Living In Alignment

In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna Williams explores what it means to live in true alignment—where your thoughts, emotions, actions, and energy work together in harmony. Blending neuroscience and spirituality, she explains how alignment supports emotional well-being, nervous system regulation, and a deeper connection to your authentic self. 

Jenna discusses the impact of unhealed trauma, limiting beliefs, and spiritual burnout, emphasizing that healing begins with honesty, self-awareness, and allowing emotions to be felt rather than suppressed. She also shares practical tools for creating alignment through mindfulness, emotional check-ins, gratitude, and intentional daily choices. 

This episode is a reminder that alignment is not about perfection—it’s about consistently choosing what brings peace, clarity, and authenticity, one moment at a time. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about living in alignment, what that means, kind of like as a lifestyle and a mindset. So in today's episode, you're going to get some of my views on how the brain is wired for survival and what that means. But how do you live in alignment? What does that mean? What does that look like? And some real everyday practices you can do to keep it up and actually live that way. So living in alignment, it's not a trend. It's not about perfection. It's about honoring yourself. It's about honoring your nervous system, keeping it safe, out of survival mode. It's about honoring your intuition, sort of trusting your gut, and being your authentic self and being completely okay without the pressures of other people in your way, without other people's opinions or energy in your way. Alignment is kind of like when your thoughts, emotions, action, energy, they all move in the same direction. So instead of pieces out in every direction, it's about returning to wholeness and living in alignment, like everything aligned, everything going in the same direction. It's not about being perfect. We're human. We are not meant to be perfect. We are meant to be who we are. We came here to be something and being who you are authentically and living in that, that's what alignment looks like every day. That may seem like a huge concept to you now. If there's a gap between where you are and where you're supposed to be or want to be from an inner self, living in alignment is gonna feel so far out of whack. It the gap is gonna be very wide. You can shorten that gap and bring yourself back to wholeness, and then it will all move in the same direction. In neuroscience, they call it coherence. Spirituality calls it integrity. Your soul's gonna call it home. All different things, all different language, same concept. You are supposed to flow with the path. For me, it helps to think about it like a river and removing dams or blockages so the water can flow, the water of me. That helps me to think about it and rationalize it in my human brain after knowing what happens on the other side. That's an experience. There's no human terms for it, but that flow is a big thing. Your brain is wired for survival, it's also wired for harmony. So we generally get stuck in survival and don't honor the harmony. So when your inner and outer world are coherent, your brain releases dopamine, serotonin, love type chemicals, peace, joy, happiness. But when you're out of alignment, the brain activates stress responses, survival mode, adrenaline, cortisol, stress hormones, and you're just unwired and you start putting all these dams in the way of your water so it can't flow. Living in alignment is about letting it flow. And when you think about water, sometimes there's waves, sometimes there's tsunamis. If you're thinking about a river, there can be rapids. Life is gonna have rapids, but the idea is to let the water flow. Water will naturally find the lowest point. Water is gonna go where it's meant to go. Your job is to remove those obstacles. So that's what living in alignment is to me. The way I can explain it is getting things out of your way so you can flow. That's returning to wholeness, that's healing, letting your energy flow like a river, if you will. In spirituality, wholeness is alignment like the water flow, right? That's how spirituality thinks of it. Alignment heals the fragmentation of your energy or those dams. It returns you to wholeness. And alignment takes healing, awareness, it takes some courage. You have to believe in yourself when all evidence is against you. It takes all these different parts. But if from a high-level view, 30,000-foot view, you just say, My job is to let the water flow, getting back into alignment is going to let your river flow. You are given a human in this life to take care of. So take care of your human. When you say yes and your soul says no, your body can feel heavy. Your chest can tighten, you start to take shallow breaths, your energy starts leaking. You start putting dams in your river. That's the nervous system being out of alignment. So, one of the first things about alignment is healing your nervous system. Ask yourself with a breath. Where does my body feel tense? Where when I breathe, is it in my chest? Is it in my legs? What feels heavy and tense? Just be aware of it. Ask yourself, where do you feel constrictive? What makes me do this and what makes me do this? It's that simple. What feels open and inviting and what feels like this? Start paying attention to those. Just take the pause and notice it. You don't have to be perfect at it today, but the brain works on what you repeat. So the more you repeat this, I'm going to live in alignment. Before you know it, you're living in alignment. I didn't think it was possible. I really didn't. I was hyper-vigilant. I was a high-functioning