talking about how that links to what I do now. So I've been leaving you little, little clues, girl. You didn't even know. Um so yeah, so this has been quite a process, and this is kind of the meat of what I want to share with you. Where do I even begin? I want to share what I've been learning writing this piece, writing this story. I've hinged a lot of my identity, a lot of how I move through the world, on the things that have happened to me, on the circumstances that I've lived through, on the parenting style of my parents. And what I've learned through writing this, I'm getting emotional, is that they are not the enemy. Not my mom, not my dad, not anyone else who helped raise me. Now that's not to say that I um I'm brushing past any trauma that I've survived. But I'm saying that through writing about my parents and through writing about and discovering more of who they were at that time, I realized that the picture was much more full. And also being a mother myself, it changes things because when you're in it, you realize how hard it is. You realize how you're always battling to move yourself forward, be a be a human in the world yourself while also tending to this other being and trying to be the best you can for them with the tools that you have. And 20 years from now, 30 years from now, when Zion turns to me and wants to know why I made this or that choice, or when he turns to me and says that I hurt him in this or that way. Number one, I want to be able to apologize. Number two, I want to be able to set context. And number three, I want to have these artifacts through writing, through this podcast, so that he understands who I was when I was raising him, what the context of the world was, what was happening, so that while he may not agree with certain choices that I've made or that Mark has made, hopefully he has the the maturity and the heart and the compassion to understand that there is no perfection in this, that you're just moving forward every day. And sometimes it's really messy and really ugly. And so the biggest change for me is that I don't see my mom or my dad as villains in my story, which has taken an incredible amount of emotional work, I will say. It's easy for me to say this in two minutes on a podcast, but it's been months of uncovering, and it's also been months of remembering all of the good, which also makes it complicated because this is shades of gray. There are a lot of incredible lessons and foundations and values that have made me this person.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

And then there are also a lot of things that I've had to fight against to make sure that I don't become who they were.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I do not identify in that way. I have certainly survived different types of abuse in my life, but I do not identify with being a victim. And I won't. And certainly through writing about my experiences, I know that I'm not. I've realized through writing that and not being a victim and and realizing how full we are as people. You know, I I needing help, needing guidance, needing support, it's nothing to be ashamed of. I've spent so much time building these incredible relationships. If I need someone, I'm gonna fucking tell them I need them. If I if I need help thinking through something, if I need a sounding board, if I if I need anything, please help me. Please help me solve this. And thank you so much, right? I'm not ashamed. I'm not embarrassed. I'm a human with needs. People need me, I am there. I need something, other people are there. Imagine. It's like a light bulb moment. The other thing is, what's what's holding you back may not be your circumstances. It might be you. We're always looking for something. This person didn't give me this, that didn't happen. I didn't get that job. This person broke up with me. This person doesn't want to be my friend anymore. Uh what any whatever.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Whatever. Shit happens. You can't let that hold you back. It's information. There have been so many things. So many things throughout the course of my life. Where I'm like

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Well, if that didn't happen, then I would be, or I could be, or this would be so much further along, or I wouldn't have suffered through that. And it's just like, well, tough shit, Ash. It happened. Right? So what now?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

What now? Don't be the one that continues to hold you back.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

The other thing, and this goes back to taking a break from social media. My work comes from me. So I have to protect me. It has nothing to do with being selfish. It has nothing to do with literally anyone else, right? Like, it's about honoring the self. We all have some unique gift. We all have some reason for being here. We all have something that we can offer the world. We all have something that no one else can do in the way that we do it.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And the more that we allow things to get in our way, the less we're going to be able to do our work. You have to protect yourself.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

No one's going to do that work for you. No one's going to give you space. No one's going to give you time off. No one's going to hand you anything. If it were true, I would be here to tell you. Right? I've tried. I've tried to wait for that. Again, it has nothing to do with being selfish. It has nothing to do with wanting to treat other people poorly. Both can exist. You can hold space for yourself. You can be responsible for yourself. You can be sovereign. You can be autonomous. And you can still, you know, be with your responsibilities and live a life of service and meaning and let people in and honor your relationships.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

It all exists. Growth is self-trust in action. Right? Growth is self-trust in action. This greater sense of trust allows for the forward momentum.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

It allows for the next step, the next thing. It allows you to be open to receive.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

It allows you the capacity to listen, to hold your boundaries. You don't fight with your eyes closed. You gotta see your target to hit it.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

So open your eyes and keep going. I'll talk to you next time.