The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Hi there, Gabby here, this podcast is intended to educate, inspire and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I’m not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

You may have heard me talk to our guests at times about being part of our Miracle Membership. It’s the next best thing to having me as your personal coach. Every Sunday, I hook up my members big time for the week that comes ahead. I show up in their inbox and I also show up in their portal with brand new coaching lessons for the week.

This includes meditations, affirmations, practices. Plus there’s hundreds of hours of archived meditations and lectures and workshops. The Miracle Membership is like having me on speed dial as your personal coach at all times. And here’s some big news. I just created a brand new members-only challenge, a 21-day challenge called the Body Love Challenge, and it’s just for my members.

So this new members-only challenge offers 21 days of powerful exercises and meditations, guidance to help you develop a deeper spiritual relationship with your body, practices for claiming a healthier relationship to food, to your body image, to your weight. And it just is an empowering 21-day journey with me to transform your relationship with your body.

This is something that we’re only offering inside the Miracle Membership. So that’s why right here right now is the absolute best time to become a member. Inside your membership, not only do you get your weekly coaching from me, but you also get quarterly challenges; you’ll get your Manifesting Challenge. You’ll get your Meditation Challenge.

The member’s-only Body Love Challenge and a Relationship Challenge that’s coming up in the Fall. So just go over to deargabby.com/miraclemembership. Members are the only folks who get access to the body love challenge. It starts on July 1st. If you’re ever thinking about becoming a miracle member, this is your absolute moment.

Don’t miss it. Head over to deargabby.com/miraclemembership. We’ll also put the link in your show notes.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I’m your host Gabby Bernstein. And if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you’re ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let’s get started.

Hi everybody! Welcome back to Dear Gabby. I am sitting here right now having breakfast. You can hear my ice water jingling. I’m having breakfast in a hotel in San Francisco, about to give a talk for Pinterest which I’m excited about. And I am most excited to share that this episode is a bonus episode of Dear Gabby.

I’m sitting here very, very excited because I’m also very caffeinated. This bonus episode is a powerful talk that I led in 2011. This was a time when I was really connecting to what my authentic power meant to me. And really connecting to an untapped resource that was within—that is our Super Attractor power. The truth within us, the strength within us, the authenticity within us.

And if there’s any part of you that’s feeling kinda dull right now or out of alignment or disconnected with your truth, this is your episode. This is your episode. So go listen now. Enjoy this talk from 2011. I really hope it gets you centered, get inspired and really plug into that true source of power within you—the power that makes you a Super Attractor. The power that helps you manifest, the power that makes the room light up when you enter.
So check this out, my friends! You’re gonna love it. And here, cheers! Bye.

Tonight’s topic is such an important topic that is not addressed enough. I find that we often can get really hooked into the pretenses that we have placed upon ourselves. And the false beliefs that we have chosen to project onto others and project onto ourselves. And it’s really easy to get hooked into this mentality of all of the outside stuff versus what is going on internally and your truthful internal condition.

So we’re going to go deep tonight talking about that real relatable, authentic person that is in each of you. That person that sometimes gets shut down and shut off or muted or ignored. In some cases really ignored to the point of forgetting who that being is. So we’re going to, we’re going to wake him or her up tonight and get that going on.

So this topic of authenticity has been coming up and it’s been just hitting me over the head and hitting me over the head. And often when I’m supposed to teach something, I’m almost forced to, it’s like, I believe there’s a divine spirit that’s guiding me at all times saying this is the next right action.

And so I listened and it became really clear to me. This was what we have to discuss tonight. And in this instance, just today, of course, right before I come out to teach you guys, I did an interview this morning and I was asked, well, are you proud of who you have become? And I thought about that for a moment.

And I said, you know, I haven’t actually become anyone. I have just released all that was blocking me from being who I really am. And so that’s what we’re here to talk about tonight. We’re not talking about how do we become powerful. It’s about how do we release all that is blocking us from our authentic power.

How do I become sexy? It’s like let’s release all that is blocking that inner sexiness within us. How do I become confident? Let’s unblock all that truth that is being completely stifled so that truth can come forward and our confidence can be heard and reached. And so we can genuinely experience that confidence.

