A Life Well LIT

Tuning the Soul: Creativity and Connection with Reza Jacobs

• Brielle Goheen • Episode 24

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Have you ever been struck by the connection between a riveting musical performance and a heart-to-heart conversation? This episode isn't just about sound; it's about the profound dynamics of human expression and connection. I'm joined by the extraordinarily talented Reza Jacobs, a renowned musician, psychotherapist in training, and my musical collaborator in our Sacred Sound project Dyad.

What if we could see every dissonance in life as an opportunity for growth? A chance to find harmony and connection through the power of improvisation and the beauty of being entirely present? Reza and I share stories of how staying in the moment allows creativity to blossom, leading to exhilarating insights and the kind of trust that propels us to leap into the unknown with confidence. We celebrate those instances where life's surprises resonate with the rhythm of authenticity, and how embracing the unexpected can lead us to a richer, more purposeful existence.

And, most precious of all, is the childlike wonder that fuels the creative process, whether it's in a burst of improvisational jazz or the simple joy of play. This episode is an ode to the improvisational dance of life, where each misstep is met with instant forgiveness and the path forward is illuminated by curiosity and discovery.

Brielle Goheen:

Welcome to A Life Well LIT. I'm Brielle Goheen and I'm obsessed with the question of how to live a life that's fully lit up from the inside out. I believe that knowing our purpose and defining our why is the key to becoming sustainably productive, taking targeted actions toward our vision of a fully lit life. My most foundational purpose is to dance (metaphorically speaking, and sometimes literally) in the bright light of freedom, and to invite others to dance with me. The spaces I dance in are creativity and music and crafting a peacefully productive life. For me, a life well lit looks like pursuing wholeness and healing in all areas of life and constantly challenging myself to ask a new question and think a new thought. The only way to do this sustainably is to craft systems that support the dance of freedom, the lit life that I've chosen to pursue. If you want to come along for the dance, yours will undoubtedly look very different than mine, but you are so welcome here. I can't wait to see you living your own version of A Life Well LIT.

Brielle Goheen:

Today, I'm so excited to sit down with and introduce you to my very dear friend and collaborator, Reza Jacobs. Reza is one of the most talented musicians that I've ever worked with, and that's saying a lot, because I've worked with some truly world-class musicians. His main area of expertise is the piano, but he's also a skilled multi-instrumentalist and he has a voice that's better than butter. He spent the first part of his career as a sought-after music director in the world of musical theater, but more recently he's found himself in a career transition, studying to become a psychotherapist. There are so many beautiful and surprising parallels between the worlds of music and psychotherapy, and we'll be talking about some of these things in today's conversation. He also has three beautiful daughters with his partner, Stephanie, so he's pretty busy.

Brielle Goheen:

Reza and I met about seven years ago when I was called in to play violin for a musical that he was the music director for, and we became instant friends for life. He's incredibly kind and brings a spirit of generosity, curiosity and deep listening to everything that he does. Together we have an improvisational, sacred sound project called Dyad. Dyad means two things that are separate but of a similar kind or nature, and Dyadic Communication means the interrelationship between the two. We chose this as the name for our collaboration because it captures the essence of what we do as we improvise freely in the world of sound, each of us in deep connection to ourselves in the moment, and each of us also intentionally bringing our two separate selves into relationship with each other as we improvise together. This is one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done musically. I don't want to make you wait any longer to meet him, so here is my conversation with Reza Jacobs. Hi, Reza.

Reza Jacobs:

Hi Brielle. Thanks for that amazing and affirming introduction.

Brielle Goheen:

Always, always. Can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, about who you are, and a bit about you as an artist?

Reza Jacobs:

I have music as a very central part of my life, and it always has been. I feel that life is a music and so music is a microcosm for life. I'm going through a transition where I am training to be a psychotherapist, which is also a kind of a music and an artfulness. I guess what I'm looking for, and why I love our collaboration, is the way to access my own desire and playfulness in everything I do And in music, training to be a psychotherapist, what we do, are ways in which that shows up.

