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Ep 11: From Reactive to Responsive | Expanding Your Perspective
Episode 11 • 5th March 2025 • The Thriving Life with Jennifer Hough: Unlock Your Potential in Times of Change • The Wide Awakening
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Are you feeling the weight of the world's chaos seeping into your daily life?

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In this thought-provoking discussion, I explore the rising tide of tension and reactivity that many of us are experiencing in these tumultuous times. From edgy drivers to short-tempered interactions, we're witnessing the effects of collective stress on our communities and within ourselves.

Transcending Old Patterns in a Changing World

Discover why now, more than ever, is the time to address and transcend our deepest, most persistent patterns. We'll explore:

  • The impact of global events on our personal energy and reactions
  • Why traditional coping mechanisms may no longer suffice
  • How to recognize and interrupt reactive behaviors

Practical Tools for Maintaining Presence

Learn powerful techniques to stay grounded amidst chaos:

  • The three-breath technique for instant perspective shifts
  • Questions to ask yourself when triggered by others' actions
  • How to cultivate compassion for yourself and those around you

Expanding Your Perspective: A Quantum Leap

Explore a transformative exercise to expand your consciousness beyond immediate circumstances.

We'll discuss:

  • Visualizing yourself as part of the greater cosmos
  • Understanding your role as a "fractal" of the universe
  • How this expanded perspective can inform your daily choices

Becoming a Bridge in Divided Times

Reflect on your personal commitment to growth and positive change:

  • The choice between being "right" and being a bridge-builder
  • How individual actions ripple out to affect the collective
  • Embracing your power to influence the world around you

Are you ready to transcend reactive patterns and step into a more expansive way of being? This discussion offers both practical tools and profound insights to help you navigate these challenging times with grace, wisdom, and a renewed sense of purpose.

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Links Mentioned in the Show

Join us next week for :

Shifting Paradigms How Understanding Existence Amplifies Your Potential

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Copyright 2025 The Wide Awakening

Disclaimer: This episode may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products and resources we truly believe in. Thank you for your support!

Transcripts

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This is Jennifer Hough just arriving back from Orlando, Florida.

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And today we are talking about something that I've been seeing

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a lot of given everything that's happening, in world right now.

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And that is

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the old stuff, the old repeated patterns.

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There's so much polarity and stress in the world right now.

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What I'm noticing is stuff that's in the deepest, darkest corners

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of people's psyche is coming up.

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And I even noticed it in my own nervous system and I thought, this

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is a thing, especially to talk about right now, the way it's showing up

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and see if this is true for you.

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The way it's been showing up that I've noticed is it's showing

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up as a little bit of edginess.

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I'm noticing it in traffic and the way people are driving.

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I've noticed it in, I've noticed in the sometimes the

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shortness of people's responses.

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Conversely, let's just be clear.

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I also see some people being even more kind than they've ever been.

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What have you noticed?

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What have you noticed in yourself?

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what have you noticed in other people, in these times of great change where all

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of the cards in the are in the air.

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Welcome to the thriving life podcast.

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I'm Jennifer Hough.

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I'm on a mission to empower you with the knowledge, experiences, and tools

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to turn your dreams into reality.

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You're ready for permanent shifts in your ability to stay unstuck, make

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glass ceilings your new floors and want practical tools rooted in applied physics

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and neuroplasticity to live a life.

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I don't watch the news anymore because, I just want to make sure that my

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nervous system feels big enough to be able to dance with life without being

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taken out by what I'm witnessing and what I'm seeing or any, any fears.

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That I have now is a time for transcending if there ever was a time

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to transcend the baggage that you have now is a time and the deepest ones

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the oldest ones are going to come up.

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to be addressed in whatever way you are called to do it.

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But today we're going to talk about the tools and skills that I have

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donned and, assist our clients with and use myself quite frankly,

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which I've used over the last few days because I got food poisoning.

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What is coming up for you?

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What patterns do you see playing over and over for yourself?

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Or maybe what do you see in the tensions or because of the tensions

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and stresses that others are feeling?

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What are you witnessing around you?

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How are you coping with everything that's coming up?

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what is it when we feel what is actually happening when we

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get disrupted from our flow?

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What is actually going on when life stops working and we feel pulled out

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by a reaction to what's in front of us?

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For instance, yesterday, because I had a little bit of this is a perfect

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example of what's happening in the world.

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When I had the food, I was just getting over food poisoning.

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What I noticed was I was going to a hyperbaric chamber and I was going to get

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an I. V. to get myself feeling better.

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in the idea of biohacking, there are so many things we can do that are

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so great for our health, in order to transcend some of these things.

