The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Telling Your Life as a Love Story with Meg Worden

Meg Worden is a memoir writer and health coach with a scandalous past that led her through the federal prison system for selling ecstasy. In this episode she returns to the show to discuss the process of how we reintegrate after a significant emotional experience.

Telling the hard truth and finding peace within our stories
Finding the seeker that lies within yourself
The common tendency to turn to things that numb or mute pain
How trauma allows us to tap into the depth of human understanding
Learning integrating the hard truth of your story into a conversation
Cultivating the ability to translate sensory input to create your art
Why taking good care of your body is essential to creativity
The deep and irrevocable connection between mind and body
A look at the power of deep intention and curiosity
The myth that we reach a place where stop suffering
A look at the process and challenges of coming out of prison
The two bubbles that occur after a significant emotional experience
Giving yourself space between a powerful emotional experience and life after
Why we must turn our life from a grief story to a love story

Meg Worden is a dynamic writer, speaker and coach talking to entrepreneurs and influencers all over the world about overcoming stigma, shame, and shifting people’s perceptions of justice, forgiveness — of self and others, redemption, tenacity, and, generally, why humans shouldn’t be defined by transgressions; rather, they should be defined by the grace with which they overcome adversity.

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Duration:: 1h 34m
Broadcast on:: 28 Apr 2014
Audio Format:: other

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Got your answers is for sale, and if you are interested in winning every sports debate you have for the rest of your life, this is the book for you. We take the 100 biggest sports debates and answer them, settle them once and for all. Meanwhile, Humbo, what's your favorite part of the book? 100 sneaky head motion review book. All that and a whole lot more. It's called Got Your Answers, it's available anywhere you get your books right now. In this episode of The Unmistakable Creative, Meg Warden returns to the show to discuss the challenges of life after a two-year prison sentence and the process of how we reintegrate into our lives after a significant emotional experience, whether it's negative or positive. Hey Meg, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Hi, it's Greenee. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, it's more like a welcome back since we had you here back in the days when we were called Blockcast FM. I love how I say back in the days, like it was 10 years ago, even though it was just last year, but it feels like it's been 10 years, hasn't it, with all the things that have happened? So much has happened. Our friendship has evolved, you've been a speaker at our event. It's been really kind of mind-blowing, but for the people who may not know who you are, because we've gotten a lot of new listeners since you were last year, tell us a bit about your story and your background and how that has led you to what you're up to today. Okay, so that's a pretty general question, let's see. So I suppose I have one of your traditional or maybe non-traditional, I guess it's traditional to me because I'm so used to telling it sort of redemption, hero journey kind of stories. I have a pretty interesting and sort of scandalous past that led me through the federal prison system for a couple of years, for selling ecstasy. And then I have over time with all the impetus and kind of drive of a seeker and entrepreneur that I believe I was born as moved into starting a business, finding out that I could do this business in a way that was location independent, which led me to finding this whole community of people working from a laptop and developed a successful and very full rich health coaching practice, which is now transformed into a business where I do story coaching, help people with their public persona and presence and help them tell the hard truth so that they can find transformation through the piece with their most tender stories. Awesome. Yeah, so does that answer that question? Yeah, I know. I mean, that's so we can get on to other things, there's a lot in there obviously. Oh yeah, and you know that I'm not going to just let that slide, I'm going to dig back into that. Okay. It's interesting. You mentioned this idea of being a seeker even last time we were here and it's funny that being a seeker led you to selling ecstasy, you know, I look at things, you know, I think that there is this component of being a seeker within all of us and the question is how do you find it and how do you end up making sure it's not selling ecstasy? Well, that's a really good question. I'm not sure, you know, I'm not positive that the component of being a seeker is in all of us and maybe in all of us, meaning me and you and everyone listening to this podcast. But I'm not sure it's in everyone, you know, I think that there's a place for everybody in the world and for some people, there's, you know, deep comfort in repetition and rootedness, deep comfort in being in smaller spaces. I'm not one of those people, I suspect you're not one as well either or your listeners, you know, people that are really have been born with some feeling that they're here to do something different, that they're here to leave the world a better place than they found it. For me, that was feeling really weird from a large part of my childhood, feeling really special and lovely as a small child and then growing older, hitting puberty and starting to feel really like an outsider, really, really weird, being really confused about why I didn't fit in with people on a regular basis and that really kind of twisted around the thing that I originally thought that was so special about me into something thwarted and afraid and lonely. And I don't really think that's so uncommon, certainly there's, well, I know it's not uncommon. I mean, the rate of artists and writers and, you know, people who really get into this craft of being someone who is sensitive to sensory input and is able to translate it into something beautiful that wasn't there before, which is kind of how I described the artist. But it's a tough gig and so it's common to turn to things that mute or numb that pain. I wouldn't say that ecstasy necessarily is one of those things that probably falls under the category of real seeking. Certainly I was always, in addition to being attracted to the ways in which partying gave me an easy way into social situations and, you know, kind of the illusion of belonging. I was also attracted to the kind of drugs like hallucinogenics and ecstasy that were innately also exploratory. So you know, those are kind of drugs that allow you to explore mind spaces. So those were particularly attractive and I thought they were particularly benign as well, especially ecstasy, which I would say I still believe while I don't use it as a part of my practice now necessarily, it is not something that I think is all that terrible, but that's a whole conversation about the drug war that we don't have to get into. As far as doing, as far as honoring the part of ourselves that is a seeker without turning to drug dealing, I don't know, you know, I don't know. It's a good question because it seems to me that there is great depth of understanding that comes from the process of being hollowed out with grief somehow. And so that's sort of an existential question. I mean, I could tell you a lot of things about how, you know, staying open and staying healthy. I'm a strong believer in keeping your body strong and flexible and eating good things and being open-minded and listening and being well-read and well-adjusted. But there's an element here somewhere that's kind of hard to put a finger on, that if you haven't, Ben, if you don't have some kind of trauma to work with, that it's difficult to tap into the kind of depths of human understanding that really, really create an environment for this kind of thing. Does that make sense? Am I getting too far out there? No, no, no. I will. And I answer your question. I don't know. It's something I think about all the time, Srini. I mean, even when I watch what you do in the world with the kinds of people that more and more you're bringing to the table to interview, there's something really profound about hearing these hero journey stories, something that deeply taps a collective conscious for all of us. And I think everyone has one. So maybe it's a matter of finding it. I mean, there's not a person in the world who doesn't suffer and there's not a person in the world who hasn't had lost. So perhaps it's a matter of acknowledging and finding what that means for you and working in that arena with a lot of bravery and courage or taking the big obvious thing. For me, you know, I went to prison. There's been a lot of other traumatic experiences, but that's sort of the one that I'm still, that still seems to be the most compelling storyline. But it's so big. You know, I was forced to learn how to integrate that into a conversation. I think a lot of people carry around things that they haven't necessarily been put up against a wall to learn how to talk