And so this has really been the case for me. It’s been this experience of just witnessing how I have gone from really at one point in my life, trying to be trying to be, trying to be something outside of myself. And then as I have become a Spirit Junkie in the past seven years of my practice, I have one day at a time chipped away at that pretense, at that outside positioning and that outside reflection that I was so focused on.

And started to chip away at that reflection of who I thought I should be and only to come back and find, oh, wow, this is totally cool. I am just really me right now. This is just who I am and becoming comfortable and confident in who I am.

And most importantly, being so disgusted and sick of not being who I am. So when I’m in those moments, when I am not who I truly am, I have to go home. We’ll have to shut her down and stop talking. And you know, my acronym, which is, wait, why am I talking? Because there are many of those moments. That’s a good one.

Take that home first tip for tonight, but that in your back pocket, but there’s so many of those moments when we have to wait when we’re looking at ourselves and we instead bulldoze past and keep talking and keep being and to keep trying, and this is so uncomfortable for me today, and that’s really the message for you all tonight.

The goal is for you all to come to a place where that inauthentic place is so gross to you, so uncomfortable for you, but you’re not judging yourself because of it. But you recognize that is not who I really am. And then you recalibrate and come back to a place of center. And so it’s not necessarily about understanding immediately how do I come back to that place of center, but it’s first and foremost, recognizing when am I not in that place?

How am I dissociating from that? I had a call this week with a really beautiful transformational teacher by the name of Cheryl Richardson.

And she’s given a bunch of us a coaching call because many of us are getting up on a stage in front of 3000 people next week in San Jose.

And Wayne Dyer’s opening for me, not literally, but he is actually speaking before me. Um, so, uh, but I, I like to just announce that Wayne… And so I’m on the phone with Cheryl and we’re going through my outline and just discussing all the different topics that I’ll be bringing up. And we all, then the next generation teachers who are going to be platformed on the stage, we have 20 minutes to tell our story.

We were not really there to teach as much as we are to just say, Hey, world. Here we are. This is who I am. Nice to meet you. And so I was telling her, and I’ve been telling my story for a year and a half now on my Spirit Junkie never-ending book tour. And so on my never-ending book tour, just have been having many opportunities to tell my story because Spirit Junkie was my memoir.

So I’m telling Cheryl, and I’m like, oh, well, here’s this piece of my story. And here this piece of my story, and she’s like, we can go deeper here. And I was like, oh, okay. And it’s funny when, you know, the teacher starts getting coached because I’m always coaching. So it’s really nice to have those real powerful teachers just to just, you know, just say, check yourself, girl, come back home.

Right. And so she’s like, we can go deeper here. Let’s go deeper into your story. And I had this really nice opportunity to go deep, really deep and start to pick up the nuances of my story and start to recognize who that girl was. When I was going through such tortured uncomfortable times and who I have become as a result of my spiritual practice.

Today’s bonus episode is brought to you by Whoop, the world’s most powerful fitness and health coach. You know that I only bring on sponsors that I believe in and I enjoy using, and that’s why I love Whoop as a sponsor here, I’m really excited to tell you about them. Whoop isn’t just another fitness wearable; it’s designed to provide personalized and actionable data based on your body.

Each day, you wake up. Whoop gives you a personalized recovery score based on both the quantity and the quality of your sleep, your heart rate variability. Respiratory rate and other key vital signs, Whoop, then coaches you through your day with recommendations on how hard you should be pushing yourself based on your recovery.

Whoop also released their 4.0. It’s 33% smaller and designed with new biometric tracking, including skin temperature, body oxygen, and more. And it’s really awesome. Since using Whoop for the last few months, I’ve had this opportunity to really learn more about my health. I’ve always been someone who’s really liked to track my successes and I’ve always really been wanting to be efficient.

And this device is allowing me to be way more efficient with my health. Every day I check what my recovery score is, and it’s been really great to understand when I should push myself or when I should rest. And it truly does feel like a personal fitness coach. Also, the Whoop band is really cute. And it’s very chic and finally, even more exciting news from Whoop. Their 4.0 is officially back in stock and shipping in real-time.

