Festivus For The Rest Of Us and The Shadow Mandala

Holidays aren’t one-size-fits-all, and pretending they are can drain our spark. We lean into Festivus as a fresh frame for honesty—airing real grievances, naming the masks we wear to fit in, and choosing a small, brave reset when life feels stuck in the middle. I share why I’m running a 10-day personal reset anchored by a shadow mandala, a simple visual practice for meeting the parts of ourselves we’ve exiled as “too much” or “not enough,” and how that work helps chronic dis-ease shift toward coherence.

We explore the hard truth about motivation: sometimes the stick works better than the carrot. Remembering the cost of inaction can push us to reclaim sleep, clear clutter, and protect the conditions for healing. From there, we get practical with The SHIFT framework from my book The Shift: Own Your Emotions, Own Your Life—turning emotions into usable data, creating a safe space to investigate patterns, feeling what we avoid, and alchemizing it into action. This is emotional fitness: the everyday reps that build freedom, resilience, and better choices.

There’s also a new take on dragons. Instead of slaying what scares us, we wake it up and make it an ally. Shadow work, breath, posture, and voice become portals to the subconscious where symbols carry more weight than words. We practice coherence so we can stay calm when things get chaotic—and help others co-regulate back to center. You’ll leave with one prompt: choose a single, slightly uncomfortable shift today. Change a word in your story, retire one stale grievance, or put pen to paper and draw a circle around what you feel. If you’re ready for seasonal resets, community support, and tools that actually fit real life, hit play, subscribe, and share this with someone who could use a little shine. Then tell us: what’s the one shift you’ll make now?We use Festivus as an honest mirror for the holidays, unpacking shadow work, chronic dis-ease, and the courage it takes to reset when life feels mid and messy. A 10-day reset, a shadow mandala, and the SHIFT framework anchor a practical path toward emotional fitness and calm coherence.

• honoring non-traditional holidays and personal rituals
• 10-day reset structure and shadow mandala practice
• chronic dis-ease, clutter, and self-healing strategies
• hero’s journey resistance and the “too much” mask
• airing grievances with self to release shame
• dragons as hidden strengths within the shadow
• carrot vs stick motivation and avoiding complacency
• the SHIFT framework for emotional fitness
• coherence, co-regulation, and calm under stress
• one small brave shift to build momentum

Sponsors and CTAs:
go over to sleepingdragonsco.com
You can find The Shift on Amazon now
Come practice with me and get stronger
So I really hope that you will join me and at least try
If you join my human reboot dojo over on the school platform, you can ask me for a digital copy of that book anytime

Chapters

• 0:01 Festivus And Feeling Like The Rest Of Us
• 2:45 A 10-Day Reset And Shadow Mandala
• 5:20 Chronic Dis-Ease And Self-Healing
• 9:40 The Middle Stretch And Hero’s Journey
• 13:15 Too Much, Too Little And Masks We Wear
• 17:45 Airing Grievances With Ourselves
• 22:00 Dragons, Shadows And Hidden Powers
• 27:10 Caregiver Burnout And Self-Gifting
• 31:15 Sticks, Carrots And Real Motivation
• 36:30 The SHIFT Framework And Emotional Fitness
• 41:55 Coherence, Calm, And Contagious Regulation
• 46:20 One Brave Shift You Can Make Today
• 50:35 Make 2026 Your Unmasked Year

