About This Episode

Abundantly Curious is back and better than ever. Learn what’s new this season, including more solo episodes exploring Geri’s audacious experimentation with living life on her own terms, conversations with fascinating guest experts and thought leaders, and exploration of life in the push-pull of two wildly different worlds: the soulful and the rational. Geri also shares more about The Now Experiment and opens up about her personal journey that led her to where she is today.

Time Stamps

01:15 - What’s New in Season 2

02:21 - Living in two worlds: the soulful and the rational

06:11 - The Now Experiment

10:06 - Geri’s story and journey to freedom

31:17 - Deepening into freedom in 2023

About Geri Paige

Geri is a leader in the art of personal freedom, working to create powerful catalysts for individual change and transformation. She is a nomadic entrepreneur, coach, and the founder of The Now Experiment. She is a creatrix with a degree in journalism and 15 years of experience as a professional content strategist and creator. Geri created The Now Experiment to help humans collectively reclaim what's ours - our freedom, time, energy, audacity, and all. You can find her on Instagram @geripaige.

Host Links

Abundantly Curious Instagram

Geri Paige Instagram

The Now Experiment Newsletter

Work With Geri

Hello everyone and welcome to season two of the Abundantly Curious Podcast.

I'm your host, Jerry.

So in season one, I had such a blast creating something that

was a pure passion project.

It was one of the first creative acts I took just as a labor of love because I am

so genuinely lit up and fascinated by the exploration of the intersection of science

and spirituality and self-help and this whole world that just changed my entire

life, that I wanted to share it with other people and explore all of these ideas

and get really curious about what exists in life and what the possibilities are.

And that's really our mission here at Abundantly Curious, is to expand

people into possibility, to liberate you from the boxes, the mental boxes, the

emotional boxes, the belief boxes that keep you living a life that is smaller

than your potential, that smaller than the holistic nature of who you are.

And so I'm very happy to be here recording this intro for the second season

because there are some new things in the second season that we're introducing.

And note that at the time of this recording right now, I have not recorded

all of the episodes for this season.

So we're really in this journey together.

I think one of the primary goals and just ways that I am showing up in this

is to not put myself as the producer, as the creator into any sort of boxes.

So in season one, you'll notice there were a lot of guest experts joining and

it was interview style and, um, there was, uh, an absolute structure to things

that was beautiful and that worked.

There were also some solo episodes and I, I will probably still have some

guest experts this season, but you're gonna notice, , that I'm really gonna

show up however I want, in service to our mission of expanding people into

possibility, that means there's gonna be solo episodes where I'm sharing

some of my personal experimentations.

I think people are really curious about what it means to walk a path

in between two worlds, and that's how I feel and that is what I've heard

so many others come to me about.

I feel like I have one foot in this soulful world where I am

so expanded into possibility.

I have.

Done so much growth.

Um, I have this wild, almost voracious appetite for information

and experiences that connect me and in enliven me even deeper into the world.

And there's this beautiful trust there that I'm not engaging as

just this alone individual in life.

That I am in fact a creator of my life, , that is working in tandem

with a force higher than myself.

It's a soulful element of artistic expression and love

and emotion and aliveness.

And then there's this other world.

I feel like my right foot is in this rational space, the space that I spent

the first 30 years of my life in.

I'm 34 now, so I mean, I'm gonna say all the way up until now, it's

probably still the dominant aspect of my nature where it's this very

energetically masculine driven, climb the ladder of life, do the things.

If you want to get the specific result you're looking for,

they're very clear path there.

And you do one step at a time in that specific way, and you suck it

up and you just do it where there's very little space for emotion.

And while there is absolutely a, a beauty to it, uh, there's a benefit to structure,

there's a benefit sometimes to, , a certain level of,

, strategy and pathway building.

It can feel whenever it's overused, quite constraining and containing.

It feels like I've been living in a box for quite some time, and this is one of

my experiments here that I'm gonna be speaking to and share and information

about is what does it mean to walk the path between these two worlds, the

soulful world and the rational world, the spiritual world and the practical world.

