Explore the profound journey of Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell in this episode of Mindful Mutiny with host Jeremy Van Wert. Kasandra, a seasoned Speaker, Author, and Coach, shares insights from her book "The Happiness Formula" and delves into her experiences, education, successes, and pivotal life lessons. From overcoming an abusive working-class childhood to achieving prosperity, Kasandra's story is one of resilience and moral growth.

🔗 Kasandra's Website: https://kasandravitacca.com/

Join us as we unravel the wisdom gained from decades of diverse experiences, financial expertise, and the pursuit of happiness. Kasandra's journey serves as a beacon of inspiration for those navigating their own path to success.

🌐 Learn more about Jeremy Van Wert and Mindful Mutiny at www.jeremyvanwert.com.

#KasandraVitaccaMitchell #TheHappinessFormula #SuccessJourney #LifeLessons #Prosperity #Morality #MindfulMutiny #PodcastInterview #PersonalGrowth #Inspiration

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We can just get

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Jeremy Van Wert: And then what I do is I introduce the podcast I will introduce you. I'll read just a real quick bio on you.

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Jeremy Van Wert: And then we'll just kind of go in. I'd

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Jeremy Van Wert: like to, you know. I'm gonna be bringing up the concept of of happiness, you know, several times in this, but you know to know what happiness is. You have to go to low lows. You have to have really been there. And so you know, talk about it. Talk about all that you're comfortable with

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Jeremy Van Wert: and you know, what was the other thing that I was gonna say, oh, if for some reason, there's an Internet hiccup or something like that back in

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Jeremy Van Wert: and we'll we'll pick up where we left off because we can edit that stuff together, and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: we'll just go until we'd we're kind of done

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Jeremy Van Wert: all right.

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Jeremy Van Wert: be

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Jeremy Van Wert: okay, William, we're gonna start in here.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Try to do one. Take

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Jeremy Van Wert: alright.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Oh, and and, William, make sure that you're picking up the the the double screen, the gallery view on this one. So that we're both appearing.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Thank you. Hmm.

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Jeremy Van Wert: 5, 4,

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Jeremy Van Wert: 3,

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Jeremy Van Wert: welcome to the mindful mutiny. Podcast i'm, Jeremy Van Wert, therapist CEO and high level coach at mindful Mutiny, we thoughtfully rebel against anything that stands between you and achieving your highest potential. We have a guest today that is phenomenal, somebody that I have known for several decades. This is Cassandra, Vitaka, Mitchell. Cassandra. Thank you so much for being on the mindful mutiny. Podcast

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah. Thrilled to be here super excited

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Jeremy Van Wert: with a wealth of experience spanning from educating young adults to retirees. Cassandra, Vataka Mitchell, Us. A social scientist with degrees from Stanford University has crafted a successful formula. A successful formula applicable to various life aspects over a okay, William, I need to try this one again

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Jeremy Van Wert: with a wealth of experience spanning from educating young adults to retirees. Cassandra Vitoka Mitchell, a social scientist with degrees from Stanford University, has crafted a success formula applicable to various life aspects. After over a decade as a financial advisor, she transitioned into being a speaker, author, and coach, dedicated to spreading the happiness formula

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Jeremy Van Wert: in 2021 she founded healthy treats for you a company with a mission to increase the accessibility of nutritious snacks.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Cassandra actively engages in philanthropy, mentors, women would nationwide and balances her life with Yoga, Hebrew and Torah studies and nature walks. So Cassandra, thank you so much for being on the mindful mutiny. Podcast we've got a lot to talk about. And I'm super so excited to have you here and your shirt matches my wall

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Jeremy Van Wert: awesome. So, Cassandra, we we became acquainted very early in life, because Cassandra was one of my high school teachers a social studies teacher at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. How did you end up doing that?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Because in first grade, believe it or not, I knew I wanted to be a teacher

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I and II still say that for most people, I tell him it's it's just easier to say I'm a teacher because it's really what I am. I get information, and I give it to other people. That's essentially everything I've done. My whole life has been, get information and give it to other people. So I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I specifically the vision was, I would start in the world of education and then move into

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: sort of political, the world of politics. I did it. But, DC, I'd oversee the nation's educational system. This is kind of the the big vision, right? The big, hairy Behag, big, hairy, audacious goal. So that's how I ended up in education, I mean, I went to Stanford actually a different vision. By the time I got to Stanford. By the time I went through high school

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the vision had changed, and then, when I got to college, it went back to what I had when I was in first grade. So that's how I ended up there. That's when I was in the first grade. I wanted to be an actual firetruck.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: II wasn't sure how that was going to happen. But that was kind of my life goal. And so you know, at least you were, gonna use your mind

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Jeremy Van Wert: so you you end. Where did you grow up?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I grew up in a city called Covena. It's about 20 miles correct east of la so the 10 to 10 freeways that people know the freeways in the La system.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: There's a lot more there now. But any case, city called cabina. It was a small town at the time, and about 40,000 people at the time, which is actually quite large. I live in a town half that size currently. And yeah, so small town, I guess. But you know La Basin

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Jeremy Van Wert: gotcha gotcha. And so what was it that kind of drove you? You went to Stanford University.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What brought you there? What were your ideas at the time? What did you study? What was your focus?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I went to Stanford because they gave me the most money so the Scholarship kid was so back up a little bit I was raised with a single mom, my dad and mom got married.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, in the sixties. By the time I was born in 69 I don't. I'm not even sure I was a year old. By the time they got divorced my father was around he stuck around for a few years, and my parents were alcoholics. Drug addicts that kind of lifestyle. Hard workers, extremely hard workers, kind of

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: what I call functional alcoholics, you know, this is what we a lot of people are that but they were also very violent with each other, and so I grew up in a very when they were together. They were very volatile together like. Beat the crap out of each other, volatile blood on the walls, cops coming through the house, taking my dad to jail. Kind of volatile.

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Not funny, not funny by any means, but so that certainly formed early years. That was like the first 5 years of my life. And then my father moved back to Illinois and remarried, etc.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I say that because 5 years you're 5 years old, and you're listening to all of this for

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but watching it. Oh, yeah. it was. It was. It was all I mean. It's interesting. I did a I had an executive, my

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my executive coach. When I try. I got a any case long story short, I had an executive coach when I transitioned from corporate to being an entrepreneur, and that's one of the exercises he had me do was to take every year of my life, you know 0 to 1 one to 2 every year of my life as best I could. I mean, I don't know if you know 0 to one, but and right one main experience, one main memory of that year.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And it was interesting, because those first 5, 6 years it was, and and then to put it on a scale like 0 to

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: 30. And I think 0 to 30, the negative, or something, or something like that. And and and those first 5 years were all negative. I mean, it was ugly, and then it took until about age of 10, when I finally started getting some pluses in terms of my life. I mean, it was very, and because it was just so volatile. So even when my father left.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you just never knew what was gonna happen. I had drug addicts and alcoholics in my whole family, and so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I remember begging my family, can we please just not drink this holiday? Is it possible not to drink?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah. So a lot of a lot of just discomfort, a lot of insecurity with regard to a family unit.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Certainly, with regard to marriage cause. Again, my parents have gotten divorced, and then I saw this dysfunction within my family unit, you know, extended family members. And then so so that formed a lot of what. And it's also the seventies. Right? It's the seventies. And so.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah, there's still very much the rob, the feminist movement. And my mom was definitely a feminist kind of a a man hater, almost feminist, and she'd apologize for that. She's like, I'm so sorry I'm so negative. I don't want you to have a bad attitude towards men. But I know you're probably going to, because I'm your mom, and I say all this stuff. And so she was at least cognizant and able to articulate

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that But she was trying to help me out. And and it's interesting in hindsight. I recognize

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: she was saying these things. But this is what you're gonna walk into as a woman when you walk into sort of society and business. So get ready, you know. Be on your guard, and you know, and and trying to say, Don't don't hate them, though. Right, you know, and so is she was trying to be, you know, and a and one of the things she always said is, don't you dare ever take a dime from a man? Make your own money, don't ever let him pay for anything, and so II didn't. I was really.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I was a great person to go on a date with, because I always went. Dutch took me a long time to let a man pay for me. A lot. In fact, my husband, who I'm currently married to for 10 years now, he said, when I told him the story about the fact that I never let a man pay. He's like you always let me pay, but you made me pay for everything. I figured it out

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so any case, a lot of stuff there, but so that that formed a lot of the background of

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my thinking right like. And so I was single. Mom, I had 2 older brothers. by the time I got to school. One of the reasons why life started turning around for me was because I was a smart kid. I mean, I was one of these genius kids, right? And so at the time I was.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I guess, in fourth grade. Well, I actually starting in first. Well, starting in first grade, they started putting me into special.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The California at the time had a lot of money in its educational system. And they had these great programs for kids. And so I was one of those kids. They would constantly take out a class and put in these special kind of programs and send a special camps and stuff. And it wasn't money we had. It was just the.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, taxpayers putting their money into sort of cultivating kids. I was one of those kids that kept getting taken out because I was a smart kid. By the time I got to fifth grade they actually sent me to a school for mentally gifted minds.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It was about so. I was 1011 years old, and it was that point in time

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: recognizing our came with the school with these mentally gifted minds. I'm a genius, kid, and that's like, Oh, wait a minute. This is a you can do something with this like this is a real possibility to like change your life because you're smart, right? That's what I thought, like it mattered that you're smart, it does matter, but it's not everything. And so that's what put me on the course to Stanford. So by the time I got to high school

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so many of my thoughts were I wanna change the world a lot of what I had growing up

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: just naturally, even, I think, regardless of the family dynamic.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I think I came out of the womb with what I would call the Savior complex. and I call it a savior complex, which is usually like a bad statement. But it's the Savior heart. It's the servants heart. I really wanted