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Welcome to the Authentic Action Podcast. I'm Ziyala, also known as the Art Angel, and today is Festivus. Uh today is often considered the official day of festivus. It's December twenty-third, although I usually figure the whole tail end of December is festivus season. I called the holiday season. But in any case, if you've ever felt like you're one of the rest of us, then uh this one's for you. I think so many of us don't feel like we quite fit the Hallmark version, right? Um, during the holiday season. And yet that's what the holiday season is compiled of, all of the rest of us. And so I think it's important to honor whatever traditions or non-traditions that you are engaging in this time of year. Maybe you're sick of it all and you're just checking out, maybe you're into it all. Uh I I've been at a at different points of it at different points in my life. And so um I think it's important to keep in mind that part of the beauty of the holiday season is all the different ways, right? Like just like a beautiful Christmas tree has lots of different decorations on it. A beautiful holiday season has lots of different traditions and rituals and ways of being. So I'm also on day three of a 10-day personal reset that I started on the 21st a couple days ago to ride out the end of 2025 for lots of good reasons, something I personally needed. And in doing that, I've developed a pretty cool, if I do say so myself, a pretty cool shadow mandala little booklet tool that I'm gonna be using, demonstrating, modeling myself, and and then using in some of my communities. If you're interested in any of that, I'm doing daily live streams for that, and then the replays will probably be on my YouTube channel, I presume. So I'm in day three of a 10-day reset, which means I'm in that middle ground, approaching the middle. And actually, this whole 10 days, I'm doing, as I mentioned, a shadow mandala to help guide me through some shadow work. And shadow work is specifically about like digging things up from the subconscious, basically, or looking for the gifts in our shadows, the things that we deny in ourselves, this the things that we criticize, the blame and the shame, and and the things that we tend to not want to bring out into the light, and that can cause chronic disease in our body. I've been suffering with chronic disease off and on my whole life, but I've had a series of flare-ups really since before the pandemic, and part of that's probably just getting older. Hate to say that, but uh it's not the only factor, though. And I do believe in self-healing. I believe our bodies are amazing, but we got to give them a chance. And a lot of times I bombard myself with so much consumption, so much clutter that's still around me right now, so much overthinking that it's no wonder that I end up with a chronic disease, right? Chronic dis-ease, chronic pain, chronic inflammation, chronic loopy thinking. And, you know, I'm sick of it. It's not the first time I've been sick of it. Maybe it'll be the last time, but I am sick enough of it to do something about it, which is a good place to be. And I have been doing three-day resets every month, and I will continue to do that. I have an online community right now where I host those. You're welcome to join those if you're interested. You could find some info about that. But on top of that, I think it's important to do like a bigger annual reset and probably quarterly, like seasonal resets. This 10-day reset really being more of a quarterly reset. I may do like a really bigger, bigger, like 28-day reset in the spring. Um, I don't know, I'm just just winging it here. It's what we're all doing, right? Of course, as I'm winging it, I'm also following quite a lot of wisdom, quite a few wise teachers who've come before me. And it feels good to feel confident enough to start to feel like a teacher myself as I've learned enough to start to teach, and then aware that I will continue learning as I teach. Like teaching is really where the learning begins in many ways. I was thinking, though, about this middle part of my current reset and how this is the stage where many people just quit or turn back in life because it's easy to think, I kind of know what's gonna happen, or this isn't working, or it's too hard, or I have a different priority, or there's so, so many things that come up. I was just listening to someone tell a version of the hero's journey story, which I've heard many, many versions of, but in this version, they were really stressing that part of the hero's journey, which always comes up, which is where you don't want to go. And I was really resonating with that in my own personal hero's journey, and just in life in general, my nature is to feel that call, the call to adventure, the call to my better self, and then to for instantly all the resistance to rise and to think of all the reasons why I'm not the right person for it. I can't do it, it's not the right time. I'm to this, I'm too that, I'm to this other thing. And the section of the shadow mandala that I worked on yesterday was about being two-faced, using air quotes there, because not to like TWO the number, but T O O, like too much, too young, too old, too thin, too fat, too loud, too soft. All of those twos that the world aims at us, or that often we aim at ourselves, that we often say to ourselves in our