Somatic Transformation - Why Mindset Work Only Gets You So Far | April Benincosa | EP204

Everything you learned about mindset, willpower, and "faking it till you make it" has gotten you this far, but what happens when you hit the wall? In this deeply personal conversation, April sits on the other side of the mic as Chad interviews her about the somatic, nervous-system-level transformation she's walked through this year  and what embodied change actually looks like when you stop performing and start feeling.

This episode is for anyone who has done the mindset work, read the books, attended the seminars, and still hits the same wall. It's for the woman tired of wearing masks of confidence, the man learning to lead with vulnerability, and the couple ready to stop repeating old patterns.

In this interview, you'll learn:

• Why "fake it till you make it" creates masks of confidence instead of real change
• The three ways of knowing (mind, heart, gut) and why embodiment is the missing piece
• How to reframe discipline as devotion to end the burnout cycle
• Why safety in your body matters more than confidence or willpower
• How triggers in relationships become the fastest path to healing
• The truth about vulnerability that real leaders never talk about
• What it actually means to be self-led (and which parts of you are driving)
• A daily practice for coming back to love when your walls go up

You are allowed to choose yourself. You are allowed to stop playing small. The life you are grieving may be the very thing making room for the one you actually belong in.

With Love and Safety,
Chad & April ❤️


What We Discuss:
0:00 The part of myself that takes the most courage to face 
0:35 Welcome + what transformation really means on a nervous system level 
2:40 The three ways of knowing and why embodiment changes everything 
4:15 Why mindset work alone hits a wall 
5:25 The conversation that built Safe to Love: safety as love language 
6:05 Willpower is force (and why it leads to burnout) 
8:30 Reframing discipline as devotion 
12:15 Performing a better life vs. actually living one 
15:00 From Tony Robbins and NLP to somatic coaching 
40:20 Why the inner work never ends (and why that's the point) 
43:30 The hardest thing to embody this year: true vulnerability 
45:40 What it's like being with a partner who can see your mess 
50:00 What it actually means to be self-led 
52:40 A daily devotion to love yourself back to an open heart 

If you're serious about ...

❤️ Work With Chad
Instagram |  @chadonlove

❤️  Work with April
Instagram |  @aprilbenincosa 

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Transcript

The part of myself that takes the most courage to face

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The thing that takes the most courage for me is seeing those parts of myself that I deem or have deemed in the past as weak. I'm still ready to face them and do them. It might take me a minute and I might be a little stubborn and you know teenagery, but I'll get there eventually. I I have this deep desire to get to know her, all of her, and love all of her, and is also scary.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to Safe to Love. We are on a mission to help the world believe in love again and give you the courage to find it. And today I get to interview April about transformation. Welcome,

Welcome + what transformation really means on a nervous system level

SPEAKER_00 0:35

April.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Thanks, Chad.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Um, so start off, you talk about reinventing yourself. And I think that's a topic that gets brought up a lot. But what does that actually mean uh specifically on like a nervous system somatic and bodied level?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah. Um, well, I'm personally in a big transformation, and the world at large is in a huge transformation, right? We are starting to talk about trauma and inner child work and all of these things and nervous system regulation, which no one was talking about 10 or 20 years ago. Our parents never talked about these things. And when I first started getting into self-development work 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I was very much into Tony Robbins. I was very much into mindset NLP. Everything was like mindset, mindset, mindset. And what I'm really learning through my own transformation process is you can fake it till you make it, but you're still faking it. And when you're actually embodied, it's a very different experience. So we have what is called knowledge-based wisdom, which is I know a lot of things and I'm going to share these things with you that I know. And then there's a transmission-based leadership, a transmission-based coaching education, which is I'm actually embodying all of these things on a nervous system level. So part of our identity, which is what we think, believe, our mindset, like our thoughts and beliefs, also has a nervous system component that I just don't think is talked about enough. And I personally didn't ever talk about it. I was always just like, fake it till you make it. And what that did was created a lot of masks of confidence. I appeared very confident, but inside I was terrified. And I felt like I was faking it because I hadn't fully embodied it. So when we want to create a new identity, part of it is a capacity. Where we want to build our capacity to hold more, to feel more, to express more, and to be more authentically ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Well, and I and I

The three ways of knowing and why embodiment changes everything

SPEAKER_00 2:40

love the way you put that. And I think sometimes the misconception people have is, right? Is you're not advocating throwing out mindset work or traditional therapy, right? Somatics is just uh kind of another level that takes it to a kind of a deeper level on top of that.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Yeah, we we have three ways of knowing. So we know in our mind and intellectually, and then we know in our heart. You know, this doesn't feel right, and then we know in our gut, and that's kind of the full embodiment of it. And that's where the world is transforming, if you will, into more embodiment of the knowledge that we've learned forever ago. So, yes, mindset's still important. I love language of empowerment, of being careful with your words, you know, because I'm always like correcting people's words and correcting my own words.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

