Well, hello everyone and welcome to episode number 46 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. We are creeping up on 50, my friends. We're creeping up on a year of podcasting every single week. Wild. I remember a year ago when I was just thinking about doing this, when I was revving my engines. It's pretty exciting.
Well, today I was sitting with a client who came to a session at my house. She said that walking into my house is like the experience she has is of course, this is exactly what Marie's house looks like it could not look any other way, which made me laugh because our house is very unique. Like my husband and I made most of the stuff in our house from the cabinets and drawers to countertops to the paintings on the walls and the frames that they're in the library ladders, the cushions.
I'm about to start making some new dishes for us. Some ceramic dishes. We are maker nerds, wilding out over here, making all kinds of stuff to live in. Anyway, it's sort of delighted me to imagine people's houses and the experience of like feeling, of course, this house is exactly what your house is like, because I love design and I love people.
So, I loved this mental game of designing spaces in my head that match the people that I know, you know, how they say like people's dogs and, and their people start to look like each other. And you could just imagine what dog would match a person. You know? And then, you could add to that, like, what house would match a person?
I don't know. I've been playing with that in my head, and I thought I would say it because it's a fun game for when you're driving or whatever, you know? I wonder what your house is like. I wonder what you think my house is like. That's just fun. Anyway, here I go digressing as always back to the point. So, she was sitting on the couch there with me and she said, you know, I feel like there's this thing I've been working on in my life that I have gotten better and better at.
And we had just been coaching on this related to this deal for her company that we have been working on for the past couple of months. We've been working on a few of them and about what's right for her and what's not right for her and eventually she turned it down and it was like a big deal because it was really close to what she wanted and she said, turning that down and knowing my worth, it just feels like life had sent me this big old test and I passed it like it was a test from the University of life.
And I got a hundred percent, I aced that thing. Do you know what I mean? She said, I just sat there, and I got the chills and I said, yes, I do. I didn't tell her that sitting on the couch, but I had one of those experiences this week too. So, this episode here, my friends, is going to be another episode from my heart to yours.
Where I get a little real and I get pretty vulnerable with my own story. If you've listened to episode 40, my Bloom story, you've heard me go here before. And when I told my own Bloom story there on episode 40, I tell how Van Morrison and a beautiful woman in cancer recovery dancing in a wheelchair with her daughters recently helped me to take part of that story back.
Well, this past week I had another experience that felt like that. It stops the presses for me in my life. When I have these experiences, I like to slow down and feel them and look at them and share them. So here I go sharing again, because it did feel exactly like I had passed a test from the university of life.
And while my client's test was about standing up for herself and I've had my share of those tests too, mine is a little bit different. My test is about speaking up and speaking out when something is not okay. It's about using your voice, standing up and doing something. It's about calling in on the people around you, the people you love and the people you're witnessing about standing up for them while also kind of staying on your side of the street.
And I want to share this for two reasons. First, turning ideas into real things requires that you use your voice. Voice that you value your perspective, that you speak up, that you stand up for your ideas, even if they don't match what's in the world or what other people are doing, because they won't. It requires that you can see your ideas through the haze of what is normal and what is accepted.
It requires that you value what you think my loves, what you believe and your ideas. The best ones will be the most successful. I was just telling the bloom room this, they will be most successful out in the world when they are a true reflection of you, authentic, you reel you. That's when they're most successful and most amazing.
It took me a long time to learn that. I'm going to tell you about that. And then secondly, the second reason I'm sharing this is that there is a lot going on in the world right now that feels overwhelming and wrong. I'm hearing people talk about how they feel hopeless right now. They feel helpless and it feels like there's nothing they can do.
I want to first acknowledge that when something is going on that feels wrong, it's hard to go against the grain because we are trained not to dissent. And let's define that. Let's, let's take a moment to take this word dissent. It, it doesn't necessarily mean to be in opposition. Dissent can be opposition, but I want to define it as just sharing an opinion that is different.
Then the predominant opinion of a group or the time or the space or the people around you speaking something different without knowing if it's going to be accepted or not. For many of us, we've been taught to not ever do that, to not dissent. We have been raised to follow directions. To do what we're told, you know, I once had this wild moment where I was hearing this speaker a few years ago, speaking about all the things we train our children to be and do through school environments.
And they said, you know, one of the top things that we train our children in is obedience. And the person said. Of all the things you want your children to learn to be as human beings is obedient, one of them for me. No way. I want them to think for themselves. I want them to speak out when the direction that they are being given to follow does not feel right to them when something does not belong.
