Participate in Curious Convos. Share your questions and topic requests!
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing any emotional distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.
Participate in Curious Convos. Share your questions and topic requests!
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing any emotional distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Radiant Life podcast. I'm your host, ray the Stematic Coach, and I'm here to support you in healing your past, living in the present and creating your future so that you can become the most centered, embodied and happiest version of yourself. Each week, I'll be bringing you episodes to help you navigate life's challenges, ease stress and tension and learn more about holistic healing, spirituality and wellness. If you're interested in becoming the best version of yourself so that you can live the life of your dreams, then you're in the right place. Subscribe to the podcast and the monthly newsletter, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok to know when new episodes are released each week. I am so happy that you've landed here. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Ray. I'm a Stematic Coach and Breathwork Facilitator. And if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning into today's episode. So originally today, I was going to talk about self-compassion and self-love, and I tried to record the episode three times and it was just not working out. It was not working out at all. So what we're going to do is I just have a few notes that I wrote on a post-it here and I'm just going to rip. Today is a day where I'm just going to chat with you guys. I'm going to give you some life updates. We will probably talk about self-compassion a little bit, because that is the theme of this month and, yeah, we're just going to kind of wing it. So the first thing that I wanted to chat with you about is the Masterclass Pass. The day that this episode will be airing, which is on Wednesday, february 21st, I have a workshop that I'm hosting that night and it is all about self-compassion. It's called Be your Own Best Friend, and one thing that I find so interesting about self-compassion is I'm sure we've all heard of the quote like treat other people how you want to be treated. And when it comes to self-compassion, we're actually saying treat ourselves how we treat other people. So we give so much understanding, so much patience, grace, love to other people when they bump up against a failure or an imperfection or a challenge in their life, but can we treat ourselves in the same regard? And so I just love that. I love that. So tonight, when this episode airs tonight, the 21st, we'll be diving into what self-compassion is. We're going to chat about the inner critic. We're going to get some clarity on our personal values. We're going to do some breath work, some meditation, some inner child healing, some journaling, so it should be super fun, and it's the first workshop of a year-long series of workshops. So if you can't make it live, that's okay. You can still receive the replay, and if you have any questions about that, let me know.
Speaker 1:
And then the second thing that I wanted to share was actually a review of a few different books that have impacted me in some way, and I'm sitting in my office here, I have my bookshelf next to me and I'm just looking at which ones are sticking out to me that have impacted me in some way over the past 10 years, and the first one that comes to mind is the Gifts of Imperfection by Brunne Brown, and I'm just going to read you a quote from this book that I love, and it goes like this the wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging and I love this quote so much and I love this book in general so much. I actually found this book when I was just graduating undergrad, and Graduating undergrad at that time in my life was a pretty big challenge in the sense that I was a competitive athlete, so I played soccer in La Crosse in college and going from having like so many teammates, so many close friends and really having like a purpose, like I was very dedicated to the sport.
Speaker 1:
So as long as I was competing, I felt embodied, I felt confident and things like that. So during this part of my life I really had to refine myself again at 21, 22, and that's when I went to Spain and I hiked across Spain like 500 miles by myself for a few months and I chose to do that. It probably is like so random, I don't know whatever, we're just gonna keep keep going here. I chose to do that because at that time in my life I felt like I was making a lot of decisions based around my sport, which I loved. I loved competing and I got to do incredible things and travel the world and meet amazing people and I really did love it. But graduating from college, it was the first time that I felt like I could really make a decision for myself and this was my version of, I guess, like studying abroad or taking a semester to go to Italy or you know whatever that may have looked like. But I never got to do that because I was in season all year round. So I decided to go to Spain and hike across Spain by myself and it was amazing and I met amazing people from all over the world and I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1:
And then when I came home, I really had to find, like, my identity all over again, and so this book, the Gifts of Imperfection, and Bernadette Brown were just so helpful for me about learning more, about courage, about being brave, about embracing the party of yourself that is like messy and maybe doesn't have it all figured out and even to this day, as, like a business owner, being a perfectionist like doesn't serve me, and it's probably one of the biggest things that I've just taken away from being a business owner. It was one of the biggest obstacles I had to overcome when I started my business three years ago, because you don't have it all figured out Like in the beginning. It's something you've never done before. You're creating it new, you're creating it yourself too, like it can look and be whatever you want it to be. And so there was a lot of learning that I did in that time, right after college and through reading this book, and I'll link it in the show notes. But, yeah, I love Bernadette Brown, she's awesome.
