If You Wanna Break Up With Your Partner, Do It Like THIS!

What if everything keeping you from lasting love is already happening inside you? Katherine Woodward Thomas, bestselling author and creator of Conscious Uncoupling, joins Sonya Love and Agon Love to unpack why so many people keep attracting the wrong partners no matter how hard they try. Katherine shares the raw personal story she never planned to tell and the turning point that changed everything. This is the conversation on love, healing, and calling in the one that you did not know you needed.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Most people don't know how to protect themselves from a traumatic breakup because it is one of the most stressful things that many of us will ever have to go through. And part of the problem is that they're bringing a lot of unfinished business into their search for love. You're not understanding how the patterns are happening through you and not just to you.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

How do people call in the one in today's times?

SPEAKER_02 0:21

The best way to find love, secure, long-lasting relationships.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

Wow. I need that to just lend because it's so true.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Catherine Woodward Thomas is a best-selling author and the creator of Conscious Uncoupling, a framework that changed how millions understand breakups, healing, and love.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

The last thing I ever thought I would teach would be love because my love life was a mess. My boyfriend left and married someone else. My parents disowned me, and I gained 50 pounds with an out-of-control eating disorder. I was so angry at life, I stopped praying. But then I said, I am so sick of living a loveless life. I refuse actually to live this life. If love isn't coming to me, I'm gonna bring it to other people.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

What is conscious uncoupling?

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Conscious uncoupling is basically a five-step process about how to break up with someone in a way that's really aligned with your own ethics as opposed to the overwhelming emotions, how to keep the kids really safe, how to protect your assets, how to stay in integrity, and how to turn post-traumatic stress of a breakup into post-traumatic growth so that you can count on yourself to never make those same mistakes again.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

In the past few years, the way people see love changed because of the way dating works and the new generations who are so closely tied to the dating apps. More and more people are starting to see a very big difficulty of calling in the one.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

How do people call in the one in today's times?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Well, it's probably even more important than ever to do calling in the one. Calling in the one is about being congruent within yourself and so aligned with the future that you are committed to creating, so living in integrity with that possible future, organized around that future, continually doing this process of letting go of who you've known yourself to be, for who you would need to be in order to be in a secure, happy, healthy, long-lasting relationship. So it's an inner journey. And once you have that inner congruence for that which you're wanting, you're much more able to manifest it. And part of the problem that people are having is that they're bringing a lot of unfinished business and a lot of old wounds into their search for love. So it's not only hard out here, it's hard in here. So it it kind of makes it even worse because you don't have good discernment about what it is that you're looking for. Um, you don't have self-awareness really of your own value and your worthiness, no matter how someone else behaves, where you can hold your own center and see that as information more about them than about you. Um, we don't have clarity on what exactly we're looking for because we're ambivalent about love. We've been hurt in the past, maybe we have wounds from our childhood that we're bringing into the search for love. So there's there's a lot of unfinished business and baggage that's really what I call the internal obstacles to love. So now, more than ever, do we need to clean our energy up, uh, get very clear about what it is that we're wanting to manifest and create. And when you do that, it's actually, you know, you find the needle in a haystack. Because even though there's a lot of, you know, players online or insincere people or even thieves are online, there's also really good people online. I met my partner online and I met my first, who I my husband, who I now affectionately call my husband. I love the husband. I love but I met him online too. And that's a crazy story. I have to tell you that story. That's really crazy.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

That story.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

The reason why I got into the love business, because I I never thought I always had this intuition that I'd be speaking to a lot of people. I've always been a spiritual person. I really thought I was going to be having some kind of spiritual teaching or something. The last thing I ever thought I would teach about would be love because my love life was a mess. And for years I really struggled with a pattern of unavailable people. And that looked like, you know, emotional unavailability. Maybe they were alcoholics or they were, you know, just struggling in their life, or they had mental mental health problems or whatever. But I also really had this thing for married people, which I'm so like horrified to say, but that's what my thing was. And so even like if I'd walk into a room and the room was filled with a hundred people and three of them were married, only the three people would hit on me. So it's just felt like like it was just happening to me. I had no awareness of how it was happening through me. And I desperately wanted to get married and have a child. So I went for years with going through um kind of a ping-ponging back and forth between being alone for months, sometimes years at a time, because I didn't want to give in to that pattern, or then I'd get entangled in some situation because it looked like he was leaving, or like whatever the situation was. So I had a lot of heartache in this area. And it was, it was, it was pretty consistent. I mean, you could go back to my childhood and see what happened in my childhood. My father left when I was young. He married somebody who would not allow me into their home. And so I always wanted, you know, to be the one that he chose as an adult, right? Like that's pretty classic psychological understanding.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Same story.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Okay. So the thing about understanding why you are the way you are is that it doesn't actually change anything.

SPEAKER_04 6:45

Yes. Thank you for saying that. A lot of people spend so much time on the story that they get wrapped up in the story. And without alchemizing it, it doesn't really help us.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Well, the key to manifestation is not being victimized by anything. And a lot of us are victimized by our own unconscious, by our own imprinting, the psychological imprinting. So we're, we're, we're at war with ourselves because we're trying to muscle over it. We're trying to figure out what do I do to fix this, to change this, and we're kind of living that, you know, compensation for it. But my fix it was don't date anybody, right? Be alone, which of course was horrible for me because I'm so relational. So that actually went on for years. And so that went on for a long time. But when I was 41, I had the good fortune of connecting with uh some folks who were doing a transformational work. So I'd done a lot of psychological work. I was already a marriage and family therapist. I'd done spiritual work since the age of 14, but nothing really shifted the pattern. I like to say that therapy can save your life, but it doesn't necessarily change your life. And it doesn't change until the patterns change. And sometimes if you just understand why you are the way you are, you're not understanding how the patterns are happening through you and not just to you. So that wasn't clear to me at the time. And but I did meet people who were creating intentions and then sourcing who they were being from the future backwards, meaning that they were on this journey to become then who they'd need to be in order for that future to happen, which is developmental. I mean, I kind of liken it to if you, you know, if you if you think of someone like a young person going to New York to be on Broadway. And so they're really lit up because they're taking acting classes and they're taking dance classes and speech classes. So the future hasn't happened yet, but the future's alive in them and they're living like it's so. So that's how these folks were being, they weren't, they weren't doing anything with relationship. They wanted about, you know, to to maybe double their income or buy their first house or whatever. But I called my friend Naomi from this group and I said, Naomi, I actually want to be engaged. Like, because I hadn't been engaged since I was like 16 from my high school boyfriend. We had a secret engagement. And then I had another one when I was 19 for like a minute that blew up. But I, and and all these years, like no one had ever asked me to marry them. And I just felt really kind of broken, like it was just somehow my destiny to be alone. And so I said to her, I really want to be engaged. And she really changed my life when she said, I'm gonna hold that intention with you and for you if you give me permission to hold you accountable for being who you need to be for that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

That's a friend. That's a good friend. Isn't that a great friend?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