I know. And um And I always take it so well.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah, you totally love it. You love it. Um, and what that kind of the shadow of that is is a toxic positivity of, you know, I'm just gonna say that I'm happy instead of actually feeling what's real in my body, which is I'm sad or I'm scared, or I feel grief. And instead of masking that, which has been what's happened over the last however long, it's it's now this being called forward to have a more embodiment of I can feel happy sometimes, but right now, in this moment, what's real in my body, and that might be sadness, it might be anger, it might be all the other feelings that have not been allowed to be expressed because they're not positive.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Well, and I

Why mindset work alone hits a wall

SPEAKER_00 4:15

also know from my own experience, having done a lot of work on a mental and spiritual level and emotional level, but not on a somatic level, that I had many times where I felt healed and everything was good until something triggered that trauma in me, and suddenly I was right back into where I had been before.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Yeah. And, you know, that's when like because our podcast is a lot about relationships, and you and I have grown so much while being in relationship. And what a relationship does is it mirrors all of your insecurities and all of the areas where you're not free, where you're not healed, our triggers are treasures. Sometimes they don't feel like it. Um, but it it sometimes you have that relationship with someone to show you like what you're not able to see on your own, because 95% of everything of how we live is not in our awareness. And so that partner brings in a lot more of that awareness through that mirror. So, which is why we heal more in relationships, or we heal things that we can only heal in relationships. I don't want to say more, but there's certain things you can only heal in relationship because you need that mirror back to you.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Well, and

The conversation that built Safe to Love: safety as love language

SPEAKER_00 5:25

that kind of leads to the fundamental word of our show, right? Safety, the word safety, uh, how the show came to be, safe to love. And the first concept that I think me and you ever bonded over.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Um It's our love language.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

It's our love language. And kind of what that means is a felt sense of safety, right? When we talk about safety, we are, of course, talking about literal safety and helping people get into a place where they're literally safe. But oftentimes what that comes down to is a felt sense of safety, a somatic sense of safety. And um, you know, in the mindset world, confidence and willpower are the key ingredients that are always emphasized, right? But can you maybe talk a little bit about why safety is maybe even more important than

Willpower is force (and why it leads to burnout)

SPEAKER_00 6:05

confidence and willpower?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah, willpower is force, right? And so I'm going to will myself to do something, and my body is telling me, no, I don't want to do this. I'm forcing and pushing myself, which causes burnout, which we've seen and I've experienced. I have willed myself to work 80 hours a week to make this work. I'm gonna make this relationship work. I'm gonna make these salons work until my body finally like put the brakes on and was like, bitch, listen to me. Like, we're getting really loud over here. And also then I project out all my feelings of unsafety and all of my insecurities onto other people, which causes a lot of mental energy. Did they like me? Did they not like me? I wonder if I should have said this, I wonder if I shouldn't have said this, which I'm not saying I don't do that anymore, but I do it far less than I do. And and true confidence, which is not the fault, uh, this is what a confident person looks like. So I'm going to mask again. This is what a confidence person looks like when you are in a true sense of power. You feel safe in your body, doesn't mean you always feel calm, doesn't mean you're never angry or never, you know, upset, but you feel a presence of, I've got me. And that is very different than forcing yourself. The the word reframe that I did for myself, which has really helped me with my own personal transformation, is devotion. And when you love yourself, you are devoted to becoming the highest, truest version of yourself. I know my true potential within me. And I know that I'm devoted to reaching that. And there's a lot of compassion in that. There's a lot of compassion and devotion of I'm not perfect. I don't expect myself to be perfect. I've got all these different parts of me arguing all the time. And my job is to lead those parts, hold them with compassion, hold them with love, and be like, I've got you. You're not gonna drive the car anymore. We are going to do this. And then what comes from that is a true sense of personal empowerment, not power over others, not a hustle, discipline, willpower, but a devotion of excitement, a pull instead of a push. And our bodies then can do so much more when we work with our body, when we're not trying to force our body into shutdown.

Reframing discipline as devotion

SPEAKER_00 8:30

I I love that you brought up that example because that's actually probably one of the examples of some of the language policing, I say, but I don't think that's quite fair, right? Of where you've um you've talked to me a lot about language and devotion is a word when we when we talk about discipline, it's not a word, you know, that you you're like replace that word discipline with devotion and in a way that I felt carries the same meaning but from a very different energy.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Yeah, and and it's personal, right? For me, my ex-husband would always be like, you just need to be more disciplined. You need to be more disciplined. And then just with a woman who's struggled with her weight her whole life and been a very big creative. I'm an Aries, I'm like squirrels and shiny objects. Discipline has a really negative connotation of trying to put me into a tiny box. And my authenticity, like me being authentically me, is like I'm not actually a very disciplined person. And so what? So what's wrong with me doing that? But also the accountability part of me wants to show up and be a woman of my word. And so for myself, I've replaced the word discipline with devotion. As I've healed my masculine, I'm actually coming around to love the word discipline, which means to be a disciple of. Um, so but I'm but I'm healing that part of myself, that part of my wounded child that was like, you just need to be more disciplined. Basically, how you are being is not good enough. And I need you to be different than than how you are. And there was so much shame wrapped around that for me. And so as I've healed that part of myself, now actually I have it a little different. And it's new, it's like within the last month or so. So it's probably news to you.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I'm hearing it here for the first time, folks.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