own minds, and that ends up dampening our shine, basically. You know, we end up putting on a mask, an outer face to the world that is what we think the world wants to see, forgetting that the world doesn't give a fuck, and even if it did, like it it wants us to be the best we can be. We all are interconnected on some level, and yes, there's envy and jealousy, and people sometimes try to tear other people down because they don't know how to handle wanting something that someone else has, but that isn't a reason to dampen our shine, to dull our shine, right? So I'm excited to be feeling fairly shiny this festivus day and working on a lot of great things, even as I'm submerged in this shadow work. And part of what I'm working on is really in real time trying to encourage more of you to join me in taking off your mask, rubbing off that two-facedness, you're not too much of anything. You are you, you're the only you we have. And if you don't be the best you that you can, who is going to? Nobody else. So I hope you will be the best you that you can be. Yeah. What if we stopped living in this mediocre kind of mid part of life, this way of being where we accept feeling chronically ill as just part of life, or accept being less than our full selves, just to fit into a society that doesn't even care about? What if we stopped doing that? I recently wrote a book called The Shift. Actually, it took me four years of writing and rewriting, but last summer on my son's 30th birthday, May 31st, I published that book. It's out on Amazon now, and it's called The Shift. Own your emotions, own your life. And from that book, I created a course called the Human Reboot Protocol. And that's where I'm hosting these three-day resets. And then before I wrote that book, I have been working on this idea of Unity Play Centers. And right now I have an online school community called the Authentic Action Academy, which is a sister, sister to this very podcast, where I am inviting leaders, teachers, coaches, people who want to step into that higher self, who are tired of living in mediocrity, and who are ready to acknowledge that our systems are largely outdated and not working very well, and that it's up to us to create better systems, to uplevel things. And it starts with up leveling our own energy, getting a hold of ourselves, so to speak, learning how to master our bodies, our minds, and our lives. And I am not coming at it as like Miss Perfect, who's got it all figured out. I'm coming at it as from the trenches, sometimes still in the trenches, and doing the work ongoingly. Because I do believe that physical fitness, emotional fitness, financial fitness all take, it's not like grueling work. It's not about efforting, but it is about showing up regularly and doing that work, putting in the reps, as they call it, showing up and staying in the room. So one of the traditions in festivists is airing your grievances. And traditionally, that it refers to like getting around the table with your family and everybody airing, you know, it's a spin-off of what naturally has happened to many of us during the holiday seasons, where maybe somebody gets a little wine in them or a lot of wine in them and starts to complain or talk about the things they've been saving up since last Christmas or a decade ago or since somebody died or or whatever it is that this time of year sometimes we have the time to sit around together that we don't always get. And so there tends to be an airing of grievances. And Festivists just made it an official thing, which I really love. But what if we also aired grievances with ourselves? This is really what the shadow mandala work that I'm doing right now is about. It's about really taking an honest look at my own shitty stories and airing my own grievances, not to revel in them, but to get them out on the table, let them go and be done with them so that I can move the F on. You know what I mean? So yeah, I think the people, the person that we often disappoint the most is ourselves. And the person that disappoints us the most is ourselves. I often find myself in my mind blaming other people for my suffering in a way that I think is very common. It's not a way that I think is great or good even, but it's I'm just being honest, it's a still a fault of mine, something I'm working on. But when I can flip that around, when I can pause and look underneath, like what am I why am I projecting that basically, that accusation, that shame or that blame, that judgment onto someone else. It's always something in myself that I am denying or not wanting to look at, not dealing with very well, and wanting to like push aside by way of casting out. And I think this is what we do when we criticize or judge others, when we um we air our grievances toward others and say how much that others have betrayed us or disappointed us. It's really that feeling comes from an internal knowing that we are betraying and disappointing ourselves by not by not answering that call to adventure, that hero's journey call, right? To to step into the heroic version of ourselves, our best heroic versions. And you know, I want to I want to pause there and say, it's okay. We don't have to be our best heroic versions every day, all day, our whole lives. It's quite fine to be your Clark Kent version, perfectly fine human being. We don't have to be Superman or Superwoman all the time. But I do think, I