That's a great friend. And that shifted my perspective. And so instead of running out to try and find love, I really every day I'd start envisioning in prayer. And I'd just sit on my meditation cushion and I'd do the best job I could at just trying to vision what it might feel like to be loved by a person that I chose, like a person I respected and valued. Like, what does it feel like to be heard, to be seen, to be organized around? Like, what is that? And I and I really wanted a child because I was 41. So I visioned the two of them together. I used to imagine, I remember on my meditation cushion, what might it feel like to be pregnant? And I'd never been pregnant. So I would imagine like waddling, you know, eight months, nine months pregnant through the kitchen, talking to my husband. And, you know, I mean, I I just let my imagined kind of imagination run wild. And then I asked myself three really important questions. Well, let's say four. The first one is who am I here? Who am I here? Because it's not the wannabe wife here. I'm chosen, I'm loved, I'm safe, I'm cherished, I'm happy, I'm healthy. Right? So then and to just try on the self of the future. And then I asked the universe three questions. First one was what will I need to give up in order to become who I'd need to be to have this happen? And I would just listen. And, you know, it's not like a burning bush experience, but anytime any of us ask ourselves that question, we kind of know. You know, maybe, you know, comfort eating late at night or isolating, or, you know, my little friend who comes over every Friday night that I know this is never gonna go anywhere, but I'm still kind of attached to that person. The next question: how will I need to grow in order to be ready for love when love appears?

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Oh, that's so important. When you call for something, you have to be ready when it comes in front of you. Because we like to say, we call this the window of opportunity. And it can be within the love or it can be with career or anything. Anything. When you call things in, it's almost like the what's the word, the Ouija board that you call ghosts. When they come in, don't get scared because you called them. It's the same with intentions. When you call them, you have to be ready because when they come and you're not ready, the next window of opportunity can open maybe in 10 years.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

If ever. If ever. If ever, truthfully, that's so brilliant. And the thing about love is it's actually the first line in lesson one of calling in the one. It's 49 days, 49 lessons. And the first line is so many of us do not have the love that we want because we're not yet who we would need to be in order to uh manifest and sustain that love over time. So the whole journey is about growth and development. And those of us who had a rough ride in childhood, which I did, and didn't learn healthy love, didn't see it modeled, and then didn't have good relationships with our early caregivers and had what we call attachment trauma, where you you had parents you couldn't really count on, so love became, you know, fragile, and then all sorts of personality things develop out of that. You know, codependence is just really at the core of the terror of being alone. That's what codependence is. You give your power away, your first attention is outside yourself because you're so anxious that people are gonna leave you. So you self-abandon all the time. But the core of that is I am alone and everyone always leaves me. And that part that self is about one year old, two years old. So when we talk about development, like who would I need to be, I'd need to be a sovereign self. I'd need to know what I feel at all times. I'd need to know my own needs, and I'd need to then know how to express them to another person. So the the moment you get off that meditation cushion, you already know your assignment for the day. Right. So, so you know, there's enough information about healthy love that all of us kind of know at our leaning edges, but we know it like an issue. I like to tell people your attachment style is not a tattoo. You don't diagnose an illness and then just say, oh well, you figure out what you need to do to take care of that illness to heal your body. So so when you when you say I have avoidant attachment, it basically means that early on in life my relationships were not safe.

SPEAKER_04 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

And when you have a pattern of a lack of safety, abusive relationships, or people blowing up relationships after you've gotten all invested in them or discarding you in a way that is kind of terrorizing. A lot of times we'll say, Well, I don't trust love because I've had so many bad experiences. But what we're really saying is I don't trust myself to navigate this well. So that's an invitation to development. How can I keep love safe? You know, people say, Is love safe? Well, I say, Well, is crossing the road safe? I don't know. If if you know how to look left and right, then yeah, it's safe. If you don't, no, it is not safe. So you have to know how to look left and right in relationship. You have to know a lot of the skills that you guys are bringing to everybody. It's such a beautiful service that you're doing. The last question before I get up is what's my next step? What can I do today to forward the conversation, to co-create the future I desire? So I'm not praying to God like God is some parent in the sky who I'm hoping will have a good day and take a shine to me and give me what I want. No, God is my partner. When we come to manifestation, God is my partner. How do I partner with God? Well, I ask this question: what can I do to forward the motion today? And there's always something. Clean out your space in your closet for that person to put their things, or call your mother and forgive her. For, you know, let go of the grudge you've been holding against her, or give up the rigidity of your story about your boss and make peace with that person. How about really get aligned with the mission of the company you're working for? You know, it's like it's so there's always something that you can show up and start growing yourself in the direction of that dream. So I'm doing this. I've set this intention. I'm doing this meditation every day. It's changing everything. Um, I did get a proposal. I told you I hadn't been proposed to for 19 years, but he wasn't really right for me because he didn't want children, and I did. So I turned that proposal down.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Was it difficult to turn it down? Because you were calling in engagement. I was. But the engagement came out. That's a good question. And you re-evaluated what engagement really means.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like 27, so 25 years later, right? So I'm telling it kind of flippantly, like, what did I actually have to go through? There's a lot of faith that you have to have, you know. That's it's I I call it fidelity to the future. And my visioning had a child in it. So, yes, it definitely was difficult. And I remember sitting with that inquiry for two weeks.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

I had to think about it for two weeks. So I'm sitting there, I'm doing all of this inner work. Life is radically changing. You know, a lot of times you know your issues for years, but other people aren't changing how they're showing up. Life isn't changing a whole lot. You start to do it this way, you start sourcing from the future, life changes quickly. All sorts of things change. So um, I'm I'm sticking with the process. My friend says to me, you need to get on the internet. This is 25 years ago, 26 years ago now. Nobody did the internet back then. It was a weird thing to do. But I'm, you know, I'm 68 now. So I I used to actually, thanks for looking surprised.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I mean, I mean you have age because I did research, but you forget about it when you look at the yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

You forget about it when you look at the person. So this is 1999. Not a lot of people were online yet. It was a new thing. So she gives me, and I did not want to do this because what I was gonna say is like 10 years before that I'd been doing, I did once the personal ads, and I didn't put one in in the paper, but I responded to one. He's actually a really nice person. But that's kind of, you know, that was like desperate back then to do that. So I was kind of embarrassed about doing that, even though it's a really good guy. But I was teachable, I'm coachable, I'm open. I have two girlfriends and this group, and they're all supporting me. And they're all, I'm accountable to all of them for being who I would need to be. So I'm coachable and I get online, and it was it's an it was a company that doesn't even exist anymore. And they had a quarter of a million people on it, and they had no pictures because it was before they had the technology for pictures. And I'm reading through the profiles, and one of them captivates me. And so I write to him, and then I went on to the next one. I was gonna respond to him, and the the um the internet crashed. My internet crashed. So I just responded to one person, and the next day when I went to my computer, uh, he wrote to me right into my uh inbox, my email inbox, and his name was in parentheses of his email handle. And it was a guy I had dated six years earlier, who I had thought of all that time as the one that got away, and I hadn't seen him in all that time. Wow. Out of a quarter of a million people. It was the first person I ever responded to. That's why I'm saying. So this goes back to your question about internet dating. You got to be magnetic so that the needle in the haystack finds you and you're not sorting through all that. So I got clear what I was standing for, and and I got willing to do whatever it would take to become that version of myself, even to the point where I turned down another man's proposal. I I read the Old Testament and I remembered that there's a story that Jacob wrestled an angel and grabbed onto that angel and said, I will not let you go until you give me a miracle. So I sometimes think of the ferocity of faith, you know, where you really have to be ferocious about it because life is filled with disappointments, even when it goes well, when it's going well. And if we if we don't have mastery over how we're perceiving our own disappointments and interpreting through the lens of our old wounds and then responding, that's the mechanism that's keeping the old patterns alive.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

