In unstable times like these, it’s easy to harden, retreat, or get swept up in fear and shouting. Instead of being part of destructive narratives, find clarity and perspective in stories—in books, poetry, theater, film, TV, music, and your own life.

I reflect on my childhood and the values my parents instilled—curiosity, compassion, asking questions, and imagining life through someone else’s eyes. My mom and dad encouraged storytelling as a way to explore challenging ideas without needing certainty or agreement. In adulthood, stories help me hold confusion and overwhelm, understand my experience and those of others, and connect with what matters most.

Inviting us into lives we haven’t lived and perspectives we don’t yet understand, stories invite us to practice empathy toward understanding. Connecting with characters and situations soften our certainty, and remind us of our shared humanity.

In this episode, I share recent experiences that have done that for me. From a Jacob Collier concert that turned thousands of strangers into willing collaborators, to shows like Schitt’s Creek and Heated Rivalry that remind us of our capacity to connect with people who are not like us.

Be invested in the diversity of stories, including your own. Stay curious and risk talking with people who think differently, even if it provokes their hostility. Hear them out. Dare to be wrong. Allow yourself to be surprised, not by their views, but their willingness to have a civil conversation. Storytelling can soften your edges, and those of others.

Someone has to make the first move. Decide—It Has To Be Me.

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS

Stories invite empathy and understanding without force or persuasion.

Stories help us hold complexity without shutting down.

Curiosity keeps us connected. It changes our minds and perspectives.

Listening is an act of resistance to outrage.

Share your stories and take in the stories of those who think differently.

Be kind as a quiet form of courage.

You can learn from someone without agreeing with them.

We build community through shared humanity, not shared opinions.

MEET TESS MASTERS:

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of the Skinny60® health programs.

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.

CONNECT WITH TESS:

Website: https://tessmasters.com/

Podcast: https://ithastobeme.com/

Health Programs: https://www.skinny60.com/

Delicious Recipes: https://www.theblendergirl.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/

Thanks for listening!

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So the Nike slogan, just do it is really a mantra that I like to live by. I don't always do it, but it is a great slogan. I don't like Nike as a company, I don't like what they're doing in the world. I don't buy Nike products, but I think it really is the most fantastic mantra of any company

out there, going after what you want, really is as simple as that, just do it. So why can't we just do it? I mean, our heart always knows what we want, and our heart knows that it's as simple as just do it, but it's our head that gets in the way. So our heart always knows what we want, and our heart runs the

show. If you think about when somebody's in an emergency room in cardiac arrest, and they're on a, you know, machines, and all of a sudden the machines go dead, and maybe somebody is brain dead, your brain's gone, and the heart keeps beating. The heart is always the last thing to go because it runs the show,

and we just don't trust ourselves to listen to our heart and be heart centered, heart focused, leading from the heart all the time. And your heart is going to keep wanting what it wants, whether you deny it, whether you ignore it, whether you try to suppress what you want, it just keeps bubbling and

bubbling and bubbling away and keep showing itself confronting you with regret, resentment, sadness. It shows up in your dreams, things that you really want to be doing. When you see someone who has the life that you want or something that you always wanted to do, it's extremely confronting. Those

mirrors keep getting put in front of us. So instead of being a stock horse, taking the slow road there, and, you know, going around and around and not listening to our hearts, and I do this too, as I'm talking this through, as much for myself as for you, I'm gonna stay on the stallion this year, even if it

is terrifying, even if the stallion is going too fast and my hair is blowing in the wind. I don't know what's going on, and it's all a big blur, and that's something. Everything has to be fast. I mean, you know, if you think about the tortoise and the hare, who won the race, the tortoise, so you can go slow and

steady. So I might just be trotting on my stallion, but I'm gonna stay on the stallion. Is my point. Life is messy, and there's a lot going on in the world and a lot going on in our own lives, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by the news, by by our own emotions, by the expectations and the demands of

others. But as i The older I get, and the more people I coach in skinny 60 in our programs, the more I realize that we are all part of this machine of choosing to stay overwhelmed, and I fall into this trap as well. We are going to get overwhelmed when there's too much stimuli and there, and

there's a lot of emotion swirling around in thoughts, and so I'm not saying that the we don't get overwhelmed. Of course we do. I experience overwhelm all the time, but what I'm saying is choosing to stay overwhelmed, choosing to believe that there's no way out, or not having the tools to regulate

your nervous system and calm yourself down and feel like you can just take one step at a time to pull yourself out. And we're all we all have those skills, because otherwise we wouldn't be here alive, you know, and functioning in the world. But instead of just surviving, we want to be thriving. We want to

be in the driver's seat of our own life and feeling like we know what we're doing and feeling really good about our choices and responding rather than reacting. So I'm going to give you something that I've been working on the last few years, and I give it to a lot of members of our 60 day recent

it's really, really working for me, this phrase, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, it's a lot, but it's not too much. And so I say that over and over to myself when I'm feeling overwhelmed and I want to burst into tears, or I can't breathe, or I stop, notice myself stop breathing, and all the things that happen in my

body when I'm feeling overwhelmed, or I start to get very angry and I want to lash out and react rather than respond. It's a lot, but it's not too much, and particularly when I'm feeling overwhelmed by something that I want to be doing and I just don't know how to get there. Like I know that I

want it, but I just can't see the path. I can't see how I could possibly get it, particularly when it's one of my really, really big dreams. And so the it's a lot Ooh, and when I'm learning something new. And so I say this to members of our CCA research all the time. We call it the two week hump. When