That like, um, and and I think my quests with Mary Magdalene and um, you know, my devotion to my spiritual practice. Like, I'm I'm like, what's wrong with being a disciple of truth, a disciple of authenticity, a disciple of expression, a disciple of compassion and love. Like there's nothing wrong with that. But I had to heal my own wounds with that first. And how I did that wise created a lot of safety for the part of me that felt that she wasn't good enough because of the way that she was showing up, she wasn't getting loved. That's where a lot of these wounds come from. Is we have a natural way of being as a child. And we have this natural expression, this natural open heart. I, as a kid, was just this like, I would cry if someone stepped on a bug. Actually, I still get really sad if someone steps on a bug. But I just have this open, soft heart. And and I was kind of told that that, like, that's not okay. You need to be this way to get loved. So there's a false sense of self that's created. Oh, this is how I need to be to get love. I need to be more disciplined, I need to be a size four, I need to be this way, and then I'll get love. And when I created enough safety in my body that that those parts of me, the undisciplined parts of me, are okay and I love them. Then it has allowed me to actually change my association with the word by creating safety in my body, and which has helped me have more confidence. And I wouldn't say more willpower, but more dedication. Like I am learning how to build trust with myself and I am showing up differently, but it's from a very different energy, not of an energy of lacking or proving, but an energy of like, I want to do this because I love myself and I deserve to have the life that I want. And this is what it's going to take for me to get to it.

Performing a better life vs. actually living one

SPEAKER_00 12:15

You know, you know what keeps coming up for me is um the word performance. Yeah. The difference between uh performing a better life and and experiencing a different life. And, you know, the the phrase you said, fake it till you make it, is one I heard a lot, especially in my early days of recovery. But um, my my sponsor, what he would always say is to act better than I feel. And I think that's you know, again, why I want to be clear, we're not down on that. There's there's a lot of value in that. I changed a lot of my life by acting better than I feel, and those actions led to better feeling, but there was always a wall I would hit. And really what you're talking about is how that becomes more of an inner change and not just an outer change. When a lot of traditional coaching was about how to perform better, and we measured our success by the metrics of our performance, and not necessarily always felt differently inside.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Yeah, and and better to who? Like, who are we trying to be better for? Who are we trying to be more successful for? Like those are questions that that we've always been trying to success looks like this. And it's society, right? It's cultural. Like, oh, culture in our American culture. If you have a lot of money and you're good looking and you have a lot of friends, you're successful. But I'm here to tell you, I've been in a lot of groups with people who were really good looking and had the money and had the wife and had the hot husband or the arm candy or the 20-year-old younger, whatever, which is all fine if it makes you happy. But I saw I saw a lot of really depressed people. And the opposite of depression is expression, true, authentic self-expression. And I don't think very many people have access to that or even know how to access that.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah, I uh I when you said that, I was thinking that's often the kind of people that are the ones that seek out coaching the most because it, you know, um, it wasn't ever my experience. My my life started out obviously with drug addiction alcoholism failing the game, but some of the people that I met that are feel the most lost are ones who have won the game from the outside and then don't know where to turn, right? And um, you know, I know you have you had started out a lot of your training, as you said, with NLP coaching, and you were really into Tony Robbins, and a lot of the coaching that you know were doing was about performance and focused on business metrics. How have you seen a shift not just with yourself but with your clients as you've integrated much more of this somatic

From Tony Robbins and NLP to somatic coaching

SPEAKER_00 15:00

safety focus into your coaching?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yeah, and I want to be really clear. I'm not like I'm so grateful for my Tony Robbins training. I don't want to like uh do anything to turn like he We love Tony Robbins. We love Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins. Anyone who knows me knows.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

If God forbid Tony Ever Robbins actually, if somehow Tony Robbins ever's listened to our show. Thank you, Tony. Apologize for using you as our counterexample.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yeah, I just he was such a big part of my world for so long. I would go to his seminars and verbatim know the words. I went to UPW, Day with Destiny, Business Mastery. I was like drinking the Kool-Aid from a fountain, and I was trying to serve it to everyone that would listen to me because he did help me really transform a lot of my mindset. And so I actually want to ask you a question. So when we met, you had just gotten laid off from a job of reaching that success, right? I have a master's degree, I have an I'm an engineer, I have the VP corner office.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I had a really nice office.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

I do love it. Sometimes I miss that office.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Pops up in my pops up in my uh one-dry memories.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