That's been a big part of our lives for about a year now. We have been very fortunate to have beautiful lives. Yeah. We we have everything that we need in life, and yet so often are we boggled by issues of like, I want I need to work harder, I need to get this done by the next year.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

And when you keep on manifesting things too much and not being grounded in the present, that is also a difficulty. Because that's the question I want to ask you. Where do you draw the line between being grounded in today and being grateful for what you have and manifesting the next thing that is meant to find you?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Well, I think gratitude is that has to be the foundation for manifestation, right? Because gratitude is a consciousness of having all that I have. And the having creates more having. And if you're if you're you're trying to source a future from lack and limitation, you're Consciousness is gonna gonna generate more lack and limitation and struggle. So it's part of the discipline.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

For sure. Yeah, for sure. Anytime I slip out of gratitude, I notice what happens in my life. And I notice I actually notice that. So I used to be severely depressed. And it was literally gratitude that got me out of it. Even till today, there are moments where I kind of start to, it's a it's a bodily thing. Nothing in my external is is bad or I can't express why I feel that way. And sometimes I catch myself, oh, it's that somber melancholy coming up again. It's that five-year-old in me going, you know what, you yeah, you could have friends and everything, but you know deep down you're always gonna feel lonely because nobody really gets you. No one really you can share your problems with. It's it's that voice that comes up, and I have to do it literally what you said, which is talk to her and kind of reparent my inner child in that moment. But also, the the most immediate, easy, free, accessible antidote to that is gratitude. The moment I lean into what is it right now that I have that I'm really grateful for and I start looking for it, it's everywhere. It's not something I understood like maybe seven years ago when I was really in the thick of depression. I feel like if someone had said that to me, that what you're doing is to some degree a choice, I would have gotten really mad at them. You don't understand because you not you don't understand depression. And today I know it's a choice.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Can anyone truly get to that level of being able to see through the mud and through the darkness that surrounds us and choose that gratitude?

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to say something about a couple of things. One is there's a practice of gratitude that when you're in the darkness can actually be really helpful. And again, it's a generative gratitude that's oriented towards the future. So I'm I really believe in being future forward in our lives. What are we here to create? Each of us has a soul's calling. The parallel life that we're feeling is the life that's possible for us. There's a possible future for each and every one of us. And it lives as a longing, it lives as why isn't this happening? It lives very often for us as a complaint. Right. So if you are able to say yes, though, to the highest and the best, even in the midst of depression, even in the midst of anxiety, this is what pulled me out of anxiety, is becoming future focused. Um, a lot of anxiety and depression is actually being off course with the future that's wanting to happen. We think our anxiety and depression is because of what happened to us in the past, but it's actually because we're out of integrity with the future that we're here to cause. Wow. I need that to just land because it's it's so true. Right. So generative gratitude is thank you so much for giving me this depression today. So that my heart can open to greater levels of compassion on the millions of people who are suffering this with this very feeling in this very moment throughout the world. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. And that prayer is sourced from the future of yourself as a leader, as a healer. That touched you, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So there's gratitude. If you see every obstacle as I mean that Ryan Holiday has a book called The Obstacle is the way. And it's really about how the obstacles are the food that we need in order to become our best selves. It's what life gives us to give us the opportunity to grow in the direction of our calling, really. I mean, I I I learned this when I was, when I was 19, I wanted to go to be a minister. Because I loved people even back then. As a kid, I was the kid, you know, somebody moved in next door. I baked them a cake and went over.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Like I was just always the person. I was number two on the Enneagram.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

I like to help people and all that stuff. I wanted to be a minister. And I went to Bible college and I'm praying every day. And I'm really just saying to God, please use my life for good. Please use my life for good. Please use and I'm reading and studying. And I had the expectation that I would be elevated to the pulpit, that I would have people to minister to, that I would be kind of exalted as a leader in the religious movement. And instead, what happened is my boyfriend left and married someone else. My best friend cut our relationship off and took all our other friends with us. My parents disowned me and I gained 50 pounds with an out-of-control eating disorder. And I was so angry at life, I stopped praying. And I didn't pray for seven years. And it took a long time. Seven years later, I went back into the 12-step program. And you have to pray in 12 steps. So I started praying again. And I kind of remember, you know, being so, you know, arrogant that I forgave God a lot.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Okay. Okay. Like having a laugh. Like having a good laugh.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

But then we were talking before the show about working or work with the homeless, right? So then a few years later, what happened is I had this moment where nothing was working in my life. I was a wannabe musician singer. And that meant I waited tables and did temp work all the time. And I wasn't really getting any traction. And my love life was in the toilet and nothing was really working. I had no money. So I just I had this wonderful moment of enlightenment where I said, I am so sick of living a loveless life. I refuse actually to live this life. If love isn't coming to me, I'm going to bring it to other people because I won't live a loveless life. So I went down to Skid Row and I started this music project down there with people who were, you know, worse off than I was. And so I started, and it wasn't until I was sitting in a circle with 18 men and women from the LA mission who were getting off the streets and living at the mission. And I was privileged to go in and start reading poet, doing poetry workshops that ended up leading to songwriting workshops with some of the great songwriters in LA. But from week to week, their lives were changing so radically. I had no, I had no credentials or anything. And I was sitting in that room with them, and that's when I realized, oh, that was the answer to my prayer.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

That was the I had to go into the depths of hell and find my way out. I had to go into addiction. I had to go into grief and loss and alienation and self-hatred and all of it. And now I can sit with these people who are getting off the streets and it's like manna from heaven to them because they know exactly how to lead them. And those people, by the way, I tracked them. I mean, the recidivism rate for homelessness is really, really high. It's very hard to get people off the streets. But those people, I tracked them for five years after they went through the program that I designed. And something like 90% of them were still housed five years later. Like they were able to what I through what I created really change their lives. So I realized that that was answered prayer. So that's why I'm saying, like sometimes, you know, our souls are taking the long picture.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

It's so true when we are allowing ourselves to be guided one step at a time. That's why you said, what's my next step?

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 29:56

That's kind of all. We don't need to know how to get to the mountain. We just need to know the next step towards the mountain, and before you know it, you're up.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

This is so important what you're saying, because we live in a w in a world where everybody wants this strategic plan before we take an action. There's a lot of pressure coming from outside, you know?