you come into our program, oh, there's just this embarrassment of riches, of resources and information. And it can be very, very overwhelming. But to decide, You know what, I can't do it now you can. It's a lot, but it's not too much, because you asked for this, you asked for change, you asked for more,

you asked to get what you want and to get what you want, you got to step up. You got to find the next gear. So, you know, we talked with ash. Cough in Episode 88 about willpower, and how she was saying that it's a fake muscle that we think exists in the body, but it actually doesn't, and that weight loss

has nothing to do with willpower. I'm going to put overwhelmed, choosing to stay overwhelmed, in that same bucket that when we choose to allow overwhelm to consume us, so that we are paralyzed and fear paralyzes, and we can't take action, particularly on the things that we want. I think

that that then does become a choice. You can either choose to resource yourself with the tools to be able to regulate your nervous system and calm yourself down, or you don't. And I'm not saying you got to spend a lot of money, because, you know, you could say, well, I you know, all these rich people can go and

hire all these gurus to whatever, but there are lots of things that we can do that don't cost a lot of money, which is what I'm going to talk about. I'll tell you a personal story about this podcast. I had a dream of about overwhelm. I had a dream of starting this podcast for many, many years. I've

always wanted to do a podcast ever since they started. I just love interviewing people, and I love getting assigned other people's stories. I just love asking questions and thinking things through and hearing perspectives that I haven't heard before. And I really, really, really love what I do

with this podcast, but it is a lot of work, or at least to do it the way that I like to do it. So I don't use AI to do show notes. I have a producer. I work with Jess my editor to work on the show notes. But it takes about two days of every week, two full days, sometimes three, to run this podcast, to release

one episode a week, the way that I like to do it, because I prepare for the episode. I read all of the books. If a guest has written books, I immerse myself in the world of the person. We do a conversation before the interview, so we're not going in cold. And then I listen to every interview twice, and then I make

my own notes about it in order to do those wrap ups at the end of every episode. And people on my team have offered to do it for me, and maybe this is something I need to let go of, but in order for me to be fully present and really authentic and present to you what my takeaways are, I need to be doing it

myself. I don't want somebody to hand it to me, and I really do enjoy doing it, but I do a lot of other things with my life. I love being a voice actor. I love being an actor. I love being a coach in skinny 60 with our 60 day reset, I want to be fully present for the people that I work with, and then I want to

enjoy the rest of my life so that I'm not working 24/7 and finding that balance of self care and fun walking the talk, basically that I'm always telling you to do. And so at the end of last year, I really got to the place where I was absolutely exhausted. I was like a rubber band that would stretch

to the max. And I wasn't practicing what I preach in terms of that balance of self care and fun and that balance of self care and care for others. I'd let it skew and allowed my boundaries to get pretty loosey goosey, and I was incredibly stressed, very, very overwhelmed. And I just thought,

I just don't see how I can keep this going at this level. And people would offer me all these solutions, like, Well, maybe you do one episode a month or two episodes a month, or you don't have to do it the same way that you've been doing. And offering me all these wonderful suggestions. But no, I decided

I'm doing one episode a week, and I'm doing it this way, and I'm not going to scrimp on the quality of this podcast. And did it, and I just got so emotional, and I just got so overwhelmed, and I wasn't using my tools. And so I wrote this email to my producer at, you know, 1137 at night. It was on a Saturday

night, and just said, I think I'm done now. I understand why so many podcasts start and they don't last and they end in the first year, because this is hard to do it at this level. And she just said to me, Oh, that'd be such a shame. I really love your podcast. I think these guests are amazing. I think this is a

beautiful service in the world. And you're all the things that a lovely person would say. And she did offer me some wonderful suggestions, and let's talk it out, and all the things. And then Christmas, New Year, I started to, I got some sleep. I wasn't as overwhelmed. You know, I was doing my meditation

practice and my sketch practice, and I was going to five rhythms again. You know, I was resourcing myself again,

and things just looked different. My heart. I just allowed my heart to come in, and I just went, that was my head saying, You can't do this. You can't grow this podcast the way that you want to. You can't do this. You can't make it all happen. There's no way out of this. The only way out of it is

to quit and not do it. And that, I just realized that was my fear talking, my fear that I couldn't quite meet the moment, or figure it out, or, I don't know, there was just so many things swirling around. And when I just took a deep breath, I stood back, I started taking care of myself. I had that different perspective,

and I just spoke to my heart. I just asked my heart, what is do you really want to be doing this podcast? And the answer was always yes. It was always yes, and so let me really honest, I don't know what form this podcast will take this year and how I actually want to move forward with it. I just know

that I want to move forward, and I don't actually know the how, yet, I just know that I'm staying in this because I really, really love it. It nourishes me. I learned so much from the guests. I learned so much from your comments and reviews and questions and emails. I love getting them, and

