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Have you ever felt held back by self-doubt or imposter syndrome? In this heartfelt episode, I open up about my journey of embracing growth and overcoming these limiting beliefs to set me up on my path to achieving my dreams. From the launch of The High Vibe Guide podcast to the full booking of my first Soul Circle retreat, I'll share the fears and lack of confidence I had to conquer. Reflecting on past 'perceived' failures, I emphasise the invaluable lessons setbacks can offer. This chapter is a powerful testament to the resilience and personal growth that emerge from stepping out of your comfort zone.
Get in touch!
Instagram @thehighvibe.guide
Email hello@yogawithjenna.com
Subscribe to my premium content here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2286124/supporters/new
Have you ever felt held back by self-doubt or imposter syndrome? In this heartfelt episode, I open up about my journey of embracing growth and overcoming these limiting beliefs to set me up on my path to achieving my dreams. From the launch of The High Vibe Guide podcast to the full booking of my first Soul Circle retreat, I'll share the fears and lack of confidence I had to conquer. Reflecting on past 'perceived' failures, I emphasise the invaluable lessons setbacks can offer. This chapter is a powerful testament to the resilience and personal growth that emerge from stepping out of your comfort zone.
Get in touch!
Instagram @thehighvibe.guide
Email hello@yogawithjenna.com
Welcome to the High Vibe Guide, the podcast where I demystify the concept of raising our vibration. I'm Jenna, a yoga teacher, mum of three and passionate advocate for helping others to just feel happier. Let me explain to you how we can all live more contented and fulfilled lives, and how it's so much easier than you think. Hello everybody and welcome back to the High Vibe Guide. So I am back from my first Soul Circle retreat. I am a week ahead of you, guys, with recording days and things like that, but my first retreat was over the first weekend in June and, guys, it was amazing. Everything about it was just so incredibly magical. The venue was gorgeous. We will be using this venue now every year for my summer retreat, at least for the foreseeable future. It's this gorgeous huge Cotswold stone house with its own private lake, so we were swimming and paddle boarding. We even went out in a little rowboat and we had the weather for it as well, which made it even more incredible.
Speaker 1:But my team it consists of me, my sister and my husband, callum and Sam. My sister some of you remember from my Plonk cast. She's a very talented wellness coach when she isn't drinking copious amounts of wine with me, but she's also a PT and a Pilates instructor, so she just brought so much to the weekend. And Callum, my husband, among his many talents, is a chef, so he came with us and acted as our very own private chef. So we had lots of yoga, breath work, pilates. Sam delivered this outstanding stress management workshop which everyone loved. They were just so engaged. By the end of it, everyone was sharing their own, their own stresses or like trigger points, and offering each other support and advice on reframing a stressful situation and how we can develop strategies dealing with them. Oh, it was just wonderful.
Speaker 1:And we had the amazing tom stacy, or tom shanty. Some of you local shrewsbriers might know him, as he came and delivered a very lovely healing sound session and he also stayed and spoke to us a little bit about his time spent as a monk when he was a bit younger and we were all just so enraptured by him and his words. He just has this sense of such deep wisdom and calm about him. You cannot help but just feel so calm and peaceful in his presence and even into the evening everyone kept saying, oh damn, I wish I'd asked him about this or that or spoke to him about this thing. We just loved the experience he provided so much that I've actually just this morning had a conversation with him and he's agreed to come on the podcast and talk even more about his experience as a monk and what he's learned, and yoga he's also a yoga teacher, which I am extremely excited about.
Speaker 1:So, guys, that will be an episode that you do not want to miss. It'll most likely be towards the end of June, maybe early July, but I will keep you posted. But I'm just fresh back off this retreat and I've just felt so buzzed and aligned with what I'm meant to be doing now that I'm already about to book another venue for my winter retreat, which I will be holding in January and that will be in the beautiful Brecon Beacons in Wales, a slightly larger space. I'm just waiting on one small detail before it's confirmed and booked on but we can have a slightly larger group without going too big and losing that kind of intimacy and closeness within the group which I do quite like. It'll be for 18 guests and I'll be tailoring our practice and the activities to the winter season, so internally warming and nurturing and nourishing.
Speaker 1:All about reflectiveness and gently looking inwards, as I believe that January should not be a time for big changes and these big pushes, working really hard towards new year's resolutions and things like that. I hate New Year's resolutions Do not get me started. But I've started to use January to gently look inwards, to start to think about what I would like to do in the year ahead and using it almost as hibernation and just to muse on ideas and potential goals that I'd like to set for later in the year. I really don't believe in going hard, going all in in January. I think it should be this slow kind of build-up. I like to use winter to think, to reflect, to start to piece thoughts and feelings and ambitions together in our minds for the year ahead and then, as spring starts to approach, we slowly then start to gear ourselves up for some action, easing ourselves into things growing slowly, like nature does with the seasons. So that's the kind of theme I'm envisioning for our winter retreat.