Brielle Goheen:

What brought about that change of going from being a full-time musician to now pursuing being a therapist?

Reza Jacobs:

In theater I was working as a composer, a music director, sometimes a sound designer and an arranger. The things I kept being drawn to were those sort of dyadic relationships, the one-on-one as a music director, where I was working with actors, with singers, to access something that is true and authentic within them and move through the blocks that would manifest in their voices or in their bodies. That felt very rewarding and I felt like we were doing something together. And then in my own therapy I found it to be so transformative in giving me more choice in my life and slowing things down to give me more choice. And that started to feel like it was even more on the front lines than what I was doing in theater, of personal transformation. My inner compass just drew me there because it felt like a meaningful place to be artful in relationship with other people.

Brielle Goheen:

It sounds a bit like a parallel in my life, where what I loved about music and performing was not actually doing the music and the performing, but for me it was always the conversations that I would have with musicians, because musicians are really interesting people. I'd have these great conversations before the show and after the show and at breaks, and that was the thing that I loved about being at work. It sounds like you had a similar thing where you're doing this thing, you're a music director for theater, but the thing that you love about it, the thing that you keep getting drawn to, is this moving through blocks and personal transformation, really.

Reza Jacobs:

There's something about music in particular that allows the transformation to happen in a wordless way as well, which is why it's so powerful, I think, because so much communication can happen. Like, when you and I are making improvising together. So much communication happens without words, and then we also talk a lot, so it's the combination of those two. Maybe it's why I'm drawn to the art of psychotherapy and the art of music. They feel very similar to me in that there is sound and silence, and movement and also sitting still. Both those things that seem central to growth and change.

Brielle Goheen:

One of the things that I think that you are particularly gifted in is listening to the third thing, the thing between the things. Really listening to what is being communicated in the silences and what is being communicated. Even in conversation, what's being communicated in body language, what's being communicated in the tone that's similar to when we're making music together, what's communicated in the sound of the note, not just the thing that's behind the thing. That seems to be something that you are just naturally gifted in listening to and you're naturally drawn to that place.

Reza Jacobs:

It feels encouraging to hear that it appears natural. I think we all have some natural gifts, but it's also, I feel like learning how to be in a pure relationship with oneself and then in an authentic relationship with the other is not easy to do. It's natural and simple, but it's not easy, you know.

Reza Jacobs:

And in music and in psychotherapy I feel like - I mean, I'm not a licensed psychotherapist yet I'm very early in my training but - what it feels like is that it's very relational, you know, whether it's between two musicians or a therapist and a client, or even between two notes, that when we talk about harmony and dissonance, when we talk about what makes something feel in tune, so much of it has to do with a quality of listening and presence that you bring to that right.

Reza Jacobs:

It's like I often wondered why some chords played by like a certain jazz musician they just sound so clear and open, but the same notes played by somebody else can sound muddy and confusing. And so I think it's the quality of presence and listening we bring to it. I think that's what you're talking about. It's like it's the relational part that exists between us when we make music and then out in the world between people.

Brielle Goheen:

I heard this idea the other day, that we talk about relationship as if it's a noun, when relationship is really just relating, like the constant process of relating and that we exist in another person only in their perception of us that we are like this data flow that interacts with the data flow that already is existing within the person.

Brielle Goheen:

And that is, this process of relating to one another, because in every moment that you're relating to another person, you're actually relating to yourself in connection with the other person and how that person is existing within your nervous system. And that's the same with music, this constant back and forth of relating, of receiving and giving with intention. But once you create or give something, you have to let it go and just be received how it is right.

Brielle Goheen:

Because you'll never know that. That's this mystery of relating right. Yeah, you never know how it's actually received by another person, because you don't know that.

Reza Jacobs:

Well, I'm fascinated by this because it's something that I've been experiencing in our collaboration is I find that we are on an adventure of locating more authenticity in our musical expression and I wonder, maybe we can talk a little bit about what about that makes it more possible, like what it is that we think we're doing, even though there's a, there's something ineffable about it, you know, and again there's that sort of tension between two things that seem that they don't go together, like we can talk about it but we also can't talk about it Like we can have our musical training and also drop all of it.