mean, to use that metaphor, I think it's it's good to have your cape ready, handy. I think it's good to keep that capacity that we all have, whatever your superpower is. And I do think we all have some sort of superpowers, most of us with many superpowers probably, and most of them underdeveloped. And so again, back to why I'm doing this shadow work. Shadow work is a great way to sort of look under the hood into the subconscious, which speaks in symbols and colors and sounds and feelings, not in words and logic so much. So hence why this mandala tool, which actually was used by Carl Jung, I didn't know till I started doing it myself, but I uh ran into in my researching for a little booklet that I put together about mandalas and shadow work. But yeah, they go really well together because of the way the subconscious speaks in symbols and pictures and stories and understands that isn't and is influenced by feelings, emotions more profoundly, I think, than logic and words, although some say not at all logic and words, and I I have a little disagreement with that. So I won't go into that. But anyway, what I've been sitting with during this reset doing the shadow work with the mandala is all the ways that I've disappointed myself or betrayed myself, or you know, I'm using victimhood as a crutch or an excuse not to step fully into that heroic side of myself. Um, I've broken it down into nine sections, eight really, with a center section, and I'm enjoying doing the real-time, raw, unscripted live streams and sharing my process, and I'll be doing some of that this afternoon. But I wanted to do a podcast here before I got to that. And this podcast is something I have all these dreams in my head of moving forward, interviewing great people, using it as a platform for good in all sorts of ways. And then I I end up not following through a lot of the times and not bringing it to the full fruition that I want to. And so here I am again, showing up anyway, doing the best I can with what I have from where I am, and happy to be doing that on this festivist. And I encourage you to do the same. Those dreams that you've abandoned, the boundaries that you didn't hold, the times that you knew that you needed to you needed to do something or wanted to do something or really desired something that you wanted to go after, but you talked yourself out of it. It's not too late. If whatever just came to mind when I said all that, do it. Why not? You know, this is your one precious life. And I'm sure there's a voice in your head right now listing all the reasons why not. But I'm here to push back on that voice a little bit and say, just do it, just do it. Just and do it. You know, your life is gonna be over before you know. We're all gonna die. Nobody gets out of this life alive. I hate to sound urgent on that part, but I think it's actually quite freeing to realize, despite a lot of people's theories about how we're gonna somehow technologicalize ourselves out of it. I mean, it's actually beautiful that we grow older and die. There's a certain, there's there's something about the temporary, the temporal nature of life that gives it so much richness, so much meaning. And I think, yeah, knowing that you're not going to live forever is a great reason to begin again right now, to pick up what again. You don't have to pick up all the dreams. I'm not saying that. There are some dreams that are best left as dreams. Believe me, I know. But I also am not sorry that I've pursued the dreams that I have, even the ones that have turned out to be, you know, pipe dreams or failures. Um, I learn all along the way. And it's so much better to look back and think, I tried that and totally flopped, I totally failed, than to look back and just think, like, what if, I wonder, I should have to spend so much time, you know, even if I spend my time thinking like licking my wounds, and as I do a lot of times, I'm holding my side because I got some chronic stuff going on. Even if I'm thinking, like, ooh, ouch, you know, I r I really, I really feel banged up sometimes by my experiences. I still think that that's better than just sitting and melting on a couch and not doing, not having those experiences and looking at other people having experiences and thinking, oh, I wish I wish that was my life. I wish it was having more experiences. Um again, I I urge you that creative work that you have buried somewhere sometime because someone said that you were too something, too young, too old, too rich, too poor, too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny, too dumb, too smart, whatever it was, just let that go. That's not it's probably not true at all. if it's completely true, it's not the totality of of who you are. It's just one one facet, one lens to look through. And it's a it's a crappy one. It doesn't serve you well to look through that, look at yourself through that lens. It diminishes your shine, like I started off saying. So I guess that's airing my grievances to us all. Today's section of my shadow work mandala, looking over here to see if I can see it. I'm just on day two, even though I'm on day three of my reset I have two versions going because I'm that kind of person I like to like to do things twice. But it is the victim wound or the wounded how am I using my victimhood to hide behind to diminish my shine. So like look what you made me do um and other ridiculousness.