about, but they're carrying around that weight. And perhaps if they tap in, bravely face those demons, a lot of depth, a lot of understanding and a lot of, I don't want to ever say like you find what you're seeking because I think all of life is a process of that continued seeking. But that, you know, that journey becomes a lot stronger and a lot more powerful. Can you come eventually to a place where you can be in great service to others? I don't know, but I'm not even going to touch it. I think maybe I got there. Didn't get there. Yeah. So it's brilliant. I mean, this is why we have you back. Well, I mean, you have a poetic way of sort of explaining things, but you know, one of the things that you said is that artists have a way of translating sensory input in our world. And I think you're particularly good at it based on the explanation you just gave me. And what I'm curious about is how you, as a creative, as an artist, as somebody who functions in a society where every one of us to some degree is forced to be an artist or, you know, help a persona, how do you translate sensory input in a way that is compelling and in service of others? So I read somewhere ages ago. I would love to take credit for this beautiful line, but or give credit where credit is due, but I can't do either. And so it was something like the artist is a barometer of a culture. The task or responsibility, you know, we think of artists as being talented or gifted, of having some sort of talent being creative. And I could get into the many ways that that's a misnomer, but I really believe that the artist is someone who is the barometer of a culture and is tasked with the responsibility of translating a culture into something that everyone else can digest. And so, for example, you know, if we were to talk about the 1920s, we might have an image of in our head of The Great Gatsby, I mean, I don't know if you do, I think probably kind of everybody does. The first thing you think about is some image of whether it was the old film or the new film or you read the book, The Great Gatsby comes to mind. So we can credit F Scott Fitzgerald with sort of gathering the zeitgeist of the 20s and delivering it to us in this way that is so easily digestible that we have an understanding of this piece of that culture, whether it's entirely accurate or not. It serves in a way that history books never can, right? So how to actually harness and use the power, I really think that this sort of power displays itself. Also, I should say that I believe the artist to be anyone who is able to do this thing and that translation doesn't necessarily have to be film or music or painting or the traditional things we think of when we think of art because we need all kinds of people and frankly everyone is creative. We're creative beings and whether we're here creating shitty relationships and drama and misery or whether we're creating books and paintings or beautiful relationships and connections. We're creating something. We're never just, you know, still doing nothing, either regenerating or degenerating. So as far as that sensory input coming in, it seems to me and from working with many, many, many clients who tend to all be these, you know, birds of a feather and whatnot, all of the clients that I've ever worked with, I would say, are the kind of people who struggle with being highly sensitive, not always knowing how to manage the creative fire of their personalities that oftentimes or often make the people around them feel uncomfortable. They've had the experiences, children of having big sort of uncontained feelings or ideas that weren't popular, that made people uncomfortable or put them in the position of having to disappoint the status quo. And this high sensitivity, you know, we have all kinds of children. I have one myself that has interesting challenges, integrating sensory input, a lot of adults I know as well, including myself, especially after prison, is, you know, there's tools. I would say, find help, get support, honor what you have, and find like-minded people and any tools you can possibly harness again, I can't say strongly enough how much taking good care of your body is in service to this task because an artist, you know, if you're going to filter all of this sensory input, you have to be really selective about what goes in. Recently, when we were at the instigator experience, we were sitting on the panel and Justin Musk was asked a question about writing, and she mentioned that the, you know, the reading is the inhale and the writing is the exhale. And so being very selective about what you take in, the last time we had a conversation on this podcast, we were talking also about creative cross-training and being, you know, taking in art and inspiration in a selective and mindful way, taking in food in a selective and mindful way, taking in substances like alcohol and caffeine in a selective and mindful way, because your body really is kind of the filter of the sensory input that is going to feed your creative mind. So what comes out of it, whether you're, whatever it is you're doing, is going to be an amalgam of what you've allowed in. So my best advice for anyone who feels this suffering and weight or aching sort of desire to break out and create something or make a difference or be in service in this way that we're talking about is to take first and foremost excellent care of your first line of defense, which is your body and your ability to digest literally, if you take great care of your digestive system, then it translates directly into being able to better digest stimulus. And certainly there's lots of science around much of our neuro transmitters actually being formed in the gut. So I could go into that for ages. But to answer your question, complexly, with complexity and simplicity, take care of your body first and foremost, and then find like-minded people and get support because, and then facing the hard stuff. Because that's probably where your story and your deepest inspiration and ability to connect to other humans lies in your vulnerable places. So when you take good care of yourself, you're strong enough to share that vulnerability without feeling skinless all the time. There's a lot, there's a lot here that goes into this. Lots of steps. Call me. We'll get into it. Yeah. That's the answer. Email me. We'll talk about your personal stuff. Yeah. Well, we'll get into the hard story piece. I definitely want to dig into that. And I love you brought up this body piece and I want to reference a conversation that you and I have had a few times even at the event and post, I told you I gave up drinking for the month. And I mentioned this in a recent interview as well. And you told me, you said, "Look what you accomplished after not drinking for one month." And then you told me about that story, about how every time something is not going well, you basically turn to taking care of your body and somehow it turns around. It's interesting, right? Because I think that it's not the most intuitive thing. You wouldn't think, "Hey, you know what, if I don't drink for a month, I'm going to land another client." There's no sort of correlation there. But I think that the idea, I love that you brought up the idea of your body as a filter for all this sensory input because I think without clouding it with all this crap like alcohol and drugs, you start to see things that you can't see. Absolutely. I mean, there's just no question. Can we just take it off the table anymore for everyone that there's a question at all between mind, body connection? I mean, it just isn't. It doesn't mean that the things that happen in your body are your fault because you weren't thinking positively enough. That's bullshit. But there is a deep and irrevocable connection between your mind and body. We are a product of what goes in and what has come before us. We are this sort of dynamic manifestation of everything we are and there is a connection. And while it does seem distant, the truth is, you know, quit drinking for a month and you will get a new client if that's your intention. It works for me every single time, just every single time. That's my first line of defense. Then you know, I go through all these other things with exercise and meditation and supplements and nutrition and, you know, after practice, I have a lovely kind of intensive regimen of things I do to take care of myself. But the intention behind that is being able to deliver this, being able to, you know, I've had to change the fabric of everything that I was, you know, 10, 20 years ago and everything that came before me, you know, changing the way that I view being a woman in the world and what kind of success is available and what kind of options are available and how do you create a business that actually works for you? You know, how to, I did, you know, how to do that as a single mother with a felony out of cool breeze and lots of moxie. So much of that has been taking good care of myself and having faith, like turning to those things as the highest priority on my business plan every time when I don't know how something's going to turn out when I'm up against another impossible challenge. I need to make X, Y, and Z happen and that's something that I would consider impossible. I have no idea how I'm going to get there all, you know, taking good care of my body with the intention