Speaker 1:I didn't really have a theme for this retreat. That's just been and gone, as it was my first and I wanted to more kind of go with the flow and get a feel for the people that were there and what they were envisioning for their time there, and just to see what came up really, and there were a few people on retreat, some amazing people, that were really going through some hard things, some truly difficult things, and this weekend was, for most of them, the first time they'd actually really dedicated some time to themselves just for them, not having to look after anyone else or think about other people's problems. And for some guests you could see that on that first day there was this feeling of almost unsureness, unsteadiness, like they just didn't know how to deal with this sudden space they had laid out in front of them. They could actually stop and process some stuff, but as the weekend progressed and they could feel the support in the space that we'd worked to create for them, of supportiveness and compassion, but not just from us, like you know, me and my team, but also from the wonderful other guests on retreat with us. It was just such a wonderful feeling of community built around us and within us, where everyone was being held and supported by everyone there.
Speaker 1:And what this did is it allowed everyone to realise their own inner strength, that not only is it always there within us, just kind of clouded by our beliefs and doubts, but that it can be utilised and stirred up towards the surface by showing vulnerability to others and then allowing them to support you. So we ended up with strangers becoming these huge pillars of support for each other, connecting in ways that you would never have thought possible. And there's something just really quite powerful about gathering a group of people together who were all on relatively a similar wavelength, you know, just there to rejuvenate, restore and continue on their paths to greater happiness and contentment, because it touches a part of something inside of us that I think isn't often brought to the surface, and I think that's connection, deep connection, with compassion between us, between people, and I think these sorts of environments on these types of retreats and something that I want to be fostering on my retreats is that it really allows us to tap into that energy that connects us all, this universal energy that connects us, and it resulted in something really very beautiful. So I will be keeping you all posted when bookings open for my january retreat. It will be very soon, very soon. And what was I saying before? Oh, speaking of um having tom um, yogi and ex-monk and sound healer and everything else, wonderful that he is coming on the podcast soon. I've actually got some more very exciting episodes coming up for you over the next couple of months. Either next week or the week after, I'll be airing my conversation with a friend of mine, aggie, who is just such a bundle of pure light. She really is. I guess she'd call herself a holistic coach. She just provides so much under her umbrella of services and skills, if you like. But I will be talking with her about her somatic breath work. It's a really interesting topic about how we store trauma in the body and how we can use the breath and other specific practices to help shift things. So that's coming very soon.
Speaker 1:I am also due to speak with my very own taekwondo instructor master, james kessler. He teaches myself and my two sons here in shrewsbury. Um, I'm actually very sadly having to give it a rest for a few months as I've got something going on in my knee. I've no idea what, but it needs healing from that type of kind of explosive and high impact exercise. But I think for some reason whenever I'm in class I must just get too excited and so into it in the lessons that I just end up aggravating it. So I've got to give it a rest and kind of let it heal for a while. But my sons love it. I will have Darcy, my youngest daughter, starting when she's a little bit older.
Speaker 1:But Taekwondo has provided so much physical and emotional benefits to me and my sons and I just had to ask Master Kessler if he would come and be a guest speaker on the podcast and talk about his experience. I mean, he's been teaching for more than 20 years now, I think, and he's actually very shortly traveling to I think it is actually Korea to complete another black belt grading which takes him one step closer to becoming Grandmaster Kessler. But he's going to come and chat with me about how taekwondo and martial arts can help with our mental and physical well-being, for both adults and for kids. So some very exciting conversations coming our way to be shared with you. But today is going to be a relatively short episode, mainly because what I feel inspired to come on and talk about today I don't feel will take up too much time. It's more of a simple bit of advice which has just really confirmed itself to me over this last week, especially on retreat.
Speaker 1:Now, if someone has said to me a year ago actually probably not even a year ago that I would be hosting a podcast and hosting my very own yoga retreats and building an online yoga studio, you know, with lots of other kind of ideas floating in the back of my mind there, things I want to work towards there just would have been no way. No way I would have believed them. I was so full of self-doubt, limiting self-beliefs, living in that victim mentality where life was happening to me, just sat waiting for someone to land something good into my lap and I remember saying to Callum, like when are we going to get our break? You know, just such victim mentality of just concentrating on all the bad stuff. But I was just sat still in my negative little mind, too scared to do anything about it. But then, thankfully, some things changed. A, a flip switched, hang on. A flip switched, I mean, a switch flipped, hang on, do I? Is that the saying? I feel like I've said it too many times now and the words have lost all meaning. But I suddenly woke up. Basically, I woke up to the reality that something needed to change and that I was the only person who could make that happen. No one was coming to do it for me. Remember what Mel Robbins says no one is coming.