SPEAKER_00: 21:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:07

In my work I talk a lot about dragons. I have a business called Sleeping Dragons Company. Uh should pinky finger asterisk mentioned they are one of my sole supporters so go over to sleepingdragonsco.com I'll probably take you still to our Etsy store but I am working on redoing a website maybe in any case sleeping dragons company came from the idea of awakening your creative spirit. I think sometimes when I look at mountains I think of them as as giant sleeping dragons. So that's where that that visualization came. And right now I have a back porch edition that I've been working on for many years that I call the eight dragons room because when I built the rafters with these waves that I cut into the rafters I saw them as like dragon tales. And so now I envision this room as eight dragons which are like bridging a different dimension to this dimension or you could just think of as like the earth and the sky. So I bring that up because I think a lot of times dragons like people think about slaying their dragons and this is similar to the work that I'm doing with shadow work in that it's not about slaying a dragon. It's not about uprooting some limiting belief or some some you know victimhood mentality or some two-facedness or whatever it is that's holding us back. It's not about uprooting that and slaying it or killing it or um shaming it or anything like that. It's about making friends with it. And not just that it's about much like like a dragon awakening it that's your friend and your your also your bridge to another a whole nother dimension a whole nother part of yourself I think hidden in your shadows hidden in those limiting beliefs are our superpowers like hidden in Clark Kent is the Superman right to use sort of silly analogy but but that analogy works for so many of us because it it's yeah there's a part of us I think that resonates deeply with that idea of hiding the hero in ourselves so that we can fit in and into society and feel safer while hopefully you know in Superman he just has that power and it just stays with him but I think in this life we need to keep that keep that power alive in ourselves it's like a use it or lose it type of a situation to a large degree and you start to like literally turn to stone get get crusty and old and stiff and less capable of emanating light energy and having that shine. And that might sound woo to you but it's it's real we're starting to have the science to measure all of this stuff which people have been saying for for a long minute or two now. Yeah I think so many of us get burned out we're in this caregiver mode and this time of year sometimes brings our awareness to the fact that we are giving and giving and giving and we don't feel like anyone is giving back to us. And I think it's really important to recognize that it's not that you don't deserve someone else to give to you but that the way that you show the universe that you're ready to receive that gift is by giving yourself that gift first. It's important to remember to give yourself grace remember to give yourself a smile remember to give yourself some ti extra time to figure things out sometimes. Remember to give yourself leeway forgiveness time to try things more than once to you get things right. Like it's silly to think you're going to get things right the first time that you try them. And I think many times not always but many times we have an easier time of seeing that when we're looking on the outside at other people as I was going to say with our children, but there's interesting things that happen in the way that parents see themselves and their children and sometimes then apply even more pressure to the child than they did to their to themselves to to achieve a certain you know to fit into society in a certain way. That's a topic for another conversation but I will acknowledge that in any case sometimes we do it best with someone else close to us like a child or a friend or parent and sometimes it's like the opposite and maybe you can only do it when you're looking at like a TV show or a movie. And then it's obvious to see the dynamics of how somebody is trying their best even if they're failing at something right now. Yeah. That's not to say that we can't do better that we shouldn't try harder sometimes hold ourselves to a higher standard have more discipline all that yes and also it doesn't it doesn't help to shame ourselves at least not all the time you know I'm a little hesitant thinking about that. I was listening to Andrew Huberman recently talk about motivation and how a lot of times we use positive we use the the carrots what we think we're going to get as our motivating factor but it's actually been shown in a lot of research that this the stick thinking about what we're going to get if we don't achieve the thing is actually profoundly more motivating. And I I didn't like hearing that I don't I think a lot of people would much rather I mean it feels better to focus on the on the goodness right on the thing we're going to get I was thinking through carrots I'm looking for the carrot cake it's a spoiled kind of girl I am but you know I've had some rounds with suffering and even though it's easy to think like oh I like and I wouldn't wish that on anyone and I'm not I'm not happy I suffered in the way that I did it was not pleasant. I don't want to go through it again. But I can see how that suffering