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: to help people improve their lives. I

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I saw injustices, and I would articulate those, and I was incredibly verbal. So would freak adults out because they would engage in conversations with me, and all of a sudden they'd be like, Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! How old are you, little girl? And I'm like 10, or I'm 5, and they're like, What are you having these conversations with me? How do you know all these words? Right?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so II was interested in helping people improve their life. I say that, because all the time I got to stand for was the Cold War. Well, before I even got Stanford been thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. It was a cold war

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: a a. And I didn't want the world to blow itself up. I didn't want people to to hate people when you didn't even know them. We're supposed to hate all these Russians and all these people in the Soviet Union and and all these other people in other countries. I never understood that. I'm like, I don't even know them. How can I hate them?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: even if they wanna kill us? I don't know. Maybe does all do all of them wanna kill us, really? Is that true? Any case? So I went to Stanford with the thought process or went to college with the thought process that I would go on international relations. I was gonna study Russian because I was gonna need to go to the Soviet Union and help end the Cold War. So that's what was my thought process going to college. So when I applied to college.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I applied to Stanford, Usc. And Yale. I applied to Usc. Because my brother went there. I applied to Yale because they recruited me, and I applied to Stanford because a teacher gave me the application.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The only schools I applied to I got into all of them, and Stanford gave me the most money. Hence

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: we go to Stanford. So that's yeah long story. But that's how I got there.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, that. And it's it's a wonderful story, though, because you're going from this

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Jeremy Van Wert: this childhood that often creates like anxiety and fear and nightmares and trauma. And I'm sure that all of that applies here, you know, and and you have these unique gifts that somewhere along the way somebody noticed, and that you began at a certain point to start to believe

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Jeremy Van Wert: in yourself.

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Jeremy Van Wert: and that that people were starting to foster, and that you you people, were noting that you there was something different about the way that you

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Jeremy Van Wert: you thought. And so you had people around you. I assume that your mother as well, that wanted the best for you, and were trying to get you into the right place the right places out of a really tough situation. Was it a difficult transition for you? And I don't even know what I'm talking about here to go from how you grew up into being around like Stanfordy type people. I mean, what was that like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah, yeah.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, I think it's beautiful. How you you do know, you did note that there were a lot of people. There's this concept of self made man right, which is a bullshit statement. Nobody is self made nobody. You do not do life alone. You're not a maverick. You're not out there. And actually.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: if you if you

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hold on to that idea too much. You'll find yourself on an island by yourself, very lonely and in pain. You do not do life alone. There's always somebody helping you along the way, sort of shepherding you. These angels unawares have been part of your life right? When you get older you start to sort of see them, and and there might be some time. I'll tell you some stories about going back to my angels unawares, and how beautiful that process was to explore that right with

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: any case, people who were part of my life growing up so yes, always people helping along the way, shepherding along the way. and so the the biggest.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So some of the challenges with going to a place like Stanford for a scholarship kid, 60% of the Stanford students paid for it by themselves 60% at the time I went to Stanford.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The college education at the time I was about 25. No. Is that? Am I correct? Oh, God, I should know this number.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I feel like it was maybe 2530,000 a year at the time.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: That doesn't sound like enough. All in now, I think now it's like 60 or 70 or something. Right? Am I right? If think about the numbers are today, and how ridiculously expensive that is, it was just as expensive back then, too, right? And there are people paying cash out of their pocket for that. I was like, oh, my God! Who are you people that have that much cash.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: You just give this boat a change to your children like, who are you? And 60% of Stanford students are paying for it. So then you get there. And you see these kids pull up in their sobs. I even know the. And they're allies. I've never even seen those cars before.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I knew what a Mercedes was. And I saw, you know, but I didn't know I didn't even know some of these foreign import cars right like. And like, what are these things right? And so it's fascinating to be there with

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that level of wealth. And if you walked around instead for campus. I mean, it's gotten even nicer. I don't like it as much anymore. It was more beautiful when it was a little more rugged, if you ask me, but it's just gorgeous, I mean gorgeous, right. I've never seen this level of. I've seen like I've been to Hearst Castle. I've been a visit to the Hearst Castle, you know. II visited Winchester mansion right? So. Yes, I've seen this type of opulence, but this is like a school.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Where the hell am I right? So it was the money differential that was pronounced for me because the other. So that was the bigger. That was a fascinating reality for me, because I came from, for I mean I came from

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the county. I didn't live in Tavina City. I lived in the county. So we were. you know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: le less less impressive, I guess. I guess I knew we were poor technically. I said this before to other people. We were just above that poverty line. So like I didn't qualify for free lunches. I didn't qualify for free stuff. I mean, I was poor enough to, you know, get financial scholarships and stuff like that. But you know, it's that painful line that that lower middle class line, right like, where you're making enough money

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that you're not technically poor, but you don't have to nickels to rub together. God forbid! Something bad happened right? So. getting to a place like Stanford, and seeing all this money

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: was was a shock to me. II

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and and what was even more shocking, Jeremy was the number of students of color that had a lot of money. I've never seen

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: rich students of color because I didn't come from that background. I came from a very colorful background. Students of Mexican, mostly Mexican descent. Native American is my family. Smattering of blacks in my, you know, we had a very

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: it's California. It's much more diverse, ethnically, anyway. But I came from a poor community. So we're all the poor people. So all the poor people of color right, you know, and all the II come from a just a more impoverished area. And so it was wild to see all these rich

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: students of color. Black students, Mexican students. I was like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: who the hell are your parents? They have so much money. Especially with a society, I'm being told, is racist. And so how do all these Mexicans and blacks

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: have so much money like cause? I thought everybody, you know. I thought they were all supposed to be poor, right? Aren't we all? And then even even some of the native American students, right? There's a lot of native American students ahead, a lot of money. And I was like, wait a minute. Aren't we supposed to be like living poor on the reservation like

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: it was just that was really kind of. I couldn't kind of put the 2 together right like I didn't know where I fit like. And and I so ultimately a lot of it was.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: where do I fit? Because

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm poor? Right? And so there's a lot of rich kids, and I don't know what that means. And then how do you negotiate. And I don't wanna be poor anymore like I wanna be like these rich kids? And am I giving? Am I trading? Who I am? Am I leaving my people? And and II was like, but I don't wanna be poor who freaking wants to be poor. I don't get this anymore. I don't get this point like what I'm somehow leaving my people. And then who are my people? Right? Because

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: here I'm in this environment, I mean, and I come from a very mixed background in my family.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so I never really had a racial identity so much because I have a I have blacks and Mexicans and Hispanics, and I mean, I guess hex Mexican, Hispanic, whatever the word is today, Latinex, whatever the hell the new term is. You know, Asians, I have literally like a little Mini, you know United Nations in my family in terms of where we came from.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so I didn't know what what group I fit in

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and even and so that was, I think it was. It was more of a cultural for any person. It's a cultural shock, but it was

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the big variable for me was financial. I didn't understand, because so much of what you listen to in society, so much of what the loud voices are chirping about is these economic disparities, these these economic, systematic.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: repressive systems. And and I'm sitting in an environment with a lot of freaking people with a lot of money that look

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: pretty diverse to me. So I'm like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: where the hell do I fit? So yeah, again, a lot of story there. But massive cultural shock, massive cultural shock. And speaking about all the trauma. Yes, all the trauma did come out.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I mean hard core, like I had a massive breakdown freshman year, and had to go to counseling, and was even sent home cause all that stuff

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: finally

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: bubble to the surface right? So it was the first time I went to counseling, and it was awesome. I love counselors. So

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Jeremy Van Wert: so you're you're you're you're going through Stanford. Your. It it's it sounds like you had a major transition to just the way that you were seeing the world.

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Jeremy Van Wert: And you you talked about before you went there. You had this notion of exactly. Why are we supposed to hate Russians? What, what, what is?

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Jeremy Van Wert: If I were to meet a Russian? Would they punch me like that sort of thing. And so then you go into this, you know wonderfully diverse environment at Stanford University, and you're seeing people from a different socioeconomic kind of strata. They look a lot like the folks that you were there with before that you grew up around. It's just that they are people who are wearing nicer clothes and have nicer cars, and maybe speak in a different way. And just seeing

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Jeremy Van Wert: there are a lot like the same people that I grew up around. There's different different ways of manners, of of talking to each other. But there's there's a sameness in these different crews, these different people, you know. And so you're you're evolving in this and kind of as you graduate from Stanford like, where are you at? In your view of the world and in the direction that you wanna go? How did it evolve?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, so part of

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: part of the evolution? Obviously, did you know

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Blossom, or or or I feel like the seed burst open in terms of what's possible going to Stanford and being in this such a different environment, and knowing simultaneously my life's gonna look different. I think that's the thing that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: coming from the background I came from. And then going into this environment. realizing. And actually there was a. There was a class I took at Stanford. It's like the one of the few I literally remember very little.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: very little, but one of the classes are money well spent.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Huh? Money? Well spent? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. A lot of the foundational

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: disciplines are still in place. It's just the details whatever. And this is, that's actually a philosophy of mine, anyway. So it it was money well spent. One of the classes, specifically, I remember, was a sociology class

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: probably were like 50 or 60 of us in this class, and she would constantly, the professor would constantly break us up into identification markers. So you do the breakup, male female you break up first born middle child, oldest only child, foster child! Right? You break up into sort of birth, order or kind of what kind of child you were you break up into, raised in the south, raised in the north, West coast, east coast, you break up so geographic territory, economic strata

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: racial lines. So you know such and so, and you should kept breaking us up. And every time you break into a group you'd have to get together with the people that identify that way and and and identify all the ways you were similar, or thought you were similar