But but like when I met you, you were you were relieved. You were relieved. And I was I was the same. Like I had done hair for 20 something years. Uh depends on how long you count, like, because I did off and on for a few years there. But for 20 years, I was behind the chair five days a week, 40 to 60 hours a week, reaching success, reaching, oh, I gotta buy one salon, and then I bought two salons, and then four salons, and then five salons. And I was getting less and less happy. It wasn't working for me personally, because what my soul wanted and what your soul wanted was to be of service, to add value to the world, to share from our heart, to like have this inner knowing of like this expression, this part of me that's like, I there is more to me. There's more to why I came down here on this earth. My purpose wasn't to just make a bunch of money and and have a bunch of letters behind my name and have a bunch of degrees. Like there, there's more to my purpose, there's more to my soul's expression than that.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, I um first off, I actually, when you said that, I remembered that moment. Like the don't trust me, the fear came and I could and still comes.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Oh yeah, we were scared shillers.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I could do a whole I could do a whole episode about the fear of of be especially being a man and losing my job. But I do remember that moment completely unexpectedly when I jumped on a call with my boss. It was a Zoom call, and HR was there, and I was so naive, I was so unexpected that I was like, oh, why is HR here? And I remember the feeling when he told me they they had to let me go was just an overwhelming sense of relief. Um, and you know, I I think that's something I've noticed, especially um getting my son is now he's now uh he's almost 17, he's got 18-year-old friends. I'm I'm kind of spending some time around really young men. And I know young men aren't typically the demographic of our show, but I think that's something that I see so much more in when we're younger, is our our focus, as you said, not just in making money, but in winning the game. And one of the things you know we talk about a lot is I'm not here to play to win the game, right? We're here to change the game. And the the biggest uh uh evidence that the game is broken is how many people have successfully won the game, and they're the ones most often desperately seeking out someone to help them because they found that the prize at the end of the race was hollow. And that's where I think a lot of this shift has come in because people realize like I don't just want to win the game from the outside, and I and it kind of brings that back to your word of devotion. Well, I I'm glad discipline's coming back. I'm excited to talk to you about that later, maybe. But this word devotion reminds it brings the why back into it. And you your question was was so perfect. You know, who in whose eyes are we successful? Whose eyes are we trying to be successful? And that devotion, like what am I devoted to, is more than just outward success.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Yeah, I was actually listening to a podcast today with um Gabor Mate, who's like one of my great teachers, and he was talking about um Peter Levine, who's also an amazing somatic coach, and I've taken classes from him. And he said, at the end of the day, I can always ask myself, have I done enough? And there's lots of days where I can say yes, but then I ask myself a different question Am I enough? And the answer is often no. And that is a core wound of all humans. I am not enough. And because I'm not enough, I'm going to chase this arbitrary thing. And like you always say to me, because I definitely have this matter of moving the goalposts. Like as soon as I'm about treating it moves and it moves and it moves, and it's always outside of you. And that's why I love somatics, and that's why I love the work that I do of like coming back inside of you and knowing you are valuable. You are valuable, even if you don't make any money. When a baby is born, we're not like, you're not valuable, you're just taking up all my time and resources, and all I have to do is it's like only when they start getting us, then we start asking them to perform. Like you said, oh, you gotta get ACE. Oh, you gotta be on the soccer team. Oh, you, and we put all these constrictions on them that make them believe that they're not enough. That everyone is born enough and whole, complete and perfect. And it's only this game that not like 98% of people are not winning. And the ones that are winning don't seem very happy to me. They are not living from their heart, they're not fully expressed, they're very small, also in a different box. It's just a bigger box on a higher shelf, and it's still a box at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah. So, you know, it uh I'm curious too, because not just in your personal life, but you had talked about how early in your coaching career it was focused on a lot of these other more um performance um modalities, uh NLP and Tony Robbins. Uh, and not I'm I'm curious not just in the in your own personal life, but how you have seen the shift in in your clients as you have brought more of these practices into your coaching.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yeah, well, I mean, we can only take our clients as far as we've gone. So before I did a lot of mindset work because that's as far as I had gone, right? So I I couldn't do the embodying work. I hadn't been embodied. I wasn't doing it. And um, so as I've really shifted, my clients have shifted. And um you always just need to be two steps ahead. So I just keep growing, and then my clients keep growing with me. So as I've gone through my big life transitions, I've noticed my clients are going through big life transitions. Before when I was really stuck in mindset and self-love, I really coached people on self-love and worthiness. And now it's more embodiment. And it's um like my clients that are coming to me are now like, I want to be embodied. I want to feel more something. I don't know what it is, but I'm numb or this or this. And so I have seen people's lives completely change through embodiment, like spiritual powers come in, like forgiving themselves for past divorces where they had been holding on to resentment for years, and then just completely like forgive them as they forgive themselves. I do a lot of forgiveness work. I love the ho prayer, the I'm sorry, please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I say that all the time. I use that with my clients all the time. And um yeah, it really is beautiful to witness someone be able to hold themselves in an embodied way instead of just mentally try to think positive and trick themselves.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because that brings us back to the topic of transition and transformation, right? And um when you when someone is going through a major life transition, divorce, career change, something like that, what are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen them make?