survivor. I just thought stress was normal. I didn't realize I was bracing for stress and pain. I didn't realize I was living in survival. I thought everything was okay until I woke up in a hospital. So I think that you have to understand your body starts bracing for impact. That starts from your brain, that starts from your thoughts, that's your energy, that's your alignment, that's that flow. Your spiritual life is literally regulated by your nervous system. It doesn't matter to me what religion you believe in. That's why I call it spirituality. For most of us, we we realize there's a soul or something more to us than a physical body. And for that to be in alignment, it starts with healing your nervous system and allowing that space of you to come out and not be constricted in to let it breathe. Alignment is absolutely impossible without compassion. It's just impossible. When you become aligned, you learn that you have compassion for your wounds, unhealed traumas. It lives in the nervous system. Your body holds that stuff even when you're unaware of it. So let that flow. That's part of alignment. You have to let out those unhealed traumas. Cry, scream, go see a therapist. I don't know what you're gonna have to do to release it, but it's your responsibility to release it. You're going to feel better when you do. Most of us are holding on to things that aren't even ours to carry. We are just carrying them around because somewhere in those extra bits of information that we never let into our consciousness, we're just processing it beneath the surface. When you heal your nervous system, you remember what you forgot. You remember what you've buried, and there will be emotions to that. That's part of living in alignment. You are responsible for healing, but again, it starts in the nervous system. Part of living with alignment is actually just letting those things flow, learning to accept there's goods and bads, and you just get as close to neutral as you can. It's okay to have feelings. I do. There are plenty of things I don't like. I recently went through a very emotional experience in my personal life, one of those big life decisions where something outside of my control was massively affecting me. But I just chose, huh, this is how I feel about it. And I'm gonna give myself some space before I make a decision and react. So instead of just reacting, I controlled my response. I'm gonna take some space, gather some information, reset my nervous system, and then I'll make a decision when I can think clearly. That's part of how living in alignment works. Believe it or not, I actually went back and watched a few of my podcast episodes and was like, I'm gonna take my own advice and how to deal with this. Life is gonna keep coming. You can't eliminate stress. That's part of living, being human, and learning lessons. But you can choose to act from who you authentically are from alignment. That's a huge thing of how do you live in alignment. In your nervous system, spiritual burnout, many are gonna meditate. Meditate is from a Latin word that means literally just to think or observe. That's really kind of the point of meditation. But in your nervous system, you sort of want to use meditation, thinking. I always say being the observer, but really letting those go. That's a big part of spiritual burnout is in your nervous system. That peace inside of you that is beyond your human body. You have spiritual burnout. Every single one of us does. Living in a digital area, you can't bypass biology. You just can't. You can try. I assume there's people that are high functioning. I know I was. That starts in your nervous system. So in spirituality, they're gonna refer to it as as within, so without. You may have heard that, or however you want to see it from your viewpoint. Essentially, what it is is if you believe I'm unworthy, behind, or dramatic, your brain is gonna look for evidence of that and it's gonna get stored in your nervous system. Alignment is upgrading your belief systems. Think about it that way, like a software upgrade. You're just upgrading your beliefs. That's part of alignment. Spiritual burnout is about sort of returning that and letting your nervous system have a little faith. That's gonna be part of healing your nervous system. The spiritual part of that has to be done, just like the healing the traumas and repatterning your brain. They all sort of work together. Again, science and religion, I think of it a lot like a seesaw, if you will, that either side is gonna go like this. But if you let your energy get too far to one side, you're gonna fall off the seesaw if someone sits on the other side. So if you think about that, there's both ends, like the concept of duality, if you will, they're both there, but it's understanding the flow in between. The flow is what's gonna heal you and live in alignment. So I had a client I worked with and coached, and she would go around all the time saying, I must earn love. I have to do this to earn love. Whether that was her friends, her family, it wasn't just romantic. She constantly would say, If I do this, then they'll love me. If I do this, then they'll love me. So we kind of coached her with what I always say is words or alchemy, right? So we just changed it to her saying, I am loved by this person just the way I am. She went from failing relationships with drama and conflict to the other people responding different when she did. So when she accepted that she was loved just the way she was and she didn't feel the need to perform or earn, and it was just okay, other people started responding different. Her relationships went with a lot less drama. She noticed all the reasons she first chose these people. Why did I choose them to be friends? Why did I choose, you know, to