To celebrate that and Father’s Day coming right up, Whoop is offering 15% off and free shipping when you use the code Gabby. Go to W H O O P.com that’s W H O O P.com to save 15% and get free shipping automatically applied today with code Gabby.

And so I bring that up because part of what we’re going to do tonight is have you each start to identify what your story is, what your true story is, and to not be recognizing your story from a place of trying to become the victim and let, and just say like, you know, look how screwed up I am.

But instead, starting to understand your story, understand how you were at one place and how you have transformed to become who you are today. And to own all of those badges of armor and to own all of those amazing experiences and to really accept an honor and value yourself for overcoming whatever it is that you have overcome to be the authentic, amazing person you are today.

So this is the work we are here to do. And so before I begin, how many people in this audience are new? So for those of you who are new, and those of you who are not new, you’ll hear some of my story tonight and some new parts of my story. I have to tell my authentic truth if I’m going to ask you all to be authentic with me.

And so the parts of my story, I want to just open up are those parts of me when I was really living in a way where I was much different than I am today. I wanted to be someone who could stand on a stage and speak extemporaneously about topics I believed in; I wanted to be someone who was inspiring others.

I wanted to be someone who I could perceive internally as powerful, but I was looking for that person outside of myself. I thought at the time that power came with some kind of status symbol or power came because I was a young entrepreneur and my business card said President. I thought that my power came because I had access to some nightclub.

I felt that my power came because I was dating some guy or I was friends with some, you know, B-list celebrity or whatever. And I was looking for my power and my self-worth and my purpose in all of these outside sources. And this was a real hardcore search. Just looking out there, looking out there, looking out there. A big one was I really remember feeling as though I was always trying to be like the cool girl on a date.

Like I would do everything in my power to just try to be cool. Like not call back or, you know, all the crazy crap that girls do, you know what I’m talking about. And those moments when we’re just doing such crazy stupid stuff. And I was so good at it, I got so good at doing all this inauthentic stuff that I would just drive people away.

Or when I would meet new people, I was sort of like give them my credentials upfront because it was like, you need to know what I do so that I can feel good enough. Anybody resonating with that? Just starting to identify all those different things. If you’re identifying in some of the things I was doing, start to check yourself now. Throughout the talk I want you to just continue to come back and be a little self-reflective and say, maybe I do that too.

Right. And starting to see how there was times in my life where I was literally projecting another person onto myself. There was a time in my life when I was so eager to be a speaker. I just really believed that I was supposed to be teaching spirituality even in my darkest hour.

And I’m a recovering drug addict and an alcoholic. And so I, when I speak very openly about my sobriety, I have these times in my life when I was living in that outside way, when I would be in my, you know, after-hours party in someone’s home, who I had no idea who they were. And there were strangers around me and God knows what we were doing.

And I would be sitting there saying. I’m going to be a motivational speaker and a self-help book author. And these people would be like, yeah, pour me a drink. Right. But something within me knew that’s what I wanted to be. Something within me knew that there was a much higher purpose than what I was doing on the planet. But I was really not in alignment with the energy of what it meant to be a self-help book author and motivational speaker when I was doing drugs in the middle of the night.

Right. So, so recognizing when we are not in alignment with what we really desire, that’s a big part that we need to really begin to recognize. Early in my recovery, luckily for me, I hit a big enough bottom and all of us in some way may have come tonight hitting some kind of bottom.

Maybe you’re coming and you don’t even realize you’ve hit a bottom, but there was a voice within you that said there has to be a better way. Let me go see what this chick has to say, right? There has to be a better way, or maybe there’s a piece of you that says, well, this thing seems to be working for my friend and my life isn’t really flowing that naturally. Let’s go check it out.

Maybe there’s a part of you that’s saying I really can’t kick this weight, let me go see if there’s a solution beyond my diet. Maybe there’s a part of you that saying I’m addicted to substances and I, I need a solution. Maybe there’s just a simple part of you saying, is this it, is this what life is? Is there something more? And so if that’s where you’re at, if there’s a place within you that’s feeling a little dull or a little out of alignment or not connected to your truth, you’ve come to the rig place.