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: discuss where maybe some of the differences were in your conversations as you're going through those similarities.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And this and then why you were different than the other groups, you know, and then we would all get together as a group and discuss how we thought about the other groups.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Fascinating study right? And they do stuff like this. You see, you can Google, these type of experiments, they do with groups of people. And you know, they're fun to watch right? Opening up people's minds to, how do we really think about you? Right? Your group, whatever your group is right? If we got really got level, honest, what would we say about you all?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The only group I remember

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: was the economic group when she had us break up into economic classes right? Because at that point in time. What I began to realize, and what I had always believed was life was more, and and I was a history teacher. I was a history. Student. II but I know that history matters right. My experience had been personally

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: what I had come to believe, but also what history teaches you. It's really, always an issue of economics.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's always an issue of class. Right? So so while we might label it, it's an issue of gender, it's an issue of race. It's an issue of some other identity.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It really is an issue of money, because different

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: economic groups do think alike. There's a lot of similarities because you get you start to hear. They start to sound alike. Which is why I didn't match all these rich

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: students of color. I'm like we don't have the same life experience. You have a completely different life experience than I do. I don't care what color you are right, or and so that was the thing about when we were the poor kids, the poor kids, and then obviously middle class. And and what was even funnier was she? She broke it down by levels and the uber wealthy. I watched them. I was particularly interested in the uber wealthy and the wealthy kids.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: You saw them kind of break, you know, they're going to their perspective quarters of the room. And all of a sudden, you see, realize, I mean, there's only a few handful in each crew group, right? And you realize I saw the uber, wealthy kids like realize, hey, let's just let's just go in with the wealthy kids, cause. I don't wanna articulate exactly how much money I have.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And the funnier part was these were the most

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: social justice of the warriors. We didn't have the term social justice warrior back, but the most vocal, loud, annoying, greasy wheels that just won't shut the F up about how society is systematically oppressing them. Where these uber, wealthy kids. And I was like, Oh, my God! And I thought, that's a privilege of money.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: We

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you you can be save the world. When mommy daddy paid for everything and you got a trust fund. It's a lot easier to save the world when you got a trust fund right when you don't have to make your own money. It's a lot easier, and I know that truth because I have money. Now it's a lot easier when you got a lot of money, and you're comfortable.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's you just can be a social justice where let me be real clear. So that's that's thi. What I noticed was one that right like people, or you're the super poor. So either you have nothing to lose, cause you're so poor it doesn't matter.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: or you have nothing to lose cause you got so much money. It doesn't matter very similar attitudes in terms of how they think my experience has been. And you know, you know, it's it's kind of interesting when you talk about this, because I'm like

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Jeremy Van Wert: it feels a little bit like the concept of survivors guilt if you will the the concept that there's guilt there. What you're what you're talking about here is there's guilt for the wealth.

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There's guilt for the that station in society where

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Jeremy Van Wert: you know that you don't necessarily fit in with 95% of the rest of society, because you've been raised in, you know, a different space in the world, and you want them not to necessarily feel like you are so different from them. So if you very vocally fight on behalf of them.

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Jeremy Van Wert: I mean, yeah, you've you've turned the. You've heard the term Larping.

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Jeremy Van Wert: you know, a a live action role play where there's this kind of a projection of self into a different space. In order to

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Jeremy Van Wert: play a role in society. It sounds like that's what you were witnessing. There is kind of like larping. I'm with all of you kind of stuff

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again. Absolutely. It could be driven by that, or just truly. I mean, I'm a

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't the term. I'm a social justice warrior, I do believe, because I have a servants heart right? But I was. It's it's so. You can be driven by very pure, loving, altruistic motives, and it could be something else, and it could be a combination of both again. II never wanted

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: tell somebody what it is. I just want them to examine it. So.

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I say all this because

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: why? In that class, and in that moment one of the biggest conversations as poor kids had was, we're not going to stay, for

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: we don't wanna stay poor. We want to be at those other levels. And and yet are we gonna lose some of the fundamental attributes that got other, some things that we've learned that got us here. And if we don't have those anymore. And I watch it with my kids. I mean, you know, very. My son was raised to completely

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: 1 80 environment from me, I mean, all across the board. Everything was different for him, and he has a very different outlook on life way, healthier, thank God! Away healthier perspective about himself, about other people. Not always fighting to survive, never, never had to fight to survive, so doesn't

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: feel the need to find, because there's a lot. There's a lot of what? When you're when you are fighting, surviving, you're you are kind of always fighting, not. You're not trying to be fighting people all the time. But you're you're struggling right? You just can't relax. And so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: lot of story here

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that class. And recognizing that. So you asked the initial question, was like the transformation, or what changed. And and that process of recognizing my life is, gonna look

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: dramatically different. But how and what does that mean? And who am I on the other side of those changes. So in a weird way, you mentioned survivor's guilt.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, like all of a sudden, I'm like, what does that say about me? What does that say about my people? Who are my people like?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Do I do? I want those people that you tell me are my people.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I it was so it's identity. It was an identity struggle. So a lot there was a ton, and it took a lot. It took decades to go through that identity struggle decades to figure that one out, to finally start making some

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: coming to peace with who who do I think I am who do I believe I am, and who do. I want to? Therefore walk out into the world, as you know. It took a long time. So the process like I said, it sort of that seed broke open and a lot of the stuff started been getting tossed around, and it took decades of tossing around. So.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah, well, where'd you go after? After you got your degree? So obviously, I taught you all

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again at that point

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again, the Cold War had ended right. I'm in college. Cold war ends. I realize I really just wanna teach. And so, even though I was an international studies, major and I was living in the Russian theme house and studying Russian. I went. You know what? I just wanna be a teacher. I called my high school. A teacher from my high school was my one of my mentors, and said, How do you make these decisions about life? How do you decide which you wanna be for the rest of your life.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And she pretty much said, first of all, you don't figure that out like what you want to be for the rest of your life. You just make a decision and go for it. And I was like, alright. I said, well, I want to be a teacher, she says, go for it. And so that's when I knew, okay, I'm going to be a teacher. I'll go into the high school system, the educational system, and then

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I probably won't stay there. I figured I would transition into adult education 2 2 ways. I was, gonna take it, I was either gonna transition into the world of adult education. And I wasn't totally sure what that look like that corporate environment, because I had a ben business vent. I wanted to kind of operate in the business world?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Or should I go? The political realm where I go into DC like started like moving up and going to the DC. And and and and and fight for sort of the educational system in the United States.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So when I left and went into teaching and after being in the education system. And after seeing kind of what that environment was like, I realized there's no way in hell. I wanna be in this system. Absolutely not. Do not wanna be in politics because education is politics.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hell, ethic? No, I do not want to

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: work for the masses.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: education is a mass system anything. Politically, anything the government does the mass system. And I do not. I don't think like the masses. I don't wanna hang out with the masses.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, not interested in the masses. And so figured. Okay, let me go into the corporate environment. So that's kinda I taught for a couple of years made the transition into literally just kind of found a job in corporate marketing wildly enough for a construction firm.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so it was just sort of a random. I had enough skills under my belt to sort of

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: talk my way into this job. It's really at that. It was more business development. I'm a salesperson. I'm a teacher, preacher, salesperson like this is my personality. Right? Like I can sell ideas. I can sell. I I'm a teacher, I can convince you of something.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So business development, that's what I would into marketing business development of a construction firm. And the idea was, you know to develop into doing, bringing in clients right?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: sales. Corporate sales is essentially what it is, business development, corporate development. You know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that got me out of teaching that got me into the corporate world. And then part of what was as part of that struck part of what I was grappling with. Also at the time

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: was.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Do I want this sort of high powered career? The corporate, you know, the the corner office overlooking the the the fancy city, with my secretary again. We use the word secretary at the time. I think we call them administrative assistance. Now, I don't know. With my assistant, you know, with with people reporting to me. Do I want that kind of lifestyle with, you know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: business suits and corporate jets? Or do I want to be married with a family.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and so I didn't see how they would work together. I didn't know how to

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: figure that out like how you have a high power, career and marriage and children. And did I really want marriage and children? And so the reason why I bring that up is because that's part of the dialogue of a young person every 20. Something starts to think these thoughts like what I wanna do. How do I do it? And you choose a path. And so one of the

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: one of the things I had chosen to do was I was trying to blend the 2. So I ended up leaving California on a whim

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: because a guy I went to college with who was like my best buddy. His name was Matt. I met him at Stanford. We were like best friends. We're drinking buddies, is what we were. We freaking drank, and passed out together. Very good, boy. He was a good boy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Never, never did anything inappropriate. Right? He was a good boy. I was not a good girl, he was a good boy. I was always trying to do stuff with Matt. He was always a good boy, and so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: He! He went off to Idaho. That's where he lived. He got his job and degrees and stuff we kept in touch. And so here I am now in the working world. I'm working at this construction firm and business development, and I'm going on these business meetings, and it's you know all how fancy and feels very special.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And he basically says, Why don't you, you know, come to a corporate event with me. He's like I'm my myself all the time. And so I flow out to Idaho and we hung out for the weekend and had a blast. I'm like, why don't I? And I'm like dude. Why don't we get married like? Why, why, how come we haven't gotten married?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How come we don't date. How come he's like, well, cause we just don't. I don't know. And so I said, Okay, let's date. So I literally packed up all my stuff and moved to Idaho.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: cause I thought, what better person to marry than your best friend Matt and I were friends. We've been friends since college since freshman year. I met him my freshman year and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah. So I married Matt. I moved to Idaho. I married Matt and actually I told people. Time. I love Matt

