Join host Tessa Lynne Alburn and J. Lumen, a life transformation coach, for an inspiring episode of Say YES to Your Soul. J. shares her journey from feeling trapped in a wrong relationship and job to embracing a life of freedom and joy. Despite many challenges, including her ex attempting harm, she saw it as a second chance to live authentically. She encourages listeners to embrace "mini moments" of joy and freedom, seeing them as building blocks towards a fulfilling life. 

J.'s message revolves around making intentional choices, finding joy in unexpected places, and living life to the fullest without regrets.

Tessa’s Free Gifts: Get access to Tessa's Roadmap to a Soul-Connected Business and spice up your life with her Reignition Roadmap 

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• J. shares her experience of feeling trapped in a toxic relationship and a job she hated. Instead of hiding, she saw it as a wake-up call to change her life
• The importance of not tolerating unhappiness and making intentional decisions to live authentically
• Break free from limiting beliefs and circumstances, whether it’s external or internal entrapment 
• Finding joy in small, everyday experiences ("mini moments") 
• Adopting an "unknown bucket list" approach to life and finding mini moments in unexpected places 

About J. Lumen 

J. Lumen knows when life sucks! To feel trapped in the wrong relationship/job due to circumstances, guilt, doubt that it seems impossible to find a way out, while knowing this wasn't the life she deserved. After surviving an unexpected attempt on her life, she began living without regret, created The Unknown Bucket List Approach and as a certified Life Transformation and Empowerment Coach, J is on a mission to teach others how to stop tolerating their life and start living, because life is short. 

J's Free Gift:  

Get your FREE self-assessment and discover your own Unknown Bucket List! Go to: https://resumeyourlife.com/ 

J. Lumen’s Website & Social Media

Website: https://resumeyourlife.com/

Instagram & Facebook: @theunknownbucketlist 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-lumen-ubl/

* About the Host * 

Tessa Lynne Alburn is a soul connection business coach, author, podcast host and explorer. Tessa believes that every woman has the ability to learn to express their true voice, be heard, and fulfill their dreams.

Her mission is to help women entrepreneurs bring their ideas and authentic feminine voices into the world, so they make a real difference and receive compensation that reflects their brilliance!

Tessa’s Free Gift: Get access to Tessa's Roadmap to a Soul-Connected Business and Say YES to Your Soul! http://www.tessafreegift.com/ 

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May You Say YES to Your Soul.

Well, hello there. Today we have a guest. She's been through some pretty big stuff in her life. When I first met her in a podcast event, it's, it's a crazy one. It's just like this all day thing where we're doing all these fast, little interviews. She jumped out to me because she was, she had a message around toleration and shifting that into a supersized life, by really paying attention to the unexpected mini moments. So her name is J Lumen, like light L, luminates, L-U-M-E-N. And she knows when life really sucks to feel trapped in the wrong relationship, to feel trapped in a job due to circumstances, guilt, doubt, all kinds of stuff, right? In situations that seem impossible to get out of. And she survived an unexpected attempt on her life. And then she began living without regret, the unknown bucket list approach. And that's what she created through that hardship. And she's a transformation, a life transformation, an empowerment coach. And she's on a mission to teach others how to stop tolerating their lives and start living because life as we know it is short. So J, I want to welcome you to say yes to your soul.

Hi Tessa. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Fantastic. I'm glad you're here too. Like, in so many ways, , , you've got a pretty big story. We could probably talk for hours about that, but I think if you can give our listeners a sense of what you're going through, you were in that in a couple different situations that you were just stuck and trapped and give them a sense of that and how you shifted out of those.

Sure. Well, one thing I want to tell your listeners is that just because I felt trapped in a particular situation in my life, we can all get trapped in various ways in our own life. We can get trapped by our circumstances or our guilts or our doubts. They should relate it to whatever, if they feel trapped in their own life, they should relate it to their own circumstances. Absolutely.

I love that though. I'm glad that you mentioned that right here, because this is not about necessarily an external entrapment, right? This is also the internal feelings of being trapped or obligated or guilty or in shame and all that stuff. So thank you for bringing this up.

Yes, absolutely. Well, and you know, we're taught as adults that we have to suck it up and tolerate it, and that we're not supposed to want to change our life. Or if we start to change our life, our friends or our family might not be so supportive, but there's no reason why every single one of us shouldn't be living a life that we don't regret. And it's our life. So no matter whether we have family, friends, work that we enjoy, ultimately it needs to be the life that we are living that we don't regret because we're the only ones that get to have it. And for me, I was trapped in a wrong relationship. I say, wrong relationship because had he asked me to marry him, I would've said no. So clearly, wrong relationship. I was trapped in a wrong relationship. I was financially supporting him, so I didn't feel like I could, you know, necessarily kick him out. It also left me trapped in a job that I absolutely hated. I couldn't quit because I was, again, the only one financially responsible, and I couldn't see a way out. So eventually I figured out that I could send him away to go live with his family, which was about four states away. You

literally were the one that paid for that, right?