SPEAKER_01 30:14

It's because the world progresses so fast, it is quite strongly defined by the younger people who right now are consuming social media and the internet. It's so difficult because when I was growing up, I would look at America. Okay, I grew up in Poland and we would look at movies. That was our only point of reference. So we would see an actor, Brad Pitt, or someone play a role. For us in our small town in Poland, these were not humans. These were some creations of the world that is not meant for us, regular people from a small Polish town. But now what changed is that people have a never-ending source of comparison, jumping at them all the time through social media. They would see a 19-year-old kid who bought some crypto and got lucky and made$5 million while they are 28 and work at a restaurant and make$4,000 a month. And the amount of discipline and gratitude and strength it takes to not get this make you feel like you're failing is truly so much more difficult than back in the day when we would look at these projections of actors that were stars and they were not like us. You know? So I think that's where that element of the world is.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Well, it goes into what's our purpose, really. I mean, that's what you're talking about. And I think we're confused right now. And I think, I mean, I'm 68, right? So I feel kind of bad about how my generation has kind of, I think, misled younger people that somehow the game is about money and the accumulation of things. Do you think it's your generation though? Um, I think our generation messed up a lot. We we we started off, you know, strong in the 60s and 70s with idealism and we brought in a lot of good things, humanistic psychology, transformation, and you know, a lot of great things. But I do think that we we we didn't really talk enough about how the whole the whole meaning of life is our our love for others and what we contribute to others. You know, we we uh most people know uh uh Abraham Maslow of that pyramid. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

Hierarchy of needs.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Hierarchy of needs, and the and the highest level of becoming is self-actualization. But what most people don't know is that before he died at the age of 62 of a heart attack, he disavowed that theory. And he said that it's not the highest pinnacle of self-actualization. Self-transcendence is the highest pinnacle. And he was just starting to develop those ideas when he died. And it's and self-transcendence is the contribution that we make to others, how we use our authentic lives is not about self-I'm gonna just martyr myself and give to others. It's about using who you genuinely are and what you've genuinely been through and holding yourself accountable to keep moving towards the light, keep learning more about self-love, keep learning more about how to love other people, keep, you know, striving towards the humility of seeing yourself as you are, flaws and all. You know, keep growing your compassion and then find a way that you can give to others what you didn't have 10 years, 20 or 20 years ago. That's the meaning of life. And I think that's why people are a little lost right now and get so dysregulated when they see, you know, a 19-year-old with five million dollars. There's so much noise.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

So it's hard to listen to your inner wisdom and guidance and realize, okay, who am I authentically when I strip away the expectations that my mom might have of me or society might have of me or what my friend has and I think I need to have as well in order to seem worthy? It's it's really hard to go down that route when you know we're addicted to scrolling and like there's noise everywhere we go, right? In in different ways. And so it takes consciousness to create the spaciousness that is required to have some solitude and a practice where we get to intentionally connect with ourselves and get really real about our flaws. And I think that's where a lot of people, especially, I think especially women, tend to fall in that category of self-sacrifice, you know, is is romanticized and it's almost seen as it gets conflated with self-transcendence. People can confuse it on the outside. It might look the same to other people, but we know is it coming from a true authentic desire to give, or is it coming because I want to look like I'm giving or because I think that's the role I need to fill. A lot of times I also see people go down the route of performative contribution to society, only to then spend a decade in to develop a strong resentment towards the world, to society, and then get back to the same thing which prevents us from manifestation, which is that victimhood of I did this for you, I had to do this for you.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

This ability to say no to what is not yours to do, but this ability to be so connected with your own body, that you can feel when energy is being drained or when you're giving your power away, when you are self-sacrificing in a way that's martyrdom as opposed to you know a genuine expression of love. I I don't want to throw out self-sacrifice either, because I think that we do sacrifice for each other in a way that's beautiful. Sure. You know, if our beloved gets sick, we give something up and we take care of our beloved. That's an act of love. That's not a that's not a negative self-sacrifice. But I think, you know, keeping yourself in the equation, uh, one of the primary uh developmental um things that I notice is missing for a lot of us who struggle in love is that we don't have our first attention on ourselves. And what I mean by that is the ability to in any given moment just go inward and say to yourself, sweetheart, what are you feeling? I'm feeling angry, or I'm feeling frightened, or I'm feeling threatened. Right. So whatever the feeling is, and then to be able to say, mm-hmm, I can see. Okay, I got it. What do you need, sweetheart? You can do that, you know, as you're in a conversation with somebody and they're telling you what they want you to do, and most of us will go right into, you know, what others expect of us or what we expect of ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

And uh I've heard you once say that uh there's some studies showing that it's most effective to talk to ourselves in third person. Third person, yeah. When you talk to yourself, do you call yourself sweetheart? I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

I love that. I love that because a lot of people don't have a lovely voice in their head about themselves. Oh, that's the most important. That's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

When you start a sentence by saying sweetheart, it's already so like diffusing. So you know you can share the truth that you feel.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Some people have a hard time with their like, I'm not talking to myself that way. So then I just say what was your nickname? We all have child, like you know, just or ear or even just say your name with love.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

I speak to myself in two voices. Yeah, we're gonna go there. In two languages. I have the language of English for dreams, for manifestation, for love, for gratitude for big things, for important things. And I have the language of Polish for the immediate things. What are you doing right now? I will say in my head in Polish. Like if I feel I'm right now doing something that I shouldn't be doing, like maybe I focused on a task that is not contributing. Why am I doing it? It's like the the my own self-voice of a father that I never had speaks in my head in Polish, guiding me through life.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

And he does it in a loving way. No. No. Polish is the meaning is the mean is the mean one.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

It's the mean mean when I'm going for a run and I'm on kilometer five, and my body is weak, and I want to stop, and the Polish voice will say, Why are you so weak?

SPEAKER_04 39:00

Oh, it motivates him. He intentionally uses it.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

I would say that's about 5% of my like self-talk. Self-talk. It used to be much more when we first met 70-30. I do think it is helpful to not only have this like beautiful, compassionate voice, but also sometimes like wake the hell up.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

Like a reality too.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

You know, because sometimes, sometimes when you are so far into one direction, it's very difficult to just slowly get. I think the English saying is cultural, right? When you do something cultural, it's usually something that like is, I don't know, someone smokes for 20 years and they need to quit. Yeah, the voice of compassion sometimes in these moments cannot allow them to quit. But if they're like, I'm quitting no matter what, bam, yeah, they manage to quit.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah, I see.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

What I love about everything that you say is self-authority. Yeah. I think it's easier, let's say, in the as we started asking about today's dating world and love, it's easier, and I've seen it very often, to just say everyone sucks today. I can't find the one because men are cheaters. I will hear some explanations.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

My clients tell me that.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Right?