I love hearing about how listening to a guest or or learning from them, you know, changed or shifted something for you. And that's really my goal with this podcast, is to help you go after what you want, just in the way that I want to help myself go after what I want. And we can't do it alone, and we

shouldn't do it alone, and it's so much more fun when you don't do it alone. So I struggle with this too, and I want to share that with you, because I don't have all the answers, just like you don't have all the answers. Nobody does. And we don't want to have all the answers, because that would be arrogance or

narcissism, or, you know, not something we want to be engaging with or not constructive. So in Episode 14, Connie Zach a friend of mine. She's the CEO of sunlight and saunas, she said something to me that really, really stuck in my body and in my spirit, in my soul, and I'll share it with you. So many

dreams are not achieved one or two or three steps before they're just about to cross over that breakthrough line. If you just keep going and persevere, you're going to get there the people that just say, I'm out, they'll never know. And that came into my heart as I was ready to to quit this podcast, I

just went. I just remembered Connie's words. So Connie, thank you so much. You're such a light in my life in so many ways, but that that really stayed with me. And look, I could, I could do 100 podcast episodes about the things that I've learned from our guests so far and from the other wonderful podcasts that I

listened to. I really feel like this podcast is a beautiful toolbox to help reduce overwhelm and fear and and empower you and shift the mindset and that approach, that that I can't, that we're moving into the I can, I will. And you know, we we do it with lots of tools, don't we? Meditation, yoga,

journaling, sketching, dancing, swimming. My niece jumps on a trampoline to calm her central nervous system. Some people find cooking meditative, somatic practices, sound bars. I mean, there's just so many things gardening, so many things that that we can do to reduce overwhelm, to feel calm, things

that don't cost a lot of money. Some people just like to sit and watch a movie, read a book, lie up against a tree, lay out in the sunshine in a hammock. There's so many lovely things we can do in the on this podcast, specifically, I've invited my friends and colleagues and people that I have met through

friends and colleagues, but most of the guests on the show so far have been people that I know very, very well and who have enriched my life. A lot of practitioners that I see on a regular basis that I really want you to know about, that are working at the top of their game. And in Episode 50, I

talked about fear, how I really feel, like this podcast has has given us an antidote to fear. So many of the episodes are around how people get past their fears, or how people hold their fears and act anyway. And so just so many episodes, I'll just share some of them that come to mind, that are around giving us tools

to work with. Overwhelm specifically. So in Episode 12, Nick pigeon shared positive psychology and a lot of very, very tangible tools for book ending our day and feeling good about what we're doing and calming ourselves. And, you know, really getting that get up and go and how do we make a plan

to do that? In episode 17, Mia Moran, who was just a planning genius, shared strategies to make a plan to get what you want, so that you can see the steps. It doesn't feel so overwhelming. And in Episode 16, another coach and friend of mine, Melissa lands, talked about how to reduce the

overwhelm of the big picture, like not being able to see how you can just take the next step. And her big approach is you just work out what the next three steps are, that's all you have to know. And then you work on the next three steps. And that has really helped me as well. And I know I got a lot of emails

about that episode back in the day in Episode 22 Dave Satcher, he is a former ice hockey player. He's a high performance coach, and he shared how to tap into our resilience and have a Champions mindset, that you can do it and just being able to find that next gear. So that's Dave scatcherd. He's amazing.

Sorry, I think I said Satcher while I was looking at my notes, but Dave scatcherd, he's it was a really. Great conversation in terms of the nervous system stuff that I'm talking about Kelly Lubeck, who was on the podcast recently, but she was on the podcast a while back in episode 24 she really walked us

through some breathing exercises and some strategies to regulate our nervous systems and just helping us understand what's going on in our bodies and how we can be more in tune with that. It was a really beautiful conversation, if you want some other tools with practitioners. Melissa dealey in Episode 39 she

talked about hypnotherapy and timeline therapy and NLP, neuro linguistic programming. I know a lot of people that have really, really benefited from those practices. So if that's something that appeals to you, that was a really interesting conversation about that, Megan Donnelly, our lead dietitian for

skinny 60, talks about how hypnotherapy has been really, really great for people with IBS and gut health and the stress that's caused in the body that causes digestive issues and other things. So hypnotherapy is really being embraced by the mainstream medical community at the moment, so it's, it's really

wonderful to see so many people looking at it as an option. I I've never done hypnotherapy, but I'm completely open to it. So I think, you know what? Maybe this is the year where I'm going to, going to do that. Yeah, I'm always open to trying things, but I never have, but I the more I hear about it, and the more

people I know that have benefited from it, I it does have it can be life changing, basically, in terms of making decisions and feeling really good about your decisions and making efficient decisions. I can be a procrastinator out of fear. I can be a slow decision decision maker. And doesn't mean

that speed means that it's the best decisions. But I had a really interesting conversation with Nell Wolfhard, she's a decision coach in Episode 47 and again, packed with tangible strategies, reducing the overwhelm of a lot of different choices and paring it down and making decisions that you feel

really good about. And Alana kazakovich, who is my personal Kinesiologist, she was on the podcast in Episode 53 and she was talking specifically about how to tackle the burnout. Often we're overwhelmed because we are exhausted, like we've just been burning the candle at both ends. That's what was happening to me

last year with the podcast, where I was just utterly, completely, physically, mentally, everything was just it was just pure exhaustion, and I really needed to get back into balance. So she had some really, really good suggestions in Episode 53 about that. And I see her monthly for Kinesiology.

She's just a fantastic practitioner.

And going back to listening with your heart, I don't know about you, and please let me know if this resonates for you. But I always make the best decisions when I'm listening with my heart, and I listen with my heart first, and my head plays a role, for sure, but Julie Hannon talked about heart centered

listening. She's a shaman in Episode 54 and she's been on the podcast recently as well. I've seen her as a practitioner. She really, really helped me when I was really afraid when I did the comeuppance. I did a play last year, and I had not done a play in 15 years. The last play I did was August Osage County for