Oh, yeah. I was the one who paid for him to go away because I was like, okay, I can't kick you out, but I can't stay here, so, oh, I got it. I'll pay for you to leave brilliant , you know, shift happens . Yes, so I eventually figured that out, but then I convinced myself that the job I had just been complaining about and saying I hated, I convinced myself that, that I could tolerate it because I didn't know what I wanted. And that was actually my mistake because I had the balls to get out of the relationship. I fixed half my life. And then I basically quit. But two months later, he came back from over a thousand miles away. He drove back, knocked on the door.

Oh my gosh. Those bad pennies do, don't they?

They do. I was like, what are you doing here? I have a smile on my face, but the night ended with his arrest for attempted murder, which ultimately was mine.

So he was arrested for your, the attempted murder of you.

Yes.

Yeah. That's so, it's just astonishing that sort of thing even happens in life, right? And here you are, and you're talking about it, and you're just so full of light and joy. I think it's just amazing. And I'm so glad somebody was looking out for you that night, the Universe. Thank you. Yes, you got through it. It was,

there's two ways you can look at it. People could have expected me to just call, crawl away in a hole and hide, and it would've been acceptable. But, I saw it as a second chance, the silver lining, because who knows how long I would've stayed at this job that I hated. I had started to give myself the freedom to live a life I wanted, and then I quit because I didn't know what I wanted. And I mean when I sent him away, I could have quit the job, I could have broken my lease, I could have done all the things, but all I saw were reasons why I should just stay exactly where I was. And it's a horrible thing to have to say I went through this, but the silver lining was here's your second chance, you started to give yourself a better life. Now get off your butt and go do it. Go start living because life is short. And it's a cliche saying, but it's true. Life is short. Well,

J, you know, it's, there's so many people I think that come up against a situation like that or they have circumstances in their lives where they're not taking the action that's going to change things. Right. And you were there. But you were starting to get that you had this second chance. What was going on inside you? How did you actually start to listen to it and lean into that message and into actually taking action? What got you to really do it? I

wanted to, if my last day on earth was going to be soon, and we never know when our last day on earth is going to be, but if that was going to happen, I didn't want to be regretting where I was or what I was doing, or what the last thing I did that day was. I wanted to break out of this. I have to only do this, because I can only afford this or my circumstances are this. We deserve to live a life that's not imprisoned by our means or our circumstances. And we all have different levels of ways that we can afford to do things, but you can really build a life in mini moments throughout your day. I started looking back at my past and finding, just remembering what used to bring me joy, passions, skills, things from my childhood that I used to remember that I used to enjoy doing.

And I started leveraging that to be able to help propel me forward and get clarity on what it was that I wanted to do with my life. I always knew in high school, I never wanted a normal Monday through Friday, nine to five job, I put myself back into that position where I was not living a Monday through Friday, nine to five job . Mm-Hmm. .I started, I always loved to travel. I grew up in the military as a military kid. So going new places and exploring new things was not something unfamiliar, but I couldn't have told you the last time I had gone anywhere. So I started doing that. And it's just looking back and remembering what really makes your heart smile? Because the life you have is yours. And you can compromise and say, well, I want to spend time with my family, or I want to spend time with my friends, or whatever you want to do

Well, I call that rationalizing.

Well, I call it intentional decisions.

Okay. So that's a difference though. If it's intentional, you can choose those things, but if it's not intentional, it's just a habit, right?

True. But It's where I was going with the compromise is if you have a couple of different things that you want to do, well, I want to have time for me, but I also want to spend time with my family. Then, you decide which you want to do, and you make the intentional decision to choose A or choose B. But then you'll also find a way to, if you're trying to find time for your family and yourself, then you'll find a way maybe the next day or a few days later to where you do the other. And so you have, it's kind of, you plan out your day intentionally so that you're always making the decision that gives you what you want for your own life.

What were some of the things that you were creating intentionally when you first started making some pretty big changes in your life?

I went completely across, I changed my career completely. So it was, I left the job that I hated. That's, I definitely did that . I changed career fields completely. And I was on the east coast of the country and I moved to the west coast of the country. Didn't know anybody, but the work I wanted to do was over there. And in order to do it, , the cheapest way I could afford to do it was actually to sleep in my car while I drove across the country. And a lot of people were like, oh my gosh, I could never sleep in my car. Well, if you had to, if you didn't have any other choice, if you absolutely had to, you could. So what's the difference between choosing to do it now versus if you had to, you could. And I actually, I've grown from that experience because I did it once and if I did it once, I can do it again. I've now been to all 50 states. I've driven almost every single one of them. And the longest stint I did in my car just to see if I could do it, was I did a two week road trip in the Dakotas and did the whole thing in my car, and I showered at like truck stops or gyms.