The mind and the matter, there's just a lot of people who are trying to figure

out how to balance these two things.

So some of the episodes are gonna be dedicated to that.

I'm also in deep experimentation around living as a creator,

not as a responder to life.

So this is a way of living that is inside out, not outside in.

And what does that mean?

That means that I intend to live my life from a place of really using

my inner compass, my inner knowing.

I wanna follow what lights me up.

I wanna follow what I desire and need and want, and I wanna be able to

listen to myself, to my body, um, to my intuition, to all these different

parts of me that exist and make sure that they're all taken care of, that

I'm not leaving any of them behind, that I'm not sacrificing any part of myself.

In order to show up in a way that I am expected to, or that I should,

or that I think I have to in order to be witnessed in a specific way or

create a specific outcome that I want.

, it really is this giant experiment, which some of you may know that I

launched a company a few months back called the Now Experiment, which is

all about presence based exploration and coaching and mentorship, where it's

really about being here right now and breaking free of this constant pull

into the past or the future that removes you from the only moment that is real.

This moment right here, right now is the only time when you can be or do anything.

And we tend to think that our access to aliveness, our access to the way

that we wanna feel, or the experience of life that we want to have exists

at some point in the future once we've created a certain thing.

And that's absolutely not true.

Our access to aliveness is only ever here and now, and we can give ourself the gift

of choosing to be and do in a certain way right now that gives us access to more

aliveness, and that also generates the possibility of the future that we want to.

So a big part of that for me is in leaving the boxes behind ignoring

the rules that don't work for me.

I was in a recent workshop with Jaya John, who is a artist and creator and such a

wise human, and he said, leap from the rules into a higher atmosphere of freedom.

Leap from the rules into a higher atmosphere of freedom.

Rules, structure.

Um, systems, these things are so beneficial and helpful, especially

as the beginner cuz they help you create new patterns and habits and

new landscapes for possibility, whether it's in your health or your

business or relationships or X, y, z.

They create a structure that is very helpful as you're starting to bloom,

as you're starting to, to sprout.

But then, What I get from this quote and what I feel so often is that

there's a moment where maybe part of that structure, part of those

rules gets to shed away so that your unique way can bloom and blossom.

So how can we use the rules in a way that frees us and how can we create our

own rules in life such that we are not contained into any box, that we're not

leaving any part of ourselves behind that we're not sacrificing our level of

aliveness in order to be accepted and successful and cared for, and frankly,

financially secure and stable too.

So there will be a lot of solo episodes where I'm sharing my personal

journey and insight on this path.

Uh, and I'll also be inviting friends and colleagues and cool

people on to have different conversations around these things.

And there will also be some guest experts as well.

So I am really, really excited to bring this new version of Abundantly Curious

to you where we're ultimately aiming to expand you into possibility and deepen

you into aliveness, bringing more presence to your life, and creating more of the

experience of what you want out of it.

I'm really happy to have you here and I invite you to sign up for my

newsletter as well if you're not already the Now Experiment newsletter

on my website, the now experiment.com.

So at this point, for those of you who are already pretty familiar with me,

uh, I wanna let you know I'm about to dive into my story and that will be

the end of this particular episode.

So if you feel like you already have a deep understanding of my path,

then feel free to keep on going.

So I want to, uh, give some background for those who are just now listening on what

my experience of life has been to date.

So I grew up in a very rural part of North Carolina and went to a

very, very small series of schools.

Um, and it was quite a simple low key.

Blue collar life, and I always had this desire for more.

And I think that there's something beautiful in that desire because

desire is the only reason why anything gets done right.

If we did not want for yearn, for desire things, um, there might not be any reason

to actually get up and take action.

I.

So I say that with love and care towards my young self who had so much yearning

for something different because she really was not loving her situation where she

was in this, in this place that she was in for multiple reasons and she just

wanted something better for herself.