Melbourne Theater Company, and then I went off and wrote cookbooks and spoke around the world and did other things with my life. So I was just thinking, there's just no way that I can do this. But I really wanted to do it, because I it because I really love it, and it was a great play and really amazing

actors and a wonderful director, and it turned out to be just an extraordinary experience, but I was terrified. And, you know, being being afraid, it's not a bad thing. It just shows you that you care about something. But her, she really helped me put some tools in my toolbox around fear and listening to my

heart. So it's definitely a really good episode to listen to another practitioner that really helps me, that I see once a month is dr ava Rubin. I had her on the podcast in Episode 57 and she was sharing the benefits of acupuncture to get centered and clear and be balanced. And so I go and have acupuncture and

massage and talk to her once a month, and it's just become a non negotiable part of my self care. She specifically was talking about esoteric acupuncture, which is a very, very powerful form of acupuncture that is like nothing I've ever experienced before. It's extraordinary. So there's

some really, really great tools in that episode. And her partner, Pete Coles, he's a somatic therapist, a trans personal counselor. I had him on the next episode in Episode 58 he's my somatic therapist. He's an extraordinary practitioner about the value of somatic therapy and getting into your

body and really listening from your body. And he he really helped me recognize that I do experience overwhelm. I was thinking that that was a foreign concept, and I

realized I was feeling overwhelmed all the time. I just wasn't using that word,

but when I was explaining how I was feeling and feeling into my body, he said, oh, so what you're experiencing is overwhelm. And I knew the minute he said it, I knew it was true. I felt it in my body. I. I was just using other words to describe it, you know, because it's kind of like shame. I don't

use that word very often, but, like, it's very judgmental or something. But we all carry shame. We all do, whether we're calling it that or not, and so that that really shifted things for me. It's a beautiful conversation. A lot of really interesting lines of inquiry came up. Karen Kenny is another

friend of mine that I had on in Episode 59 and she really took us inside of her journey from fear to forgiveness, and how she guides others on that journey. And often we get overwhelmed by by the emotions we feel towards others about particular things that have happened, and so the forgiveness piece of reducing

overwhelming in a lot of situations, and often it's about forgiving ourselves ourselves. I find that that I can forgive others much easier than I can forgive myself. I can forgive myself. So, oh, that's an interesting line of inquiry that's kind of swirling around as I'm swirling around as I'm as

I'm talking to you. Yeah, that comes up a lot for me. Somatic practices and embodiment practices have become a very, very big part of my life in the last 10 years. So that's why I've had a lot of somatic practitioners on the podcast. I just think somatic listening is just so needed, particularly for

me again, because I'm a salmon. I mean, always in my head, and I've got to come down to my body with practices. So I had Kerry koligie, a beautiful person. I attend her women's circle every month. In episode 62 I had her on, and we were talking about feminine embodiment practices. She's also very big into tea

ceremonies, which can be a really beautiful ritual to calm you down and just invite the slow and low and the ritual of tasting the tea and smelling the tea and holding it, and it's just it's a very, very beautiful practice. So that may be something that speaks to you. It's becoming really popular

too, which is really beautiful. I also spoke to her husband, Amir khaligi In episode 63 and speed weed in Episode 64 about a male embodiment practices for the men in your life, and they're really beautiful episodes to listen to as a woman to help understand the men in your life and how they're

processing overwhelm and how it may be preventing them from expressing themselves and asking for what they want and holding the bigness of what you want in the relationship. And they're different perspectives, and both really, really extraordinary and have certainly changed the way that I relate to the men in my

life. So I offer that to you because it's really beautiful. Another dear friend of mine who's a somatic practitioner, Elizabeth Jurgensen, very, very dear friend, you probably, you know, if you've been listening to this podcast a lot, you hear me talk about Beau and Elizabeth bow and Elizabeth a lot on this

podcast. Well, this is the Elizabeth and she and I had a really amazing conversation many years ago about the cycles of the moon. This Native American teaching that teaches you that the moon ebbs and flows. There's full moon, there's the waxing and the waning, there's the Dark Moon, and all the cycles have

value. And I am most comfortable in full moon, full achievement, full success, full drama, full energy, right? I just think everything has to be full or it doesn't have value as my default position now, now that I'm so, you know, I'm more self aware, and I've done lots of therapy in the decade, many decades past,

and I'm constantly going to be doing more, and I just absolutely love, you know, coming into a more nuanced understanding with myself and with those that I'm in relationship with and those that I'm yet To be in relationship with so I can have more meaningful relationships and

meet people in a place of love and compassion and openness. And it really, really resonated with me, so I had her on the podcast to talk about it, and oof, that was a very popular episode. So take a listen to that, because it really helps shift. We talked about internalized capitalism and how that that increases and

adds to overwhelm. And so, yeah, it's a great conversation, just to how do you find more ease and clarity and balance? And another thing that I do regularly is I go to sound baths, and I attend sound healing sessions, privately and in groups. I've done a lot of different kinds of sound healing around the world,

and there's some very, very beautiful practitioners. So I invited two of them on the podcast. In episode 67 I spoke to Kelly Sullivan, and in Episode 68 I spoke to Liam lachel. And they do sound healing in two different ways. They both use bowls, but Liam does a lot of other instruments

and singing and all kinds of things, and they're coming at it from from a different place, which is really lovely. So if you want to learn more about sound healing or your you love sound healing and sound baths, they're great conversations, and it really has helped me to relax and to be more open. And to be

open to slow and just to be allowing things to be in the flow. It's been very, very beneficial for me in the last 20 years. In episode 74 I spoke to Justin Patrick Pierce and London Angel winters about sacred sexuality, sacred intimacy. It was an exquisite conversation. Their work has completely

changed my life in so many ways and ways that I'm yet to discover. Yet, I got so many emails about this episode. So if you want to feel more present and seen and express yourself freely and be open in your relationship, your sexual relationship, or your relate, your relationship with your