that I'm creating an incredibly strong space to hold open possibility. That's the intention. So it's works every time, it seems like magic, but it's not. And, you know, to show up for an hour workout, to pay attention to what I put in my body, that doesn't mean that I don't, you know, sometimes there's room for a great glass of whiskey and a cheeseburger. There's plenty of times where that is completely appropriate unless you're, you know, an alcoholic who will absolutely die if you have another drink. I mean, there's certainly exceptions for everybody, but it's a, it's a staying awake space. It's in every given moment saying, is this the choice, is this the thing I want to put in my body, or is this the thing I want to put in my brain, or is this the heart interaction I want to have that's going to lead me closer to my core values and my, this thing I seek, even if it's some ineffable thing that doesn't yet quite have words, but I, I know it's, it's on the other side of the storm, to quote Kamal Ravi Kant from instigator is, you know, is this leading me closer to that or further away? And you know, there's plenty of times that glass of whiskey and cheeseburger is leading you close to that because the heart connection you're making around that is Trump's whatever, you know, alcohol content you're consuming or is aided, you know, and lubricated by those things. Or, you know, it isn't and you walk away. So the art of letting go, good Lord, that's a whole other conversation as well that's completely valuable and an important piece here to staying spacious man, staying spacious. Whole taking care of the body is holding space for infinite potential. And you don't have to know how things are going to work out, sometimes just turning to that with intention, as if it's prayer in action because it is works every time. Well, that's, that's mind-blowing, it really, I love what you said about taking care of the body being a way to create space for infinite potential. You know, I want to get into something, you know, and we had this conversation before we quote unquote hit record here was this idea of intention, you know, and you brought that up as well, you know, I think that intention is one of those sort of new agey psycho babble things that we kind of hear about. You read about it in like a Wayne Dyer book or something and then you kind of don't really understand it. I'd love for you to expand on that in a bit more depth, just because I think it's such an important thing. And yet I feel it's very esoteric and really hard to understand and I'd love to kind of hear it from sort of a concrete perspective. God, you asked good questions. You know, intention, yeah, definitely. First of all, can I just say, good Lord, can we have some of our words back? It's so interesting how humans, things get so deluded, don't they, that they're misunderstood and they're deluded and we're so quick to sort of want to identify with things that have a promise of easy delivery, some sort of an easy delivery and to, I'll say quote unquote, happiness, you know, whatever that means. As far as intention goes, you know, certainly, I'm a huge fan of, honestly, I think the intention around creating space for infinite potential would be a great place to start. Because it is the disconnect to the outcome, you don't, we don't always know how things are going to end up. Let me try, let's think of a kind of a concrete example. Can I talk about a little bit about what I watched go down through the process of you planning and then actually manifesting the instigator experience? Yeah, absolutely. So when we first started talking about a year ago and you were telling me you had plans for this thing, this creative endeavor that was going to be a conference like no other, you know, the words you used were, it's going to be a conference like no other, a small amount of people, it's going to be intimate, it's going to be integrative, it's going to be intense, it's going to be life shifting, people are going to walk away being truly changed. And you weren't quite sure how you were going to pull all of this up, you weren't sure at all how you were going to pull any of it off at that point, actually, it was this completely impossible dream sort of. And you were just gathering information and you had a partially formed idea, some sort of esoteric ideas, like integrative, you know, intimate, it's going to change people's life. How do you actually deliver something that is a paradigm shift for people that's truly something valuable they take forward? And as we know, lots of conferences do that, lots of conferences don't do that, I would probably take the lead to say more don't pull it off than do, but some do, some don't. But having, I would I was hearing from you was this deep intention with absolutely no idea how to get there, but having a great amount of curiosity around it and being unwilling to believe that it wasn't possible. And then of course, over time, we had some, you know, probably many conversations about the progress as we moved forward and then it happened a few weeks ago. And what I took away from it, besides many, I mean, I took so much away from it on account of the fact that it was to a huge degree, intimate and integrative and intensive and paradigm shifting and all of these words that were in our first conversation were exactly what people were saying, exactly what the takeaway was. I would have, you know, I think the best concrete answer for that example would be watching you do that. I could give you examples from my own life as well, but I like this one because I am, it was so fun to watch and and just sort of the watching it happen also was something that was a, you know, blew my heart open in such a lovely way. You love to see your people and your friends succeed and that was meaningful. And I love to watch this kind of magic happen. This is so important to be able to really ask these questions about how this process works so that we can share it and more people can have access to it in a way that's not like the secret kind of cheesy. My belief on it and certainly personal practice and watching you, I mean you being sort of this quintessential curious guy, you know, this interviewer who's always asking questions, who's always wondering how to do this new thing, how to make the impossible possible. I would say that how long can you stay, I think when you're staying with the question, it's an asking more questions and answering your own questions with questions. What's next? What's then? How can I do this thing? And when you start to, when you stay in the question like that, you start to close the gap between you and the thing, right? You sat there saying, here's a thing I want, how can I make this happen? And through that process, the people that were able to help you, amazing people started showing up, answers started showing up, spaces started showing up and this and people started showing up wanting to buy tickets. And this thing came to life and had it never, you know, had you closed off any doors by shutting down that curiosity, it wouldn't have happened. They say that the path from, is from judgment to, through curiosity to grace. And so in a way, not to be too esoteric and Wayne Dyer or whatever, I should, I don't want to use him as an example, because to be honest, I've never read him. So I don't want to be judgy, but you know, we're talking about a sort of a woo woo lack of meaning thing here. I like to talk about curiosity, like, can you stay in curiosity? What does it mean? Why am I here? Is this possible? Is this thing I want a reality? Why don't I just try it on like a freaking coat? Like what if I were just to try on the coat of truth? What if I were to say, I want to do this thing? I did it. What if this job, what if this success is available to me? Despite the fact that I have a felony, despite the fact that, you know, these many, many people don't believe in me or I've bucked their status quo or, you know, by all accounts should not have this kind of success. But this is, but I want it. I want it. And I see something over there. What would it look like if I decide that every element I want to travel to New York a couple times a year, I want to be able to be home taking care of my kid. I want to be able to help people in this, in this way. I want to be able to do it all from a laptop. I want to have this kind of apartment, all of these things. What if that's possible? What does that look like? And what if even though perhaps the money's not in the bank account today, or I don't have this person in place today? What if they're there? What if that's available to me and I just don't know how yet, am I getting too far out there? No, no, no. I have to keep asking, bring me back because, because I'm totally prossy. You're asking questions that I don't really have concrete answers to. So we're all working it out together right now. But then I'm sorry. I don't want you to give me concrete answers. I like this. And that's why I'm not interrupting you. I mean, what would be the point to that? We're working it out together. Yeah. I just want to listen to you talk. I'm just like, okay, cool. Keep going. I'm like, this is brilliant. Yeah. But it's, curiosity is my best. Curiosity is, is when you're sitting in a dark room and you open the window to possibility, you may be in a room full of never can't, no way, impossible. But