Speaker 1:And I realised something recently. I think I realised the thing that was holding me back. I know that it was many things really, but the main overarching thing that was stopping me from going out and doing the things that I wanted to do, from going and taking steps towards my goals, was that I didn't believe I was ready. I didn't believe I was ready to do these things and make a success of them. With building my online yoga studio, which will become my app, I believed I didn't have the time, the knowledge, the physical readiness to actually be able to record myself. It was something that I knew would be amazing to do, but I didn't think I could do it or I'd placed it so far in the future, because I believe that in time, one day I might feel ready, that I might wake up. Maybe when the kids are older, I'll feel ready.
Speaker 1:With hosting my retreats, I believe that I didn't have enough of a following to actually get people to sign up and actually pay me money and to be able to offer them something wonderful that they'd actually benefit from. Again, I didn't believe I had the time, the knowledge to set something up like that. I didn't have the confidence. The podcast I would never have believed I would have enough to talk about, that people would actually want to listen to me, to what I had to say, that they might actually enjoy it, benefit from it. Even the idea was madness to me. But you know what, here I am. I have just completed my very first retreat, my very first Soul Circle retreat, where not only was it fully booked within three weeks of advertising, but each person who came on retreat has already signed up to come on my next one.
Speaker 1:I am not saying this to sound like some arrogant dickhead, like I'm showing off. I can already feel the emotions like rising within me now as I'm stating what I've achieved. It's making me want to shrink and make myself feel and look smaller. Honestly, even as I'm saying this, my chin has kind of dropped a little bit and I'm I've lost. I've lost that kind of confidence in what I'm saying. But I almost need to say it to myself.
Speaker 1:I wanted, wanted to do something, so I slammed the door on my imposter syndrome and I went and did it. I started the high vibe guide and you guys are actually tuning into it. I mean, I'm mad or you are. That's wrong, that's not true. But that was. My greatest fear is that no one would listen. But you guys actually are and my audience is growing. People are even starting to approach me to come and be guest speakers, and I'm actually monetizing it now. I mean a little bit, not a lot, but my weekly guided meditations, which you can subscribe to now only for $4 a month. I wanted to make it affordable to everybody, but this means that I can invest a little more money into the podcast now, into the High Vibe Guide, and continue to create valuable content for more and more people that actually need it. And I'm actually building a virtual yoga studio.
Speaker 1:Me, miss, technologically Challenged over here. That was really hard to say. I scare myself with it nearly every day. I have huge fears and my imposter syndrome is shouting at me every single day about it, about every single aspect of it. But I'm doing it. Nothing's going to stop me. And, hey, I'm aware that I have listed my successes here, if you like. I'm very aware of that. Well, I mean, I haven't released Soul Circle yet, the studio, which you know could be a huge failure, but I'm still doing it. And you know what? I haven't actually told you this, guys, before, but two years ago ish I think, maybe just over I had my very own pop-up shop in John Lewis in Oxford.
Speaker 1:You know that I used to make candles I still do, but to a much smaller scale. Now it's just wholesale. But I had my candles in John Lewis, me there with them, this lovely pop-up shop, for one whole week in 2022. And I was convinced it was my big break that they were going to fly off the shelves like hotcakes and John Lewis were going to start ordering thousands of candles from me and I was going to be adorning all of their candle shelves. But the reality well, none of that happened. Basically, I went in. Billy Big Bollocks made way too much stock, because I envision selling like between 50 to 100 candles a day when actually the shop floor in John Lewis is not as busy as you think it would be, I mean, apart from Saturday, where it does feel busy and, don't get me wrong, I did sell some. I got a few repeat customers, which was nice.
Speaker 1:It got my name out there a bit more, but was it financially viable? Was it financially viable? No, did it affect my mindset? Yes. Did I feel like a total failure? Yes, yes, I did, and I think it really dampened my motivation for my candle business Teddy Candles it's called, by the way's, named after my, my middle child, who, bless him, got the brunt during covid, which is when I started the business this poor, beautiful little 16 months old teddy who suddenly had a newborn sister and an incredibly stressed mother who had to homeschool a six-year-old. So, but I, I just feel it dampened my fire for a while when it came to me outside of being a mother. You know what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 1:But I now realise, with this new mindset I've managed to cultivate for myself, I'm, that you really are not defined by your failures, and something else which took a little longer to realise is that you are also not defined by your success, because what do you learn from your success? Absolutely nothing, really. But what do you learn from failure? A hell of a lot. I don't even think it has to be practically like right, that didn't work, what can I do better next time? I think it teaches you more than that. I think it teaches you more about yourself, because you learn resilience. I think it's the biggest test of all to fail, isn't it? Are you going to do the hard thing and get back up, or are you going to do the hard thing and get back up, or are you going to do the easy thing and give up?