SPEAKER_04 40:20

Yeah, I've done all the work. I'm doing the manifesting, I do this. At some point, the girls need to not be told that we need to be the ones who need to keep doing the work. At some point, we need to have a reality check and realize that the guys out there just suck. Like I verbatim.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

These are the works.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

Hear that.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

And with that mentality, how can you actually attract someone who's amazing?

SPEAKER_02 40:46

And and we cultivate wisdom in order to do that. So you're using everything that's difficult and uh upsetting and disappointing to grow yourself into the kind of person that you would need to be in order to really kick it out of the ballpark in this in this lifetime. I mean, there was um a time when I was your age that I was still kind of in a lot of confusion. I was in graduate school to become a therapist. Nothing was really working, as I said. I I didn't, I wasn't really able to get much traction for myself for a lot of years, really till I was in my 40s and I wrote Calling in the One. You know, got married to Mark, had our child, then got a book deal the next year. I mean, after that, like all these wonderful things started happening. But until then, I was really, really struggling. But I do remember, I felt, and this, I think this is important for people right now to hear too. I felt the future, the potential of the future, but being speaking to to thousands of people. This is before the internet was really a thing. So I didn't know how in the world that would happen because I was really shy, actually. So that didn't make any sense to me. I wasn't pursuing a television show or something. But I felt the future and I and I thought, well, if that's true, if that's true, then I better become someone who has something valuable to say. And that was my North Star. So the North Star wasn't becoming famous. The North Star was to become a person who had something valuable to contribute to others. And that's what really started me on a wisdom journey, on a conscious journey of leaning in, like, how can I grow wisdom? You know, wisdom has been shown. You know, this is this myth that wisdom is just comes with age. It doesn't. There's a lot of people my age who did not ever really pursue wisdom. And wisdom actually begins in adolescence. But it has to be cultivated. You have to care about wisdom. Wisdom is a different question than when is he gonna be here? Who is it going to be? You know, what do I say when he says this? And what do I say? That's a different question than who will I need to be being when I'm feeling insecure and disappointed. Um, how can I use this experience to grow my power? In what way might I have shown up as less than who I am and somehow enrolled another person into that version of me in a way that they felt it was fine to just treat me poorly? You know, these are questions that actually lead to growth and power. A lot of the questions that we ask ourselves when we try and understand ourselves as the source of something. Well, how am I the source of the pattern of unavailable men? For example, you know, a lot of those questions are very self condemning questions. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Let me go back and analyze. Our past, and this is why I am the way that I am. And somehow we don't have access to growth. Anything that's shame-based, there's no growth in it.

SPEAKER_04 44:11

It's an enemy of healing.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

It is the enemy of healing. It is the enemy of growth. So what we want to be doing is to look for what I call an empowered question. Um, so an empowered question is this question uh like I I wonder what part of me doesn't want a relationship. And um I I how did I give my power away to that person? What motivated me to do that? And what's really true about that? Or what skill would I need to grow to have this go differently next time?

SPEAKER_01 44:50

It's once again self-authority. Yeah, it's so empowering.

SPEAKER_04 44:54

You're taking accountability and ownership for your reality over and over again. Yeah, and you're being pretty curious with the questions. Yeah. There is like a lack of judgment in your questions and a lot of curiosity.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

Uh you know, there's a big difference between judgment and discernment. Judgment is the more superficial level when we judge ourselves and other people. Ugh, but you know, how could how could I do that? Just a stupid thing. I'm so mad at myself. As opposed to, oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed that I behave that way. Checking in, sweetheart, what's going on with you? What's going on? What were you feeling in that moment? Were you acquiesced and and didn't speak up? And didn't stand for yourself. What was going on? How can I help you with that, darling? See, I mean this this third person speaking to yourself in the third person is a very powerful tool. And there are studies that are coming out now that say that if you're if you're dysregulated, you're feeling a little out of control, your emotions are getting the better of you, they have you, you don't have them. Uh if you can just say your name and do this practice of sweetie, what are you feeling? Name the feeling, mirror it back. What else are you feeling? You start to get cohesive again, start to get whole again. But then there's this whole thing about kind of learning how to speak to yourself in a way that's compassionate and kind versus the way you were spoken to as a child by your early caregivers. And if you didn't have an early caregiver who was speaking to you at all, then versus the tendency towards self-neglect and not really speaking to yourself much at all, just being more other-referenced than self-referenced. So um Kristen Neff uh is a teacher of self-compassion. She talks about the qualities of self-compassion. One of them is that when we make a mistake, very often we hide. We get filled with shame, and then we hide and we try and pretend that we don't want anyone to see the mistake. And the mistake isolates us from other people. We feel separate from other people. If we can notice the mistake with humility, we can actually then allow it to deepen our humanity and have us feel closer to other people.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

You have conned something that has been in our field for a while among our friends. We have seen and heard it many times, which is the conscious uncoupling. Yeah. And as we know, Chris Martin from Coldplay and Gwynneth Paltrow made it famous 20 years ago or so. For people who don't know the premise of what conscious uncoupling is, yeah, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Well, I think Gwyneth and Chris have done a great job modeling it, but they they did some myths went into the lexicon when they used it to announce their divorce. And one of the myths was it needs to be done by a couple, and another is it's just kind of this privileged way to have an amicable divorce. So the five steps of conscious uncoupling are really about how someone deals with rejection, uh, the unfairness of uh a breakup, the insult to identity of a breakup, um, all of the big feelings, the multiple losses that are happening, how to not go from a soulmate to a soul-hate relationship because nature has really designed us to stay bonded. So if so sometimes we go into a negative bond just to avoid giving up, people can go through, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of retirement accounts and all sorts of stuff just because it's not fair and they're gonna get back at that person. Revenge, revenge, and all that stuff. And but you know, it's actually more common than we think. I mean, even the most conscious of us will have feelings of wanting to hurt the person who's hurt us. It's just natural. So conscious uncoupling is basically a five-step process about how to do it, how to kill how to stay in integrity, how to break up with someone in a way that's really aligned with your spiritual beliefs and with your own ethics, as opposed to the overwhelming emotions. You have the emotions, but you don't let your emotions have you. How to keep the kids really safe, how to protect your assets, and how to turn what we call post-traumatic stress of a breakup, because it is one of the most stressful things that many of us will ever have to go through, into post-traumatic growth so that you can count on yourself to never make those same mistakes again. So um, so it's generally done by one person.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

That's a that is a big miss that we the couple needs to come together to do it.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

I love that we have the people.