partner. I highly recommend listening to that episode. The other thing healing modality that's really helped me in my life is craniosacral therapy. And the best craniosacral therapist I have ever met, and I've met many now, is Lee veal. He lives in Kansas City, and whenever I'm in Kansas City, I

go and see him. I There's many, many hours of the day that I wish I lived in Kansas City so that I could see Lee on a regular basis. He's a very, very special person, and he's a bit of a body whisperer. He really is. He designed his understanding of the body and body listening and fascia, and

it's really extraordinary. So on a physical level, which extends to the body, mind and spirit, everything. Craniosacral therapy is a really powerful modality to calm, to soothe, to open, to release. So he's in Episode 77 we had a really great conversation about that. Unleashing your wild woman and

expressing yourself and seeing things that you might perceive as negatives as positives, is what I talked about with Amy Stanton. We spoke in Episode 80 about harnessing the power of our femininity and the power of our natural inclinations and qualities to go after what we want, and boy, does that woman

go after what she wants, and she helps other people do the same thing. So her book really, really inspired me as well, and getting my human design last year really shifted some things for me in the sense of owning who I am in the world and not second guessing my natural inclination about things. So I

offer that to you, and hope that it will help you as well. In episode 81 I had Amanda Lee Walker on the podcast, and she was sharing the benefits of human design and how it can help you you work with your natural tendencies, as opposed to against them. And lately, on the podcast I spoke with, I invited

Mia and Kelly and Julie that I spoke about before, to talk about the power of community and bringing yourself into community and listening and learning from other people in in spaces that you feel safe, and the magic that happens when we feel safe to be seen and heard and expressed and express ourselves

with vulnerability and celebrate the shares of others. There is something very magical about female communities. And Mia runs flow 365 which is an amazing community. Kelly helps people regulate their nervous systems in community. And Julie has an amazing, sacred circle that she runs every week. They're all

wonderful practitioners, and it was a really lovely round table discussion about finding good practitioners, finding good communities, about being seen and heard, holding space for others, and feeling like you're being held, and that the challenges that we face as women and the overwhelm that we

experience and how we can get help, how we're not meant to do it alone, how doing things with others, you know, has real value. I'll give you something else that that I learned last year so Alana kazakovich, who I talked about before, who's my Kinesiologist, who I see once a month. I went to her late last

year when I was really at the end of my rope and feeling incredibly overwhelmed, and I was sharing that with her, and you know, what do you want to work on today? And I told her, and she already felt it when I lay on the table and I feel, I feel so full, I'm going to burst. Was the phrase that I

used. And she offered me this adjustment. She said, Yeah, okay. And I had said what I said to you earlier, which is, it's a lot, but it's not too much. So I had said that to her, you know,

I tell people it's a lot, but it's not too much. Well, I'm telling you, it's too much, right? Now, was what I was saying.

And she said, but you really love what you do, right? You really love you like you're doing all these different things, but you, you actually really enjoy and derive pleasure from these things, right? And I said, Yeah, I really do, but I just, I've just stretched myself too thin because I'm too greedy

and I'm too trying to do too many things, and I need to hire more people and all the things, right? So she said, Well, what about if you chose to be energized? By all the things that you're doing and all the things that you have to do or want to do or choose to do, what about if it just energized you,

the fullness of all of it, and you, you were able to sail and and riff off of that energy, the vibration of that I'm probably butchering the way she said it to me, actually, but it just, I don't know what it was, maybe it was. Maybe it just happened at the right time, or whether I was lying there and I was ready to

receive it, or she's just amazing. I'm probably a compliment of all the things. But, oh, did it shift some things in me. So whether that's useful or not to you right now, it really, it really helped the it's a lot, but it's not too much. If you choose it, if you really want it, it can't

possibly to be too much because you want it. So all these things that I want to do and love doing, it's not too much because I love it. So it's really shifted things for me, and I think that's why this year has gone off like a cracker so far, and just things are opening for me in the most extraordinary

way. And I hope that they are for you as well. If you choose to be on the stallion and choose to believe that you are the stallion. Actually, another thing that I've been working on in the last couple of years is my default position historically well even now, really is to in on a scale of one to Dan, is

just to make everything an 11 like everything is high stakes. Everything's high stakes, from what I'm going to eat for lunch to, you know, whether I'm going to get that job, to whether or not that person is receiving things the way, or whatever it might be. I'm just throwing things out there right now. I

just made the decision my hashtag is no more than three. So unless it is literally life and death. I'm choosing to keep everything at a three, meaning that I just I just imagine that I've taken a Valium and I'm actually unable to take it to an 11, so that it stresses me out so much that I just continue to

feel overwhelmed by it. So that's something that's working really well for me. I don't know how much longer it's going to work for me, but I offer it to you, and I hope that it's helpful. Another I'm giving this to a lot of members of skinny 60 during my office hours, by the way, so if you're in skinny 60,

you probably heard me say this to people, but it really is helpful. I think it's constructive. Another exercise that I have been giving members of our 60 day research for years now is the practice of playing the movie all the way out, so when you sort of can't see what's going on. So again, I

this was a riff off of something that Connie Zach gave me in episode 14 from sunlight and saunas, when she talked about how she had a real fear of public speaking, and she got really nervous and when she was going to go out and speak in front of things like, you know, the imposter syndrome about, you

know, who am I to do this? And just the overwhelm of feeling that imposter syndrome, she had this strategy where she thought about how she wanted to feel when she was done. What's the feeling? What? How do I want to feel while I'm up there, and how do I want to feel after I've done it? And she just stood

there with her eyes shut, and she imagined being done that. Mia talks about this as well. In episode 17, she talks about picture being done, picture what it feels like. And then you make decisions from that place like you've already done it. You just imagine you've already done it. You've already done it. You've

already achieved it. It's already happening. And, yeah, already done. And a lot of coaches teach this mentality. You know, the dream is happening right now. You know it's not fully realized yet, but you are making it happen right now. And so the extension of that is just playing it all the way out like