if you can open a window of possibility, anything can come into that window. That window is to get into curiosity as fast as possible. And that was what you were doing. What would it look like if I had that? What would it look like if I could make that happen? Right? And I know you're still there. What will it look like to up the bar for the next instigator experience? Pure curiosity all the time. Yeah. And that's the path to grace. That's where we find grace, whether we're ever fully in it or not. I mean, life is always going to be hard. I think where we lose this sort of place, this annoying place we're talking about, where people set intentions and positivity memes and all that shit that pisses us off. I think that what's lost there is the depth of understanding that life is never easy. Life is never comfortable. You will never be brave without fear. You will never have success without failures. You will never, ever not suffer. Can life get easier? Can you do bigger and better things? Absolutely. But with every single thing comes a new set of challenges. And when you're on this path of, you know, as we've described it in this call of being a seeker, buckle up, man, buckle up and sometimes go lay down because it isn't easy. If you're going to continually push edges, you're continually inviting a new, deeper, more profound set of challenges to your plate. And ultimately and ideally, you're inviting the ability to hold that space for other people in their suffering. And that's a big deal. It requires an incredible amount of strength. And it certainly does not happen with a lack of suffering or discomfort. So any idea that we can reach some place where we stop having feelings, it's not going to happen. Any place we reach where we're going to be some, get the tiara of health or finally be successful enough that our dad is proud of us, it's just not going to happen. I mean, it might, but really, it's not going to ever happen in the way that we need it to happen to alleviate all suffering and existential angst. Just being human beings means, you know, that's what we get while we're here. So the acceptance of that also kind of eases up, we're not always fighting the battle of why am I suffering, why I'm having feelings. You know, feelings actually, they're not comfortable. They suck. Who likes having feelings? Oh, they're so vulnerable. You know, the minute we have a really good feeling, we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop because certainly it's going to stop any minute. And then the minute we have a shitty feeling, we're like, look, this is what my life is forever. It's so crazy, but feelings, you know, just to kind of come back to one thing we were talking about earlier, are one of the ways that we get information, our feelings are actually triggered by different things, sensory input or potentially, you know, information about the next right way to go or a reflection of who we are in the world and our emotions are great pieces of data for us to use going forward. They're not comfortable, but they definitely are useful and they're not going anywhere. So staying in curiosity, taking care of your body and acceptance that you're never going to get somewhere where life stops being hard or heavy or full of human suffering and grief. Yeah. I love that. You know, I'll comment on the curiosity piece. You know, I think the curiosity is definitely the driving force behind everything I do. You know, people will always ask, you know, what, what makes for a good guest on your show? And I said, well, something about them has to make me curious. So that really, you know, makes the criteria somewhat esoteric, like, what are you going to do to make me curious? I don't know. I mean, your life purpose should not be to do that, but, you know, there's that. I mean, and I always say, you know, curiosity has led to billions of dollars in value being created and billions of dollars of genius ideas, just because somebody was curious. But I really appreciate that you brought up this idea that there's never a point in your life when you stop suffering or that life stops being hard. You know, and I think I said so myself on stage, I had this sort of magical idea in my head that, you know, when we got to that moment, everything would be perfect and there would be no problems. But now it's like, no, there's just a bigger set of problems and you're fascinated to deal with them changes, you know, I mean, like, I really did. I thought, okay, business will just hum along at a certain point. And I realized, wait a minute, now the stakes are so much higher, which puts a whole new level of pressure on me. But at the same time, and, you know, I think Greg is another great example of somebody you look at kind of his life and it's easy to say, well, Greg has had all this success. You made all this money when he's young. And then on the flip side of that, look at the health issues that have come with it. So I think it's a really, really wise observation that, you know, we will never reach a point where there is no suffering because I think that that's, that is sort of the mythical pursuit of the path of self-improvement and enlightenment is that you're going to not have suffering in your life, which is total bullshit, which we've both discovered, right? And I think it ties into the first thing we talked about of, you know, how to be a seeker without ending up being a drug dealer is that it's this human suffering that actually is the path. What, you know, what, what we don't want, analyze, we don't want, these are, these are our greatest teachers and we're not getting out of the kinds of things that life will hand us that seem so unfair and so frustrating, you know, ultimately we're all going to die. It's just the fact of life, right? It's terrifying and it's real and we spend a lot of time, you know, setting goals and buying houses and in developing relationships and all of that, of course, has to happen. But in, you know, it happens in a sort of as a double-edged kind of a project that on one hand we are creating something and planning for a future and on another hand we're sort of in a place that we're denying a very brutal reality, which is that the nature itself, nature itself is, is pretty harsh, you know, and finding some peace with as close to truth and reality as you can get, finding peace with grief, finding peace with loss and death and what things that seem unfair, we talked about being grateful for your problems the last time we talked and, you know, it sounds trite in some ways. It's not, you know, but the practice itself of showing up is a practice of curiosity. What would it look like if at the very least I could show up to this thing with neutrality? What would it look like if I could practice feeling neutral about death or illness or failure or success, right? We need to practice as best we can, curiosity in all of those moments and neutrality, grace to me even when I say curiosity leads to grace. When I think of grace, I think of homeostasis, I think of something neutral, I think of something fairly detached from the roller coaster, a place of peace, and that doesn't mean free of discomfort, it does mean that as you practice getting brave and you trust yourself to show up despite bravery, you are given more high stakes challenges, but your, your self-counsel is wiser, your muscles around showing up anyway are stronger and there is an ease created there. Your life experience becomes richer and deeper and more, the more you're selective about that, the more profound those interactions are, the more meaningful, the more you can do with less, right? And it's a constant practice, you know, it's all of the things, it's staying awake, it's staying connected and, you know, what does it always come down to? Keep showing up, get up every day, somebody sent me something recently that said it's easy to slay dragons, what do they say, compared to getting up every day and falling in love with the world anew, slaying dragons is easy, like there's, there's a way that actually the real challenge of all of this stuff is waking up again every day and showing up in all of the ways despite the fact that perhaps your original emotion and impetus has faded and you've encountered the resistance. That you keep showing up, that you keep doing the wise self-counsel and collecting people that help you out. Spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. 