SPEAKER_04 49:45

Because a lot of people are like, of course, yeah. A lot of people are like, you know, my partner, he's just he won't do it. He won't do it.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Or she or she or she. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But more often he.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Well, and and a lot of times, but the one person wants to do it because if you have a partner who is not compliant, who is even maybe making you wrong and making life miserable for you, then you really need to do it because what generally happens is the least conscious person is in charge of the dynamic, because the more conscious person who wants things to go well is then being attacked and they're in reaction. So we have to flip that. We have to flip it so that the person who is the more conscious person is elevating the quality of the connection. And, you know, and you don't have to stay friends with people after a breakup. If people behave badly, why would you want that person as your friend? If they've if they've really violated you and betrayed you. Now, if they've made a complete amends, then you know, maybe they you can recreate something. But if they're righteous about it or blaming, you know, you sometimes it's better just to let people go. But then I say, well, don't you don't have to do it in hatred. You can do it where you hatred's not the opposite of love. Hatred is very highly engaged. You have to get neutral about that person. So you think of that person as your dark guru. That's the person I bottomed out with. That's what it looks like when I, you know, go in and, you know, people please and give away my power and don't speak up and organize around the other person, and you know, and uh train that other person to be very self-involved and narcissistic with me.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

That's what that's that's a that's an important sentence you just said. Train that person. That's the part, that's the accountability piece.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

That is the accountability. I like to say, even if it's 97% the other person, what's your three percent? Because that's where your gold is for growth.

SPEAKER_04 51:48

This sentence of yours in right after my previous relationship ended, and probably before you came into the picture, I was really in a very dark place, in a super dark place. And this sentence of yours, this sentence of yours, what's your three percent? That was the one has been something that I've carried with me till date in any situation, no matter who I'm speaking with, no matter how unfair something might feel to me, what is my three percent?

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Yeah. Well, life lessons are very expensive, I have learned. So you have to really make good on that life lesson. It's not just see, this is what happens when I give my power away or disappear myself, or, you know, don't share my needs authentically with somebody and uh make it all about the other person and taking care of their feelings and needs under some, you know, fantasy that then they're gonna turn around and do the same for me. It doesn't delusion of it all. But I've been organizing around you for six months. It's my turn to go. Can we that's not the contract we made.

SPEAKER_04 52:58

Yeah, I also want to talk about agreements later because that's something beautiful that you speak.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

I think now would be a very good moment to ask for your mystery item.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Um, my mystery item.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Okay, we know you brought it on your phone.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

Okay, yes, I did. It's a photo I want to show you, but I have to kind of set it up, right? Okay, okay. So Calling in the One came out in 2004. I rewrote it in 2021 because I'd learned so much and I wanted to really just, you know, infiltrate all the wisdom I'd gained from all the people I'd taught. But um 2015 was when uh conscious uncoupling came out. And I have now written 10, I guess so every 10 years, I guess, is when I write a new book, right? So I have a new book coming out, What's True About You? Seven Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. And um, I'm I'm you know really excited to say that there was a bidding war on it, and we had we were taking all these meetings, we all these publishers. Five of the publishers wanted it, and it was very, very exciting. So we finally chose uh Penguin Life and that and we we signed the the deal on a Wednesday, and two days later, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And the date that the book was due, exact same day that the cancer treatment was over, the chemo and the all and the operation, everything was complete on the same day. And you and and you're all good now? I'm I'm tumor-free, I'm symptom-free. I mean, I'm still doing all sorts of stuff to take in my mind, but I'm great. Yeah, I'm great. I mean, we were shocked about your age now, all the more. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So I was going through cancer treatment as I was writing this book. And at first I was like blown out, like, what is that about? And then I realized that it was the biggest gift because the book is all about manifesting a positive, possible future and living into that future and standing powerfully in the truth of who you are and what you came here to create. What better medicine? I never got depressed, I never got scared. You know, I'd go through the chemo, I'd kind of lay up and watch TV for three days while I was just kind of sick.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Then you're living in the book.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

The whole book just infused me with with joy, actually. So the whole process was joyful. So what I brought your words literally got you out. Yeah, it was a gift from God. So that's that's that's me without my wig on because I'm still growing my hair back then.

unknown 55:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

That's my surprise.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

What a coincidence, right? That you would have your book at the same day when your chemo ended. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Yeah, isn't that wild? It's wild.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

It's once again one in 250,000 husbands. Then you get this. Like, if anyone tells me that this is a coincidence, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

I created a prayer group, which was great. If you ever get sick like that and you're going through that's wonderful to have a group of friends who meet every week and pray for you and you for them. Um, and I remember telling one of my friends, it's like I'm going through the I'm I'm going through I'm living the resurrection and the crucifixion both at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

What a world to be in where you just celebrated something. Yeah. And two days later you get such a difficult information. How did it feel?

SPEAKER_02 56:39

Well, it was sobering. I mean, you you have to take it very seriously, but I didn't go into a lot of fear. You know, um, I mean, look, first of all, at 68, you know, we're losing people at this age. Like not we're not everybody lives uh into their 90s and hundreds. So there's the reality that anyone my age is dealing with about our own mortality, which really makes us, I think, can make us even more present, more loving, more committed to what we're here to to contribute. Um, so there's that, and just the the deep surrender like to life on life's terms. I personally don't believe that that death occurs when the body dies. I'm I'm pretty connected to the other side. I have a I've been developing, you know, when you develop that wisdom muscle, what you're basically doing is you're opening yourself up to a dialogue with the divine because you're asking life to see this situation through God's eyes, not your own egoic lens. So you do develop that. So there was a certain sobriety, listening, not knowing, uncertainty. Um, but there was also a sense of ferocity, like I'm not done yet. I have a lot more to give. And these are the years that are most productive for me. I mean, this teaching that I'm coming out is introducing new content into the world that does not yet exist. And I'm creating a new form of psychotherapy called future forward therapy that I'll be privileged to you know, share with more therapists. I've been training a therapist already because I have a whole, I have a whole a lot of coaches, but also therapists who I work with. And it's really about breaking down this self as source piece. How do you look and see yourself as the source? You know, this whole thing, like uh the James Clear has this wonderful book, Atomic Habits. I don't know if you've read it. In his whole book, he only gives like three pages or just to transformation of identity. But where we're centered at the level of identity is where we're sourcing our lives from. How I show up from an I'm not good enough center is going to be vastly different from how I show up from a center where I'm in a pre-conscious knowing of my value. Right. And you've got to actually be in the ladder in order to examine your mistakes, learn from your stakes, not go in to get stuck into shame, be humble enough to tell people what you did wrong, to make amends, to grow, all of that stuff is really, you know, inside that a growth mindset is in what I call power center, the truth of who you are. So, how how we are able then to examine, if we look at a pattern about how I'm showing up. So, for example, one of the stories I tell in the book, uh, What's True About You, is I went to when Calling in the One was first coming out, I was going to this church for 10 years. And uh I assumed and put into my book proposal that I would have a signing at this church. Now, there were like thousands of members at this church. It was a big church in LA. And it was very exciting to me. And I'm sure it contributed to me getting a book deal because I had no platform for calling in the one. I was like one of the last authors that could get a book deal just because you had a good idea. And, you know, people liked your first chapter. So as I'm going leading up to the time when the book is being released, I'm calling the church and I'm trying to get it. Then I wait on the line and talk to the minister. There's like, you know, 30 people ahead of me, and I wait for an hour and a half to talk to him and tell them what I'm doing. Absolutely, we're going to give you a book signing. How exciting. We're so proud of you. It's, you know, all this stuff. But nobody's calling me back. And I must have called at least a dozen times, and nobody would return my phone call. So I went into this place of, you know, hurt and victimization. Here I am. I don't belong again. You know, I'm not belonging was a big theme in my childhood. I moved every year for when I was a kid. My mom was married in and out of four marriages by the time I was an adult. So, you know, a lot of wounding in that area. Who do I belong to? So I left the church. I quit. And I had this big story about the church and big judgment on the minister. And you know how we get right. And I'm right about it. I mean, it wasn't even examined. Like, I'm just right about it. Just like how you were angry at God and so then I the book comes out and I realize, oh, you know, a lot of calling in the one is about non-victimization, about seeing yourself a source and taking your own inventory. So as an experiment, I said, well, if, you know, keyword if, if I was responsible in some way for the church not giving me a book signing, what would it be? And I really sat with the question. And as I sat with the question, I started to realize, because the whole 10 years I was there, I was super shy. You know, and it's a church in LA. So you get all these very outgoing, what I call peacock personalities, you know, these gorgeous peacock personalities. And so I was just like a little wallflower in how I did myself. And I was so shy. I would come five minutes after the service started. I would leave five minutes before, even though there's like a big social thing happening at this church. I never took a class, I never volunteered for an event, I never raised money for the church. Like as I'm listing these things, I'm going, oh my gosh, it was completely me. I completely recreated not belonging from my childhood. That's what happened. So I, you know, I searched in my own little psyche, like what how I asked myself the key question, how how old is this part of me? How old are you, sweetheart? And eight came up, and that was a year when my mother had gotten her second divorce, and I became a latchkey kid, and I'd come home to an empty apartment every night, and I was starting a new school, you know, all these things, and I lost connection with my grandma who loved me, my dad's mother. And so all of, you know, and I and I realized I'm like now I'm crying, right? Because I realize like that's the belief that she lodged. Like I don't belong, and other people belong, but I don't belong. They belong to each other, but I'm not a part of them. And so I start mentoring myself and saying, sweetheart, you belong to me. And I love you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