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: absolutely, deeply, purely.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I just wasn't II didn't have those like those feelings, those butterflies in your stomach feelings that we're all looking for. We all believe love. Many of us. Most of us, society tells us love is those.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, feel easy. Your tummy lost. Basically, people are trying to rationalize and justify lost right? I had no lost format. 0 lost for man. Love him, great man! But I didn't want to sleep with Matt well, I would've, but he never let me a until we got married. And so he was a good boy, that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: II didn't have those feelings for Matt, and I thought, that's what I was supposed to have. And so Matt and I get married for all the right reasons I mean it the checklist of all the right reasons. It was a perfectly beautiful, excellent arranged marriage.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I mean truly.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: could have had the best marriage ever absolutely

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I know it now. Now you know 54 years, you know. I know it now, but at the time. because I wasn't having all those lustful feelings for my husband. You know I wasn't like. Let's let's get it on baby

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I thought that it wasn't good enough, and so I left, and that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I left the marriage. We'd already had a kid, I mean, I got pregnant. We had a baby, and it's really when my son Grayson was born. It was then that I knew. I can't. I can't do this. I can't stay married to this man that I have no love, for

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm not in love with him. It's like being married to a roommate. Well, welcome to marriage. Anybody's been married long enough.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, you know. Love is a choice. Let me real clear.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah. Any case, that's a different conversation we could have. But so I left, and that, leaving Matt leaving the father of my son, destroying a marriage, destroying a family.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Oof that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that's that took a toll in a way that everything else prior pales in comparison to what I had done. Everything else that it happened to me up to that point were things that were part of the world that I didn't really create right like my parents. Their craziness wasn't my craziness, you know. I was even molested. That wasn't my fault. Right like

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: people do. Crappy things

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: shit happens around you, but it's not mine, and so I can. I can let people go. I can forgive them and move on

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: when I did it. When I'm the source of the evil when I'm the source of the destruction. Oh.

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that that that was my beginning of my decade in hell!

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So so you asked what happened after Stanford.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I was, I guess

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know. So I teach you guys for a couple of years. I go into corporate for a few years. I leave my marriage, I

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and and and really just that's when, like

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: all the drugs and alcohol that I had been socially consuming, I wasn't I'm called a binger or periodic. I don't drink all the time. I don't drug all the time, but I'm one of those who had goes and has a good time, because you know it's the weekend, and you're allowed to party. You know this is what you tell yourself. Right? I've got. I finished all my work, you know I'm ready to go. Well, that's when the drugs and alcohol again. All those years of kind of indulging for the weekend.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: II just kind of really caught up and I really

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: or I mean II didn't realize how much I was drinking and drugging. II really didn't cause I didn't do it every day.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But I was

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: any case. So that decade of hell

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: started again, recognizing my own. What I call my own depravity.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Had to confront myself and what I had just done with my life. And and now, all of a sudden, I'm questioning everything.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm questioning every decision I've made about everything.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and I didn't know where to go with it like I didn't. And so I just. And I still, I have a child to raise. I have a mortgage to pay, so I'm still doing all the things I have to do. But I'm still working. I'm still paying bills. I'm still, you know, calling my mom and dad telling them I love them because you gotta call your parents. You know, I'm still still doing everything society says you're supposed to do, but I am like kind of dying inside, too, trying to figure it out

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: until I eventually crashed and burned. So I've just jabbered a lot, and I don't. Your question was, happen after there's a lot that happens after that I left after I, you know, left Stanford to start teaching. But

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: sort of so, for that's really the big. The big next moment was that decade of just insanity.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Really, it's very interesting to hear these kinds of stories where college is right, supposed to prepare you in many ways for the world, and it doesn't really prepare you for much of anything, and that has become very apparent in recent years.

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Jeremy Van Wert: As not only are people graduating with no real usable skills, but they're in a tremendous amount of debt. They have strange ideas about what the world is supposed to be, and now go and be successful. There was a poster in the 19 eighties that I just saw.

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Jeremy Van Wert: and it was this poster of a giant mansion on a hill, and there that was by a lighthouse on a bay. And then there were all of these supercars in the driveway, 5 supercars like a Ferrari and a Lamborghini and a Mercedes, and all this sort of stuff, and it said, incentive for a higher education at the top, like

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Jeremy Van Wert: that, higher education is going to get you that mansion and the 5 supercars and everything like that. That was the vision of what education? Well, and I know that a lot of millennial and Gen. Z.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Bought into that, because that's what they were constantly told. And so then you go out there into the world, and there is no guidance

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Jeremy Van Wert: for how to make good choices. You may have grown up as a person of faith, and you can use that as some of a guide in some of this sort of thing. But it's a very difficult thing to to know that you're making the right decision. You have all these movies and songs tell you to listen to your heart, and then you end up leaving your marriage and getting into a decade of darkness and everything like that. And so for you, all of this has happened. You're super smart, bright, gifted

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Stanford graduate person. And now you're living this decade that you are just not having a good time. Something happens there that changes and turns things around like, what? What occurred. Yeah.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So it's interesting. So, obviously, I wrote the book, the happiness formula, right? So the happiness formula came out in 2019.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The happiness formula really kind of started back in that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: back in the beginning of that decade, and through my decade of darkness my descent I call my descend into hell. I've told them a million times I've been to hell, and I'm not going back. And and it was dark, and there were. They're absolutely hands down unequivocally. There's such thing as evil spirits hands down unequivocally, seen them battle them dealt with them freaking scary. It's a scary world. And and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and you know, praise me to God, there's a more powerful world of excellent forces as well. So spirits as well. So so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: one

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: part of what happened in that descent? Part of what happened into that sort of like decade of darkness. Was this idea of like? Why the hell can't I stay happy like II realized I had such a critical spirit

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like I was so critical of myself.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I had a it's never good enough spirit. More, more, more better, better better. What's the next thing? The next thing bigger, better deal. Bbd, bigger, better deal like all of that languaging that is good, languaging in a lot of ways, because it's the languaging of success. Right? It's.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And at this point, time again, I'm still working at a high level. I have nice corporate jobs. I've got nice paychecks. I've got nice phones.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's amazing how F stuff you can be and still do pretty well. I mean, it's functional

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: thing is so so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm I'm I'm doing everything society since I've got these degrees. So yeah, I blew one marriage. But, like II recognize I blew it like I'm I'm I'm I'm self actualized enough.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: emotionally intelligent enough to kind of recognize my failings, you know. And so I'm doing all the self-help. I'm love therapist, some going to bunches of them. I'm going to retreat. I'm doing like I'm doing all the work involved

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: on the sort of emotional. intellectual, physical. I'm doing all the things right that society tells you to do

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and and they're good. These are good disciplines, and it's a good discipline to sort of, you know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Pull your pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you know. Suck it up right, you know, if these are good teachings right, you know. Stop being so emotional. Just do the next right thing so and simultaneously.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's not that there's a balance. I don't like the word balance, because there's no such thing.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's like a dance. There's the dance between facts like, Shut the F up and do your damn job because you gotta pay a mortgage, and you gotta feed your kids. Just go to effing work and but I'm miserable.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and I'm hurting, and I'm scared and I'm lost. I'm confused, and I'm lonely, and I'm terrifying.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and you're dancing.

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Jeremy Van Wert: and the other part of that is, and I make too much money to complain. I don't have a right to be up for. Yeah, okay, in my case, before even made money, here was the thing for me.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm too smart.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I have a big brain. God would not have given me this big brain if he didn't expect me to figure it out. That's what I thought, Cassandra. I gave you a lot of intelligence so you could figure it out so I can go worry about these other people. I can't believe I'm saying it, but this is how I thought

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I need to go help the people that yeah

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: can't figure it out. Let me go help them. So I didn't think God

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: was ignoring me. I didn't think that I wasn't even sure about God. Anyway, that's another story. It's part of the story.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: whatever this thing is. If there is a God. I knew people were different. I was given a lot of brains.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I was also given. Here's what's interesting. I was given a lot of brains, so I should be able to figure it out. I was given incredible verbal dexterity, so I should be able to verbally manage myself through processes. I was given an incredibly analytic mind. So extreme analysis. So I can see, I can put that. And and I'm strategic thinker. I have an analytic strategic thinking mind global. I'm a visionary. So I have that kind of mind.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I can see things. It's actually it's prophetic.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I can see where things are gonna go.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I know what's gonna happen. I do. I don't mean like I can tell you, when you're gonna die. That's not prophecy. It's prophecy is

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I have enough data that I can tell you if you continue on this path. This is what's going to happen.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I have that kind of mind where I'm like. Well, I can put 2 and 2 together and see what it really equates to. And so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I have this, you know, high intellect, the way my mind works in terms of visioning stuff, verbal dexterity. I'm also not too shabby to look at. So it's not like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And that helps in a society that is visually based.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: being decent looking enough, you know. Comb your hair, brush your teeth, you know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Look a little more decent helps, and I come by that a little easier than some right cause. I don't look too shabby. So and and and I'm physically able. I'm incredibly physically able. So I'm healthy. So I don't get sick.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I mean, seriously.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: help me. I'm supposed to help myself. There's no way someone should have to help me. I should be able to figure it out myself. This is what my thinking was right, because you have all these skills.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And that's why I think trips up so many of us as adults in particular. Yes. a lot of adults, even if they don't have the criteria. I have have other criteria, right? And and that's what's so scary. You're like, I have all these skills and attributes.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: or I'm supposed to be an adult. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to figure this out. It's so freaking scary. So

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again, it's I had no idea how to manage all this. How do you deal with all this? And this is.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and that's why it was so crazy to me, because, especially because I got myself in such jacked up situations, part of my descent into hell.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: This is a story I don't tell very often. It's funny it doesn't show up in my book, which I found fascinating in hindsight and reading it. It just didn't have a place in the book. It's not that I was avoiding it. It just didn't have a place.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Part of my descent into hell was I got married a second time I eloped.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: If you wanna talk about signs of insanity, you know, there's anybody who reads who knows the Bible. There's something called fruits. The spirit Escalation spy

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the Lord talks about. If you are in Christ. If you have the spirit of the Lord in your spirit, in your body and your mind and your heart. your life will manifest

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: in a certain way. It will. If you have the spirit of the Lord.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you will walk differently the ways that you will, and they're called the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, right, humility.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: These things do become part of you. Well, there's also

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the fruits of evil as well. There are sign that you are not walking in the spirit of excellence, one of those

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sign that you are not walking in the spirit of excellence. Is you alone

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hands down. That is a sign that you are. FDA. Interesting? Interesting?