And that was the case for me, by the time I recognized that when I got to the place in my own life, where I could recognize: this isn’t working. I am unhappy. I’m sick. I am not living in my truth in any way. That was when I invited a beautiful, cracked-open experience of allowing the energy of the universe to work through me, to guide me towards exactly what I needed to heal.

And so those beautiful divine moments when you crack open and you hear that inner voice say there has to be a better way. That’s step one, everybody. And so welcome. I’m glad you all got there. And even if you’re not in that place yet where you recognize that there is something funky, you got to a place where we’re discussing another conversation.

And that in itself is valuable because unconsciously you’ll begin to pick up the principles that you are learning tonight.

Earlier in the episode, I spoke about Whoop and how I’ve been loving their fitness wearable. And it really helps me stay on track of my health. A huge part of this is tracking my sleep. If you’re a frequent listener of Dear Gabby, you know, how much sleep hygiene means to me and how much I cherish my eight to nine, sometimes even 10 hours of sleep.

And sleep is one of the most important things you can do to improve your recovery, boost your immune system and make fitness improvements in your life. The sleep coach from Whoop analyzes sleep duration, quality, efficiency, and consistency every single night.

It also provides ideal bed and wake times to help improve my sleep routine, which I literally am obsessed with. It tells me when to go to sleep. Their all-new Whoop 4.0 comes with a brand new haptic alarm that uses gentle vibrations to wake you in less jarring ways. And that really relaxed way of waking up is much better for your nervous system.

Head over to the sleep coach section of the app, and decide the alarm code that you want, the exact time you want to wake up and your sleep goals, or when you want to wake up in the green feeling recovered. Tracking my sleep has been one of the biggest priorities in my life. It has been very eye-opening for me to see what the results can be when I really take care of my sleep and pay attention to it.

And I really pride myself on my numbers that Whoop gives me every single day. I get really nerdy about it. This has been really fun. I highly recommend checking it out and I love having sleep hacks. I love it.

Finally, even more exciting news from Whoop, their 4.0 is officially back in stock and shipping in real-time. To celebrate that and Father’s Day coming right up, Whoop is offering 15% off and free shipping when you use the code Gabby. Go to whoop.com that’s W H O O P.com to save 15% and get free shipping automatically applied today.

And so as I wake in this new way of being, I started to pick up on these amazing metaphysical teachers and people like Cheryl Richardson. And then this woman by the name of Marianne Williamson became my main teacher. She became this, this beautiful goddess who I believed in and adored, and I just wanted to soak up everything that she was teaching.

And so I remember reading Marianne’s book A Woman’s Worth, which I would suggest to anyone in this room, man or a woman, it is such a beautiful book. And I was reading Marianne’s book A Woman’s Worth. And I remember opening the book and recognizing that there was this one passage that just hit my heart.

It just got me where I felt the real truth come forward. I’m going to read it to you. She said: a queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her, but having passed her test, she has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become a vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.

Feels good, right? There’s so much energy behind those words. And there’s so much truth behind that experience of ruling with your authentic power. And I remember reading that and saying, I am not there, but I want that.

And I will write, and I will do whatever I need to do to get to that place. I will show up for my assignments. I will allow all that I need to release be released so that I can reconnect to that presence of authentic power within me. And that was exactly what I did. I let that be my guide and I awakened to a new truth and started to practice the principles I’m going to teach you tonight to chip away at all that was blocking.

And the first step was really to recognize all the pretenses I had placed upon myself. So seeing myself as special, seeing myself as less special, really looking at all the ways that I had used the outside sources to be my sense of completion and wholeness, and to make myself feel good enough.

And so I started to take a serious inventory of all of these things. This is your first piece of homework tonight is to start to take an inventory of all of the stories that you’ve begun to tell about yourself, to make yourself feel good enough. What are those stories? Really beginning to see how are you trying to be cool?

How are you trying to be important? How are you trying to feel good enough? Because you are walking next to somebody that you think is cool, whatever it is. Becoming conscious. And when I started to look at all this stuff, I started to realize, well, I’ve been trying so hard to be the cool girl, but actually I really am a cool girl.