Do you mentor yourself in the moment or do you mentor that eight-year-old?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

I mentor the eight-year-old in the moment because she's in me and I'm now in a in connection with her. So instead of trying to just step over her, I I get related to her. So that is almost because it before you do that, it's like the eight-year-old's driving the car, right? But now I can put her in the backseat and get her all buckled up safely, and the adult can drive the car. So it's not like she goes away, but now she's contained and she's not in charge of my life anymore. So I I and then I came up with a power statement that kind of course-corrected my consciousness. I am mother to the world. Everyone belongs to me, and I belong to them. And that resonated in my soul. So guess what? I went back to the church. And by now I have a a little girl.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:15

How long had it been?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

It had been a couple of years. So my daughter's two. And I go back to the no, she's four at this point. I left when she was two. So, and uh, so I go back and she's uh four, and um, I go early and I go sit in the front row, which I'm like mortified.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:34

And same church, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

Yes, yep, yep, same church, and I go in time to hear the announcements, and their children's choir is having auditions. So I take my daughter the next day to the children's choir auditions. We get into the choir, and I um and and and I'm sitting there with the parents on the first day for the rehearsal. We get in and they say, we have a position open. Uh, we have a position of we need someone to be on the celebration committee. And uh, and one of the things on my list was that I'd never participated in Leanar leadership. So up goes my hand. You know, I'll be, I'll, I'll be on the leader on the celebration committee. I have no idea what the celebration committee is, but I'll be on it. And uh, I was the only person who volunteered, so then I became the head of the celebration committee.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

That's just some turn to be mad. You opened the door. This was the window of opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

And you took it. So the next week I come in and everybody's all excited because the White House called. And that was when Barack and uh and was in office. And so Barack and Michelle had invited the children's choir from the church to come and sing at the White House. So everybody's like out of their mind. And then I realized oh, I'm the head of the celebration committee, and so I stared. On the chair, and I say, okay, we're gonna have a what to wear to the White House party, and you're all gonna come and we can have a pool party and we'll barbecue, and you know, everybody has to wear red, white, and blue. And I'm just going off the top of my head. So the next week when I come in, I'm you know, two steps forward, one step back, so I'm five minutes late. Okay. So all the parents are there already.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:21

And I come in the room and everybody goes and I go, I've never had that happen to me before.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:36

I've never had that happen. So that that that's what where we graduate from beliefs. You can analyze that I don't belong forever, but until you give yourself a new way of being in the world and you get new relational evidence for what's really true about you, it's not going to really change. So the new book introduces all of these ways of being that are specific to the 22 main beliefs that actually cause us to not be able to realize our potentials in life.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

I have a unique question for you. Analyzing your life's work and everything that you have created on a bigger scale, I found a pattern. And I think I find this pattern from the standpoint of also being an artist. I know that when I write, because I I write fictional stories, the best things I will ever create will be the ones where I have tears in my eyes. Where whether it's singing or writing, any type of artistic form in my case comes from pain, from difficulty, from discomfort sometimes. And looking at a lot of things that you have created, it came from struggle. Yeah. It came from not feeling in alignment, not belonging somewhere. That's right. And now that you shared your story with us, the question stands even stronger. You you overcame cancer while writing. So there's a theme of creation that is elevated by the obstacles you have mentioned earlier. I wonder, as you are going through creating all these beautiful things that change lives, have you ever had moments when you wouldn't have an idea and you would almost almost want to manifest some difficulties in your life in order to create better? It's like Kurt Cobain. You know, like there's a lot of artists who create from pain. Have you had moments like these?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:52

Um, no, but I don't think I had to because I really have had quite a bit of suffering. So uh when I I I had an astrological reading with a friend of mine uh who's quite a wonderful uh expert at astrology, she does the Vedic astrology.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:08

And I was 57 when I went to her, and she kind of gasped, she said, I'm really sorry to tell you this, Catherine, but you've never been in a good period. She said, Your whole life has been one struggle after the other. She said, But I have good news. When you're 58, it's gonna flip. Like it's it's the whole, then you're gonna be in this wonderful period, and that will last for almost two decades.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:32

So you were 56 when you went to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:34

Yeah, I was 56. So that gave me a lot of hope. Like, okay, hang in there. But, you know, I think about um, you know, I I I guess my early years of studying uh the Bible really stay with me. I, you know, it's good to have sacred scripture, whatever your path is in your brain. But I think a lot about what Jesus said, the darkness and the light are all the same to me. And even Bill W. in one of his books about the 12 steps and 12 traditions, says something about can you keep your equilibrium when things are going well and when they're not going well? And I do think that there is great value in dark times. About 10 years ago, I also had breast cancer. And there's this time where, by the way, it's for the listeners, pay attention to your body. If there's something happening that's weird, do not dismiss it. Can I just say that? Because the reason why I caught both cancers when I did before they were dire and I could still recover was because I was listening to my body. Something was different. I had no lump, by the way, in my breast.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:38