And, um, what I wish that I could go back in time and tell her is to remind

her of how much there is to be grateful for in those moments, and to give her

access to tools and things that she can do that, , help her feel more alive without

needing some sort of external experience to happen in order to get her there.

So that's a little reparenting inner child moment right there.

That's what I would tell young Jerry.

But anyway, so I basically jumped onto the ladder of life that I call it really

early on with a lot of zeal and with a very clear vision and mission and purpose.

I wanted to get out, I wanted to be successful.

I wanted to leave, um, this place that had been kind of containing

and, and boxing in for me.

I wanted to leave it behind and I wanted to go out there and just explore and

adventure, , and get out in the world.

So I was very, very academically inclined.

I was at the very top of all of my classes.

I think I had a 99 in every class

it was so annoying.

I remember.

Um, well, it wasn't annoying to me, but I say it was so annoying cuz I got

feedback that it was annoying . That, , whenever they had the award ceremony,

I won almost every single award.

So it was just me getting up and down for highest grade point

average and all of this stuff.

, and it, it was just absolutely so deeply rooted in my identity, like so

wildly rooted in my identity to be, , academically successful and not just

successful, but at the very, very top.

, it was what became expected of me in a way.

And I am still working on deconditioning, that aspect of self that feels like

in order to be me or in order to be loved or the valuable that I must.

Be at the very, very top.

Um, so with that sort of mindset, I ended up in high school my

sophomore year applying to this science and mathematics school.

It's kind of like a magnet school for science and math,

education, higher tier education.

It's really meant to attract who were in my position, who were in schools

that were much, much smaller, didn't have access to as much resources

where kids weren't being challenged or, , really given the education that

could help them reach , their potential.

So I applied and got in and was so wildly excited because getting in meant that I

got to go live on this campus that was almost like a college campus in Durham,

North Carolina for two years in a dorm room and get completely free, , room

and board there, free dining free.

Education from doctorate level.

Really educated people and it also meant an entirely new environment

with new people and being in like a much bigger town and just access

to so many more experiences.

I was super excited to do this, and I went and I got there and oh my God,

it was like, for a little bit, it was amazing, but then it started to almost

feel like a slap in the face because whenever my identity was so tied

up in being at the top and you get.

Access to the sea of other people that are really, really

smart and really, really driven.

Suddenly I was average in that pool.

Right?

Which was still pretty good considering.

But wow, like I was no longer anywhere near the top.

And I started to notice how much of my motivation to act was motivated

by external validation and the perception of how I was doing versus

how I felt about how I was doing and how smart it was that I was perceived

as, versus how much I was learning.

And that, that's a a point I wanna bring up, like nowhere in my education

was anybody talking about the joy of learning or the joy of curiosity

or exploring something or writing something or doing something because

you wanted to, I don't remember a single message from a single teacher.

I don't remember anything like that in my entire.

, childhood, it was all about you do this thing so that you can achieve,

so that you can be validated into the next level so that you can keep going.

And so you can get to that place eventually.

Where you'll be a valuable person who's successful and you'll

have access to a lot of money.

That's kind of the latter of life that I'm talking about.

It is that message that normalized, uh, capitalistic, patriarchal, uh,

timeline that has created great order in our, in our highly populated system.

Yes, of course.

Um, that has worked very, very well for many people, which has created a

lot of abundance for a lot of people, provided access to a lot of safety and

stability and, and fundamental resources.

So not saying that it's all bad, but there is so much containment in it

and there's so little exploration.

So whenever I was at that school, I became deeply depressed.

Because my, I was having an identity crisis at 15 with no resources living

away from my family with all these kids in a sea of just teenage angst.

But, uh, there I really developed a, a, a stronger sense of resilience I guess.

I went to a really, really dark place there.

A part of being in this school was that I would get free tuition

to any of the university systems schools, which was amazing.

Cause my family did not have enough money to afford college.

Really, for me.

So I got a full ride, went to UNC Chapel Hill, and I played

the rules and I chose the major.