And they gave me complete freedom to literally just explore at my own pace. And it's, did I have to? No, but I wanted to because of the experience that it gave me. And that's, that's what I mean about not limiting yourself by your means or your circumstances, is that it doesn't always have to be a glamorous way to do something. You can still do it.

I love that. And so you knew that life is a box of chocolates and that you were going to have some Yes. You found a way to do it, and you just didn't give into the limitations that seemed like they were all around you.

Yes. And the more, the more I went for it, the bigger my life got. And I've been able to do things that I never even would've imagined were possible. And it all came through just little mini moments. And a lot of those we will dismiss as insignificant, but if you collect them, it's like standing on the side of a river bank. And if you want to get to the other side of the river bank because you think there's freedom over there, you just throw little stones in or your little mini moments. And at first it doesn't seem like it's doing anything. But over time, if you just keep collecting the little stones into the river or your mini moments of your life, it will eventually create a bridge and you can walk across the bridge to the other side of the river and find your freedom. And if you are happy with your life all over here, that you just want a little happiness over here, you can go across the bridge, get your happiness, and then you can come back to your life the way you want. And it's just from finding all these little mini moments and then stacking them up to where you have this supersized life.

That's really a beautiful way to envision it. So it's a great metaphor. And I think this could be really helpful for so many people who just get overwhelmed, right? Get overwhelmed at trying to make a change. And so you can go about collecting mini moments. What were some of your mini moments? Do you remember any of those original ones or the ones that you're living today? Your mini moments.

We actually just had one. I'm visiting family at the moment, and it was Memorial Day here in the United States. And we cut into a watermelon and it was yellow.

.

I've never seen a yellow watermelon. No. Neither had anybody else in the house. And they, of course at first we were, is it rotten? Is it safe to eat? And then we went down this rabbit hole of yellow watermelons are a thing and where they come from. And of course, we could have gone our entire lives with never experiencing or even knowing that yellow watermelon existed, and many would dismiss that as insignificant. But it's a funny story. And so those are little mini moments that you just collect into your life and it's all these experiences that you're overlooking, and that's how you get this supersized life. It's full of all these experiences that are little moments.

I think what I like about what you're bringing here today, I mean, a lot of it, but there's a way of paying attention. A way of paying attention to what the experience is behind whatever's happening. And so, in your mind, you're calling this a mini moment now, not because everybody was confused, but because it was fun to get into it, go down that rabbit hole, and learn about yellow watermelons, right? And it makes you laugh when you think about it. That is the essence of the mini moment, right there, right? The changing of your state and lifting, it becomes an automatic upliftment of one spirit and being. Yes.

And it's so easily dismissed as being insignificant, but once you shift your way of thinking about it, then you just, you start finding all these little mini moments all over the place.

Yeah, I love that. And yes, I think you're right. A lot of people would say that the stuff is insignificant, but it's not. And I think one of the main things, in all the coaching that I've done over the years and the mentoring, it always comes back to something very similar to this, right? It comes back to, what do you want to be feeling? Like what are you going to need to get over there? And you, this way of capturing mini moments sounds like it works really well. Maybe for people with ADD in addition to just everybody. It could work for neurodivergent people, it could work for people who are over, tend to be emotionally overwhelmed. It's a way to focus the mind and attention onto the joy that's present or the possibility of joy that's present right now in this moment.

Yes. If you feel like you need to make a change in your life, it doesn't have to be a massive overhaul. It can be done in little micro shifts, building the little mini moments, and eventually you will see that your life has been changed.

Fantastic. Alright, we're going to get booted out of here. I know the event people are going to do that in a moment, so I want to make sure that our listeners know how they can connect with you and if you have a free gift to go ahead and let them know what that is.

Well, thank you. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook under The Unknown Bucket List and J. Lumen on LinkedIn. And I have a play on words. You can get a self-assessment if you need some help identifying your past achievements to your little mini moments. It's resumeyourlife.com or it could also be resumeyourlife.com.

Mm-Hmm. . Oh yes, . Very good. All right. So resumeyourlife.com. So get that assessment going on your mini moments, your capability of that and turning things around. It just sounds like a joyful little process. I'm really glad that you brought that to us today. And is there any last thing that you want to share before we have to go, before we have to leave here?

Just to live life like it's short, but also like it's large, and finding the balance or long, life is short and life is long, and finding the balance in between and just really making intentional decisions throughout your day.

Awesome. Thank you so much. All right. That's it for today's show. I'm glad you were here today, J, illuminating us and bringing your lovely spirit.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

I wish you all joy and finding those mini moments. All right. Bye-Bye for now.