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Well, the biggest mistakes I've seen them make are the exact mistakes that I made. So um trying to go through it too fast. Um the body is a lot slower than the mind.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

The mind's like people aren't patient.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

I mean, Chad. If you want to learn patience, careful because God will give you lots of things that are super slow that are you're like, I'm so impatient.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

It reminds me of one of my one of my sponsor's favorite sayings is everybody's trying to get sober by Thursday.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that that was me to a a certain degree, um, to a lot of a degree. To a certain degree. A lot of a certain degree.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

A certainly high degree.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

And this is where relationships really help you. Um, because they can mirror to you. Like I remember even before we started dating, I had left my marriage, I think four or five months at this point. And I just kept saying, I thought I should be further along by now. And and that's what I see a lot of my clients do. Like, they've been in this career for 20 years, and then they're just like magically wanting to step into this new thing, and they're like, I should be further along by now. I blank, fill in the blank, be somewhere other than where I'm at. And one thing I know that I was very committed to was to allow myself to feel the grief and not spiritually bypass it. And you have been such a beautiful partner for that. But even before we met, there were so many times where I just feel it coming up and I would just pull over on the side of the road and be like, if I don't let this move through me, it is going to stay stuck inside of me. So I just pull over and let the grief come. And I think whether you're going through a divorce or a career change, I've actually worked with a lot of people through a career change. And the phrase I like to tell people is you're not starting over, you're starting something new. There's so many of your gifts that you had in your previous life, whether it be, you know, a floor, like I have some florists. I've worked with quite a bit of florists and wedding photographers and that are transitioning into something different. But the tools and the skills and the person that developed this beautiful artistic business, their rapport with clients, their ability to market, their ability to get themselves online are all still the same tools that they're going to use. So they might get there faster. Like we don't want to limit and put limitations that it's going to take you, you know, it took me five or six years to build my hair clientele. Has not taken me that long to build my coaching clientele, but a lot of the same tools that I had already developed. Um, so yes, patience for sure. Clarity, it takes time to get clarity. There's a Chinese proverb of like, you don't swim through the mud, you kind of wait for the dirt to settle until the water's clear, and then you can see what direction you're going. And that settling takes time. That settling takes time. And and the going inward, and when your whole life has been outward focused to go inward, the body is so much slower. The body does not speak the language of the mind, it speaks somatically through slow, gentle movement. And when you've also been in the hustle, masculine, you know, society, capitalistic, I wouldn't even say masculine, I would say our capitalistic society of hustle culture. There's a lot of unwinding in your nervous system for that. And it's a constant reminder in this world of when people don't even have the attention span to watch an hour-long video. They oh you oh oh now you got six seconds. Oh, you gotta catch them in 15 seconds. Oh, you gotta catch him in this amount. The body doesn't work like that. Body likes you to slow.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

You have three seconds with a real Oh my goodness. Their attention span.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

Oh, I forgot.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

No, I uh I love access, I'd love so much you bring that up because um that's one of the I mean it's honestly one of the biggest challenges of our profession. Um in part of that is people are very impatient with themselves. I think people are also, you know, to to bringing some compassion into that, because there's a lot of compassion for that. But I think also a lot of times people are just like, I really am tired of hurting and I want to stop hurting. And to bring them back to, well, you haven't really been hurting, you've just been avoiding the hurt. Um, but also that is what um sales is, and that's something that we you know we've talked a lot about, where it's really easy to go out and sell someone on give me three weeks and I'll change everything about your life. Um and I would argue that even when people have that immediate success, it's not the blessing that they think. You know, my another one of my sponsors' favor my favorite quote ever, and one of the constant messages that I bring into every single client I have is to um you to say pray for slow growth. Because the faster you change, the easier it is to change back. And I'm here for sustainable growth, and I have been in that trap my life, and I have changed drastically and changed back. And what always happens for me and a lot of other people that I've worked with and known is that over a year, I may say, Well, I don't want to take three months, I want to take one month. So then I try to do something in one month, and a year later, I've gotten I've gotten a lot, I've made a lot less progress than if I had had the patience. It it it whenever we look back and realize that chasing that short-term goal actually pushes out the eventual success.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, I mean, and going back to my good old favorite teacher, Tony Robbins, says he always used to say. I love you, Tony. I love you, Tony. Um, I I wouldn't be here with without his influence in my life for sure. Um he he always said, people, the human brain will overestimate what you can accomplish in one year, but seriously underestimate what you can accomplish in three years. And anything that is built to last, it takes time. And you're constantly reminding me of this. And that includes our, and this is where compassion comes into the work. So we have our patterns from zero to seven. Our our brains are like sponges and they're just like absorbing, absorbing, absorbing. And by the time you're in your 30s, 95% of everything you do is a pattern that you have learned and modeled from your world. So if your parents don't have a good, loving, healthy relationship, if they don't know how to love themselves, if they're not good with money, if they haven't been successful, if they weren't an entrepreneur, and you're trying to get into all of this, there's more than just like a mindset shift. There are patterns that are deeply woven, generational patterns that take time. I'm 46. So some of these patterns I've had for my whole life. And my mom had them and her mom had them. And so it might take me more than three months to unwind all of those patterns. And that's where the real compassion and patience is a constant daily practice. I have to constantly daily practice patience. It is not natural for me, it is difficult for me. And and the impatience comes from sometimes a dysregulated nervous system of I'm running out of time. I'm in fight, flight or freeze, right? Whereas when we're grounded and we're calm, we're not coming from fear, we're not coming from scarcity, we're not coming. And when you just leave a marriage that is all you've known for 15 years or 20 years or 30 years or 40 years or two years, there's still unwinding of a new way of being. And that takes time for your body to even settle enough. Like when I first left, I just was like, my mantra every day was that's a future April problem. I said that to myself every single day. And that was advice that I had gotten from a friend who had gotten divorced, and she had gotten that advice from a friend of hers who had gotten divorced. And so every day my mantra was that is a future April problem. Today, I just need to get through today. And that's enough. And that's sometimes all we can do, right? It's get through the day.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's why I mean we know this, but I I could feel the energy of it, even as you were sharing. Like, why we'll I'll never sell anybody on a quick fix, you know, and the many people will. And I I know that over time, um, a lot of times people come back when that quick fix not that it didn't work, that it worked, and then six months later they're back where they started, right? And I we we didn't get in this to um uh create surface wins, right? We we got in this to create sustainable change to see a clients grow and change and embody new identities and last they'll last a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Yeah, and and what happens when you try to go for the quick fixes, and I've done that so many times with so many different things is so many times, just in the time I've known you. I know, is you lose trust with yourself. Like every time you do that quick fix and you go back, instead of saying that that program, that nutrition program of eating 500 calories a day and injecting hormones in my body didn't work, is it so you say I am broken. You you tend to put it onto you, I'm broken, I didn't work, instead of saying, Oh, that actually just wasn't realistic. Yeah, it's slow progress over time. And it's kind of like our podcast like real love, real intimacy, real safety, it's a lot of hard work. You and I put a lot of hours when we go to the office into our relationship. But what do we always say at the end of the day? It's worth it. Yeah, you're a lot. Yeah, I'm a lot, but it's worth it. It's it's all worth it, and anything worthwhile is worth it, and anything worthwhile is not uh quick three steps how to whatever make this person magically fall in love with me forever. Like that those things being sold are the reason why people have so much mistrust of themselves, of partners, of their government, of Instagram, of all of these things is because none of those things actually work. If they did, they wouldn't still be doing them.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yep, yep, yeah. And you know, to to for an example, and again, I don't want to overemphasize physical attributes, but I um I peaked at 275 pounds, uh, which I just which is a funny story how I discovered that on my um uh honeymoon, but it took me about eight years from that to get down to a size 32. And I have never had to buy a bigger pair of pants for over a decade now. And that's the kind of again, that's one of the smaller things of importance in our life, but it's an example of the kind of change that we're talking about here, right? Where do you want to be in three months? Well, where do you want to be in five years?