Speaker 1:
And then the second book that I want to share with you that stands out to me on my bookshelf is A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, and this is basically her reflections on the principles of A Course in Miracles, which is another, a different book. She really writes about how should her takeaways from a course in miracles and she talks about her life and there is a little bit of like religion that's intertwined into it. And I'm not necessarily like a religious person, but I did Do. I did love the book anyway. So if you can kind of like, see past that and she uses words like God and prayer and you know spirit and source and all and, yeah, the Holy Spirit I just opened up the book and I can see that here.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, if you can, if that's not your jam and you can look past that it's definitely a book worth reading, and this book in particular I absolutely love because it really connected me with, I think, what you know life is really about, which is love. Not necessarily like romantic love yes, of course that's wonderful too but love as in, like the energy of love and the frequency of love and being a loving person and treating people with kindness and knowing that like everyone's fighting their own battles and how can we be more kind in the world? And when I read this book, I was in my mid twenties, I was single and I was, you know for sure, looking for the real deal, looking for love. But what was empowering about this book is like it really returns you back to yourself, like you can be happy in your own energy, in your own self worth being, you know loving towards yourself, and so it was just like an empowering read for me that you know might be supported for you too. And so, in a return to love, mary Ann Williamson also is the person that which I didn't know before I read the book, until I was reading the book, but has that famous quote and I will read it to you. You've probably heard it before, but I'm going to read it to you anyway. So it goes.
Speaker 1:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be? Brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do, and as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others, and this is one of my favorite quotes. I love this, especially being someone that is, you know, a recovering perfectionist, a recovering people, please are. This feels so good. It's like you get to be sparkly and shiny and take up space and you get to support the people in your life that you love to be their sparkly, shiny selves as well, and that feels really good.
Speaker 1:
And the next book that I have in my hands here is called Big Magic creative living beyond fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, and she's also the author of eat, pray, love, and this is one of my all time favorite books. It is all about creativity and she shares her process around what creativity is. She shares it in a way that's really fun and empowering. And you know, it's funny because I just opened this book. I haven't read this book in a while. I should probably read it again, but I read this probably. I read this, I think, after I went to Spain and I have a note in here actually that just fell out and it's so wild because it literally it literally says make a website, take professional pictures, do a meditation, teacher training, become a holistic coach. So wild so I guess I was manifesting back in. I don't even know what year this was that I read this, I'm not sure, but I guess I was manifesting back in the day and I left a little note in there for myself.
Speaker 1:
And One part of the book that I remember is that she views creativity and like big ideas as little fairy dust and so she pictures these kind of like little fairies that go around and land on people's shoulders and so like I might catch this idea of creating a course and that same fairy if I don't like take action on the thing, that little idea fairy is sitting on my shoulder like create the course, create the course, create the course. And then maybe you don't listen to it or you put it on the back burner for a few years and then, all of a sudden, you see someone else that created the exact thing that you were thinking about creating, and it's because the Little fairy, the little idea fairy, landed on their shoulder and said the same thing create the course, create the course, create the course. And so she has this really playful way of, yeah, playing with magic, I guess, which is why she called it big magic. Definitely worth checking out, super inspiring, and I, yeah, I love this book.
Speaker 1:
All right, and the last book that I'll share with you for today, I had to go back to, of course, gabby Bernstein. She's like an og for me. She really was the foundation, I think one of the first people I discovered that really talked about spirituality. That was in a very like easy, digestible way for me to understand, and when I went to my first yoga festival, she was actually a speaker there. So I have a signed copy from her, which is super fun, and this book is just a great foundational book to return back to. It's definitely inspiring. It will definitely help you to feel more connected to the universe, connected to your spiritual path, connected to your flow state.