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On that note, I think that that makes a perfect setup. Let's shift gears a little bit. We've been talking about the past and one of the interesting things that you had said, which really was the catalyst for this conversation when we last spoke, was that coming out of prison was almost harder than going in because there's this entire process of reintegration. We had this as a request from a few people, so what does that process look like? As we were saying before we hit record here, I think that there is a process of reintegration that happens after any significant emotional experience, whether it's a failure, whether it's a success, whether it's traumatic, whether it's joyful, so let's talk about that. First, talk to us about it through the context of your own story of coming out of prison and we'll get into how we apply this because you and I, I remember we very distinctly you said this is something that seems to be missing from a lot of things out there, completely neglect the process of reintegration. Yeah, we've had several conversations that were really good about this. To start with, just to talk story about the prison thing, absolutely, I would say that getting out of prison is harder than going in and not to negate the difficulty of going into prison. What happens is you go into prison and this I think will make a good segue to talking about other things, to talking about major change, is that you go into prison with your particular set of tools and life skills and social structure, the way that you socialize, the way that you get your needs met in the world and all of that is stripped away and you have no choice but to learn a whole new language, a whole new set of social structure stuff, a whole new identity, you become your last name and a number. I literally forgot my social security number while I was in prison because the process of having to unlearn and relearn everything was genuinely such a trauma. I would say it was traumatic but such a, such a brain twist that I actually forgot my social security number and I could only remember my prison identification number. I forgot lots of things actually, I would spend days trying to remember the name of my step sister's daughter, crazy things that I should never forget and being just feeling so upset about that and then having spent, then you spend time there, then you integrate into the system and you go through of course a massive, they say it's like what Victor Frankl who wrote a man's search for meaning and talks about being an Auschwitz and he's actually developed a really interesting psychological profile and particular kind of practice from his experience in Auschwitz, from looking at the psychology of what it looks like to be incarcerated and you go through the stages of grief and it really is a traumatic experience and so having to unlearn and relearn everything and then when you get out of prison, the original tools you had are either unavailable to you psychologically because you've lost them or perhaps the original tools that many people have are that they know how to get by in the world by selling drugs and being a part of an environment that they're no longer allowed to be a part of or they'll be sent directly back to prison, you know, and there's not a very, let's see, you know, trying to diplomatically describe what it looks like, what after, after prison post-prison, we'll say like parole or whatever, which wasn't available in the federal system but the post, I forget what they call it, post-incarceration, where you have to go to these crazy drug classes and get drug tested and it's all government contracted, we are just the weirdest places, I mean nothing about it is helpful, it's all just things that are in place to appear like something's happening. So you're sort of dragged through this whole other set of inefficiency and it's taking up a ton of your time and there's still people telling you that you're supposed to be doing things one way that are absolutely against your true nature, especially for me, I don't know if especially for me, I don't know if that, but it's especially for me because that's how I experienced it being inside of my own head, but when I got out, I had very real, you know, talking about that sensory input stuff, I had very real heightened sensory input stuff, it was months before I could go into a store, like a mall or a store, any of those big box stores were completely off the table, I would try and just turn around and walk out the door, too much light, too many choices, too many colors, too much sensory input, I still to this day have a very hard time going into a lot of big stores or malls, you know, I tend to shop at those little boutiquey organic food stores because the lighting is better and the brands are not all shouting for my attention and just generally the energy is a little, a little calmer, but in the beginning I couldn't at all, I would literally just turn around and walk out, everything had changed, you know, another problem was seeing people in those stores with overflowing baskets of food and I mean I had a much deeper understanding of what it looked like to do without and I had access to a population of people that were coming from a place of poverty that I had never ever imagined, that my world and my bubble would have never intersected with otherwise, so it was difficult to see a lot of conspicuous consumption, it was difficult to see the excess and something, so something had shifted in me, which I think that we can leave as the segue into talking about how this relates to everybody else, there was a profound shift that happened not only because of the experience but also I would say what I chose to make the experience into because this probably is unlike, you know, most inmates, I had a very, very intense intention while I was there to learn and grow as much as possible and that happened, so I also had an incredibly major psychological, spiritual and emotional series of shifts while I was incarcerated, so I came out not only with this sort of what happens when you're in an exclusive environment for a long time, you know, or, you know, when you're in a sort of live environment, you're surrounded by the same people in the same thought patterns for a period of time, you know, at the same experience, it was similar, it was echoed when I got out of prison, actually I went directly not too long after I finished my yoga teacher training in an ashram, in a residential experience in an ashram, which of course was a lot lovelier than prison, but also interestingly gave me a lot of insight into the reintegration, reintegration experience because when you are secluded from your ordinary way of being and as a group develop a new way of using language and communicating with each other, potentially develop special relationships, everyone's there for a similar reason, so there's a certain kind of mirroring being done and then having to transition out of that, so a lot had changed for me coming out and it is, you know, I feel like sometimes I'm still doing that transition, but do you have specific questions on that note about that? Yeah, I mean you brought up a lot has changed and I love that you brought up, you know, all the stories are really interesting because I think that, you know, what happens when you come out of a significant emotional experience, I think that the idea of the bubble, right, that you brought up is that, you know, your bubble intersects with another person's and it might never have, I think what happens when you enter an environment, you know, in our case, one likely instigator experience or in yours, you know, the yoga teacher training is that we come back into the real world and I mean, if you remember, one of the things I said is what you're feeling right now is going to dissipate because that's just natural and what's going to happen is you're not going to be around people with those same thought patterns, you're not going to be around like-minded people and we've already seen, you know, sort of the evidence of this with some of the people who are at our event running into this, but you know, and I don't want to center this specifically around the event, but you know, when you run into this, you know, sort of idea where the bubbles collide and they don't play very well together, you know, they collide but somehow they don't meld, I'm curious, you know, how you deal with that aspect of the reintegration because you remember, and it may have been you, you know, you told me, you said you come home from this really powerful experience and the person on the other end of it just doesn't care, you know, like I remember coming back from my study abroad when I was when I was in business school and for about a day, it was novel that I had been gone for a semester and the next day nobody cared anymore and I had had this, you know, incredibly transformative experience and yet everybody else's life, you know, really, you forget almost that, hey, by the way, while I was gone, their lives have gone on six months has happened. They've experienced life, they've lived, they've had their experiences too. And I guess, you know, how you handle that dynamic is really the question I have. So it's definitely worth saying just pragmatically for anyone who's listening to this, that's going into or post any kind of experience is that especially if it's you're coming out of a positive emotional experience and what just what you said, the people at home or your people that you're coming back to, they don't really care. And in many cases, not only do they not care, they're potentially resentful because you've gone to do something cool that they wish they could have done. Or they're just tired because while you were gone, they fed the dogs and took care of the children and did all the grocery shopping and held it down all by themselves. And all they want from you is gratitude that they are the rock that made this thing happen for you. What they don't want to hear is how brilliant everybody was that spoke and how amazing so and so was that you connected with and all the amazing things you learned. Sadly, they don't want to hear that. Sometimes they do. Oftentimes, not only do they not get it because they're not part of your bubble, what they really want is your gratitude