I was originally a business major cuz I had watched so much sex in the city

that I wanted to be in marketing and pr.

Uh, and I actually dropped out of being a business major because there was a

Friday morning accounting class that was a requirement for the major that

I could not get to because Thursday nights were the party nights and it

was a 45 minute commute from my dorm to the 8:00 AM classroom on Fridays.

So when you think about the random stuff in life that can

have a momentous butterfly effect, that's definitely one of them.

So I ended up choosing journalism and public relations as my major

I noticed this rebellion in myself while I was there, I had been contained for

so long on this path, and now I was in this free space and I just wanted

to learn the things I wanted to learn.

And yet the majors that I selected had such a strict.

Curriculum of what kind of classes I had to take that I couldn't take a photography

class cuz they were always filled up and they were reserved for the art majors.

I couldn't take a music class, I couldn't take the writing

classes that I wanted to take.

There was still so little options at this place that we were meant to be free.

So I kept climbing the ladder and I got out there and I found the entry level job.

A year later I moved to Boston for a relationship and I just

kept climbing that ladder.

You know, I had the coordinator role, the, , account executive role, the manager

role, the senior manager, the director, and then the head of marketing role.

By the time I was 28 years old and this career was built in marketing.

So all this time, and I got to the top of that ladder and I was just like,

Jesus, . That fulfillment that I've been seeking, all of the ways that I've ignored

so many parts of myself, I didn't even know at the time what those parts were.

To get to this place where things are supposed to feel different

and they didn't feel different.

So I went on a big journey.

I kind of like left, went on this, uh, solo backpacking trip where I ended

up meeting up with a friend on one of her, , retreats that she was planning.

And I awakened to this entirely different way of being and doing.

I'll never forget, there was a Oracle deck at one of the

places we were staying in Bali.

Which is a beautiful place, by the way.

I highly recommend it.

And I had no idea what an Oracle deck was at at that time, but I picked it up

and I started playing around with it, and I, I kept pulling the same card.

I must have pulled from this deck eight or nine, maybe 10 times,

and almost every single time the transformation card would come up.

There are 56 cards in this deck.

The statistical likelihood of me pulling completely randomized,

purely shuffled, whenever I'm pulling one card, the transformation card

is so low and it kept happening.

And that is maybe one of the first moments when I started to get a sense

for the spiritual synchronistic, beautiful, irrational nature of life.

That transformation card was such a catalyst for me whenever I was there and I

was surrounded by all these people living their lives in such a different way.

And I kept getting this card and I kept feeling something in a

really scary way, to be honest.

Shifting in me.

I knew that there was something else for me, and that was the

beginning of my awakening.

And I say scary because there's something that happens whenever you

realize your power to change your life.

There's a shadow side to it where you're also heartbroken about the fact that

you didn't change it before, that this power has always resided within you.

And that there is for some of the elements of your past,

a, a level of responsibility.

And to that part I'll offer grace because we don't do better until we know better.

Right.

Um, so Jerry was doing the best she could until she got to that

place of understanding that something else was possible.

But nevertheless, there was a deeply, , dark side to realizing

that I had spent most of my life on a path that wasn't serving me.

Like it was not lighting me up.

And there were all these other possibilities that I just wasn't

aware of, hadn't really opened myself up to or been exposed to.

, And so with this initiation of sorts, I returned to my corporate job and I

started on my own free time incorporating different modalities of personal

growth and development on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual sides.

My physical journey was, , unintentional because whenever I

came back from this trip, I had a really scary medical experience.

Traveling to Bali is a lot, it can take anywhere from, I think

at minimum it'll take you 28 hours, and at the most, gosh, 48.

Mine was somewhere between those two and it was a lot.

And then I flew a lot for the holidays directly after I was in the air a ton.

I had all of this energy moving through my body, , and all of these

emotions after having an awakening to the possibilities in life.

And I felt like one night whenever I got back.

From one trip I felt like I was having a heart attack.