opens the door of potential for me to have a whole nother level of appreciation for life and every round of intense suffering even you know every traumatic experience wave of abuse and neglect and self-betrayal all the things create openings of possibility a countering potential for them to motivate the force of that negative can be that motivation that can propel me forward so much farther than just looking for the reward if you never have that suffering behind you to think about how you want to avoid it. And that's a it's a weird thing it's not I don't think it's really talked about a lot although was just talked about on Huberman's uh Huberman Lab podcast but I think there's still this idea and general storyline among we humans that that you just have to focus on the good that you just have to say your affirmations that you just have to stay positive and it's a it's tricky because I do think those are true I think while you stay positive it's important to think about how bad it could be and if you have some proverbial stick some suffering behind you that still stings a little bit it is highly motivating. And that's the kind of motivating I'm coming out of so that's how I know you know yeah there's nothing nothing wrong with being in that mid place either comfortable comfortable enough to not push yourself. But I do think there's a real danger in that you can get real real low without realizing how low you've gotten it's like the frog in the in the boiling kettle you can start off quite comfortable and then get a little uncomfortable and blow it off because it's been comfortable so for so long and by the time you really realize that you're in hot water it might be too late. You might have your muscles might not work very well literally this is what's been happening to me so in my book The Shift Own Your Emotions Own Your Life I developed a framework based on those letters just because it's easy so it's S C your story and H hold a safe space and I investigate and invite in F feel your feelings and flow with them and then T transform your life alchemize all of that because our emotions are are information they're not facts but they are information. They are responses about the difference between our expectations and the data coming in about what really happened and a lot of other things our past experiences it's complex but it is data and the more we learn to pay attention to listen to work with that data the more emotionally fit what I'm calling emotionally fit we've we become and I'm really excited to be starting my first round of the shift lab beginning uh in January here I have the have the platform set up and I'm excited to have my first cohort of humans humaning together going through this shift lab together to really step into our hero selves to take off our masks and to learn to love and accept ourselves exactly as we are while also reflecting on what we don't want it's all all the things it's going to be a real time messy but held by a framework a safe space kind of operation so you can probably find a link to that somewhere around here if not now then soon and not if not here then somewhere I do think discipline is is needed and probably uh underappreciated I think what we need right now more than anything is integration. I think so many of us are feeling wounded feeling raw feeling um tattered and torn and and just can't can't take it anymore really in so many ways and so what I hope to do is provide a safe space for us to grow together to upgroup things a little bit and examine them but also to uplift one another. I'm really excited to introduce and guide other people through using this set of very simple easy free tools that we all can learn to use things like breath work and posture and waking up our fascia with stretching and using our voice more intentionally all of those things that I think are going to help us have better human relationships better relationships with ourselves and each other and then build better institutions as we're moving forward in this in this new future of uncertainty where the only thing that seems certain is that a lot of things are becoming obsolete, dying out and that means there's a lot of opportunity for new things to be built new things to come into play and I really really want we human beings to bring our humanness to the equation as we're developing these new systems these new institutions and upleveling our old institutions and systems because we all know AI is here. It's on the playing field and it has been for longer than many of us want to think about actually but I have been using AI to really help me organize my thoughts come to better conclusions and be able to articulate them more clearly about what kind of relationships I want in my life and how I want my life to be I think there is like with everything else great opportunity in the challenges that we're currently facing with AI. So that's another thing that I hope to bring to the table is my perspective and my experiences after a couple years now of working with a lot of AI language models on what they call the front end, you know, just data annotating and experiencing them and making notes on them. I think there's they can be wonderful, wonderful tools, wonderful collaborators, wonderful assistants. But like any tool, any assistant, we would be wise to learn how to use it wisely and not just expect that they're gonna make everything better without our participation that's that's never