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah, that kind of segues into sort of a similar topic. Um, because you had done, both of us had obviously, but you had done so much transformation, so much growth, so much healing in your life before I even met you. And one of the a lot of the processes and and fun times we've gone through in the time that we've been together, um, one of the phrases I've heard you say a lot is, you know, I thought I had already healed. I thought I'd already done the work. I thought I was done with this healing. And I feel like that's probably like the the single most lament that God hears, especially in the modern era. Um, and yet I have seen you transform so much in the short and relatively short time that I met you. So my question is really, you know, this is something not just you, this is something that we hear all the time, hear all the time with clients, hear all the time with friends, hear all the time with each other, here all the time when we're sitting there in the mirror. What would you say to people who are out there who feel burnt out, quote unquote, from healing? And I put both those in quotes because I think you know, people take that in a lot of ways, but a lot of people kind of feel like, why is there still work to do?

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Yeah, so the answer to that, and that's a great question, Chad. The the answer to that has really been settling. So I'm still in exploration and contemplation with that question. Um, and what I love about consciousness is it's always expanding. So there are always new things that are coming in from that 95%, right? Like our consciousness expands and then a new awareness comes in, and then that shifts everything. Um, and as Wayne Dyer always says, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So as you change what you're looking at, the things that you look at change. So the way that the reason why I was saying that a lot is I I kind of went a little backwards. Like I was like very much in like, I'm in my wholeness and I'm in this. And then like life kind of started squeezing me. I had a lot of contraction, and then I was like, why am I here again? You know, that's just my humanness of me wanting the roller coaster ride to be over instead of surrendering and trusting that everything is happening for me. And when I when I have the thought that a life is moving through me, then I can pause when I have a regulated nervous system and ask, how is this happening for my highest expansion? Because sometimes we do need those things to create character, to create resilience, to create the necessary container to hold the capacity. So now that I've gone through those things, I can hold space. My capacity is so much bigger now. I can hold space for someone who's gone through a divorce, I can hold space for someone who's been sexually abused, I can hold space for someone who's been objectified, I can hold space for someone who had the core wound of I'm not smart enough because I went through all of those things and I had healed those things that as my consciousness is expanding even more, healing is not linear. Nothing is linear. That's using the third-dimensional thinking for fifth-dimensional experience. And you know, now we're getting like spiritual and meta, but we there's layers, and so like you'll heal one thing on an embodiment level, and then you know, you'll heal it on the mind level. Okay, I healed this thing, and then now I healed it in the heart, and now I healed it in the body, and then whew, my container opens. And guess what? There's another layer of that that's like ready to be healed, and we are all one. So as collectively, we are kind of all going through a transformation. We're going through a transformation of the rise of the divine feminine. We're going through a transformation of men needing safety and men feeling like they want to access more of their emotional being, right? And so as we go through that collectively, that brings in more things for all of