My chest, it felt like a, like a giant weight was on it.

And in retrospect, it could have been a panic attack, but it was more than that.

My left arm started going numb, and I didn't know what to do, so I called

my mom and I was like, I think I need to go to the emergency room.

This has been happening for like four or five hours, and I'm trying to sleep and

I can't, and it's really, really scary.

And so I went and they couldn't find anything.

But then this weird thing happened where my legs were feeling really

full, almost like there was a clot in them, and I couldn't walk very well,

and I kept having this very intense sensation of pressure on my chest.

To this day, I have no freaking idea what it was, um, from either like a

spiritual, energetic, or a physical scientific, , perspective, like no clue.

But what I do know is that after spending a month and barely able to walk and not

going into work as often, and having endless tests run by the medical community

and constantly being told that it's in my head or that they don't know what it is or

that I'll just have to like feel it out, that I started then to get more curious

about the other things that were possible in the physical health and wellness realm.

That's when I discovered acupuncture and started going every week

for the next two or three years.

And I gotta tell you, after the first two sessions, my symptoms

were almost completely gone.

I was put on this really, really healthy, , diet.

I mean, you can't even call it diet.

I was basically just eating like healthy food and, um, it,

it changed everything for me.

So I was pulling on this thread.

I eventually gave up caffeine.

I was vegan for a while, and then I decided that meat,

um, was calling to me again.

My body sort of needed it.

, but being vegan for the while that I was, was such an excellent cleanse and

detox for me, and I stopped drinking.

That was such a big one for me.

I have actually been alcohol free for almost three years now, and I would

not go back at least in this moment.

I feel that I would never say never, because one thing I hold a lot of space

for is that I can change in any moment.

, I can choose differently in any moment.

And so I don't put myself in any box of saying, I am this, forever because

the ways that I've transformed and changed internally and externally over

the course of my lifetime have proven to me that there is such a state of

impermanence with a lot of things.

And even the things that we say will never be for us could possibly be one day.

I released a lot of.

My anxiety and mental rumination via the growth that I did.

I went on a lot of women's retreats.

I just, I was doing the work, man.

Like every morning I had a morning ritual, morning practice.

I was moving my body.

I was getting a little bit closer to emotions.

I was healing my mind , and I just got to a place where I realized that

the work that I wanted to do that was actually creating a sense of more

fulfillment and joy and peace in my life wasn't what was happening at work.

It was what was happening whenever I wasn't there.

And I realized that I wanted more time to be there with myself with these practices

and these things that were helping me.

So I left my corporate job.

I put in my notice the day after my big fat bonus hit my bank account,

and sure enough, uh, covid, I had just been a whisper that day and

two weeks later it was full-blown.

My last day in the office was the first day that they told everyone to

stay home in Boston where I was based.

And that kind of killed my, uh, dream of traveling during that time.

But it was such a juicy time for me in terms of having all

of my time and space to myself.

No one was doing anything without me.

There was no fomo.

There was no events.

I literally couldn't do anything but sit at home in my studio

with my cat and just be.

That worked out so incredibly well for my personal timeline.

And I'm not saying like, oh, COVID was a good thing for me.

I'm just saying that in terms of when it could have happened in my life,

me leaving at that moment worked out really beautifully because I was able

to initiate a really lengthy healing journey that I am still on three and

a half years later to deprogram myself from the conditioning of being constantly

productive in a very specific way and to catch up on years and years and

years of rest and self-reflection and.

Space to follow my curiosity.

So okay, well I guess I'm gonna start a business cuz I've been just

existing for two months now, living my best life and my apartment.

Uh, so I'm gonna get curious about how I'll start generating income on my own.

And then it just hit me, start with what you know, , what do I know?

Well, I'm an expert in marketing, so become a marketing consultant,

become a business coach.

And that's what I did.

I had an idea.

A month later I launched the business.

. In my first month, I had a great super responsive month, and in my second month

in business, I had my first $10,000 month.

And I have continued on that entrepreneurship journey

for the past three years.