how anything has worked and it's not how it's going to work now. So I just want to remind you that the shadow is not your enemy it is where your hidden gifts your hidden potentials your hidden superpowers is hiding or hidden. And I would ask you as I have recently been asked where are you hiding in plain sight? This is that two mask that we tend to wear as we present ourselves to the world as a little bit dimmed down less shined version of our true self so that we don't offend anyone so that we fit in better so that we don't stand out really why so another tradition of festivist is the feats of strength. And I think most of us when we think of feats of strength we think of like wrestling somebody to the ground and pinning them my son did that to me one one of the first years we were celebrating festivus while I was tucking him in goodnight one of the last times I probably tucked him in and kissed him goodnight when he was a teenager and uh and he tried to tried to put me in a chokehold you know playfully but he tried to wrestle me to the ground uh for the traditional feats of strength because you have to hold the the hold the head of household down that's part of the tradition at least as we as we claimed it came close to succeeding but not quite anyway he probably could now if he really wanted to he hasn't tried thankfully because now he's 30 and I'm um I'm just stubborn enough to hurt us both trying to keep him from holding me down. So but um you know we think of this kind of thing right for feats of strength. And I think real strength as Brene Brown loves to point out is in vulnerability right it's in it's in this kind of shadow work that I'm talking about. It's in being willing to turn around and face ourselves look at how are you hiding in plain sight and be willing to just take off the sh the mask a little bit polish up your shine a little bit step out of your comfort zone a little bit more even if it's just a little bit more maybe it's a lot more maybe you leap out that's fantastic. But I don't think it has to be that there's there's you know a little bit is a lot better than none and you can build on that. So don't underestimate the power of making a small improvement or finding a little bit of courage especially if it's that uncomfortable kind of courage that comes from sitting in your discomfort that comes from being vulnerable from not displaying not roaring and displaying that physical strength that many of us think of right you know first when we think of strength. Because often a great feat of strength is is remaining calm and coherent when others are being chaotic or being able to smile and relax when there's when there's a lot to get tense about Trevor Noah comes to mind is one of my favorites for his ability to take things in stride see the lighter side of things and that is a real feat of strength especially it's again one of those things like the the more hard and hurtful and and chaotic something is the greater feat of strength that it is to hold ourselves coherent and calm and relaxed and be able to smile and hold that safe space for others because we all know we're contagious to each other and when one of us is chaotic it tends to ripple out and infect others and when one Of us is able to hold that calm coherence. It is so powerful and it holds a safe space for others to come back into coherence. We can co-regulate. And this is a skill that can be learned, can be developed, can be improved. And a big part of my work is doing that for myself and inviting others to join me because I really, really do. I really believe and I really know that from experience, you can ask me how I know. I really, really believe and know that coherence, bringing ourselves into a coherent, calm, regulated state when things are getting chaotic. They used to just call it like not losing your cool. That is one of the biggest keys to success in life on a personal level and in life on a societal level. In life as a species, we need to be able to do that for ourselves and each other. So come practice with me and get stronger. I like to say fitness is freedom. And I've practiced physical fitness a lot in my life. And while I'm not perfectly fit by any means, I am a lot freer than I would be if I hadn't put in the time that I have. And the same is true of emotional fitness. It unlocks so much when you can learn how to listen to emotions, feel your feelings without being dysregulated and overwhelmed by them, or and recognizing when you're becoming dysregulated and putting boundaries in place, giving yourself the space, the time, the tools that you need to come back into a regulated state. Well, when you learn to do that for yourself, then you can learn to do that for others. And the more that we all do that for ourselves and each other, the better all this is going to get. So what is one thing that you could do today, right now, after you finish listening to this podcast? Maybe it's while you're doing something else. You're cleaning, you're cooking, you're hiding from your relatives in the kitchen, you're celebrating festivist in whatever way that you like to celebrate. What's one even slightly uncomfortable, honest, brave thing that you could shift internally? Maybe it's just admitting something to yourself, changing a word, changing a story, stopping yourself when you start to tell a certain victim story or talk about another person or thing or frame something in a certain way, like this happened to me.