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So I really felt very called and there was a place open until four o'clock

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yesterday that I could go to and I went and I knew that I wanted to be home to

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remotely watch the Super Bowl with my sweetie, I was there and I realized that

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I didn't have the key to the condo I was in and I remember getting out of the

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Uber and thinking to myself because my body was still a little bit on edge from

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having a physical thing go wrong with it.

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So I want you to know there are certainly psycho spiritual things that

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can go wrong, emotional things that are in the background bothering us.

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like sometimes the weight of the world and looking at what's happening in politics

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and how divided families are, those can cause some definite underlying psycho

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spiritual and psycho emotional things.

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and for me, it was physical yesterday.

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And what happened was I noticed a pattern of reactivity and a real craving

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for I got to get in the condo and

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I just want to go home and relax.

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I just there was a knee jerk reaction.

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I had a friend with me in the car and normally she sees me as someone

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that's so grounded and then normally I am, but I had food poisoning.

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And I think it shocked her a little bit to notice how, like how much

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I needed to get in the condo.

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I just needed to sit and be somewhere home with nobody else around, and so I noticed

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a pattern of being really attached.

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I haven't felt that way in years, probably.

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And that's what happens.

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That's what happens when there's a background of perturbation.

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If you haven't heard of the word perturbation before, it

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comes from the word perturb.

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It's like perturbing your nervous system.

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It's like adding so much weight to your nerves through the changes and shifts.

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That are going on around you or the unexpected happening or life,

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not meeting your expectations.

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and because of all those things.

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We, our nervous system that wants to stay safe and in control starts to have

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its eye twitch and feels overloaded and when our nervous system feels overloaded,

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if you haven't done a lot of work.

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On your, spiritual wellbeing, your emotional wellbeing, on the patterns

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that have been running you, you're going to have a knee jerk reaction to life,

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a knee jerk reaction to these things that feel out of your control or unsafe.

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Now, In the work that I do with myself on myself and with our clients, I'm

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not that interested in providing tools are great and skills are great and

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ways of snapping out of it are great.

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And we will share some of those in the things that I use.

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I'll tell you exactly what I did yesterday.

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Because I just love efficiency is how do I change the entire paradigm

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with which I plug into life?

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How do I change the overview of how I plug into life such that nothing

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would even occur as stressful?

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i'm going to talk about some paradigm shifts today that maybe you've

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never even thought of that would actually grow you so much bigger

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than the current world circumstances

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What used to stress you just because you don a different greater perspective may

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not get you as much if you're willing, when we're really anxious or when

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we've had a past of a lot of volatility, what happens is, the first step.

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The first step is you might hear these huge paradigm shifts that I'll talk about,

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but you may not be willing to go there.

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So the steps for actually changing your entire paradigm, so you're free,

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really, truly free, the steps are one, first, you have to have someone

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open the door to a possibility of another way of living your life.

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Two, once the door is open, then you have to get practice being that way,

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which means that you have to be able to disrupt the neurosynaptic highway, the

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well paved path of thoughts that usually you have when life gets really stressful.

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You have to be able to interrupt that.

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And three is you have to be with at some point, there's going to

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come a leaping off where you're just going to have the courage.

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To permanently make a choice to either believe that life is that way or not,

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as in, there's no going back.

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I call that a spiral jump.

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You're no longer trying to get better on the same spiral, but you're actually

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looking for an entirely different way.

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First, you have to practice it so that you gain confidence though.

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So just wanted to give you a little bit of a heads up that our

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company and me as a human being, I am just so not about learning

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how to manage my levels of stress.

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There are lots of people that do that.

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I would rather change the entire paradigm with which I view life such

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that the stress no longer affects me, which is a deeper journey, but

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it makes a permanent, non regressive shift in the way that your life goes.

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So some people, so this thing that happened yesterday is not

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something that is repetitive for me.

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I also want to address today, that idea of these repetitive patterns.

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Yesterday was unique only because I had food poisoning.

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So for me, what I did is I did use one of the tools.

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The tools that I used, first, what I did was in the situation where I was

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reactive and realized I didn't have a key to get into the condo, I took

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three deep breaths, The 1st question I always ask in the 1st breath is

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this actually the worst case scenario?

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Am I going to die?

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And as soon as I answered that question there are so many people

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and situations that are so much worse than what I was experiencing.

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I just come from taking care of my health.

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Someone just drove me back to this beautiful condo like, please.

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So I had to take a breath to get.

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Yeah.

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To get into what's real.

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So the second breath I ask is it real that I'm in an emergency?

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And instantly the answer is no, I'm not in an emergency.

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You just call the front desk and they send over security, which

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they did in three minutes flat.