Originally as a business coach, , I still do business coaching even though

I don't advertise it as much, and eventually evolving into life coaching.

I have clients who have been working with me for two and a half years who

show up every week and we work towards what they wanna create in life, the

experience of life that they wanna have.

And I have to say like the fulfillment and joy of doing this work and

witnessing clients create so much change, so much transformation.

It has been absolutely beautiful to witness and that's why I, I got into

this is I wanted to do work that helps free people that goes towards

that north star of deepening into aliveness, which requires freedom and

the ability to create the experience of life that you want to have.

We spend so little time really giving thought to that.

What is the experience of life that I want to have and how can I create that?

This is taking me back to what I said earlier about living a life from the

inside out instead of the outside in,

instead of just responding to all of the things that are coming at me,

, without a clear vision or intention,

in this journey.

Over the past three and a half years, I have experienced more

growth and transformation than I have in an entire lifetime.

It has been so, so wild.

I would not trade it for anything.

Entrepreneurship has a lot of pros and also some cons.

, and I'm really grateful to have had this experience.

And then about five months ago, go, I had this moment where I realized

that I needed to remember some things.

That's something that's really important.

Just cuz you learn something once doesn't mean that that's it.

It's programmed in and you're done.

You have to keep practicing it.

You have to keep remembering it.

And I looked around at my life and I realized that I was in a

relationship that wasn't fulfilling me.

There was a lot of love there, a lot of good things, and it was also

making the life that I wanted to have for myself more difficult to create.

Flynn Skidmore.

, a therapist on Instagram actually said that, and it was so meaningful

to me, he said, whenever you're in a relationship with a lot of love, it

can be really hard to ever leave it.

But the question I have for you is this relationship making it more exciting and

fun and easier to create the experience of life that I want, or harder and less fun.

So I left a on and off four year relationship.

I sold all my stuff.

I put it into storage, and decided to do my second stint

of being a full-time nomad.

What does it mean?

It means I don't really have a home.

I don't pay rent anywhere.

Uh, I have a home base in North Carolina with my family,

and I travel out from there.

I've just initiated this , and I spent a month in Costa Rica and I'm about

to take off for a month in Austin.

Who knows what will be there after that.

It feels really, really good to be so comfortable in this unknown and to have

all of the many lessons and experiences.

So I am now a full-time nomad floating around traveling, and

that'll be part of the stuff that I share with you here in season two.

I also took this opportunity as this great reset and I really pulled back and

I called all of my energy back to me.

I decided to rebrand my business as the now experiment and to really

dive even deeper into what does it mean to walk the path between these

two worlds of soulful and rational.

Left brain, right brain doing being, um, what does it mean to exist in a way

that is nearly, completely generated from my internal compass, from my unique

preferences, desires, wants, needs.

What is the point of having these wants and needs and being a unique individual?

What is the point of being alive, if not, to show up in life, in alignment

with these unique desires and wants and needs, and to do your own unique path

and to have your own unique experience.

So that is what we are gonna be diving into in season two.

I am so appreciative if you're still listening, that you stuck along with me on

this journey and it just got a little bit of a sense for who this person is that is

gonna be sharing with you at times, really incredibly vulnerably on this podcast.

I am really excited to continue sharing with you.

I want you to know that my door is always open for feedback,

and also notes of resonance.

So if something really speaks to you, please let me know and I can

give thought to doing more of that.

And I want you to know that even though the podcast world is sort of a one-way

street in terms of communication, I don't think of it that way.

I want you to feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or in the

contact form on my website and let me know what is resonant for you.

What is really working for you with this podcast?

What questions do you have?

What are you curious about?

Let's keep it a two-way street in that regard.

And if you sign up for my newsletter, the Now experiment@thenowexperiment.com,

you can also always just feel free to reply to that email and, , let me

know what you're thinking there too.

Without further ado, I will send you off into the very first episode, even

though this felt like a single episode of the Abundantly Curious Podcast.