Why the inner work never ends (and why that's the point)

SPEAKER_02 40:20

us. I don't know if that's making sense, but absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Absolutely. And I love I I I learned to fall in love with growth um and uh embrace that as there is there is no destination, there's no place for me to get, there is no person for me to become, and then I'm done, and then I stop. And I think sometimes that's a huge temptation, right? Especially when we're especially when we have those moments in life where like everything's good, freeze, but that's just that's not how it works, right? And I like I love the way you said it that this as we we expand and then and then in time comes and it's time to expand again, right? Like the way a snake sheds its skin, right? We all just come out of the year of the snake. I think we all had a great time in that. And um the a snake sheds its skin because it's outgrown its old skin. But then as it sheds that skin, that new skin, and I don't actually know if this is true zoologically, but it's a really great metaphor, so just roll with it. That new skin, as we come out of that old skin, is very sensitive and raw. And for a time we we fill out that new skin, but then it's time to grow again. And and there's no point where we stop growing consciously, as in the terms of consciousness, right? And so I know sometimes it can be really frustrating and painful, and there's a sense of, have I actually done any work? But there is a reason that that this work doesn't end. You know, there is a there it's not supposed to end. Like as long as we're here on this plane, we're meant to grow and expand.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like playing a video game and you get into your first level and then you figure it all out. Are you gonna keep playing that video game? You'd get bored. I mean, that's why movies and television, there's always some kind of drama, right? We don't want to watch a movie where they like, oh, they get together at the beginning and there's no trials and they live happily ever after, and you'd be like, I'm I'm bored. Like, we as humans actually kind of want the chaos. We kind of like the drama. Our psyches, like if I'm God, which I am, and everybody else is a god, the only way to experience myself is to separate myself so that I can know, because I don't know what it's like to experience me. So I separate myself so then I know, like, oh, what's your experience of me? Oh, what's your experience of me? Oh, that's interesting. Oh, you think that of me? Oh, that's interesting. So it's kind of like this little fun game that we're we take way too seriously. I take way too seriously. Remember when we were editing one of our podcasts and we were just like laughing at ourselves and laughing at each other, and we're like, we are taking this shit way too seriously. And I feel like that added a little bit of levity of like, yeah, why aren't we just so serious about this?

SPEAKER_00 43:10

We were in tears, actually. We were laughing about it, some episode where we were just like so you know, coming back to this last year of huge growth and change in your life, you know, what would you say has been like one of the most challenging aspects of it for you, one of the most challenging

The hardest thing to embody this year: true vulnerability

SPEAKER_00 43:30

things to learn to embody and shift?

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Vulnerability. So, because I have always been very expressed and share a lot of things, I thought that I was being very vulnerable. And it was over a year ago that we did the Tantra retreat. And one of my coaching clients was actually there. Actually, I think there were two people, and then this other woman who was in one of my other groups, and I did not want them to see me not having my shit together. I used to believe that being a leader meant I had to have all of the answers figured out. I had to know because people were coming to me to find the answers. And what I've learned this year through deep embodiment and deep humility life happening for me is real true leaders don't have it all figured out. Nobody has it all figured out. And being able to admit that, like I don't have all of the answers. What I have to offer is really a high level of unconditional love, safety, acceptance, and some beautiful questions because you have all of the answers that you need inside of you. And my job is to be present and loving and let you figure out your own answers. And so the vulnerability of not having it all figured out and letting my armor down with people in my life to let them see the mess, let them see that I actually need help. I'm hurting. I don't know what to do. I'm scared. For me to admit that I'm scared to people is a really big deal. And um, I would say that's the biggest thing that I've learned this year. And I'm I'm still in process, and I imagine it will be years for me to keep leaning in to

What it's like being with a partner who can see your mess

SPEAKER_02 45:40

vulnerability.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Well, dare I say, uh, ladies, that's one of the challenges of being with uh a man who has connected himself because you can't hide your mess.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yep. And you can't mask. That is the hardest. Like just thinking about our relationship and my how much I wanted my ex-partner to share his emotions with me. And then how much you share it. I'm like, whoa, you're sharing a lot of emotions. You know, we talk about that a lot of like how many women are like, I want my husband to be like this, I want my partner to be like this. And I was like, Are you sure? Because that means you get to show up very differently as well, and be vulnerable and be sensitive and be let him lead, which is hard.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Well, and I mean, I would I would ask you, has has what has been more of a challenge in that is um seeing my emotions or realizing how much of yours I can see and how hard it is to hide, and that feeling of being seen and not having it walls up. In fact, I remember early on, very early on in our relationship, before it had even become uh romantic or sexual at all, you very brilliantly putting it that you're like, I feel like you are seeing I can't remember exactly how you put it behind walls that I haven't yet wanted to let down.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