Speaker 1:
And I just opened up to one chapter and it says obstacles are detours in the right direction. You know, I love this quote. It really makes me feel like we are always being divinely guided and, although sometimes things might not work out in the way that we hoped, it's all because we are on the path and we are on our way and we're just all putting one foot in front of the other. And so it's a great Reminder that we're always being divinely guided. And I'm actually going to go see Gabby in April. So she's coming to New York to give a talk, and whenever she comes to New York, I always feel lucky that I live here, because I can just like hop on a train and go into the city and see her. So that's super fun.
Speaker 1:
And the first time I saw her oh man, I don't even know how many years ago it was Um, I, it actually might have been from this book. I don't know, I'd have to check. Hold on, no, it was a different book, but it was one of her book tours. I don't remember which one it was and I got a little sticker inside of my book so I won a custom yoga mat. That was like signed by her and it had like her picture on it and it said something might have said the universe has your back in text on the on the yoga mat. And when I was in the subway on the way back to Penn Station there was a group of girls and one of the girls was like, oh my god, like you got the yoga mat, like only five people got them or something like that, and I had like four yoga mats like I think at the time I was working at Lulu lemon so I could get a little lemon yoga mat very easily and so I gave it to her. I was like, yeah, you can have it like. You clearly want it like a lot more than I do, it's okay. And so I always have fun memories of Gabby. You always meet cool people there and I'm going with two of my friends in April, so we'll see, maybe one of us will win another yoga mat this year.
Speaker 1:
So I really love all four of these books. They've all impacted me in some way and I'll definitely list them in the show notes. We have the gifts of imperfection by Bernie Brown, a return to love by Maryanne Williamson, big magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and the universe has your back by Gabby Bernstein and I would probably recommend all Gabby's books, but we'll just stick with that one for now, yeah, and then the last thing that I'll leave you with is just a little bit of a life update for me, yeah. So right now I am kind of in that space of embracing the in-betweens, which I think is something that we can all relate to. It's like that space between where you are and where you want to be, or where you are and where you're headed, and so it's like I feel like life can kind of be cyclical in that like we get where we want to be and then we want to be somewhere else. We get where we want to be and we set like another goal and just being like a very driven person and really wanting to always be growing, I feel like I've been integrating for a little while now, and so I'm ready for that next challenge.
Speaker 1:
I'm really kind of trying to manifest something in my life that's going to help me to grow and challenge me, and so right now I'm embracing the in-between, I'm trying to practice patience and just be present and so I'm really leaning on my personal tools, my breath work, my meditation, journaling, things of that nature. I've been also just trying to get outside for a walk, like as much as I can every day. Definitely, february in New York can be gloomy and cold and I'm kind of just missing the sun. March is usually the hardest month for me, but I'm definitely feeling it in February and so, yeah, it's been a little bit of sad girl vibes, just wanting the sun, needing that vitamin D and looking forward to just like the warmth and summer and trying to also be present. So it's been a nice balance of all of those things and that's kind of just where I'm at in my life right now and I hope that this episode has been fun for you and supportive, and definitely feel free to reach out.
Speaker 1:
Let me know how you're doing, what's coming up for you. If you end up checking out any of those books, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are and how they're impacting you. They're some of my favorite books, so thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope that you have an incredible rest of your week. I hope you have an incredible rest of your day and I will talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you were moved or inspired, please share with me by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcast. It means the world to me and I am so appreciative for your support in helping my podcast grow. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram and TikTok and follow me at Ray the Semantic Coach. Make sure you check out the show notes of today's episode for links to freebies, opportunities to work with me and ways we can stay connected outside of the podcast. I'm so happy that you're here and I can now eat to talk with you on our next episode of the Radiant Life Podcast.