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Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah. I'm I'm I'm trying to think right now, just off hand, if I know of a couple that eloped and stayed together for an enduring amount of time.

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Jeremy Van Wert: And and I'm I'm just off the top of my head. I'm not.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm not coming up with that. So yeah, what what happened here?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I mean, like, I mean, people going to the justice piece, you know, with family. I don't. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who literally get married in secret.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: who get married

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: based on an an overwhelming rush of emotions. And let's go get married because we're meant to be. We're each other's kindred spirits.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So when I married this man I even had. I don't. I hate to say his name, because I don't want to disparage him because it's not about him. But when I married this man. I literally said to myself.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: this is so. This is my descent into hell.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: When I look back at how much I had destroyed what I had done to my first marriage, the father of my child. The family that had been put together

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again. It was very logic. Everything about Matt was beautiful and brilliant. I mean, really, I mean brilliant. No reason not to be together. Very logical. And so I thought the next time, and I said this out loud the next time I get married pure lust I'm getting married purely for lost screw this logic crap. Apparently it didn't work for them a first time

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Jeremy Van Wert: I'm gonna do it for lost. So how'd this go? This? Yeah, this sounds like it was set up for success. So I mentioned, I don't drink or do drugs anymore. Right? So when you, when you look at the

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: what addiction is when you look at what obsession is, when you look at what a lot of mental health disorders are!

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: They're idle worship their obsessions of the heart in mind, and they are. They can be overcome with proper

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: dialogue, with proper sort of I wanna call it spiritual input because there are forces playing spiritual forces playing on our dispositions to indulge our flesh.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I mean our flesh of I want it, the pleasure I want to have pleasure, the happiness formula. When I came up with the title

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: it was fascinating to me that I was always looking for pleasure. I was always looking for happiness. I just want to feel good. I want to feel like I belong. I want to feel like I'm in love. I want to feel like we're best friends. I want to feel like this job matters. I want to feel like I'm making a difference.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's an f word. The field word is an f word. Feelings are not facts. They're not facts, they're not truth. They're flags.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: They're flags. They're waving something in front of you to pay attention. But they're not truth

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: in the slightest sense. Your feelings are not truth

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: insofar as this. I did not know that

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I thought the problem was, I wouldn't allow myself to have feelings, so

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hearken back to how I was raised. I was raised in an environment a lot of the 50 plus year old people have this. We were raised with this idea of suck it up buttercup.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: suck it up. You know we were not allowed to express our feelings. We're not allowed to say how I feel, maybe, for, like a nanosecond, and then wipe your freaking tears. Put a Band-aid on it. Go to Frickin, work like no one wanted to hear your crap. No one wanted to hear your excuses, and absolutely yet none of this victim. Crap! You're blaming your I mean. We don't allow you to blame your parents in my generation. You cannot blame your parents for effing you up.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I still believe that, by the way I do, I'm a little more compassionate about how I say it to people nowadays, but I still believe that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you you were never, ever, ever a victim, ever, ever. I don't care what happened to you.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Welcome to being human in a world where evil exists

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and a whole boat go to beauty as well, and you gotta decide who you're gonna be. So I appreciate that my parents were the type of people that they were, and so far as they were

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: absolutely always said, We love you, Cassandra. You can do whatever you want, suck it up and make it happen

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: right. Figure it out right. And and and I love you, and I'm here for you. But I only know so much. So figure it out. I really appreciated a lot of that about them right? They raised me pretty right for all the stupid crap they did wrong, too. And and so what I'm saying is I

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I never I never cried. I didn't cry, growing up. I never! I didn't know how to feel

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: which is part of the reason why I appreciate that the pendulum has swung so far to the other side. Do appreciate that part of that is. And it actually happened when I was teaching you all

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: when I was teaching you all in the early ninetys. It was the beginning of the self-esteem movement. It was the beginning of

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: having different different educational curriculums for different students in the class.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know. So so we we weren't quite. It was the beginning of prescribing drugs to kids. You know it was the beginning. And so and and how does this child feel about themselves? How do they feel about life, and actually asking you all how you felt

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I appreciated that a lot. And at the same time there's a dance right between. Okay, you feel that way.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But here's the truth of life and what you have to do. You know what I'm saying? There's a date.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know you don't. Always you have to get up every day and go to work. whether you feel like it or not, get up and go to work right. But if you're miserable well, maybe you need to go talk to a therapist.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but show up at work right? So there's there's that dance between the feelings. So I appreciate it during your generation that we started this self esteem. How do people feel about stuff? Let's think about the language that we use. I appreciate it all of that. I believed in all of that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again. The pendulum is swung over here, where I'm certain I've offended everybody, their mother, so far on this my languaging right cause, you know, whatever I still probably use the words all wrong, whatever you're gonna have to ask me about it. You know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What I'm saying is, I realized I didn't know how I felt about life.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So part of this getting into this relate, so, so, so getting married.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: having a relationship for pure lust was really my way of trying to examine. What if I went completely on feelings?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What would life look like? And and so I loved what this? And it was, and it was super electric supercharged it

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: lustwise.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: super emotionally intense. I have never in my life felt that level of emotional intensity about anything.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and he was.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: He was all the words that we use today. We didn't use these words back then. They didn't. I don't think they existed in our vocabulary, but everybody froze them around today. Narcissist gas lighting he was at the turn at the. He was just an abuser. He was an abuser. He was verbally abusive and physically abusive. Those are the terms we use back then. Now we have all these clinical terms, and everybody throws them around and uses them incorrectly. Whatever. Everybody can't be a narcissist. People are selfish and self centered, but not everybody's an actual narcissist. But he was definitely

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: sick, and I, and realizing how scary he was because he was scary. He was a big man, he was a

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and I mean a physically muscular man. I mean he was a work. I was a personal trainer, worked in the fitness, industry. Beautiful Adonis God, you know, tall, dark, and handsome, kind of dude and very scary, and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and and I realized when I one of the things that God has given me naturally.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and I appreciate it is that very quickly I can recognize if I'm in this situation. How did I get myself here

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: when someone is attacking me verbally, physically?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How did I get myself into this situation? Not. How am I to blame?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's not about that.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How am I here? How am I in a relationship with this person?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so, mind you, I've married him already, so I'm already, you know, betrayed, and I'm like holy shoot. I just married a really sick man, and and I want to get into all the details, but it was sick. That's another podcast and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I had to confront myself.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How do I get myself here and talk about talk about the final crash and burn

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: like I literally found myself in a closet in a closet in the corner of the closet.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: trying to just shrink, trying to just shrink. I Ca, trying to disappear. I figured if I could make myself small enough in this corner. Your your minds crazy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: because I couldn't commit suicide. I didn't want to kill myself, but I wanted to die

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: because II didn't.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I didn't know how I got myself here. How the hell was I in this situation? And it was isolating he'd again it was. It was scary and and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I'm in this corner of this closet

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: in the upstairs room, the farthest room in the house I could get away from trying to shrink into a ball. and then, you know again. I know at this time. I know it's gone. I didn't know at the time.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but God, God shows up

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in the way God talks to me.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: okay, Cassandra, look at your situation.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What? What's the physical situation right now? And I'm like.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I am trying to shrink into nothingness in the corner of a closet

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: in the house because I'm married to this crazy psycho man. Yeah.

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this is crazy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: holy Mother of God! Am I totally crazy? Right?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I'm like, and God's like, no, you're not crazy. But what are you gonna do?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I'm like. I don't know.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: like, Well, what are you gonna do?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I'm like, well.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you guys gotta figure it out alright. What's the first thing you need to do? Well, I could stop trying to disappear in a corner.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: cause you're not gonna disappear. You're not gonna just suddenly shrink into this ball and nothingness. You're here, you are.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: You're married to the psychoman. You're confused. What are you gonna do. And I thought, Well, and I had a job still still working.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But well, I'm gonna have to go to work tomorrow. I'm gonna have to be effective in my job, and they pay me to be effective. And I've I've pretty big jobs. So I had to be really effective right, and I could compartmentalize. That was one thing I could do. Kinda sorta

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my personal life was leaking out into my work life. That's another part of the story. So I thought I could compartmentalize. But I couldn't. And that's essentially what I realized was, I'm not compartmentalizing well anymore.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so I thought, you know what? Get up. dust yourself off, get ready for the day. Start doing the next right indicated thing. What can you do? What what step can you take.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so I went to therapy. What can I do? I can go to therapist because something's wrong with me.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And then again I started the therapy again and started to walk through. How did I get myself into this situation? What am I looking for? What I want, and started to sort of build up, just go back to things I'd already kind of been taught.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And realizing I do want happiness. I do want pleasure. I do wanna feel good.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: That is true. Those are normal. Good God! Given sensations right? God wants us. We are sentient beings meant to feel joy, happiness, love, warmth, comfort, those are all wonderful

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and God-given and correct. And then there's reality.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So how are you going to dance between them? And I begin to give myself permission

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: to feel to like, really examine. Okay, how do I feel like, really? And and the thing is, Jeremy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I didn't know half the time I didn't know how. I didn't know the words for the feelings all the time.