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And then number three breath is a breath.

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So I love these questions cause it just gets me right back, in my flow state.

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So the third question is, is it.

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Are there people that have overcome this before aside from me?

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Is it even possible?

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I just love to ask the question.

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Are there people that have Clearly overcome this besides me and the

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answer inevitably is always yes.

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Other people have totally moved through this without perceiving it as a disaster

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or anything like that, regardless of my body, so wanting peace and to

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lie down and to do all those things.

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It's

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yeah, far worse than this.

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One of the reasons why we keep replaying the same narratives.

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But you might have some acute situation, some repeated triggers for you.

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And I'd love to hear about that.

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What are some of the Triggers that just get you, and the reason I asked

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this is because in these days of great change, I'm going to tell you that

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those little triggers, those triggers, those things that get you, right?

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Those things in these times of great change have to be they don't have to,

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I'm not the boss of you, but man would it serve for them to become incredibly minor.

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So how do we make that which triggers the repetitive patterns so minor that you have

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enough cushion in your nervous system and in your glands and organs to be able to be

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more, Then what's going on around you to.

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Know that you are bigger, no matter what happens, and I do mean no matter what,

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because I know some of you are truly, concerned about what's going on in the

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world, and some of you are not concerned, you're probably completely unplugged,

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but you hear things from people and some of you it's really getting to a place

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where we gain a perspective that's so much bigger than the current one we hold, so

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that we remain productive, of citizens so that we may remain, present in our wisdom.

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That is the goal here to be so present in our wisdom that there is

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no way that we could be taken out.

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And it's just an interesting time to be alive, my friends.

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So how do we do that?

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How do we get out of these I used to have a repeating pattern with my dad where

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I would shrink when I knew he was, his expectations weren't being met and that's

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not his doing, I would just shrink.

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I would just get, it was a knee jerk reaction.

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That was a repetitive pattern for a long time in my life.

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Not at all.

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Now I just.

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Completely in love with my dad.

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He's the same guy.

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It was me who changed.

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So here's the thing.

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Even if I look at one of our listeners saying, people not being

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considerate or being oblivious.

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To others.

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I see that all the time.

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These days, I see it a lot because people's nervous systems are so

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overwhelmed that they're not present.

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So even in the airport that I was just in, people were standing in the middle of the

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lanes or just stopping and putting their bags down to look for something right in

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the middle of just absolutely, completely not knowing that anyone else was around.

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The thing is, you can't do anything about.

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Other people's ability to navigate what's going on in the world

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and their nervous system being overflowed, but you can do something

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about the way you perceive their,

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because I promise you, those people aren't thinking, I wonder how I can be an

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inconsiderate to you or oblivious today.

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I wonder how I can really exert my sovereignty by being an inconsiderate.

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Little dickhead today and the thing is that's not what people are doing.

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What they're doing is they're doing their best and I want you to know that when

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people are not in their presence with wisdom we've all done it really there

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but for the grace of God go we because we've had those moments too, right?

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The key here is If you've got to decide whether you're going to be right, or

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you're going to be a bridge builder.

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Those are the only options.

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You've got to decide whether you're going to be right, or whether

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you're going to be a bridge builder.

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By the way, this is one of the skills to hone.

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That choice, when you get triggered of whether you're going to be right, That

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someone is inconsiderate, which they're not being, they're just not being present

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in their wisdom You're letting everything overwhelm you, then you might not be

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in your presence with wisdom, right?

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They really are doing their best, you guys.

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So let's do three deep breaths again.

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So this three deep breath technique is really great because you include

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a question with every breath.

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So the question is, Did this person wake up trying to be and like, were they

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seeking to be outside of my expectations?

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No, they were not.

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So that'll be your first breath.

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The second breath is, do I know what it feels like to feel so

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overwhelmed that I can't be present?

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So that would be the second breath, Teresa.

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And then the third breath would be,

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Just a breath of compassion for what it feels like to be there because

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if you can have compassion for that person, it's like Ho'oponopono,

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which is a Hawaiian, mystic technique to actually join your heart with

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another and understand that which you're witnessing is also within you.

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And if you can have compassion within yourself, then you've

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already started the pathway.

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To healing yeah, it just takes a lot of compassion these days.

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so I had to have a lot of compassion for myself yesterday, by the way, so

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these three deep breaths Really great you include the questions that actually

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just take you to the deeper truth instead of the knee jerk reaction of

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your you know your fears Your safety concerns, your control concerns.

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But I do want to talk about that quantum leap.

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I do want to talk about how to quantum leap your perspective.

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Because can you see how with what's going on in the world right now?

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Global safety is a concern.