that they are part of the part of your life that's steady. So there's that element to it. Then there's also, I feel like I want to say because the first part of this conversation about being an artist and being sensitive and the relativity of this conversation about integration and reintegration is that we're doing it all the time as seekers. I kind of love where our conversation started because getting comfortable with integration and reintegration all the time is part of the life of someone who's an artist or a seeker. Because even as you're leaving an emotional experience, so say using my prison story, for example, of course, I was coming out of prison which we can all agree was probably a shitty experience into another experience. Well, the experience of getting out of prison wasn't the experience of getting into freedom. In fact, I spent a lot of time hiding in my room pretending I had a migraine because I couldn't interact with people because I didn't know how to talk to those people. They didn't know how to talk to me. They didn't know what to ask me and I didn't know what to tell them except for thank you for being here. I had to sleep on the floor because the bed was too soft and I would curl up on the floor by the bed for several weeks to be able to get to sleep. I'll tell you, it happens less frequently but there are still moments that I miss what it felt like to be in that secure space. I missed my friends. I missed this world that I finally was able to understand and that's a whole, you know, that could then go all the way out into a conversation about recidivism that's interesting but not so relevant. What's relevant is that we're always integrating and reintegrating. So coming out, you know, I had to go in and integrate and sort of constantly be reintegrating or reintegrating, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure I haven't processed those two words well enough yet but then to get out to reintegrate is not necessarily to go back to the way things are. So you're reintegrating into this new space or the space you just left. So for the something like the instigator experience or my yoga teacher training program, you go in, you integrate these new things that are happening and then you go back out and you're sort of reintegrating back into where you were but with a whole new set of stuff. And so the fact is many things might change for you radically. And the question really is how do you navigate one of the questions is going to have to be how do you navigate potentially having to change some of those relationships? How do you navigate potentially having to change who you are in the world? So then once again, it's almost like starting all over, right? You're back at ground zero where you have to integrate and reintegrate these changes. So I feel like we're talking still about this path of a seeker and this, you know, art of letting go because this integrating and reintegrating is a consistent practice of being selective about what you're around and what you want in your life, being in curiosity because we don't really know what does this look like? What does it look like if I come back from this life changing thing and I fulfill my dreams? What does this look like? You know, what would it look like if this relationship that feels so heavy to me is something that I actually have to let go of? Will the world end? What would it look like if this relationship changed and I straight up asked this person to love me anyway or you know, whatever the case may be, I tend to find that it's the human relationships that are the most complicated and integrating and reintegrating. The human relationships including, you know, plenty of people leave these, you know, stuff and they quit jobs and they leave marriages or they, you know, realize that the people they're hanging around are not the people that are supporting their highest good and that's tough. So, you know, I like to say out loud after, you know, it is important to go home and remember, like you said, no one cares. It's important to show gratitude to the people that, you know, were there for you. It doesn't mean because they don't get it that there's somebody that needs to be immediately 86 from your life. But sometimes when you're on a path of constantly pushing edges, relationships do change. Wow. I love that. I mean, it's, you know, this is, again, this is why I wanted to have you back because I felt this was such a relevant conversation regardless of what's going on in your life. And I love that you brought up that is a constant process. You know, I mean, some of you probably heard the interview that Diana Alviar did with me where we did, you know, my reflections on that whole thing. And even, and I told her, I think the thing that kept coming up over and over for me, I think the next day when people asked me even Monday morning with you and I were sitting down writing my LinkedIn speech, you know, there were so many other things going on. I said, you know, I haven't quite processed what has happened yet. And I think that, you know, one of the things I'm hearing is that there's also this period of sort of giving yourself the space to process what's happened as a part of that entire reintegration. Okay, say that again. Well, I guess, you know, the thing that at least for me, what I'm finding through these kinds of significant emotional experiences is that we, our tendency is to want to rush into this reintegration process. Like, we want to go home and start saying, Hey, it was awesome. I want to start making these drastic changes. But sometimes I think that we even forget that we need to give ourselves a little space to process what's happened before we start the reintegration process, if that makes any sense. Yes, yes, that is so true. And you know that you don't have to tell everybody what happened. In fact, I would say it's valuable to tell no one necessarily. I mean, you know, you're close people, but you know, you can keep a relationship going, you know, especially nowadays, we have, you know, private everybody who does a thing has a private Facebook group. If you've just gone through an emotional experience and you don't have a group of people who support systems, because I think we're talking, you know, we're talking about prison and, you know, sort of events and things like that. But I think there's a way in which, you know, we can, we're also talking about people who have to integrate and reintegrate new ideas, new jobs, potentially finding out they have an illness, you know, all kinds of ways that we have to integrate and reintegrate all the time when life throws us these challenges. But that you don't have to tell everyone, there's a way in which you can stay contained until you have processed it. You don't have to try and tell the people that don't understand. So staying close to the group of people that do understand, staying close to your few people that really do are helpful in this way. Not you don't have to over explain to everyone that you're changing and everything is shifted more than you actually have to. You know, when studying health and like spiritual stuff around sort of fasting and real spiritual experiences, particularly fasting, I've always heard that when you're fasting, that you don't go around telling everyone you're fasting and you don't go around complaining that you're hungry. You know, you've chosen a thing that has an outcome. And so you show up for it without question, without complaint, without a lot of noise. And so when we're having all of these moments, you know, in life where some are bigger than others that we have to process things, it is important to give yourself the space to process that without a lot of noise. And that was something that I learned dramatically in prison, you know, when I say that I hid in my room, faking a migraine, I had somebody give me permission to fake a migraine, you know, a therapist friend of mine was like, fake a migraine, do it, just fake a migraine. Everyone will understand if you have a migraine and they won't bother you. And it sure, it's so much easier than trying to articulate the kind of processing I was having to do. Just recently, an instigator experience, I stayed an extra night in the hotel. And as soon as I got home, I cleared a day and I, you know, went to my acupuncturist and did all the things, you know, did my exercise during lots and lots of water, again, back to taking excellent care of my body. Because again, when I take excellent care of my body and my digestive system, that is directly linked to being able to process this stuff. And then I'm able to articulate it to people in a way that's not asking them to process it with or for me. So I'm happy to talk to people that were in, you know, I have friends that I went to prison with. And I have new friends that have been in prison because I make this story public. So I have some very cool friends. You just interviewed one of my friends, Joe Loya about prison. I can't wait to hear his interview. Having conversations with those people is fun and hilarious. We've been through something many people don't understand and we can find that connection and process that together. You know, as far as having just come from this lovely, this lovely event that you integrated, you know, I'm processed that stuff with the people that were there rather than trying to process it with, you know, the people in my personal life. I tell them it was wonderful, it was great. I had an amazing time. And that's really all they want to hear and need to know, right? I mean, some specifics maybe, but being selective and, you know, not asking the whole wide world to sort of, there's something that's lost about the power of what's happened. If we just come home and just barf it everywhere and don't give ourselves the time inside of our strong, clear, lovely bodies that were, our bodies do the job for us in so many ways. So spending time taking walks, taking care of your body, this intentional taking care of this filter to process, digest, integrate all of the emotional stuff. You know, even when we're talking about the body being the thing that betrays you, even if we're talking about how to reintegrate into or out of an illness, the act of taking care of the body itself and taking care of our personal space by being selective about the inhale, or you know what, what we read, what we watch, who we talk to, is hugely important. Awesome. This Halloween, ghoul all out with Instacart, whether you're hunting for the perfect costume, eyeing that giant bag of candy, or casting spells with eerie décor, we've got it all in one place. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Offer valid for a limited time, minimum $10 per order, service fees, other fees, and additional terms apply. Instacart, bringing the store to your door. This Halloween. Ryan Reynolds here from Midmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Midmobile unlimited. Premium wireless. Have it to get 30, 30, 30, but to get 20, 20, 20, but to get 20, 50, 50, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabyte CD tail. Expand the way you work and think with Claude by Anthropic. Whether brainstorming solo or working with the team, Claude is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages, and solving complex problems. Plus, Claude is incredibly secure, trustworthy, and reliable, so you can focus on what matters. Curious? 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Repeat after me. I'm comfy comfy. I'm cozy cozy. I have zero blisters on my toes, blisters. And that's because I wear Bombas. The softest sucks underwear and t-shirts that give back. One purchased equals one donated. Now go to bombas.com/acast and use code ACAST for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash ACAST and use code ACAST at checkout. I love it. I mean, it's just pure genius. I'm going to have to go back and listen to this like a dozen times because there's just so much in this conversation. So I want to ask you about something and I want people to hear this because not everybody got to hear it. Only a handful of people did the people who were in that room before we start closing things up. You brought up something about freedom and I that quote just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, God, I'm like, people really need to hear that because I mean, obviously, you come out, you remember you told this amazing story about the date on which you're going to be free and I'd love for you to expand on that and then we'll start wrapping things up because I have one final question I want to ask you. Oh, what are you talking about? The date on, yeah, what did I say? Something about our life, our life sentence on the planet. Let's see. I think I said that we are all serving a life sentence on the planet and it would be something about, it would be a shame and we can find freedom anywhere. I was talking about finding freedom while we're here, right? Finding freedom while we're here. Doing whatever it takes to find freedom while we're here, right? I mean, I think it was something along the lines. It would be a shame to wait until you get it. It's still our out date to be free. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was a call to action. I mean, good Lord, everything we're talking about is deep freedom. I mean, despite the fact that it's still uncomfortable, what we're talking about here is freedom. Moving forward, you know, the question of what does it really look like to be free? And by being in that curious space, you know, we really can find a profound level of freedom wherever we find ourselves, even if it's in a legitimate prison, which is, you know, part of the story I was telling because I was so pissed off. Someone told me that there was a date on which I would be free that I decided to seek freedom before that date in any possible way I could. And I think the call to action is that we're all serving life sentence and we're all in prisons of our own making. We're all in fear and resistance and waiting for the fear to go away to do the next big thing or waiting till we have all the resources in place to be ready. And the call to action would be start now. What would it look like free to have that thing? What would it look like to be free? Because the truth is, you know, that's available at any given time and waiting for our out date to be free means, you know, you're dead. So start now. So one last question around sort of the story itself, you know, one of the things that you said at the very beginning of our conversation is how your business is evolving into basically story coaching and getting people to share the hard truth. I think that's, that's a, you know, I have found that to be the most transformative experience of my entire life when I've learned to do that. But I don't think it's that easy. I mean, that's why it's called the hard truth. I'd love for you to talk about that. I mean, I know we kind of talked about it in, you know, a bit of detail last time where you said, you know, as long as it's in service of other people, it's great. It's, it's when it's, you know, sort of a cry for help that it becomes a problem. But, you know, let's talk briefly about this idea of the hard truth and what it means and, you know, what, what the significance of that is for our lives and, and, you know, the people that we come in contact with. Yeah, I would say it's kind of everything. It doesn't, you know, there are a lot of variations of the things we choose to reveal and a lot of variations of who we choose to reveal things to. There's a lot of conversation with an around Brene Brown about this right now. And she talks about, again, the select, the selective nature of who you choose to reveal things with. And there's also, you know, I work with people who are revealing things to the whole wide world. And in that case, there's not a lot of selection of your audience. I believe an audience will self select, but there's not a lot of selection and it's a very vulnerable place to be in. Another thing I've taken from her work is she talks about vulnerability, obviously, but that that is the thing that we first look for in others. And it's the last thing we want to show everyone. So when we meet, I look for your humanity. I look for the ways in which you are accessible and approachable and real, the things that really make me feel connected to you and emotionally empathic, empathetic towards you, right? Yet I want you to think I'm a smashing success with no problems whatsoever that I've never been in a shameful place, right? Whatever arbitrary definition I have of shame and the ways that my proof, you know, whatever my experience is, the things, the parts of me that are attached to shame, I don't want you to see those. Really, it is arbitrary. We all have these arbitrary things that have become shameful for us. Some of them are obvious, like going to prison, right? That's an obvious stigma. There are many obvious stigmas that people have around things that are valid. But somewhere in those places, that, you know, that's the vulnerability to learn how to be able to learn how to be strong enough to recognize that in order to connect and be in service to the world, you must be able to show your tenderness. And that doesn't mean that you barf your problems all over the place. There is a path from first discovering the stories that you're going to choose to use to connect. Well, there's layers here because all of them, you know, there's space here for you to learn to articulate and tell all the stories that may be heavy and full of shame. And just learning to articulate them for yourself is a great healer of post-traumatic stress to be able to go from that spinning Mac beach ball of indescribable pain to being able to articulate something in a way that relieves you from the shame. And then your brain is able to categorize it and file it and find peace around it. The next step then, you know, is to be able to so the first step being able to tell it to yourself in a way that gives you that freedom. So you never have to tell all of your stories. But speaking to the people that perhaps are listening to this and they want to create art that taps into collective consciousness or they want to stand up in front of a group of people and really connect to an audience or they want to write beautiful things, whether it be a blog post or whether they're creating a business and they want their brand story to be immediately something that deeply connects to people. This act is profound because once you can then tell the story to yourself and then be able to tell it to others in a way that still maintains emotional depth and vulnerability. You know, I've done the work around prison, but I am never ever going to stand