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and that's what therapy gave me. Right. They give me words they give you. Maybe it's this and examine this. You're like, Oh, okay, could it be that? Could it be this? Could it be a combination of all of it, right

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and And so that started the ascent out of the pit in particular. I the crashing and burning wasn't done, though I had to finally, officially, when I officially blew up. My world

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: was realizing it was kind of a a perfect storm. I begin to start to examine. Maybe this god dude is real

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: like. That's part of the piece I hadn't yet ever factored in. Totally. I kind of dabbled with the idea of God cause society.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: We 97%, supposedly, of the world believes in a God.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, 7 or so percent, I don't know could be smaller. Number could be a little higher or truly atheist. Right. And II knew I wasn't an atheist, and already kind of figured that one out like I believe there was a God of something.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I just kind of knew it in my soul. I just I wanted it to be. Let me be real clear. I wanted there to be something otherwise, because for me to be an atheist

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: just didn't work for me to meet it, didn't it? Didn't let me put it this way.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I would be a very scary atheist.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: because I already demonstrated enough, if not given a shit about you the proverbial view. I'd already shown how easy it was for me to use people to myself, I'd already demonstrated enough to myself how selfish and self center I can be.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and to believe that there isn't a God that has a system of order and structure and morality and ethics that are higher than myself

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had to believe that.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: otherwise, left to my own devices.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I might do something nice. I might do something good, but I promise you it was all to make sure I got something out of it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: absolutely, and I didn't realize how much of a user of people I was, because I would have never thought that about myself. I would have never put myself in that category.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But I really walked around with an underlying cause. I thought I care. I thought I wanted to save people. I thought I wanted to help people, and I did I do genuinely, truly want to

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: again that pure altruistic self and this other self

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that isn't so pure. And that's all about what's in it for me the with them. What's in it for me? What's in it for Cassandra? What am I getting out of this right? Hence my feelings? If I'm not feeling motivated by you, I might stop giving to you right? And so am I giving to you because I'm truly giving, because I'm good and altruistic? Or am I giving? Because in the end I get something out of it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Mantle I, Jeremy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm pretty certain. I only get 99% of the time I only gave when I thought I was gonna get something out of it. Really, ultimately, when I thought I could get something, and and it might be I mean, I might give to a poor person on the street. What could a poor person give to me?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What I was getting was? I felt good about me. Look at me, even if it was only me, even if it was anonymous. I gave money to that person who's poor.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: homeless, can't.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: They're not. They don't know my name. They're not. Gonna take a picture and put me on social media which didn't exist back then, you know, they're not gonna go tell the world I'm great. Nobody saw me do it totally anonymous. You know what I got out of it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I felt like I was a good person.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I didn't realize how much I was motivated by that.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: That's what I had to confront. I guess that's part of what for me. and choosing a God. And so that's part of the story. In in deciding I needed something that can get me

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: out of me. so that I am dying to self, that I would sacrifice myself on a cross for the people, so they don't have to suffer. That's what who Jesus became right like. I begin to recognize there's truths to what God's saying. There.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know a good man might die for a friend, but he certainly won't die for an enemy.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but Jesus demonstrates she dies for everybody. Right? This idea that really step out of yourself.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I wanted to be like that. II decided I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be that good. Not

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: not so. You'd all feel good about me, not even so. I'd feel good about me. I just began to believe it was true. And that that that that was the point. That's why I began to recognize. Okay, I do believe in a God. I'm not sure if this is Jesus, dude

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: not real, keen on him too much, appreciate him, appreciate the story.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but and so I started the process of exploring that in man alive, in in starting that process. This is one of the things that most people who, especially an early Christian or someone who's deciding what they want to accept price.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: One of the things that is true is once, the moment you accept Christ, all hell is going to break loose.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Generally speaking, all hell is gonna break loose, because as soon as the enemy knows he's lost one he's gonna or he's got about to lose one. He's about to make your life

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: effing miserable?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so that you don't seek God. He's going to do everything possible to to do whatever it takes.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: You can even make it so glorious, IE. To your point. So rich.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: There's a it's Proverbs 37, 30. II haven't written down so I can remember proverbs 37 through 9. It talks about. Lord.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: yeah, I asked, for 2 things. Don't give me so little

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that I steal, and I wrong right? Don't give me so little that I'm desperate and dying and and and can't see you, because I'm just scrapping to survive. And don't give me so much that I don't think I need you, I mean there's Lord says it more eloquent in His word. But I read that. I remember reading. I read the Bible a ton before I accepted Christ. I read a lot of different religious books before I accepted Christ.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and I remember reading that and thinking there's a truth to that, like III need this

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: balance between this life of how I feel about it and what's real and and what is real.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: because I don't know how to feel. I don't know what's real. And so it's it's it was this dance, and I and I and I again I done a lot of I had a lot of success and by society's terms.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so I it wasn't the success that was, gonna get me. It wasn't the success that was going to I'd already kind of been there done that enough for me.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It was

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: the the crashing and burning, losing it all. I really II had to lose it all. I had to crash and burn in the worst way.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: so lost my job. Got fired because I was drunk.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and so why do I not drink and drug because a I can't. I'm really bad. When you put intoxicants in my body. I do not know what's gonna happen. First and foremost and the other thing is, I blew up my world. II blew up everything, and so here I have a mortgage and a child to raise. I'm I'm with this man who's crazy

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and and I and so my whole world exploded. I mean, he's cheating on me. He's drinking and drugging and acting nuts and embarrassing, I mean just oh, my God, how the hell did I get here? And that's kind of what happened I did at 1 point.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Finally, get on my knees and thought more. If you're real.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: if you're real, you're gonna have to show up because this is miserable. I don't know

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I have created the most insane world. I'm married to this crazy freak of a man, this abusive

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out of control.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Again, I didn't have the worst narcissist and all that kind of good stuff. But

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I've lost my job because I got fired. I'm apparently this drug addict alcoholic that I didn't know I was what the fudge

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And that was it. That was what it took. I

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: crashed and burned. October 29, 2,006 went to a church service

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: heard of Pastor at the time. He's no longer a official pastor anymore. Pete Briscoe was preaching at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, and Carrollton, Texas, and Church still exists. Pete Brisco still exists, and at the time he was preaching on that Sunday, October 20 ninth, 2,006 on john, 6, 35, which is John 6, is about the bread of life, that

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: nothing will satisfy you. Nothing in this world, nothing of this life will satisfy you, only I will satisfy. Eat of me, drink of me. It's that whole sense of only the Lord's gonna satisfy. And and I believed it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I believed it. I finally kinda hit that point where I thought, you know what? Lord.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: whoever you are, cause I still wasn't comfortable saying, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. You know I had too much. Tell Evangelist sound in my head to say, Jesus Southern Baptist crap in my head. And

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I finally thought, Okay, I'm like, 37 years old or something like that. Right?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I thought, okay, okay, I'm I'm in. I believe it. I believe that I have been trying to find happiness, to feel good

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: by by filling myself with stuff.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: people, degrees, success, sex, drugs, travel, money, better body. I don't. Friendships. I don't

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: feel good stuff. therapy, self-help. self affirmations. I am beautiful, I am lovely, and whatever I mean. I've tried all the stuff society says, hence IQ. Eq. Stuff.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: IQ is data, fax and stats. I've tried all the stuff of society data, facts and stats. Here's information. I've had a lot of information.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I've put them into practice. Eq, how do I feel about them? How am I gonna behave actions I'll take. So okay, Lord, I'm general. I'm I'm operating. I got data facts. I've got info and feelings and emotions, and I'm I'm I'm working it out on IQ. Eqing to death. And the reason why I wasn't quite there is. I didn't have a Gq. System. I didn't have a God system I believed in. I could anchor myself to. I could follow. That ultimately

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: is the is the

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: what undergirds everything. Anyway, your belief system like a like a like a iceberg.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: what you believe your thoughts, your your your your actions. your your, your data, your fax is the tip of the iceberg. The truth of everything about what you even determine is a fact

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: about what you determine is a feeling that you want is based on what you believe. It's your belief system that is, the the heaviness

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: of the iceberg is underneath the surface. And I didn't have a solid Gq. System. I didn't have a God quotient. The happiness formula came again. It still wasn't a book. Then. This was 2,006,

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: 2,005, 2,006, 2,007, 2,008. As I began to explore this God potion system, this belief system

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: that I could anchor to, that had communities of people that had books and history. And I began to figure out, how could I take all of that?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And and and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: put it into the equation of data facts and Staff's IQ intellectual portion things I can learn and know to my emotional portion, my feelings and behaviors. I can or won't take right what I'm gonna do, what I'm not gonna do. The Eq. System. And then this Gq. System, as I begin to work that formula.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my happiness did increase my joy, my peace, my calm, my maturity.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my adulting, my decision-making, the fruits of the spirit, became my reality.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I started walking.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: better, behaving better, loving, better.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: just being nicer

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and enjoying the process more. And

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: eventually it became a book. So

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: lot of story

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Jeremy Van Wert: that was, that was a lot of story. And and I you you just flow so well into it. So you've got this book, the the happiness formula. And then, when you're talking about the An IQ plus Eq. Plus Gq, that's that's all. A part of this happiness formula that you've developed really, absolutely. There you go. There you go. That's my book available where?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Well, you can go to Cassandra. pataka.com, and you can go to happiness formula, book.com Amazon. It's on Amazon.

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Jeremy Van Wert: And so this, this is something that you've developed, obviously over a huge life story.