SPEAKER_00: 43:00

And instead you could you could reframe it like this opportunity opened up in front of me.

SPEAKER_01: 43:17

I invite you to just contemplate that and you could write it down, you could draw a circle and just uh you know, scribble doodle, I call it. There's some great ways to use symbology and movement, even if it's small, like with a pencil, pencil right here, um, or a marker or some paint or your finger. If you can put some movement into it, viscerally experience that in a safe, while you're in a safe frame of mind, it's gonna help you integrate whatever that is. And then the next time you're grappling with it, you become conscious of it, you're gonna notice just a little bit of an improvement. You're gonna notice, you know, the next time you start to yell, like I've been working on yelling at my dogs, there's just a little glimmer there where you go, like, actually, I know that I want to do that less. And I could probably just stop right now. And then it's that simple. And those those start to add up, start to build momentum. What's the grievance that you've been airing at yourself? And underneath that, what's the dragon that you put to sleep to survive something that you maybe shouldn't have have had to survive or didn't feel fair? I'm not here to debate the fairness of anything, but when we let those things dull our shine, when we respond to tragedy and trauma with what I call the look what you made me do game, where we go like, look what you made me do. Now I have all this armor on and I can't fly, or look what you made me do. Now I'm now I'm old and I never pursued my dreams. That's that's on us. That's on you, that's on me. So I hope that we all make 2026 the year that we take off the two-faced mask and step more fully into our hero journey, our hero self, our superhumanness. Right here and right now is a perfect time and place for the shift to begin. So I started doing these three-day resets every month a few months ago because I needed them. And I'm doing this 10-day reset now because I need it. And no, I'm not doing it because I figured it all out, and I'm not expecting to figure it all out, but I do know that I will improve through doing it, that I will be better for having gone through the resets, setting an intention, doing my best to alchemize some of the stuff that's going on in my life, doing my best to change the habits that are no longer serving me into habits that are better serving me. In that process, it won't be perfect, but I will make improvement. And that improvement will be improvement that I wouldn't have made if I hadn't at least tried. So I really hope that you will join me and at least try. It doesn't have to be perfect, it's not going to be perfect, and that's fine.

SPEAKER_00: 46:33

It's okay, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_01: 46:42

I should mention my sponsors for this podcast. I did mention the Authentic Action Academy over on the school platform, where I'm starting to build a community and where I will be hosting the Shift Lab in its first form. That will be a paid experience, mostly to make sure that people there are invested and really going to show up and make the transformation. This isn't just for what my mother would have called pussyfooters. I don't even know where that expression comes from. It's probably offensive. I'll look it up. I got places for that, but this this shift lab will not be that. It's going to be for some serious transformation, serious alchemizing. And if that sounds like something you're down for in 2020, CNO where to find me. Also, another sponsor is the shift. You can find that on Amazon right now, in ebook and in paperback. I do hope to get it out on uh audiobook at some point in the near future. And if you join my human reboot dojo over on the school platform, you can ask me for a digital copy of that book anytime, and I'd be more than happy to send it to you. I know I did already mention, but I will mention again the Sleeping Dragons company over on Etsy currently, where I have a line of hard-to-find natural essential oils, aromatherapy blends, phthalate, phthalate-free perfumes, and other self-love-oriented items. The growing, growing gift shop over there aimed at heart coherence and self-love. So check it out if you're looking for a unique place to buy some gifts any holiday season. If you're curious about this Shadow Mandala work that I am doing, I'm in the process of putting together a cool little booklet for that. And that will be published soon and available. And that will be utilized in the Shift Lab, among many other things. So also I'm doing live streams where I'm sharing my first run through with the Shadow Mandala so you can see it in action real time. I thank you for joining me today on this lovely festivous afternoon, as it is here. I hope that however you're choosing to spend this holiday season, that you are remembering to relax, smile, drop your shoulders, let go of whatever's no longer serving you. Maybe look in the shadows for some of those precious gifts. Let your light shine a little bit brighter. Thank you for joining me, beautiful human. Thank you for being you and let me be me. I hope to be seeing you soon. And until next time, happy festivist and ciao for now.