What was different?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:39

Well, I had these weird sensations. It felt like uh it felt like an electrical current in my breast. It was the weirdest thing in your breast. In my breast. I remember it was in my milk duct. Not like I know what my milk duct is, because it's not like we know what that feels like. There's no sensation to it, but that's what it felt like. And it happened three days in a row. And I the first two days I was kind of ignoring it. The third day, I just decided I called my assistant and I said, please get me in for a mammogram. And that's how we found it. And it they we found it like stage one going into stage two. So I was very, very fortunate. So pay attention to everything because nobody tells you watch out for the electrical current in your breast. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:20

And it might feel something different for someone else. It might not be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

Exactly. So just be vigilant. You know, cancer is on the rise for our for a lot of us. We have a lot of plastic, we have a lot of weirdo food stuff going on. Even in our clothes, chemicals and everything. Stress that we're on a lot of us are under. So we just have to take really good care. So I I went to the doctor and and they called and they said, uh, yes, you do have cancer. I said, what stage?

unknown 1:11:46

Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:46

What stage? It's a big question. They said, Well, we can't tell you that. You have to see the oncologist to tell you that. And uh, the appointment's in three days. So there's this experience where you're like, you don't know what's gonna happen. You're kind of suspended for three days. And I had this image of what it might be like to drive off a cliff and you're kind of like floating through the air and you kind of don't know what's gonna happen. If if when you land, are you gonna survive this? Are you not gonna survive this? And in that state, I heard my intuitive voice. I say spirit spoke to me or God spoke to me. But a lot of times people get confused about what that means. It's just kind of let's say the voice of wisdom or some just inner knowing spoke to me and it said, You set this cancer up before you incarnated uh in case you had not become who you've become. Um but because you have chosen love thousands of times, this cancer is going to just wash through you, and you'll remember it like a bad case of the hiccups. So it and so I'd set the cancer up to be a kind early exit. Right? So because there was so much suffering in my life. But if you keep choosing love, it just creates compassion and depth and wisdom and light, particularly if you are committed to really being a force of good in this world. You know, a lot of us pray for a world that's peaceful, pray for a world that's good. We have to become the vehicles of it. It's one thing to pray for it, but it's another thing to offer yourself as the vehicle of the light that you would want to see in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:37

And it comes back every time the light.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:46

In the most unexpected places and from the people you might not expect from.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:51

We keep on learning this. We sometimes sometimes have moments we we sometimes like have these conversations where we laugh at each other saying that we're just suckers for charity. Like we we have created our entire company in times and we would do charity of our employees and all these things, and we just we just make the same mistakes over and over. Like we'll give someone money who needs and then they disappear. Oh my gosh. And we make these mistakes, and yet our lives are just consistently getting better. Yes. Because yes, I remember I used to live in UK, and I had this man come over to me. I was I I had a very difficult job, like it was I was struggling financially. And this man was standing on a corner next to my apartment, and he said, Man, I need 20 pounds. I left my car and I need a train ticket. And I looked him in the ice, I was broke. I looked him in the ice and I said, Listen, I'm gonna give you 20 pounds. It's a lot of money for me. But just so you know, if you don't come back tomorrow to bring me this money back, I will really struggle to ever trust anyone again. Because here you are looking me in the eyes and saying that this is the truth. So you are going to really hurt like my worldview.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:06

He took the money and he never came back. And I remember at that time, for whatever reason, this element was actually freeing for me. Because when I came there, I remember I went there, it was next to my apartment, my flat in London. I went there and I stood for like an hour, consistently hoping that he's gonna come back. I wanted to believe that he didn't lie. And when I came back to the apartment, I was like, actually, what is it? It wasn't that bad. I thought I'm gonna be so disappointed that someone lied to me and took my money that was supposed to go for food. And I like, I actually didn't mind. And from that moment on, I just was like, most of the time, whenever people need help, and then I found her, she has the same mentality as me, so we're lost.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:58

First of all, I think yes, we're we're quite generous and we're fortunate to be in a place where we can help a lot of the times, but also I think with time there's that voice that you talk about, and it guides you, and it tells you it's like it's not even my brain, but it's my body that goes either like this, which is like a like a no or like a an aversion, and sometimes maybe it won't make sense. Maybe that person, maybe that person ran away, but they really actually needed it. I mean they definitely we never know, but I feel like it's a fine line between, you know, generosity that is ill-placed and can be taken advantage of, versus just having so much trust in yourself to know that you are discerning enough to know when to help, when not to help, but also trust enough to know that either way you are okay. Yeah, like it never affected us, you know. It's not like anyone taking away from us actually taking the case. That was that's when that's when it really matters, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:05

I had like very cheap chicken balls and beans every day.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:20

And then it's like really cheap because it's about to expire. And he lived off of that for like 10%. 10%.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

I I knew life was difficult when I was, and it was a tough thing to do. I was racing homeless people. And I I remember this one day I would stand in front and I would see that the guy needs to like he wants to take the food. And I had such a like, like, I need food, but this guy needs it more than me. But the the crazy thing, and that's why I say that I have lived by your beliefs unknowingly. In that moment, I already knew I'm a freaking rock star. I never gave up from the moment I left my town to the very moment 12 years later, yes, when my dreams came true. I put it to two when I was young, and I was like, by the time I'm 30, things will work out.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:09

And at 29, it started working out.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:11

That's right. That's right. There it is, right there. It's very important to say that to people because people dismiss that in themselves. They think, oh, this is just I'm being arrogant, or um, you know, who am I to do that? They they discount themselves. So it's very important to sponsor that dream in your listeners, in each other. I mean, I have a membership program now, and the whole thing is about sponsoring each other to be who they came here to be and to not get stopped. And and to to to shift, I call it shift centers. Can people join? Yeah, yeah. How can we please sell it? Oh, great. Thank you, thank you. Oh, yeah, thank you. Thank you, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:57

Thank you, everyone watching this.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:59

It's called true you members. Like live from your the truth of who you are, the truth of your worthiness, the truth of your value, the truth of your power. And we learn how to mentor the younger selves so they're not in charge anymore. You know, people have their I'm not good enough in charge, or the I'm not safe, and so they're playing too small, or they have an I'm alone in charge, or the I don't belong, which is what I did. And it's running our lives until until we give it a name. And then we start to give it a name, we give it an age, and we start to learn how to hold and contain that part of us so it's no longer in the driver's seat of our lives, and we can actually become the people that we were born to be.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:41

So many people listening to this episode are going to relate the way that I'm relating and have already for all these years with all your books and the one that's going to come. So truly thank you so very, very much.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:56

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:56

From the bottom of my heart, it's it's an honor to now know you, but to also have learned from you and what you just said to be able to use what I've learned from you and teach people that are a few steps behind where I'm at right now has shown me why I'm here on on earth. That's right. It really is my purpose, you know. And I'm like, wow, I never thought I'd be teaching people about relationships. I sucked at them.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:26

I sucked at them. And then here you are, and it's just it's uh it's a very special moment for me to be sitting next to you today.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:34

For me too, to meet you.