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Jeremy Van Wert: And you know, Wes, you were talking about cowering in the closet, and I didn't want to slow your roll on any of that. It just

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Jeremy Van Wert: reminded me of what your childhood must have been like. And so you're 5 years old. You're cowering in a closet. You go through all this stuff. You're in this geez genius programs. You go to Stanford University and eventually end up cowering in a closet again. You know that that's kind of an interesting door to door on that sort of thing, and as you talk about

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Jeremy Van Wert: you.

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Jeremy Van Wert: A window kind of opened up for you a spirit window where you began having a conversation in your heart with whatever it was that was outside of you that had no name that had no gender that had. No, it was just a What are you gonna do, Cassandra? Yeah. What's what's the next step. What? What

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Jeremy Van Wert: Where? Where do you walk from here? And that's such a that's such a a beautiful voice. a a beautiful way of just sitting next to you, and you know, sometimes in therapy, the best thing that you can do for a client is just go. So

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Jeremy Van Wert: just talk.

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Jeremy Van Wert: you know and just just work it out. Keep keep. Yeah. And that's what that voice was. It was a voice that helped you begin to go.

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Jeremy Van Wert: Okay, what's my path up. How's my path? What's my path out of this? And so you build this happiness formula, and you you you speak about this. You go and and and you do that sort of thing so like. What? Talk a little bit more about the happiness formula, what? What helped you create it, and what you do with it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, so got so much stories. So I thank you for indulging my very long winded stories here.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I didn't want to write a book.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I wasn't cognizant of not wanting to write a book. How about that?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: we are in a culture?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, I pay attention a lot to sort of what is happening around me, and culture. And what are the masses accepting? What do people see as valid and and credible?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I always find it fascinating how we add credibility to somebody because they wrote a book.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It's like the easiest thing to do. By the way, that's not fair. That's not fair. It's not easy to write a book. It's not fair. It's actually a lot of work.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And at the same time

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: it's not that difficult, either, right? Like II can't explain it. It's not that difficult, not not in today's day and age, which is why everybody writes a frickin book. Because you can self publish and do it. You don't even have to write a you're gonna it doesn't have to be tangible. I guess you can do it all ebook or something. I don't know if technology is not my thing.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: The reason I bring that up is because it's not that I wanted to write a book. but I but I was given a truth. It came to a head.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: June, July of 2018.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I had gotten in the habit, starting in 2010 of going on silent retreats.

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part of spiritual

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: growth.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Part of people know this going on a spirit journey going on a solo

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: silent journey, finding yourself the spirit walk very much part of many cultures. It was part of my culture, the spirit walk right? And so meditation

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: silent retreats are part of that meditative process, part of that spiritual process. So you can hear from this higher power. So on 2,010, I start actually starting in 2,008. I figured out that silent retreats were necessary. So I started going on silent retreats.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: There's a place a Jesuit retreat center the Jesuit do this around the country. They have retreat centers. They're brilliant. And I started going to this one retreat center and and in 2,018, when you know. Now I'm at many years of doing this, I decide I'm I'm struggling what I want to be when I grow up so I'm still what I wanna be run. I still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm in the middle of leading. I'm in the middle of trying to transition out of my financial services career. I had gone into financial services.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: truth be told, because it was an easy way for me to make money.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It is not an easy career, it it's actually a horrible career.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't. I hate talking to people about their money. I cannot stand it, because people don't want to hear the truth about how money really works. They don't wanna hear the truth about how they need to manage their money. They just don't want to hear the truth. They wanna believe the hype that you can get rich quick. They wanna believe the hype that they just wanna believe the hype. And I and I, I'm I'm a well educator. I teach people how money really works.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How do you actually utilize the world of financial services. I was in the world financial services. I got paid because I sold contracts called insurance and investments. I sold those to people. They bought them. I made money off that. Thank you very much. I made a lot of money off of this. I really appreciate it, but more than anything,

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I learned what I needed to for me. And how do you utilize

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: formal contracts, insurance investment contracts with things like a business, with things like real estate with things like riskier types of endeavors with saving. How do you just how does all this work together? Money?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I went into the business because I was solving my problem.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and then I could talk about it. I'm a teacher. I know how to educate people, and so it was easy for me to talk to people I did very well is very successful, really appreciate it, but I kinda hated it, too, because people are exhausting and they won't do their own behaviors properly. The best analogy would be. I'm a fitness. Professional for finances. Most people aren't healthy because they won't put in the work to be healthy. Period

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hands down unequivocally. There's no such thing as a fat, fricking gene. Strike that from your brain. People rare people are prone to being obese, rare. The majority of us are just not doing what it takes. We won't do the research to figure out what it takes to be healthy, because it's a lot of frickin work to be healthy, but once you figure it out and get the rhythm, it's actually the easiest way to live.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But again, same with money

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: takes a lot of work to figure out how it really works. Once you figure it out, it's the easiest way to live. I mean, it's like a lot of things in life. It's hard if you don't know it, but once you know it, you wouldn't go back to the other way.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I'm in the role. Financial services want to get the hell out because I'm tired of talking to people and convince them to overcome their own Bs right? Money is not math. Money is human behavior, and I was sick of trying to convince people

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: to to take care of their own life and stop blaming everybody else for why, they're not wealthy, and you know, by tomorrow.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and so this is 2,018. Wanna try to figure out where I want to be when I grow up.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Go on a silent retreat, you know, trying to hear from God. I hear certain things come home in the process. I'm talking to my husband and sort of downloading what had happened.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and literally, and I had been teaching. I had been speaking already. I'd already developed the keep the the coaching practice in my business part of being in financial services because I'm dealing with people, I'm learning a ton about them. And so I started to. I develop the coaching practice. I develop the speaking practice, and I was speaking on the happiness formula, the 3 elements

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: II didn't call it God, potion! I didn't have that term yet. I'm I don't even know what I called it. Actually be honest with you. But I talked about this. I don't the

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't. I have to go back and look at my presentations what I called it, because a while now. But I have. I have the the data and facts. I have the emotions and actions, and I have the spirit things of the spirit that I would teach on. And and I would, you know, corporate settings and all that kind of good stuff, because, again, that's part of an exercise to peace, joy, happiness.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I'm talking to my husband about this.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and in the process, as we're dialogue through again. I said, IQ. I'd said Eq. And he goes. You know, it's like a formula. He's like, it sounds like you're putting deal. He's like an IQ plus Eq plus.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And I'm like, yeah, what he's like, I don't know, what is it? And I'm like. It's like he's like, and he goes. It's like something like the spirit like, it's some other potion. And I'm like God, potion. It's God, potion. It's the guy. And so we're like, and he's like, What is it? I'm like, what is it?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So we're we're like going through words. And that's it literally was born on a Sunday morning, I or Monday morning, because we were dialoguing in the morning on a Su Monday, and that it was it was so that was the day I people see it with Gq's Hq. I was like I'd already had a I had a marketing person who wanted me to write a book. A director. So I called her up. I said, Hey.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: II wanna write a book, and she's like, Oh, my God! How exciting. She had worked with the publisher before she likely put you in touch with the publisher. She put me in touch, and 40 days later

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: he worked me through some processes about how to go about writing the book. He had me do some exercises and stuff. But 40 days later, from that phone call, I had 65,000 words.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: 65,000. My book has about 30,000 book words, 270 pages are about 30 33 ish 1,000 words, there's mind drive 65,000 words in my book, actually, technically, should be 2 different books. So it's actually kinda long for the formula for what it is, so you can get a sense of how how many words. But it's 40 days. I had 65,000 words.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so that was again, that was what happened in 2018 and

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: put the book down because I knew I was supposed to write it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew I was supposed to put the information out there.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I knew I didn't have any other vision for it. I didn't know what God was. I knew God was calling me to put it out there, but I didn't know exactly what again, I'd already been speaking on it.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so I'm like, Okay, now that it's quantified and formalized, what do I do with this? And so I just begin doing what I'd already been doing? I began talking about it more I begin. I mean, I had a book now that I could sell and and and get people to like, read. And as I coach people one of the things I would say is, you know, go to this chapter or go to that chapter. Because there's different chapters that have different.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And you know different chapter on money. Chapter on Marriage. Chapter on even chapter on Music. You know what I mean. There's a talk about music makes Mary I mean. So it became a tool.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I became a tool. And that's again back to I'm a teacher.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I find information and I offer it to people. So really, this is just.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: This is 30 years of information for all intents of purposes. If there's a lot of tools in here, and in particular, I talk about all the time. I promise you

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I can help you find your answer.

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I don't know your answer, but if I walk you through I can walk you through these ideas

531

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you can walk yourself through. Once you kind of learn the rhythm of what they are.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and you will get to your answer for now. And I think people that's Olympic, for now II didn't say I have the answer for you for the next 1020, 30 years, because none of us do.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But I can get you off of dead center. I can. The formula can help you get off dead center

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and start moving in a direction that is going to have a more positive that ball. The balls are gonna start rolling in a better direction. Right? It's that idea of having bumpers on your Bowling Lane. The ball is gonna start going down the middle. More if you walk yourself to the formula. So that's what I begin to do with my people that would come to me for coaching people that would hire me to speak to their groups is just give people this tool. So

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Jeremy Van Wert: yeah, II love this so much because we returned back to you, coming out of Stanford University.

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Jeremy Van Wert: being very book, smart and very life naive, if you will, and so really searching, really searching. And as you've been talking, I've been thinking about coaching because we're both coaches here, and I was thinking about this when I was walking my dog last night, all of the things that we seek coaches on, and we and landscaping physical training, nutrition, addiction.

537

Jeremy Van Wert: business. We even have a coach. My wife and I were getting coached on the colors that we're gonna use on the walls of our house, and and so we got this coach coming in. Oh, no. You wanna lighter color here because of this. Gonna cut the worm in half, and then we look at it and go. Oh, yeah, I guess it would, wouldn't it? Because they're just having that specialization sitting next to you with things that you may not have thought of.