Speaker 1:And for me, it took real time for me to learn that lesson, because it wasn't necessarily like well, right, that didn't work for teddy candles how can we improve prospects for this business going forward? Because it actually, for for me, looked like going in a completely different direction. It meant pursuing yoga and my love of yoga and spreading this to others, and without that I don't think I would have found the High Five Guide. So my lesson me getting back up again, not giving up looked like this. It looked different to how I thought it would look. So I don't think you need to keep banging your head against the same wall, because your journey can change. There are always different forks in the road.
Speaker 1:It's all about just not giving up on yourself, no matter what anyone else says to you or what life may throw at you. And the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway, is that you do not need to change to start something. You do not need to change to start. I could have let all my fears stop me, all of my fears of not having enough knowledge about how to set up a podcast or build a studio virtually, or organise and actually fill a retreat or until I had more time. But that would have meant I'd been waiting forever, because I do wholeheartedly believe that you will never feel 100% ready. So do it now, before it's too late. Don't be the person who looks back and thinks God, I wish I'd done this or I wish I'd done that, at least given it a go. Yeah, you might fail. Yeah, you might fall so hard on your arse that you never want to get back up again.
Speaker 1:But all growth requires some level of discomfort of the unknown. There are just so many analogies for this. What happens to a seed when it's planted? It has to break its shell. Break through its shell in order to grow bigger. Think of going to the gym to grow a muscle. You have to go through the discomfort of lifting a heavy load. Think of childbirth. Birth isn't just stressful and painful for the mother, it is for the child too. They're forced to leave all they've ever known, this lovely, warm and comfortable space, to be pushed out into the cold, the harsh light, forced to breathe through their lungs for the first time. But you need to do this in order to grow, and it's the same with any journey of growth.
Speaker 1:So if you're stuck in misery and sadness, stood in front of two doors one is success, one is failure. Do you stay stuck in misery and sadness, or do you take the leap of faith, knowing that you might fail, knowing that you might pick the wrong door? Because, look, even if you do fail, there will be other doors, there will be other pathways. And even if there aren't other doors, come back. Come back and find your way to the right door.
Speaker 1:The key is to keep trying. Don't give up. So many of us give up, because giving up is the easiest thing to do. It's perseverance, not giving up on yourself, which takes the real strength, the real strength of character. And it just made sense for me to talk to you about this today, while I am fresh, you know, back from retreat, because I had this moment, after the guests had all left and I was stood in the yoga studio About to start, you know, rolling up the mat and packing things into the car, where I just felt so thankful, so grateful, so grateful to myself for taking the leap, for not giving up on what I wanted to do, because I would never have been stood there in that moment. I'd still be at home, living in doubt, fear, full of limiting beliefs, too scared to do anything about it, to make a change. So my parting advice to you today is to just take the leap.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't have to be you know some huge, life-altering thing here. It can just be something small. Maybe it's getting out more, making new friends, maybe it's thinking about a change to your career, maybe you want to train in something new. Maybe it's even a conversation you're putting off, a phone call you keep procrastinating about and, hey, maybe it's becoming the next richard branson. The sky is your limit. Do you know how many times richard branson failed? Does anyone remember Virgin Cola, virgin Brides, virgin Cars? No, okay. How about Virgin Megastores, virgin Express, virgin V, virgin Student? No, that's because they all failed. All of those things failed.
Speaker 1:His approach to business has always involved taking calculated risks, which means he's always exposed to some degree of failure. And he's not alone. There are so many well-known, hugely successful people who have failed over and over and over again Thomas Edison, jk Rowling, walt Disney, steve Jobs, oprah Winfrey, henry Ford and everyone has heard of the great Elon Musk. And the one thing all of these people have in common they kept getting back up, they kept believing in themselves and they never gave up. Can you imagine what the world might look like today If every single person with a goal or a dream never gave up? They just kept trying. How different would the world look today? So go do that thing, please. Please, go do it. Do the thing you've been dreaming of. Just take one step towards it. Don't be scared, please, just do it.
Speaker 1:So, guys, thank you as always for tuning in. Remember you can now subscribe to my guided meditations links will always be in the show notes for that one and, as always, feel free to get in touch. I love hearing from you all. It means more than you know. So keep smiling, guys, keep looking for the good stuff and I will see you back here next week. Thank you all so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with your friends and family to continue spreading that positivity. You can find me on Instagram at thehighvibeguide. Get in touch. I would love to hear from you. Thank you all so much for listening and I'll see you back here next time at the High Vibe Guide.