I imagine I've already done it. It's amazing. I've already finished that particular task, and then you work backwards. And it actually does make it easier, like when you just kind of reverse engineer it, so to speak. And I do reverse engineer a lot of things in business, you know, I the what determines the

how, and then I work backwards from there. But emotionally, I have to remind myself that that template works with this as well. And so I hope that's helpful as well. So I want to ask you, what's holding you back from just saying it has to be me, you know, is, can you let go of the expectations of others.

Can you give yourself permission to want what you want no matter what the consequences are going to be for other people in your life? That they might be disappointed, they might feel let down, they might be shocked. I mean, we have to care what people think. Otherwise, we're sociopaths, right? Anyone that

tells me they don't care what other people think, I just go, okay. I don't believe you. I mean, or you're a sociopath. We have to read the room and be sensitive and care about the thoughts and feelings of others, but it's when we care about their thoughts and feelings more than our own, in a situation

where I think we get into where we have boundaries that perhaps aren't so healthy. Be or don't serve us, I should say, is probably a more constructive way to say that. So can you shift the need to wait for the right time or for things to be perfect until you can go after what you want? Can you let go of the need

to start over or have a redo or or revisionist history before you can be worthy of having that thing that thing that you want or going after, or what happens if you get disappointed? Yes, I'm not enough. I'm too much story that I talk about a lot on the podcast. If you haven't listened to episodes one through

four. I did four solo episodes when I started the podcast, and I shared my personal story, my philosophy about coaching, and I talk about how this I thought that I'm not enough and I'm too much. What opposites, but they're actually two sides of the same coin. It's basically the idea that I somehow have to

be different in order to be loved and accepted, or in order to be worthy to get that thing that I want the right. People can handle the full you in any form, in any manifestation. They can handle you. And so it really is about trust at the end of the day, trusting yourself and trusting the people that you

choose to put in your sacred circle. And do we need to be very discerning about who those people are in the mirrors that are surrounding us all the time, because we become like the people we spend the most time with. So you've got to be really super picky about who we are touching the most in life. And

this, I'm not enough. I'm too much. I always assume that I'm too much for everybody. I'm too loud, I'm too opinionated, I get in there too much. I'm too ambitious. I want more. I just want I want too much, basically. And I've always seen that as very ugly and greedy and almost like having a monster inside of

me. And Bo and Elizabeth really helped me see we want to dance with your monster. We love your monster. That's your monster. Let's play, you know. And I've really been working on, I know, I continue to work on accepting that part of myself, because, you know, I mean, I should practice what I preach in this

sense of, I always tell people in my program, you know, wanting more is only bad when it's an Oliver, the musical, or if you're gonna murder somebody and hurt or hurt somebody, you know that's the only wanting more is a beautiful thing, wanting something more for your life, wanting something more for the

world, wanting something more for the people you love, it's a beautiful dream. So I'm learning to hold that differently and not to see that as an ugly thing, just to see that as part of wanting a full human experience. And every experience is an invitation to return to self, to see how all the pieces fit

together. What does the emerging story look like not living in what the story looked like in the past? Life happens now. And so that's another thing I'm constantly reminding myself to be present. So I'd love to hear from you how you remind yourself to stay present and work on the emerging story, the current

story, rather than living in the story from the past. That you can change the story whenever you want to. We don't get to change the past. But why would we want to back to the future? Taught us that, right? We don't get to just go and, you know, get rid of the bits that we are ashamed of or didn't like. If we

change one thing, it changes everything. It all gets woven into this tapestry that helps us become who we are today and who will become. It will inform our future self, you know. And we weave all these experiences in and all the parts of ourselves in, oh, you know, I mean, we talk about this a lot, that

we're more alike than we're different, and the basic human need is to be known and loved. We want to be seen. We desperately want to be seen. All that we do in life is to be seen, you know, whether we're cognizant of it or not, but we don't want to be exposed. So that dance of wanting to be seen

but not feeling exposed, that's why the safety part of it and being discerning and allowing ourselves to be seen by people that are going to hold it with care and love and respect is so important, and I think that that's why it does take a village to be to feel powerful enough to say it has to be me,

and to decide that you can get past any overwhelm or any fears that you experience in order to get what you want and you can get it, you got To have those people around you that are constantly holding up the mirror that, yeah, showing you the best parts of yourself and beckoning you back to the best parts of

yourself when maybe you're dancing around with the worst parts of yourself, which we all do, myself included. Of course,