stay in these relationships with my family member? Why did I choose to spend time with these coworkers? You name it. She went from being, I have to earn, I have to earn to that people-pleasing thing to she was happy and content and better connected to these people. That's alignment. It didn't have anything to do with the other people. They were still exactly the way they are or on their own journeys. But when she stopped saying to herself, I have to do this to earn that, she just showed up different when I am just okay as I am and noticed that other people were reacting to her different. She wasn't bringing her own energetic conflict to the situation, she was showing up happiness connected. She was showing up differently. And because she did, other people's reactions to her were different. That's sort of a karmic thing, right? If I do something, something will happen. You can choose how you show up. That's part of alignment. So for me, when I was healing, every time I was doing it, I had a friend that I would talk to about once a month and have lunch with. And every time I would show up, she'd ask me how healing was going. I'm a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. Then about three months in, she was like, stop saying that. You are a success in progress. You're walking. You may not be perfect yet, but you are not in a hospital bed with a walker. Stop saying you're a work in progress. Say you're a success in progress. I changed the wording and I started showing up differently. That's alignment because every aligned life expresses purpose not as a job energetically. That's part of alignment. Every aligned life will express your purpose in what you align to. But neuroscience actually shows that fulfillment activates dopamine and oxytocin. In spirituality, that's I am present, I am here just as I am. So again, that 15 minutes a day that I always ask you to find and schedule for yourself. That's meditate. Again, it's just observe. If you want to pray in that time, pray. It's about letting go of everything external. Feel it, breathe, and let it move and exist. Let it flow, let it go. Stop holding on to it. Don't let it be heavy. You're just observing. Letting go is probably one of the hardest things. I think harder than that might be forgiveness. I believe that we each find it easier to forgive other people way sooner than we can forgive ourselves. But that's part of healing and alignment in your nervous system, right? You're letting yourself flow. You're just observing it. I think it's really easy for the brain to just name it. That helps me with the observing effect. It comes up, I feel sad, I feel joy, I feel proud. Why am I feeling these things? Just observing that and naming the emotion and giving it the chance to just be there. If I have to feel it, name it, breathe through it, what have you. Emotions are gonna overcome a lot of us. But I think when you just sit there in that 15 minutes and name it, to me, that's half the battle. If I can just identify how I'm feeling, I'm smart enough to know what to do with it next. I think all of us are, but most of us are just unaware what we're feeling. So just observe it. Just let it be what it is, allow it to exist exactly how it does. Just like the client who I am loved just the way I am. Okay, you don't have to be anything more than you are. Your brain is a prediction machine. That is what it's designed to do. It's predicting things based on a lot of past experiences. Taking that 15 minutes actually allows you to just observe how you're feeling today. Again, your brain is a prediction machine, predicting mostly on the past, but it creates reality based on expectation of what happened before. You think about 60,000 thoughts a day, 90% of those are the same thoughts from yesterday, and about 70% of those thoughts are negative. So, what is the harm in scheduling 15 minutes for yourself to just name how you're feeling? Your emotions are actually chemical messages. Neuroscience shows that unprocessed emotions are trapped in the body. Spirituality calls it blocked energy. Alignment is allowing that movement. Your body is essentially like a big traffic jam in rush hour traffic, all the cars trying to go somewhere, and every car in the way of you getting off the freeway or getting to your destination. So that 15 minutes will actually let you slowly remove cars and get things out of your way. That traffic jam in your body of energy, all those little cells of energy are being blocked because of conditioning and everything else. Your 15 minutes a day is just going to let you remove things out of your way. That's flow. You're doing that. You're spiritually bypassing the trapped energy. Things like I'm fine, I'm grateful, I'm all good. Inside, you're actually hurting. So it creates an inner conflict with yourself. Your truth is alignment. That 15 minutes of this is how I exactly feel. Acknowledging your feelings will help you keep it moving. Naming your emotions is powerful. Just naming them helps you become aware of it. And awareness is one of the biggest things. So living in alignment takes awareness, mindfulness, intentionality, all those things are there. I think when you understand how you work, you might work different from me, and that's okay. I allow you to do that. I'm giving you the tools that have worked for me. Hopefully, they work for you. I absolutely love this is not ideal. To me, that lets me accept what's happening. I don't like it. It's not ideal, but I don't feel the need to change it. That helps me. I don't like that. That allows me to say, I'm not okay with that, but that doesn't mean that I have to be responsible for changing it. One of my favorites is access denied. When somebody does something to me, I just go, okay, access denied. Now, you may