Reza Jacobs:

in the moment we can have an idea and also discard that idea at the same time, and like there's something about being fully present in what we're doing and what we're trying to do, like listening to that inter compass as opposed to having an idea and following it. What is your experience of what's happening when we're making music?

Brielle Goheen:

So maybe I should first say what. What we're doing, yeah, what it is that we keep talking about with like collaboration that that we're doing.

Brielle Goheen:

So we're working on a project called dyad and it kind of just started with just getting together to jam right, just to kind of improvise, just make music together, and kind of started once a month or so we would are very occasionally even less than that at first, and then just kind of once a month and then we were finding that we were really connecting and really enjoying the process and so it became once a week and then eventually three times a week and basically what we do is we get together and we improvise music and there's something about it for both of us in this experience that's just very, very healing, I think, and very it returns us to ourself, this process of of making this music, in this improvise improvisatory.

Brielle Goheen:

It's a mouthful, for sure it is making music in this improvisatory way, and what my experience of it is very much that what I'm listening for is the thing that wants to be the note, that wants to be sung, or the sound that is just like already here and is just waiting to. You know, with the bowls that you have these, this beautiful set of crystal bowls, and sometimes one of them just feels like it just wants to sing Right, and so that it's that thing that I'm listening for as opposed to what.

Reza Jacobs:

Is that the other way of doing it? That's not the thing that you're. You're trying not to do.

Brielle Goheen:

So the other way of making music, which is how I've always improvised before, it's more like math. Yeah, I am kind of ticking in, calculating what's happening, what might be missing and how I can add it and what my trajectory is going to be as I add it. What does that do? It's very, it's very thoughtful and, yeah, it's very, a very brainy kind of activity for me when I'm, when I'm often, when I'm making music with people, there's a lot of dodging, dodging what other people are doing and trying to kind of fit into the, the holes and then at the same time, trying to like make a space and kind of like elbow some room sometimes and like and create something. But what I find when we're making music together is that there's no dodging actually at all. There's a lot of hitting each other like we'll, we'll clash, and then we just stay there and see what that clash becomes.

Reza Jacobs:

There's a lot of. I feel hopeful in this moment when I hear you describe it like that, because that feels like a hopeful way of seeing what humans can survive Right, that we can survive dissonance and not not shy away from it or intellectualize ourselves around it. It's like you actually show up to it and just be in the dissonance and let it run its course and then move past it. There's something very natural about that. I think a lot about my family. I have three daughters and a lot of what I the practice for me is of living in the discomfort of dissonance, you know, and not trying to smooth everything over.

Reza Jacobs:

And this collaboration with you, the kind of play that we're doing it helps teach a lot of that to me. You know, like trusting that you can live in not knowing and not knowing what is going to happen later and just live in the dissonance.

Brielle Goheen:

That's really beautiful. My motto for a while is engage the dissonance.

Reza Jacobs:

Engage the dissonance.

Brielle Goheen:

I love that. That hopefulness that you see in what the human can survive. Is that part of what shapes your desire to do psychotherapy?

Reza Jacobs:

Yeah, it does Well. First of all, I'm inspired at what humans are able to survive. You know, it's shocking that we can survive so much. It's also overwhelming how little it takes to make me stop in my tracks too and make me deflate. You know so the juxtaposition of those two things is really fascinating.

Reza Jacobs:

You know, I think that is what drives me is to help others broaden their choices. You know, to feel like more is possible, that they don't have to shrink from life, because I've had so many things shut me down in my life. But what therapy has done for me is open up a lot of choice, that I have more agency than I thought I did.

Brielle Goheen:

And that goes back to the whole helping singers sing through their blocks right, Because if you can encounter a block and stay with it and move through it, then you have more choice.