That I haven't seen yet. So I remember, yeah, I remember distinctly feeling so vulnerable because you saw something I hadn't seen yet. You saw it before I had seen and maybe before I was ready to see it. And I mean, that's debatable. I guess I'm ready to see it if I'm in a relationship with you.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

I don't do it on purpose.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

He just can't help it. It's his gift, and it has been a gift.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

It's like having emotional x-ray vision.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

It's kind of it can feel invasive.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Yeah. I'm like, oh, he's not supposed to see that or something. But it's it's true. You're you're right. It's it's not that I'm uncomfortable with your emotions, it's I'm uncomfortable with my emotions, and that you can see my emotions, and that I can't hide or mask it. It doesn't, it doesn't work with you, which is why you are the exact right partner for me. But it's very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Yeah, I'm not easy, but I'm worth it.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Well, and you know, it's interesting because you're kind of easy, but that's we can talk about that after the show.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

That um that's the most challeng, you know, you you answer the the question of what was the most chat one of the most challenging things, but I'd ask like how much that was also the biggest key to some of the change, the transformation you've gone through.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

It's the it's the thing you had the most struggle with.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm kind of like you, Chad, where I just really lean in to growth. And I remember you telling me, like, you're one of the most courageous people that I've ever met. And that the thing that takes the most courage for me is seeing those parts of myself that I deem or have deemed in the past as weak. I'm still ready to face them and do them. It might take me a minute, and I might be a little stubborn and you know, a little teenager-y bitchy about it. But I'll get there eventually. And I do. I I I have this deep desire to get to know her, all of her, and love all of her, and and is also scary.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

You are, by the way. The most courageous woman I've ever met. So I want to ask one last question before we close out the show. Um, before we ask our question that we always ask anyway. And because I know this is something that you've really been talking about a lot lately and have a lot of stuff in the works for, and I think we I think we might end up doing a whole episode about. But

What it actually means to be self-led

SPEAKER_00 50:00

what does it actually mean to be self-led? Um, you you kind of alluded to that earlier in the show when you talked about having, you know, the adult part of you lead the other parts of you. But I think that idea of self-leadership is not one that is well understood.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah. I mean, my purpose here, Chad, is to change leadership, to change what leadership looks like and to invite. I was about to say demand, and then I was like, no, that's actually what I'm trying to get away from. So that was an interesting little Freudian slip. I'm here to invite divine feminine leadership and to be self-led. And to be self-led for me, because I use a lot of parts work in my coaching, and parts work has been transformative for me. Is we have these different parts of us. And which ones are we letting lead? Are we letting our shame monster lead? Are we letting our insecure abandonment trauma lead? Are we letting our angry teenager don't try to tell me what to do lead? Or are we letting our sovereign, true higher self lead? And that takes a lot of introspection, a lot of self-awareness to understand even who's leading and to have the awareness to slow down to catch it from the language that we're using. We had the episode about archetypes with Christy, which is a really great episode to watch to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

Season one, episode four.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

Episode four. We'll we'll we'll tag it on. We don't know exactly which one it is. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

But season one, episode five.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

Episode five, season one, episode five. To talk about the different archetypes and the language of the archetypes. And when you're in the language of the shadow, when you say, when you're in blame energy, when you're in demanding energy, which I just slipped into, but I caught it right on air. See, so so like it happens just like that. But I have the awareness of the language. I was like, oh, that's the language of force. That is a shadow. That is not the language of invitation. Invitation and demand are very different in the nervous system. They're very different energies, right? And so to be self-led means to know which parts of mine are which and which one is actually leading me forward in my life. And I'm so excited to be working on this. I've been working on it for a couple months, but it's going to it's still in the process of evolution because I'm in still in the process of my own evolution, right? I am going to lead myself to that process.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Well, I can't wait. Me too. So with that fun little

A daily devotion to love yourself back to an open heart

SPEAKER_00 52:40

teaser, um, what is one piece of advice you would leave our audience with to give them hope and love?

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Give them hope and love. Um my invitation is to have hope in love. There are so many people out there who don't love themselves, they don't feel like they're lovable, they don't feel like they deserve love, they don't know how to receive love. They have so much armor around their hearts that are blocking love. I can feel when my wall goes up and I'm blocking love. Chad can feel it. I can feel it come up, I can feel the flow of energy stop. And I breathe and I just slowly let it down, and then it opens up and it's scary, and then it regulates. And so I would just say, don't give up hope. There is hope. There are practical tools that you can do. There are daily practices that you can do to love yourself. You can do EFT tapping, you can do the I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me. Thank you. You can do mirror work, look at yourself in the eye, you can hug yourself, you can kiss yourself, you can do all sorts of things. It's a daily devotion to learn how to love yourself. And the more that you love yourself, the more that you can receive love. The more that that love pours out, the more that that love comes back to you. And so just love yourself. And it's not that easy to just love yourself and say it, but it is a daily devotion to come back to love, to keep your heart open, and that is what will change the world.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Thank you for coming on the show, April.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Thanks for having me. I'll say my show, it's our show.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

Thank you for coming on our show. Hope you enjoyed being on the other side of the room.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

I like the pink couch.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

And uh, I just want to remind everyone to be brave. Love is worth it.