have had the chance now, but your access to future is denied. Again, that's not ideal. I don't like that. Access might be denied, but that all comes to me in my 15 minutes a day of observing. So just being living in alignment. Let's talk about some of the things that you might do. For example, I might be washing dishes, but I can use that to align myself. If you're there washing dishes, washing the cup, what does the cup look like? I'm washing the blue cup. It's glass, it's got a bubbled texture, whatever that is. I'm the kind of person who cleans up after myself. I'm grateful for this cup that gave me water today. I like the color texture. Alignment is not about escaping, it's about intimacy with yourself and the human experience. You were given five senses in this human life. You can see, you can smell, you can taste, you can touch, you can feel. So even washing dishes can be that experience. Name your senses. This is what I'm doing. Alignment can be that simple. So as you're feeling all those, you can say to yourself, I'm the kind of person who cleans up after myself. I'm the kind of person that's grateful for the water that was in my cup. That's part of the human experience. That's part of living in alignment. Just that simple act of just being present and washing the dishes. You can live in alignment and just that. Alignment is not a retreat. It's really a lifestyle. It's not about one thing you do, it's about the sum of a lot of things you do. So here's what it might look like: speaking kindly to yourself, honoring your needs, expressing honesty, resting without guilt, nourishing intentionally, listening to divine timing and your intuition, all of those things. It's a little bit of surrender, it's a little bit of allowance, but it's a lot of just letting things be as they are. A dangerous phrase is that most of us don't get it is what it is. You just accept it is what it is. Aligned decision making asks: does this bring me peace? Does it bring me expansion or clarity? And if not, you pause and redirect. Alignment is not rushed, it's not just going slow. Alignment is about just sort of that divine timing, letting things be as they are. Aligned decision making, that's a big one for me. I ask myself, does this bring me peace? Does this bring me expansion? Is this good for me? And if it's not, I just redirect. Now, the redirection is sometimes hard because I think we make a lot of plans or we come up in our mind, this is the way it's gonna go, and we set all these expectations. But if it's not going the way it should for you, I think it takes a lot of courage to pull that back and say, I started this, it's not working out for me, and I'm gonna go somewhere else. In a previous episode, I talked about something called the sunk cost fallacy. And that's really like giving up when you're behind. And you know, you've poured a lot of time, money, and resources into something and it's not working out for you, and you need to pull back and go somewhere else. Don't just keep going if it's not aligned. Now, if there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm not saying don't push through. I'm not saying don't push yourself to get there. That might be your alignment, but knowing when to throw in the towel and move on. That's part of alignment. Is this good for me? For me, I always think like, does this bring me peace or expansion? Is this good for me? Is this bringing me clarity? Is this moving me in the direction I want to go? I keep it moving, but am I moving in the wrong direction? Then I need to pull back and go somewhere else. That's aligned decision making. Alignment's not just mental, it's actually cardiac. So, according to the Heart Math Institute, when the heart and your brain synchronize, your body enters optimal function. Coherence. In spirituality, this is flow or alignment. So science actually says the same thing. Again, science and spirituality really are saying the same thing with different language. But when your brain and your body synchronize, your body enters its optimal function. But when your heart and your brain are coherent or synchronized, your body is at its optimal function. In spirituality, flow. Or alignment gets your heart and brain to help synchronize. They're all different things. That's about energy flow. So alignment is built through repetition. How do you do that? The brain learns by repetition. Inspiration and motivation, those are great. We absolutely need them, but your brain doesn't change or rewire with neuroplasticity until you actually make daily choices. It's repetitive patterns. Your brain learns by repeating. So let's talk about how that might look in spirituality versus a repetition in the brain or in the physical world, if you will. So in spirituality, a person who prays once a week versus a person who practices conscious breathing daily, the second person is actually more aligned because they did it daily versus once a week. So the more you repeat, the more your brain's gonna learn. So alignment is built through repetition. It's actually built through the brain. If you practice breathing properly daily, again, you practice that 15 minutes a day after about a month or two. And yes, it's probably gonna take a month or two to really start noticing the results. Once you do that, you're gonna start seeing yourself being aligned and everything else will become easier. So decide what's important and just commit to doing it. There's an old Buddhist concept that says chop wood, carry water. It's just focus on the details. When everything is out of whack, just do what you need to do. Repeat that, and everything will work itself out. That's part of alignment. Do the little baby steps you can do and repeat, repeat, repeat. You will turn into an aligned person and you will keep