Reza Jacobs:

For me personally, it's also about sitting with, letting things be simple. You know like I have a tendency to want to make things complicated, because if things are simple, sometimes it feels like we're not doing anything, and as musicians, I think many people are acquainted with that feeling of like I need to be doing something in order to be making music. I have to make it, you know, but being still and realizing that I don't actually have to always be doing something and that's true in family and life too. But in this collaboration and making music has been very valuable, and one of the things that I've started to do is to, when we sit down to make music, is treating the silences already happening and we're just adding to it.

Reza Jacobs:

It's not like I have to do something, it's already the music is happening already. It's kind of like what you were talking about with what node wants to be sung, and then I'm just adding a frequency to what's already happening. Yeah, yeah.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, it's almost like when you listen deeply enough to the silence, you release a frequency that is already. It feels like it's already in the silence and you're just releasing this particular one to be louder or to sing a little louder, to have to have a little moment. But it feels like often, when you listen deeply to the silence, there's so much movement, there's so much frequency that's already happening at inaudible levels.

Reza Jacobs:

It is a quality of looking, of listening, of being present to the thing. It's like what I was talking about with the jazz chord earlier, like one person plays a four note cluster and you can hear every single note. Or like Glenn Gould playing Bach you can just hear every single thing that's happening because he hears it so deeply. It's the same thing like talking to people. Sometimes when I talk to somebody, like talking to my therapist, I feel more spaciousness in my body because he's listening with such detail and care that there is more space, spaciousness.

Reza Jacobs:

It's not just like one knotted up cluster of information coming at him, In the same way that if someone can listen to a chord with specificity and spaciousness and attention to the detail and the nuance and all those frequencies, as opposed to just hearing a messy balled up yarn just like one monster of a chord.

Brielle Goheen:

Do you think that that has to do more with the intention that something is done with, or how it's received, or does it have to be both? I'm thinking again of Glenn Gould and the clarity of the sound, the clarity that he hears those notes with and that he hears every last line that's going on through this incredibly complex Bach fugue. He hears it all so clearly that he's able to communicate it in a way that you are able to hear every single line. But I know people that would listen to that and not hear a single theme or not be able to pick out any individual lines. They would just hear it as a must of notes, maybe beautiful, but they wouldn't hear the same thing that you're able to hear.

Reza Jacobs:

It's an interesting question because I guess part of me feels like people who may not even know what's going on with Glenn Gould would still respond differently to that than listening to someone else play Bach, because there is a quality of something that's happening there. I don't know. I actually don't know. It's a good question.

Brielle Goheen:

I feel like music is maybe too close to me, so I find it hard to even think about that question. But when I think about dance, which is not close to me at all, I know nothing about dance and yet when I see a great dancer, I don't understand it in the way that another great dancer would understand it, but there's something in the quality of what they're creating and the intention that's behind every single bit of the movement. There's like a oneness with themselves, Like you were saying before, that authenticity with yourself. Right, that comes across when you see a great dancer. Everything is aligned and everything is tuned to the thing that they're doing.

Reza Jacobs:

Yeah, it is presence it feels like is a word for me that encapsulates a lot of that, because when you said intention for me it's not exactly that, because immediately I think of actors that I've seen where they've done so much homework, they've worked out their intention in every single moment and I feel like I'm being shown their working and they're not alive in the moment, they're not open to the possibility of whatever might happen. And that's what I like about and learn from what we're trying to do in improvising together is really having no agenda, and I think that that is a vital quality of flowing in life. And being present with a person in a conversation or a musician you're improvising with, or even just myself with a piano, is to go in with no agenda. And it's difficult because we're so programmed into having goals and we need to have some kind of future looking. But as much as possible in the, in the moment and when we're making music, I'm able to practice really dropping an agenda and trusting my training, right.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, there's two words that you've used that I heard for the first time from you, which is like beingness and knowingness.

Speaker 3:

I've never heard those words before in that conjugation or whatever grammatical thing that is.