So why am I trying so freaking hard? I already am a cool girl. And when I got that and I accepted that and I recognized that I didn’t have to try so hard, that’s when things began to shift. And so the first step here is to start to see very clearly how you have placed false perceptions onto yourself. And as many of you know, and if you’re new, I teach a metaphysical text called A Course in Miracles and the Course, one of the primary messages of the Course is that projection is perception.

So whatever you’re projecting about yourself, you are perceiving to be who you are and you were trying to get everybody else to perceive that as well. And truthfully, whatever you’re projecting the world is projecting back to you. So if internally you’re projecting, I suck, but I think I’m cool when I dress this way or I suck, but I’m cool because I’ve got a business card that has this on it, or I’m not that comfortable with who I am, but I’m comfortable when I’m standing next to this hot guy, whatever it is, recognizing that energy is being picked up all around you and that energy of lack within you, regardless of whatever you’re using to feel good enough on the outside.

That energy of lack is what’s blocking your authenticity, which is what’s blocking your sexiness, which is what is blocking your truth, which is what is blocking your happiness, which is what is blocking that woman or man within you that can walk into that beautiful boardroom and just nail it or that person who can walk into that date and just be who they are and not care how it turns out and be free-flowing and have fun.

And regardless of the date actually turns into a romance. You leave with a new friend. Each of you has this amazing, authentic being within you. But the first step here is to recognize how have you tried to make yourself special or separate or better based on your outside pretense. All right. So let’s all get honest about that.

I think everybody in this room might be aware. And even when you think you’re aware, you are not aware. Okay. And I will tell you from my own experience. This week, I went to an event and it was like for health, you know, health bloggers and stuff. And I went to this event. And I showed up and I showed up just being like, oh great, I’m going to learn something.

And I showed up with the right attitude. I’m here to learn something. I’m going to meet some new people. And then I remembered this experience. I’m gonna be so truthful with you guys. It’s embarrassing. It’s the truth. They were talking about how they wanted new video content and they want it to work with new people.

And I was like, oh great. You know, I have great video content. I’ve been doing blogs for almost six years and I’ve got, you know, all this stuff I can share with them. And so I walk up to this woman and my ego, my pretense, it’s like, oh, she’s got to know who I am. And she’s like, hi, who are you? And I was like, I’m Gabrielle Bernstein.

And I went into like pitch mode. Right. And it was like a long time since I’ve been in that place. And I went there and I was like, I have this video blog. And it’s really great. And you know, I do these lectures and they’re really neat. And she’s like, oh, that’s cute.

And my ego wants to be like, do you know how many people come to my lectures? You know, I want to just go there. Right? Do you know who I am? Right. And it’s such BS, it’s such crap. And it’s, and I walked out of there feeling hung over. I remember walking out of the Whole Foods, feeling hung over. I was like, what just happened?

And I was hungover and disgusted by being inauthentic. But not just genuinely going up to this woman and say, Hey lady, I have some really groovy content. It might be cool for you. Here’s my website. Check it out. But instead, I had to first and foremost, see if she knew how special I was. And then, and then if she didn’t, I had to make sure I told her how special I was. Pretense pretense pretense, inauthentic.

And for me today, because I practice these principles when I’m out of alignment like that, it is so clear. I walked out, I felt hungover. I was walking the aisles and Jennifer and Jennifer, I was sick. I was like, I need vitamins. What do I take? She’s like eat some kale.

I was literally and that is exactly what happens when we’re out of our truth. We deplete our strength. We deplete our energy. We deplete the nutrients within our body and we become shriveled up and sick.

I’ve touched it on some of the reasons why I love using Whoop, but I really want to stress that it’s not just for serious athletes with their feature called The Journal, I’m also able to track the impact that my meditation and other mindfulness routines have on my recovery and sleep, especially my sleep.

I’m also able to track the impact of CBD, melatonin and more. Whoop is a wearable, but unlike other wearables, Whoop is designed to help you optimize your performance based on your sleep, your daily recovery and your activity habits. It tells you when you’re primed for a big day and when you should really chill out and just relax.