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the neighborliness of entire countries, In many places in the

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world right now is up for question.

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gosh, we can see that, there is a huge divide in, the economic

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status of different people.

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There are the difference between the haves and have

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nots is just getting massive.

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And so if you carry the weight of that, it can weigh on your nervous system.

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If you are someone who has spent your life feeling like you want to control

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your life, you want to control your circumstances, you want to get to a

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place where you feel safe, there are far more variables to try to manage.

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And they're much bigger than anything that you have direct influence over.

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So then we got to go to What do you have direct influence over and

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what you have direct influence over is you have direct influence over

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your town, your family, your body, your perspective,

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and that perspective.

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Going from reaction or yelling at someone to actually breathing and

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being kind, which I experienced very much on my plane ride today.

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We had a very compassionate discussion with the guy next to me

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who was having a real hard time.

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It's like in my Ted talk, in the tech talk that I did, the movement of one to

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many, that movement is all about be you.

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It's just making a decision.

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So the greater perspective is, do you see yourselves as a big

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question you can ask for yourself?

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Really?

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Look,

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are you in the bigger sense, okay.

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Of the perspective of life more committed to being a bridge and you're gonna have

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to answer the question for yourself more committed to being a bridge for the world

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that you want are you more committed to protecting yourself from what's going on.

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The thing is, that doesn't add anything to the way the world evolves.

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What it does is it keeps the status quo, keeps ev you in

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fear and everybody else in fear.

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It doesn't add anything to anyone else.

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It's okay.

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It's all right.

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There's no judgment from me and maybe other people judge, but I

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just really don't judge that.

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I understand it completely.

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I have a lot of compassion for it, but at some point, it's really time

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to decide whether you're going to actually add to the polarity, right?

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Or whether you're going to actually be a bridge.

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Now, once you answer that question, now, the second question comes to mind.

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Where am I going to go to make myself big enough?

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Last exercise we're going to do before we say goodbye from

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this particular conversation,

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speaking of changing perceptions of growing ourselves, just imagine

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right now that you take your consciousness behind your eyes.

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Okay, you don't put it out your consciousness out in the world.

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But take your consciousness behind your eyes,

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and maybe you close your eyes, and allow yourself to imagine that

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your essence your spirit, your greater self, your deeper knowing

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is much bigger than your body.

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And then it's bigger than your house or apartment.

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And then it's bigger than the state or province or region you're in.

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And then it's bigger than the country you're in or in, and then it's

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bigger than the world that you're in.

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Grow your consciousness much bigger.

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Pretend you're an astronaut out in space, looking back at the big blue marble.

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Take yourself out to,

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out to the moon and then even beyond the sun to view the entire solar system

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and look back and how beautiful it all is, because it is on one level.

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And what I want to say from here is this, that if you can grow yourself

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bigger and include all other potential futures, meaning in the laws of physics,

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Every future outcome is possible.

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They're all on different timelines and from here you can see all the

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different timelines that can play out and that you can embody any of them

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and that you contain not only from this greater self, but within you,

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within your, 75 trillion cells times a hundred million atoms per cell.

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The protons at the middle of each of those atoms contain, Basically

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a hologram of existence itself.

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So imagine that within you is every possibility by staying present in

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your wisdom and growing yourself bigger than the circumstances.

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You can make choices instead of being a victim of it.

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To be someone that's more concerned about being present in your wisdom

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and as many times a day as you can

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take a break and take those three breaths and break yourself back to

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the idea that you are a microcosm of the macrocosm and what you do

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every day actually does matter.

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And just breathe and know that I am not a victim.

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You are not a victim.

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And from that place, our actions to the people we love around us every

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day, allow us to actually, fractally, metaphysically, psycho spiritually

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and in every way, change the world.

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And you are not alone.

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So that's how we get out of patterns.

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That's how big you are.

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It's a big I am.

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Can't wait to see on the flip side.

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See you next time.

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Stay tuned.

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We're going to be announcing our upcoming quantum leap, workshop,

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and also a wonderful free intensive that we're doing for all of you.

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So stay tuned.

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Hey, I deeply appreciate you joining me on the Thriving Life Podcast.

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In these times of great change, it's so good to come together.

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I'm on a mission to empower you with the knowledge, experiences, and tools

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to turn your dreams into reality.

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Your dreams matter.

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Your thoughts and suggestions really matter to me, so please join me on

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LinkedIn at Jennifer Hough or on Instagram at The White Awakening.

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Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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And if you enjoy today's show, please leave a review or many reviews.

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Share the love.

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It really helps us to reach more people.

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And that is what a movement is all about.

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Until next time, keep thriving.

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