Brielle Goheen:

But, yeah, not just being and knowing, but beingness and knowingness, and I love that. Another thing that I really loved about working together and making music together has been this real sense of freedom, and maybe that comes from the having no agenda, but there's such a sense of freedom to just play with sound and to just make things that aren't good sometimes, and then you make things that are really good sometimes, and there's just so much freedom in this space that we've created in improvising together. Yeah, can you speak to that, the freedom?

Reza Jacobs:

It does feel a little bit like that moment when you first take the training wheels off the bike and you realize that you are riding just on two wheels for the first time and you're like I've got this Also. I might fall down, but I also I've got this and I am doing it. I am on two wheels right now and also I might fall. So it's holding both those things and choosing to go on the two wheels. That's what feels like freedom.

Reza Jacobs:

You know, this exhilaration oh, love that and that's how it feels is like I can feel the accountants and lawyers in my head coming in to be like buddy, you got to have an agenda here. You need a plan, we need some numbers to add up and you have the training. So pick the right note, you know. But I love telling them to go jump in a lake for a while and trust that. The exhilaration of like just leaping, especially doing that with you, like with another person, relationally, that is so exhilarating and feels meaningful and without even rationalizing it. It's like there's a feeling of it being closer to what human experience is about, you know, of like leaping and being trusting something larger than just my brain. It's something about that feels and feels in my body, central to the experience I want to be having as a human.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, you mentioned the. You know the lawyers and accountants in your head wanting you to pick the right note. But the right note is the one that gets played. Yes, and that is very much like life.

Reza Jacobs:

Yes.

Brielle Goheen:

There's. There's not this right way to get from here to death. There is the path that you're in, there's the things that are happening in your life, in the world, and all of these things are just what, what exists, and you take it from there, step by step. You just keep keep moving, keep creating, keep dancing around. That and that's what life is.

Reza Jacobs:

And any kind of agenda then gets in the way of flowing with the current. It's called a current. I'm just realizing this now. Current means now, in the moment. It's currently happening, right, yes, and that's the gift of the present, the present of the present. Okay, that's terrible puns.

Brielle Goheen:

You gotta edit that out. It's too much, but I love it. It's too much, you know. It's too much in the best way because, it's like no, it's so, it's current. Yeah, like now it's also current like flowing, but it's also current like energy. Oh, good one it's all of these things together. And like raisins.

Reza Jacobs:

Raisin Dettra oh my gosh, this is terrible. Brielle, you have to get rid of all of this, but also don't. It's also kind of like my favorite part.

Reza Jacobs:

Yeah, me too. Sometimes I have the experience of like, if we're making music or if I'm playing the piano and I have an idea for a note already, that's it's the wrong note at that point, right, because I've had the idea but I'm not doing it in that moment. Then it becomes an agenda. It's like I don't know, it's like I'm still taking my figure skates with me to the beach. You know, it's the wrong time.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah.

Reza Jacobs:

And it's the wrong idea.

Brielle Goheen:

And okay. So also when you hear a note singing, for me that's different than having the idea of a note.

Reza Jacobs:

It is Right yeah.

Brielle Goheen:

There's. There's like something that has already happened happening, but just that note is not physically happening in a way that would be audible to other people.

Brielle Goheen:

Yes, but this note is already singing, like inside me, it's in my inner ear, there's something, and then when that note gets sung, that always feels like the right thing. And that seems to be somehow different than when you get the idea of a note and you don't hear it. But you have the but you might hear it, but it's in a different kind of a different way of hearing. When you have the idea of the note and then that's when there's agenda attached, that's exactly it.

Reza Jacobs:

That's my experience as well. You're articulating the mystery of creation right there, right. Which is this? Where's it coming from? And you can feel when it's coming from the head versus when it's coming from some other mystical place in the body connected to something else, and I think that that's what I love. Practicing with you is practicing listening to that deeper place, to the source place you know and feeling you doing the same thing and bearing witness to whatever comes out.

Brielle Goheen:

Mm, hmm.

Reza Jacobs:

Yeah.