And I think there's always something we can say. There's always something we can do when we have that feeling. But I, like many of us, had to learn that the hard way. When I was growing up, I saw a lot of things that weren't okay happening in front of me, wildly not okay. And I was little, I was following directions and people around me acted like those things weren't happening.
I wasn't supposed to talk about them. And as a child or growing up, that made me feel really topsy turvy because the reality that I was being taught in words didn't match things that I was seeing in front of me. And then it was sort of like, A mirage being treated as a mirage. This isn't actually there.
This isn't actually happening. When I was a teenager, it happened more. And when I was in my late teens, I saw people harming other people in front of me and was told that it was not mine to talk about. When I tried to speak up and I tried hard, I was told aggressively that I was not allowed to talk about it.
It is not mine to talk about. And after years and years, right? Like many formative years of this, I sort of tucked all that. Inside of myself, all that darkness, all that conflict, all that topsy turviness. And I just stopped eating and in the way that the world does, the world gave me more of these situations to learn from until I finally got it because I was trained not to speak up.
And so, I didn't. Each time made me sicker. When I was 21, I was sexually assaulted, and I didn't say anything about it. I said nothing. I had learned not to say anything. So, I didn't. And I had other experiences like that. And as I've shared before, I became really sick from all the upside-downness. From seeing the harm happening to the people around me and not being able to stop it.
And when it got bad enough... And I almost lost my life in my early twenties. Some people gathered around me, and they lifted me up. They came and they cleaned my house. They said, lean on our minds because yours is too in it. They said, we'll walk you through these steps. We'll stand next to you while you get out of this situation.
And I needed them to do that. I was at my rock bottom in my life and they reached a hand in and they lifted me back out. And that's why I'm here with you today. I learned, I worked for years on retraining myself to speak up, to stand up, to do something when something wasn't right, either for me or to protect someone around me.
To acknowledge when harm is being done, to acknowledge how hard it is for all of us to live in a world where we want to help and can't and don't know how. But I'm here to say that you can always do something. There is always something you can do. I saw this in three ways this past week. This past week someone that I love was being hurt.
And I've seen it for a while and eventually this past week it got bad enough that I just stood up. I dropped what I was doing. Went to them and said, this has to go, this has to change, this has to stop. I'm here to help, lean on my mind because yours is too in it. I'll walk us through the steps and stand next to you while you get out of this situation.
I reached out. And helped to pull my loved one back up and out of the bottom that they were in. And while this was happening on a personal level, I saw the people around me experiencing it on a global level, the helplessness that we feel as we see children and families and humans having their lives, just broken apart a world away from us this week.
Hearts have been heavy, and many are asking, what can we do? Many are feeling like they can't do anything, but my friends, something is always better than nothing. Dissent is always better. Speaking of what you see is always better than going along with something that doesn't feel right. If it's not okay, say it.
If what's happening in your opinion should not be happening, say it. Say something. Do something. In the Bloom Room this week, everybody's taking an idea for what they can do to make their world better. And we formed a community around that. And it's so amazing. A community around the idea that we can, whatever our idea is for what will make our lives better or the world or our communities better.
We can do something, we can say something, we can create something that will make the world better. They shared this week, their experiences with this. They said just in the first two weeks. Of really looking at what my purpose is in the world of what the pillars are, what my belief systems are. I had wildly different interactions with my family members where I shared with them on a deeper level.
People in the bloom room talked about how good it felt to be witnessed as who they want to be. They made art about using their voice, being able to find their voice and use their voice, sending those pieces of art to me, describing it as a feeling of relief and discomfort. As they really uncover what's underneath all the voices telling them who to be as they uncover who they want to be.
As they step into who they already are without all the layers of what they're supposed to think and do and say and be on top. So, I'm sharing this episode to say that you're not alone. If it's feeling like the humans around you, like the world around you or the humans on the news or in your world are causing harm, you can speak up, you can do something.
And I want to acknowledge that sometimes people do something for the sake of doing something so that they can feel better. That's different. That's not what I'm talking about. Doing something that's truly driven by love, by your values, by your mission in life, whether it's big or little, whether it's just speaking that something isn't okay with you, all of it counts.
Every time you touch the world in a small or a big way, it helps. Every time it creates a ripple. With just loving ourselves a little more, with gentleness with the people around us, with cooking a meal for someone or sending a loving text, you can help maybe volunteering our time or money to help people across the world who are going through the unthinkable.
We're all here living in this place together. We can all do something to help. We can start big, or we can start small. We can start with just a whisper, just as long as we start. That's what I've got for you today, my friends, with all my love. I will see you next week.
Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.