I think the people pleasing aspect of it is a huge piece of this, whether we're cognizant of it or not. We don't want to disappoint other people. We don't want to not meet the moment with their expectations. But actually we're meeting the moment with our own expectations. And you know,

myself included, I'm speaking for myself that often I forget, that I've got to constantly remind myself of that. And the people you know in our program that there are only so many yeses. There's a finite amount of yeses to give, and infinite amount of no's that you can give. And no full stop is a

complete sentence, and it doesn't make you a nasty person. You can give a very compassionate, respectful, loving no to somebody. And. Know, my friend cater taught me this. I talked about this in episodes one to four. She really helped me see this many, many, many years ago now, about 20

years ago now, she said, You know, when you don't have a full bodied yes to give a passionate Yes, I want to be here, and I will be here with bells on, and there's nowhere else I want to be right now, if you can't give someone that full throated, yes, you do. You owe it to yourself and them. The most

compassionate, loving thing to do is to give them a no so that that frees them up to go and get a yes from someone who can give them that full bodied Yes. And I went, you're right, and I haven't had a problem saying no, since no is a gift to yourself and others. If the full bodied yes isn't on the table, and

every full bodied yes comes accompanied by a bunch of no's. You cannot say yes without saying no to some other things. You can't do it all or we burst. So I think it's the limiting beliefs that hold us back. You know, what are the stories that you're telling yourself that might not even be true? By the

way, I often tell my stories myself, stories that I kind of know are true, right? Like I have these imaginings about what people are thinking about me. And I don't know about you, but so many of the things that I obsess about and think about, or I used to, I don't spend a lot of time doing it now, but years

ago, when I was a teenager, when I was in my early 20s, even in my early 30s, I would spend so much time worrying about things in Al Anon, there's this saying worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but in the end, gets you nowhere that absolutely changed things. For me, while we're

talking about the rocking horse, let's use that analogy. Oh, man, did I spend a lot of time worrying. And 99.99999% of things that I worried about never happened. Or if a version of those things happened, it was nowhere near what I thought it was going to look like, or it wasn't exactly what I thought it

would look like. So wasting so much time instead of just being present, I think it's worrying serves as a distraction. It pulls you out of the present. And I think that, you know that's a fear based thing too. So not being afraid of the moment, that you can meet the moment. And as Kerry koligie

said in her episode, it was a beautiful thing that she said, give your imperfect offering. Oh, it really pierced my my soul when she said that, because we are all just giving an imperfect offering. And Justin and London talked about this in their episode, where we talked about this idea that if we accept that

we're all failing in the moment, meaning that we believe that we can be doing it better, it's an inconvenient truth, but if we acknowledge that every other human on Earth is feeling exactly the same way, then it becomes really comical, and it becomes a freeing reality, and then you don't feel so ashamed

or disappointed when you don't get it perfect or whatever you Think you're meant to be doing. So that's been very freeing for me as well. It really shifted things for me. Pete Coles, my somatic therapist, who I talked about from Episode 58 he really helped me not exile parts of myself. And I offer this to a

lot of our members as well, that the things that we find embarrassing or shameful or horrible or about ourselves. We want to exile them. We want to get rid of them. We want to we want to cut them out. We don't want to give them a seat at the table. So that's what Pete always says to me. What about if

we we give all the parts of what's going on right now, all the parts of you and all the emotions? What about we give them an all an equal seat at the table? So can you imagine that it was very interesting exercise, because I imagined myself at a table, but my table was a rectangle, almost like I

was in this medieval castle or something. It was very dark. Is where I imagined myself and the good bits of myself, the achiever and the best selling book author and the person who did this and this, and you know, they were at the head of the table eating all the food, and they had all the money and all

the the energy and all the embarrassing, sad bits about me were all down the other end of the table, and they had no food, and were eating the crumbs and, you know, licking the table, and they were starving. And so I was, you know, sharing, because he asked me what my table looked like. And I went, he goes, Oh,

so you went into hierarchy. And I did. I went, I did. I totally did. And he said, What about if we make it a round table? And of course, I went, Yeah,

of course, I should be at around David. I should, I? Should? I should? No, no, no, just, I'm just

inviting you. Just inviting you. What would it feel like if every piece of it had equal value was able to grab anything just like anybody else? What does that feel like? And of course, it felt a whole lot better for now, when I imagine things, I imagine myself always at a round table, my friend

Michelle, who's also a therapist, calls it making friends with your uglies. I think it's a it's a fun way to think about it, you know, again, Connie Zach, I think, been thinking about her a lot lately, because obviously she's done extraordinary things with her career, and, you know, didn't

give up. And as I you know, am looking at the next. Volunteer in my business, and I'm terrified about, you know, growing this thing, you know, beyond what I can personally manage myself is just one example of the changes we're making in our company and hiring more people and all that kind of

stuff. I'm thinking about her a lot. She's, she's a great business mentor. She talks about fighting to be a unicorn. Celebrate the unicorn in you, that there is only one YOU, and you are completely unique, and nobody can offer to the world exactly what you offer to the world, and trusting and having

faith in that and celebrating it and sharing it with the world at every turn, whatever that looks like. So fight to be a unicorn, and that's just something that's swimming around in my head. You know, this, this self doubt and self belief. They exist in us all the time. We have to have both. And I was thinking about

this amazing address at Harvard. It was the class of 2018, I believe, and it was chamamanda Adichie. I hope I'm not butchering her name. She's so extraordinary. And in her speech, she said, without self doubt, you become complacent, and without self belief, you cannot succeed. You have to have

both to create anything of value. And so again, we talk about this a lot on the podcast, that that courage is not the absence of fear. It's acting in the presence of fear and learning to build a different relationship with it, so that you can hold it in balance. You can hold that self doubt and

that self belief, and that's why we have tools, that's why we go to therapies, that's why we join communities, that's why we get coaching, that's why we ask friends, that's why we're in relationships, that's why we read, to learn more about ourselves and the world so we can meet the next Moment. So

it's time. It's time for all of us to get off the rocking horse and stop waiting for your dream to come to you. It has to be me as something you claim. It's something you fight for. It's something you go after. It's not something that sits on the rocking horse with you. We're always in the middle of the