Brielle Goheen:

Yes, I love that. The very first time that we met we were playing a show together the Wizard of Oz and I was coming in as a sub, so I hadn't come to any of the rehearsals, I didn't know anything that was going on and basically I arrived and everybody kind of arrived same time, like five minutes before the show, and we were on stage too. So it felt like very high pressure and there were only three people doing the music and when we got onto the stage we were just kind of waiting. You just turned around and you said when you make a mistake, you have instant forgiveness.

Brielle Goheen:

I think part of the reason that that was so meaningful to me was that it returned me to the present Right and I knew that you know, typically when you, when you make an error, especially if you're in a situation where it already feels unfamiliar or unsafe, and so you're already on edge when you make a mistake, the mistake compounds immediately and then it just gets out of control because you start thinking about the mistake, and then you start thinking about the fact that you're thinking about the mistake, and then you have less brainpower for the thing that you should actually be thinking about, which is what's coming next and the things that music that you're currently making, and then you start making more mistakes and just compounds and snowballs out of control really quickly.

Brielle Goheen:

And so in that moment, what, what you gave me was the permission to like let it go and to just keep going and keep staying in the moment. And I feel like that's also what we're practicing, that that staying in the moment, but also learning, learning to just like let things go, let let notes go, like there. There are so many moments when we're making music together where we'll create something that you know isn't really working, and if we just like let go of our thoughts that this is not working and that we need to control it somehow, or you know, the, the, the accounts start coming back in and telling us how to fix it. If we stop listening to them and we just like accept that this is what we've created and okay, where do we go from here? Where do we, where do we move from here, then so often that thing that we created will turn into something really beautiful. That feels like life too.

Reza Jacobs:

It does. I mean, we see it in nature all the time. Right, I really I am so inspired when I see like nature go growing through a pavement. You know it's like you can cover it up and it's going to like this little soft leaf is going to make its way through this man made cement, and there's something about that, like you just wait long enough, like the beautiful thing emerges, right, and I found that to like just letting go of, like allowing myself to sit in dissonance longer, or it's sit in a feeling of what is going on right now.

Reza Jacobs:

You know, there's a music to it and that you can allow yourself to let the river carry you through it, or something.

Brielle Goheen:

And you can't when you're fighting it. When you're fighting it, you just kind of stay in it, make things worse, like I often think in life about growing beyond your problems instead of fighting them, instead of concentrating on fighting and fixing, just keep growing and then eventually, as you grow, things will fall away. That need to fall away and new things will come into your view that you couldn't see before you grew.

Reza Jacobs:

Don't tear down the system that's not working, just build a new system that makes the old one obsolete. Yes, right, yeah. And that is what I feel like we do with when things are not working. Where we're making music, we just kind of, rather than try to fix it, it's just like be with it and then just a new element emerges which starts to create. It becomes something else. It can go anywhere.

Brielle Goheen:

It's really beautiful. So is this, this idea of allowing and creating from what, what kind of exists right now? Is that what it means to play with music, to just like accept it and work with it? Is that like? Is that the process of being like a child? Because I think of, I think of when my kids make anything, and literally they, they will make anything from whatever is available. You know, their imaginations are so powerful.

Reza Jacobs:

It's everything is possible and there's so much, so many options and everything is available, like they don't feel limited. That is how I feel. That's what I've reconnected with in our collaboration. I mean it's a sort of a spirit of play that came back into my life in a way when, after having my first child, where I started like drawing and coloring again and realized, oh, I can just mess around more. You know, I limited my messing around to the piano and just music in general, but even there I did deliver products because it was my work.

Reza Jacobs:

So what I find over here that we're able to do, which is now bleeding into the rest of my life, is like a playing without having to have it get me somewhere. So I guess, again without an agenda. I think that's what I value and what I see children doing. They're playing for, for play, just to find out. They're finding out more about themselves and about each other and I suppose that sounds like a goal. But they're playing for the feeling of playing, because it feels good and it feels meaningful to them, and you can see that it's meaningful to them because it matters, like the playing matters to them, and I guess that's what it is, is like what we're doing. It feels meaningful in my body, it feels like it matters. It also feels playful and even though we are starting to build it and share it with other people, it doesn't feel like I'm doing it for just four other people or for a certain kind of level of success that the successfulness in it is when I feel the playfulness of it something like that.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, and I found this as like playing in this area has been a path back to loving music again. Yeah, part of it was the unfamiliarity of the instruments that you have here, and then I was like, hey, what about having fun with the voice? Right what about just like releasing the voice to sing and just to like play with textures and sounds and overtones.