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Jeremy Van Wert: and the ability, that powerful position where you, as a coach, sit next to somebody and go consider this. Consider this. Consider this. Did you know that you do this? Do you know that you apologize for everything when you talk? You know these these sorts of things that people do that sometimes they just need pointed out to them. I do. Yeah, I guess I do. I'm sorry, and you know. And and so

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Jeremy Van Wert: you know, the the coaching that you do is about building. And you said the word strategy a couple of times in this conversation you help people

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Jeremy Van Wert: build values and strategy into their life to get them going in a productive direction, which is exactly what coaching is supposed to be. Yeah. And why wouldn't we continually stop in for a coach once in a while, in the same way that we talk about. Well, I can't sleep at night. I think I need a therapist that we wouldn't also look at things in terms of. I feel kind of lost right now.

541

I started going to church. It's great, or, you know, going to wherever it is that you're going to get the spiritual enrichment and so forth. I feel like I just need some structure in my life. And so you you provide that for a lot of people in a very intensive sort of way.

542

And you've been working with clients for a while.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Yeah, yeah, I mean. So I guess. Well.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: when I started, my financial services. Practice was when it became clear that I was a coach like

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: my whole career in corporate. Up to that point I was always in that role where I was always working with executive teams in. So at at private corporate entities, at professional nonprofits sort of trade association kind of nonprofits where I worked a lot at universities. So these kind of environments I've been in, I always was in the C-suite, working with the executive team, always in a role that was literally made up

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: hilarious to me. I mean, sometimes it had titles, I mean they. But really, what they would do is they bring me on because they needed things. They needed sort of a

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: an understanding of of where their company was going. I was a business coach in a lot of way, but but more around the efficacy of people. Because people are the company. People make the product. People make the are the consultants that you send out to.

548

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, talk to people to the business side. So so how do we increase the efficacy of people, their their piece toy happiness and their productivity, and therefore the bottom line. So we can continue employing these people and continue, you know, making more money, etc.

549

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: And so I was always kind of in that role where they would say, Hey, we have X issue. Can you address it? Hey? We have this issue. Can you address it, so it's always those kind of one off. So it was hilarious to me. I'm like, I swear.

550

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Ceos, just make up their they don't make it up, but they give it to Cassandra. Give it to Cassandra.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: So I've always been in this role.

552

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: how do you take a system, an economy, a a business economy, an educational entity, and work systems

553

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: in their most efficacious way. So then, then, when that's what I did, and then I go into the personal, the personal money management. Now, I'm looking at an individual who comes to me and says, Okay, how do I take my economic entity of me and my wife or me and my family, whatever it or me. And how do I get the best use of that right? Because it wasn't just about their money. It was not their life

554

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: right? Because money is not math. Money is human behavior. We make money, but we don't know what to do with it, because we also don't know how to feel about it. We don't know what it means to us. We don't make sure whatever belief system is to know how to feel about it. I can't tell you the amount of guilt that Christians would come about the fact that they were, or we're not tithing. I love that one

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm always like. Let me be real clear. The answer to how much money you give the Lord is 100 when you can tie the 100. Then we can talk typing. Otherwise I don't want to hear it. I don't give a rip what your percentages. It's 100. Once you figure out how to adopt 100,

556

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: then we can have a conversation about what you're doing with the Lord's money. Because that's the truth. None of it yours. You get the privilege of getting a dollar. What you do with that dollar.

557

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: whatever you do with it is between you and God. So whether I'm eating it, burning it up.

558

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: sticking in the fridge, giving it away. It's not my call. What do you want your life to look like? What are you doing with the dollar that he gave you?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Once you recognize a hundred percent of it as lords. And all of a sudden I'm like. thank you for this gift of a dollar. What do I do with it?

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Bring that up? Because all of a sudden, now I'm talking to people. I'm coaching them through, and they would talk. I'm their marriage counselor. I'm their health counselor. I'm a wealth, I mean. I literally was always called counselor Coach. Right. That's what I began to get that title from people, because again, I was trying to get them off dead center about looking at a dollar as my salary, or what's my neck? What box could I put it in to be a millionaire tomorrow? I was trying to get them to understand. It's a tool. And how are you gonna use this tool for everything else you want to achieve in your life?

561

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: What are you going for in your life? And if you can't answer those questions, then you're never going to use the tool properly.

562

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know. The analogy is my husband golf. So I know a lot about golf now, even though I don't golf but if but everybody knows a golf bag right? Everybody understands the the world. Most of most people understand the basics of the world of golf. At least, if there's a golf bag and you have different clubs and you hit different things, you're trying to get into a little hole.

563

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: and you know, whatever we kind of get, that

564

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I can give you the best tools I can give you.

565

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Custom designed golf clubs. I can. I can watch the way I can put you on a computer with metrics setup. And I can watch how you swing, and I can give you the best bag of tools. But if you do not know how to operate in that system, if you don't know the rules of the game. If you don't understand the dynamics of wind, if you don't understand your own body, and how you show up that day, whether you got enough sleep or you didn't.

566

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I can't help you in the game. I can give you the best tools, but a lot of playing the game is you playing the game, putting in the work, doing the effort and recognizing sometimes

567

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't know why. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you hit a bunch of bogeys. Sometimes you get a bunch of eagles. I don't know why, sometimes from one day to the next.

568

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: but it's recognizing that if you're doing the work, if you have the good tools and you're putting in the work, you'll probably eventually hit fewer bogeys and hit more eagles eventually over time. I didn't say you're gonna be Tiger Woods.

569

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: But you'll be better at what you're doing. And I think that's a lot of what I realized with coaching became because I was trying to get people to stop focusing on.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Is it an insurance bucket? An investment bucket? You know, low cap mid cap, international goals. Stop focusing on the leaf. Let's look at what the forest right stop focusing even on a tree. Let's look at the forest, and then we can talk about the tree and the leaf it produces of the fruit that's produced. Right? So it's this kind of in and out. It's this micro macro, micro macro kind of stuff.

571

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: If I can keep people focused on the macro, which is the happiness for me, is a lot about the god potions a lot about Macro. But there's also micro applications.

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Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: That's kind of how it's continues to flourish right? It continues to grow because of. And that's what I do. That's like what and and that's what I still do, I mean. So it doesn't matter whether I'm actually talking to somebody.

573

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: It always ends up going back. I don't. Actually, I try not to say, I said, that we're happiness formula, and and talked about it more in this dialogue with you that I have in a long time. So I try not to. I feel like I'm always trying to sell a book or sell my concept. I'm not trying to sell anything. I I'm not. I'm I'm it's just dialogue. It's languaging to help people wrap their brain around like this is what I'm doing. What do I know?

574

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: How do I feel? What actions can I take right? And then what does my God system say about it? And you know

575

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: where wherever you start is where you start. But all 3 planned it in each other. Right? So, yeah, yeah, this is

576

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: when I work with people. One of the things I tell them all the time is you are gonna have to put in. I'm gonna give you tools, and you're gonna have to put in the work. And if you don't put in the work.

577

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I'm not gonna say I'm not. Gonna I have fired people I have because I'm like.

578

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you're too resistant at some point you gotta put in some work. Yeah. And when you put in the work and you keep putting it in, you're gonna get results. It's just.

579

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: you know, people fight you.

580

Jeremy Van Wert: So yeah, absolutely. And

581

Jeremy Van Wert: this this time that you've spent here. Thank you so much for just an incredible life story. And the way that you are walking forward into the world, and being an ambassador of light.

582

Jeremy Van Wert: and being one of the helpers, taking a story of challenge, struggle, and sorrow, and turning it into something that benefits people going in a direction where they're trying to find their way. Because that's what we're kind of all supposed to be here for. So just thank you so much for being on the mindful mutiny. Podcast.

583

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Been fun, I mean, again, I hope it was.

584

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I know I talk a lot. So I hope that this provided some benefit to you. But anybody who listens absolutely right. This is we're we're in this together. That's why I accept these kind of phone calls or accept these kind of invitations, cause

585

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't.

586

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: I don't know who. I don't know what somebody's gonna hear. That's gonna make a difference for them, but it is gonna make a difference. And I think that's the thing, too. If I can encourage anybody, I this is the time you're always a good example.

587

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: always a good example.

588

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: You're a good example of what to do. how to walk, how to talk, how to speak, how to live.

589

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Well, you're a good example of what? Not to do, what? Not to say, what not to have a walk, but not to act as a take. So you're always a good example, right?

590

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Most of us would rather be the example of what to do. Right. We want to be. Some most people I meet want to walk in the world of. I wanna be something that my kids would emulate, that my brothers and sisters around me would wanna enter Emily that I would be to your put that light in the world. We that's you're supposed to be. That's what God wants to be as well. So how do you do that.

591

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: Well, you're gonna have to confront some things right? You're gonna have to walk through some things and recognize how you're personally, uniquely designed to show up. How Cassandra shows up in the world is not how Jeremy should or is going to show up in the world. I'm not asking to show up the look like me. I'm asking you to show up to look like you.

592

Kasandra Vitacca Mitchell: There might be some overlap. There might be some exercises that I do, and behaviors and disciplines that I do that makes sense and perfectly match yours. And and you can do those and they may not. And therefore you're gonna have to learn, figure out some other tools and techniques. So yes, I do hope that this is provided at least one takeaway for somebody who listens.

593

Jeremy Van Wert: I'm Jeremy van Werth, the CEO of high altitude mindset. Now go be something great.

594

Jeremy Van Wert: Man. Yeah, I'll ride this.

595

Jeremy Van Wert: Just turn the recording off here.

596

Jeremy Van Wert: Some of the.