story. We don't start and stop. We don't get to go back. The beginning of the story is birth and the end of the story is death. And then, depending on what your spiritual beliefs are, we can have that conversation. But in this physical body, in this physical realm, birth and death, beginning, end,

everything else, we're in the middle somewhere. So piggy back what's already working spectacularly for you. Because even if this has been a shit year to begin with, right? And you feel like you're on the rocking horse, or you're on the horse that's actually laid down to die, maybe, oh yeah, that's a

terrible image. But you know what I mean, not absolutely everything is a hot mess in your life. I say this to people all the time in our program where they've got all these health issues and they feel like nothing's ever going to work. No, this is why I always ask every member of our community,

what is your superpower? What do you do? Really, really well, that other people come to you for that is one of the special needs. There could be many superpowers. It's so, so important to know what they are, so that when you're embarking on something new, when you're going, Okay, I'm really afraid

of this. I don't know how I'm going to make this work, but I'm going after it anyway. I mean, when you don't see the clear path to every single piece of it, and you don't need to, it's kind of like driving a car where you only need to see a few more, you know, a little bit ahead of you not going to be able to see

exactly where you're going 10 hours from now. So it very much is that way. And so using what already lights you on fire, what you already know how to do, and piggy backing the energy and enthusiasm and confidence of that, like, where does that sit in your body? Somatically, when you feel strong and powerful. So

Pete often asked me that in our sessions, and being able to access that part of your body and that part of your consciousness so that you go, no, no, I've actually got undeniable data and evidence that I'm somebody that can go after things that I want because I've done it before. So if

you've done it once, you can do you can do it again. And I also know that I can't do it alone, and that's a good thing. That's a strength to go. I'm going to pull in people to do what I don't know how to do. You ask, don't ask. Don't get my philosophy. So yes, we've got to be discerning. Yes, we've got to

hire the right people, etc. But ask, ask, ask, reach out for help. Join communities, get coaching, ask friends and family, you know, do what you got to do to assemble your village and your army to make it happen. So what are your superpowers? I'll tell you what three of mine are, and I had to

have help to recognize this, by the way, one of them is that I can put extraordinary flavors together. So I just have that gift of being knowing what something needs, and being able to throw things together and just make them taste incredible, and have bouquets that open and go on extraordinary journeys,

and I don't even know where it comes from. I'm a self taught person, and. But it's just really, really fun for me. If you want to assemble Ikea furniture, I'm so not your person. I'm absolutely hopeful, hopeless, and we're never going to assemble one chair in my presence. I'm hopeless. But

cooking is one of them, and and flavors I taste everything you know. Another one is that I attract extraordinarily generous, awesome, beautiful, open, kind, humans. And the third thing is, as a coach, I make people believe that they can do anything, and as a friend, and I'm sure there are

others you know that I'm yet to claim, yet to claim, your superpowers, whatever they are, because it really does help anchor you in life and and help you sort of go with the flow and know that you've got the resilience and the tools to weather whatever comes your way. And again, if you don't in the

moment, you reach out for help. I'm always calling a friend. Let me tell you, I've got friends on speed dial, you know, like I and I go to quite a number of therapies every month to show up the way that I show up cleanly, so that I can be clear about what's mine and what is somebody else's. Just because you don't

you don't know how to get it doesn't mean that it's not possible. And so Pete always says to me, it's a problem, it's not a puzzle. Sorry, what did I say? It's a problem. It's a puzzle, not a problem. Sorry, to think that through for a second, because I've said it so many times. It's a many times. It's a

puzzle, not a problem, is what he says, one of many gems that I've gotten from him. So how do you eat the whale? One bite at a time, one bite at a time, one step at a time, one choice at a time, and you can always do the cha. Cha. Life doesn't go just step, step, step, step forward, forward, forward, win, win, win.

We learn right, and we can just keep going and dancing with it. So choose to let the waves carry you this year, not drown. You surf the possibilities. My therapist Tony, that I've been seeing for 20 years, he's got this beautiful bookshelf, and he's got this little line in front of all the books that

says, dwell in possibility. And the last session I went to before the end of the year, all of a sudden, for the first time in 20 years, the sign wasn't there. And it was like I couldn't sort of function if the sign was there, because I just constantly look up at it. And it's such a great reminder. And

I always think, yes, yes, dwell in possibilities. And then, of course, you know, the next time I'm having a freak out about something, I forget about forget about it, you know, and it's always just a really gentle reminder. So I said to him, Tony, I'm sorry, but I need to know where the sign is. I don't

think I could sit here and talk to you without the sign. And he just laughed his head off. And he goes, I I loaned a book to somebody, and I think it must have fallen down, so we put it back. I mean, it was hilarious. I felt like a three year old. But anyway, that's another example of asking for what you

need in the moment. But, you know, dwelling in possibility, it's just such a beautiful reminder. And I get that reminder every month. Live in the promise of what life can be moment to moment and what you can make it be moment to moment, and don't do it alone. None of us can. I don't want to be on an

island by myself. We know what that does, and it makes you crazy. It makes you mad. The only people that survived that is Tom Hanks and cast away so it reach out for help. Asking for help is a strength. Showing your vulnerability is a strength, saying I don't know how to do this, I need help is a strength.

So do whatever you have to do to be the stallion, even if the stallion sleeping right now and figuring it out, figuring out the next move, doesn't mean that the stallion is always running the stallion, in my mind, just knows that they're a stallion. That's what it is. Know that you you've got the goods, you got

the juice, you got the gold, you got what it takes. Let me know what happens for you this year, being a stallion, I can't wait to hear about it.