Brielle Goheen:

I think that was the first thing that we started playing with was overtones singing right, and then one note singing which was really powerful, and then from there occasionally bringing it back in the violin, which is the instrument that for me carries so much more baggage than other instruments.

Reza Jacobs:

Using the instruments that are unfamiliar to us has built in necessary curiosity, and that curiosity is intrinsic to the playfulness that I see in children, because playfulness is curious. Like you don't, you're playing, you don't know where it's going to go. And when I'm playing the piano much like what you've described when you're playing the violin, because I've spent so much time with the piano sometimes it's harder to connect with the curiosity because there's so much I think I know, or even there's so much my body just does because it's used to doing that.

Reza Jacobs:

I found that my relationship to the piano has changed as well, since we've started working together because of that playfulness and curiosity with instruments we're less familiar with and things like singing one note for an hour, like the practice that we did a bit.

Brielle Goheen:

And that practice was life-changing for me.

Reza Jacobs:

It was yes, For me too.

Brielle Goheen:

Like I pointed that as the single event that lifted me out of my depression, one note singing, that one hour was just like completely transformative, like that's the power of a note and staying with a note uncomfortably long.

Reza Jacobs:

Yeah, I guess that's sort of. I'm thinking in this moment about what we've called ourselves dyad, that relationship, and it's like staying in relationship to yourself, staying in relationship with the other through discomfort. There's something meaningful about that, about life.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, and we've discovered that through trial and error. We've discovered that the more present we are with ourselves, the more that we make beautiful things and the more that we are harmonious with each other without trying, and that when we try to make beautiful harmony it just kind of like falls flat or it doesn't feel like right. But when we're just being present with the things that we want to create in this moment and where we're at, then it just is harmonious because we are relating.

Reza Jacobs:

Like a conversation that is flowing naturally yeah.

Brielle Goheen:

This is good stuff. What does a life well lived look like to you? Like when you hear that phrase, what does that mean to you?

Reza Jacobs:

Things that come up are feeling like I spent my life doing things that felt meaningful and that I have rich relationships not many, but just deep relationships.

Brielle Goheen:

Yeah, thanks for chatting with me today.

Reza Jacobs:

Thanks for having me on.

Brielle Goheen:

Oh my goodness, don't you just love how Reza's brain works. I feel so privileged to work with him and get to have conversations like these with him on a regular basis. If you're interested in learning more about dyad, the best place to find out updates right now is my Instagram page at brielgov. We're just starting to open up these sound experiences to small groups of invited guests, but we'll be sharing them with larger groups in the near future, so feel free to connect with me on Instagram if you're interested in finding out more about when and where these events will be happening. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful, then share it with someone else who might find some encouragement in it as well, and, if you haven't already, subscribe so that you're the first to know each time a new episode is released.

Brielle Goheen:

I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that I love creating systems that support people in living a fully lit life. One of the areas that a lot of people struggle with is their email inbox, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot, a lot. Over 40% of email users struggle with hundreds of unread emails, so I've created a training to teach you how to beat inbox overwhelm once and for all and get that coveted inbox zero in 60 minutes or less. It gets even better. The training is completely, 100% free. Check it out at wwwworkwithbrielgovcom.

Brielle Goheen:

You can also find the link in the show notes. I have hundreds of simple systems just like this that can help you become sustainably productive, to get things done with ease and to craft a life that truly supports you in the things that matter the most to you. So check out the inbox zero training and, if you like it, connect with me. There's so much more. Where that came from. Until next time, remember the worlds we imagine are the worlds we build. So imagine the best, most beautiful one you can and get to work building it.