up in front of a group of people and talk about losing my son, having to go to prison and leaving my 18-month-old son behind that will never ever come out of me without me almost choking up, you know? So when we can identify this balance of being able to tell a story with so much truth that it taps into that collective consciousness, that it taps into this need we all have to connect to the humanity of others, we make the process a lot simpler. We take control of our own stories and we take control of our own interactions and we are in service because when you tell your tender stories, they're not your, it's like opening a door to deep human connection because you want someone else to do that for you, right? But it takes years sometimes to dig those stories out of people. If we all sort of do this work ourselves, it's a lot faster road to being able to make deep connections and we are living in, as Seth Godin says, a connection economy, right? We are living in a world where people are going to choose something that makes them feel overjoyed or unconditionally loved and accepted over the best marketing plan ever. And so it's powerful work and, you know, in coaching people personally, you know, there's a lot of work that goes around holding a container for people to be able to get from A to B and get from that shame place to be able to tell that story and then to take the leap into bravery to absolutely telling that story. Some of my clients are people that are back up against the wall. You know, they have a story. They have to tell they're getting ready to be on stage. This has to happen. Or, you know, there are people who just want to write a better book and there's no timeline on it or there are people who just want to stop it with the old stories. So did that answer your question? I mean, there's so much I have to say about that so much of it is individual to the person's story. There's no, there's no simple way. It really starts with asking the question, really, what would it look like? What would it look like if I was able to tell this story? What would it look like if I was able to connect deeply to people? You know, there's a whole conversation also around connection and the layers of the levels that we allow people in. You know, there's people that read our stories or listen to our talks or whatever it is. Follow our blog posts and then, you know, there's levels of intimacy all the way up. Everybody's not going to be your best friend. How do you navigate having a deep human connection with people while still keeping yourself intact and not engaging in unhealthy transference? How do you stay whole and not exhausted? You know, there's a lot in there, but asking those questions is a good start. Asking those questions, recognizing that not the importance and the non-negotiable nature, should you want to engage in a connection economy? Should you want to push these edges? Should you want to make deep meaningful connections and relationships, recognizing that you have to? Because we are not alone. No success happens on an island, right? We are not alone. We absolutely need each other. We carry each other. We marry each other. We uplift and support each other. And we're each other's key to this freedom that we're looking for while we're here. And in order to do that, we have to learn how to tell our stories in a way that connect, uplift, and give other people permission to reveal their humanity instead of telling our stories in a way that just asks the world to validate and fix a chorus, right? Yeah. Wow. It's funny because I could talk to you all day long. We should set aside a time to come to Portland. I think people could listen to you all day long. Well, that is going to happen. And we'll tell you guys more about that coming very soon. But, Meg, I got to say, I mean, I'm not surprised. But this is really, I mean, this was amazing. So I'm going to ask you my final question on, you know, at this point, I'm expecting your answer to be poetic because you just have kept rocking it with poetic answers. So, you know, I mean, you were here when we were called Blogcast FM and, you know, we changed the name of the show to Unmistakable Creative. So my question is, you know, we live in a world that's very noisy. So what is it, in your mind, that makes somebody unmistakable? You know, I have been rolling around this idea in my head after a lovely visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, being able to see the artist James Terrell, who does things with light that blew my mind. I'm already just absolutely huge fan and fascinated with light because I think about the way that that is a, about the way we carry our light. You know, again, as an artist, the way we're not necessarily, it seems like when I say, oh, you're full of light, that that's a gift, when in reality, you know, too much light without darkness is painful. And so how do we amplify radiance? How do we become our own installations of light, right? How do we become these keepers of light and shares and interact in a way that that God, when I don't want to get too far out there again, I'm attempting to do that. But it's, but being unmistakable, you know, it has something to do with this radiance. This is something completely like not fully explored for me yet. But this idea that there is, you know, that we are these carriers of light and stardust and all the things that ever were, this infinite wisdom, and that when we truly sort of put back together this cracked vessel of humanity, when we're all really in this connected place, that we'll finally figure this all out. But people that are able to really hold this light, really take up the shape, you know, we're back to the being in your body, taking care of your body, being fully embodied, cultivating what it is you do the best, even though it's tender and scary and brave. All of this is how do we hold the light in the shape of our lives and navigate it and mitigate it and share it and do that with generosity and being selective at the same time. So, you know, these are high level concepts. It's hard to answer easily, but everything we talked about today, talking about what it means to be an artist, you know, all of these things, anybody that is taking all of these things and putting them into play, this idea of bringing out your tenderist stuff and making it into a love story versus a grief story, right? Every life is full of grief, every great love story is full of loss. But are you going to choose to make your life a story of grief with moments of love or moments of love you don't even believe in? Or is your life despite everything that's happened, a love story with moments of grief? For me, the people that are unmistakable are the people that are telling me a love story and they're able to integrate these profound trauma or grief or real, real human experience into that love story. That to me is unmistakable. That's hard to do. Really, really being able to cultivate a quality of grace, you know, curiosity and neutrality about things that otherwise you could just get stuck and spin around forever in and do nothing but romance, your pain and misery. So unmistakable would be the people that are telling life as a love story and part of that love story, they're sharing, you know, with that bravery and vulnerability those very real human moments of grief. You know, Meg, I got to say it has been my absolute pleasure to have you back a second time. You know, I didn't know what to expect, you know, because I mean, it was such a powerful conversation the first time. People are going to be blown away by this. They really are. And I can't thank you enough for, you know, coming to show your story, your insights and everything that you do with us. My absolute pleasure. I mean it. I am just so honored to be able to be a part of not only watching what's happening over there and in your life, but to be able to be a part of it. I just love it. So thank you so much for including me, believing in my voice and story, just over and over. And every time you ask, it is my absolute pleasure to say yes to whatever it is you requesting screening. So awesome. And for those of you guys listening, we will wrap the show with that. You've been listening to the unmistakable creative podcast, visit our website at unmistakablecreative.com and get access to over 400 interviews in our archives. Expand the way you work and think with Claude by anthropic. 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Telling the hard truth and finding peace within our stories
Finding the seeker that lies within yourself
The common tendency to turn to things that numb or mute pain
How trauma allows us to tap into the depth of human understanding
Learning integrating the hard truth of your story into a conversation
Cultivating the ability to translate sensory input to create your art
Why taking good care of your body is essential to creativity
The deep and irrevocable connection between mind and body
A look at the power of deep intention and curiosity
The myth that we reach a place where stop suffering
A look at the process and challenges of coming out of prison
The two bubbles that occur after a significant emotional experience
Giving yourself space between a powerful emotional experience and life after
Why we must turn our life from a grief story to a love story

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