it moving in the right way. So, what are some things you can actually do that might help you chop wood, carry water, if you will? Practice morning deep breath. Take a deep breath in the morning before you even get out of bed, before you even get in the shower and go running around your day. Take a deep breath. What matters today? In a midday, around lunchtime, take a pause and reset your nervous system. Hey, what did I tell myself this morning was gonna matter? Am I still moving in that direction? That's resetting your alignment if you got out. Because trust me, life is gonna throw you out of alignment. It just does. But that's resetting your nervous system. Remember, I always say like it's in your nervous system. That's that's the first step. You are a sensitive soul in a very loud world. You are so resetting midday when all the noise and and loudness of the world comes in and throws yourself out of alignment. You're just resetting. Take a pause around lunchtime. Okay, am I still moving in the direction I want to move? And then an evening, like a gratitude reflection after dinner, before bed, somewhere, just observe and release. That consistency will rewire your consciousness. So I'm grateful that I did what I was supposed to do today. I'm grateful that what mattered to me, I was aware of. I'm grateful. I mean, I'm somebody who survived us. So some days I'm just, I'm grateful I was alive. Thank you for this day. I'm thankful for all the people I got to help. Every day I'm grateful for the people I help. I appreciate all of you that reach out to me and tell me what a difference I made. That warms my heart. It lets me know that what I'm doing really does matter. But those are some of those things I practice in the morning. What matters to me today? I'll reset around lunchtime. And then when I go to bed, just what am I grateful for? Did I work in alignment? And that practice, after a month or two, it just rewires your consciousness. It tells that reticular activating system in your brain this matters. It's going to scan for evidence for whatever you tell it. So taking that deep breath and doing that. That's one big thing of living in alignment. Alignment is not about perfection. I want you to get that out of your head. It's honesty. Truth hurts. It's choosing you over and over and over again. As boring as that might sound, choose you. You're just choosing yourself. When you live aligned, your body relaxes, your nervous system relaxes, your energy can expand, and your life will respond. You become a frequency of peace. You become in the flow. And your nervous system is the start. Your nervous system and your reticular activating system are, I think, two of the big components. You can reset and restart as many times as you need to. Every breath is a second to reset. And I think we beat ourselves up a lot with self-judgment. So again, alignment is about choosing you and saying, that's not ideal. I didn't like that. You don't have to like it. You just have to say, it is what it is. I feel this way. This made me sad. This made me angry. But again, that repetition, you choosing you over and over again. That's alignment. When you live aligned, your body relaxes, your nervous system is calm, your energy can expand itself. As you expand, you're in that flow. More things like attracts like. So the more peace and joy and happiness you have, the more of it can come in. In the moment you practice, when you're having a panic attack and anxiety, you know, this is not ideal. I'm overwhelmed. My nervous system is fight, flight, or freeze. When you're in that moment, take a breath. It's the five, four, three. So name five objects you can see in the room. I see the door, I see the table, I see the book on the counter, one with each breath. Take five breaths. Just name five things you can see. Say them to yourself in your head. You don't have to say them out loud. If you're alone, I recommend you say them out loud because you know, words are alchemy. But even if you're in other people and you're starting to panic, just take five breaths and in each breath, exhale. Name five things that you can see. And then everything is working out for me, right? Everything is working out for me. I see the door. That's kind of how it works. And then this brings your energy back to you, your body. This is avoiding fragmenting. It's about aligning. So when I said that 543, name five things you can see. Name four things you could touch. I could touch the door, it would feel hard. I could touch the table, it would feel hard. I could touch the pillow, it's soft. It's cottony. The texture is chenille. And then three things that you could feel about them. If I touch the pillow, it's going to be soft, and that's gonna make me feel comfort. If I touch the table, it's gonna feel hard and I know it will support me. But that's the 543. Five objects you can see, four things you could touch, and three things you could feel about them. That's kind of one that I do, but in that moment of panic, you kind of have to reset yourself. So, what can you do in that moment when life hits you hard? You can just go take five breaths, and every exhale in those first five, just name something you can see. Name five objects. And if you can't do the next things, that's okay. At that point, you've taken five breaths and you've stopped fragmenting and you've sort of turned off the alarm system. You started telling your brain, we're safe, we can react. That's it, just take a deep breath. And if you're in full panic, take five deep breaths. But these are some things you can do to just live in alignment. You're telling your brain choosing me is important. That's living in alignment. Thanks for joining today. Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious. Check your vibes.