It sets exertion targets based on your body, not your friends’ bodies, not your trainer’s body, not some statistical body index. And I love knowing when I’m ready to go, but I also appreciate knowing what I need to take a chill pill. Burnout is a really popular term in our society right now. And it’s not just physical exhaustion.

Stress plays a huge part in both your mental and physical health and Whoop is designed to measure the impact that stress has on your day-to-day living. This is a serious issue right now. And I see a lot of people on the show coming in complaining about burnout, and sometimes the biggest step forward in our changing of a habit is to just have the information, to just understand how our stress is affecting us.

That’s why Whoop is so powerful because knowledge is power. And that knowledge will give you the inspiration to start to create change. And finally, even more exciting news from Whoop, their 4.0 is officially back in stock and shipping in real-time. To celebrate that and Father’s Day coming right up, Whoop is offering 15% off and free shipping when you use the code Gabby. Go to whoop.com that’s W H O O P.com to save 15% and get free shipping automatically applied today.

So if you have low energy, if you’re in a depression, if you have sadness, if you have a sense of weakness, if you have a poor constitution, I invite you to look at your thoughts. I invite you to look at how hard you might be playing somebody else’s life.

That’s gotta be pretty exhausting, right? Anytime I’m trying to be someone other than my authentic self, I am exhausted. I feel sick and I was hung over the next day too. I felt that feeling. Oh my God, what did I just do? And I was judgmental to myself and it becomes this guilt-fear spiral that A Course in Miracles teaches about when we disconnect from our truth, we feel unconsciously guilty.

And then we judge ourselves more to deny that guilt so that we stay in the guilt. And then we’re really fearful because we just don’t think we can get out. Did everybody get that? Trippy, right? The fear-guilt spiral. We feel like this unconscious sense of guilt because we are not living in our truth.

We feel like we’ve sinned. And sometimes if you have not been doing this kind of work, you don’t actually recognize it. So it’s real deep and it’s real dark, and it can hook you for days and days, maybe months and years. If you do not recognize how your inauthentic energy is affecting your truth. And so that was a really nice experience for me.

Because I see these moments just like Marianne said in the quote, she’s passed her test to become the queen. And so we have to recognize that we are being given universal assignments every single day of our life, so that we can crack open, crack, open, crack, open, and start to understand and recognize our truth on a deeper and deeper level.

So every time I have these experiences, I have a new opportunity to take another onion layer off and just continue to peel away at the onion so I can get to the center. And just, you know, one more experience that I had this month that I just have to share because it was so powerful for me. I know many of you have heard this story in my video blog, but there’s a video blog about just focusing on the content rather than the frame.

And we talked a lot about this in my Medi-dating lecture when we’re on dates and we’re out there looking like, how do they look? Or, you know, are they going to be good enough for me? Or am I great enough? We focus so much on the frame, which is the outside perception when we disconnect from the content. And the content.

Tonight right now, this example of the content, the frame could be, oh, I like my outfit. I look so cute. This is so cool. There’s hundreds of people and there’s people on the internet. That’s the frame. The content is I’m spending Friday night with beautiful people. People who want to change their lives, people who care about themselves, people who care about their friends sitting next to them, people who I can help awaken so they can bring these messages into their own life.

That’s the content you feel that, right? I do. And so that’s what we need to be focusing on. That’s how we can hold a room like this. That’s how we can energize a room like this, just with a few words. So we have to make sure that we become aware and conscious of how our energy is either positively aligned with our truth, which is to serve, which is to love, which is to be happy.

And when it is totally disconnected. So that’s what we’re going to do tonight. We’re going to start to recognize that realization of when we are being ourselves versus when we are not when we’re focusing on the frame, rather than the content, when we were focusing on the, how can I get, rather than the how can I give. And start to look at all the different ways that we are either in alignment or out of alignment.

So one of the things I thought that was neat was that that was coming up. It was like, how do we shed who we thought we needed to be? And this is a really important part because I think that we’ve all got these ideas of who we need to be. I need to be this CEO, or we’ve got this whole pretense around who we think we are because when we’ve established that person that we think we are, then we have arrived.

So I am a mom. I am a friend. I am a, A-Lister. I am a fashion blogger. I am a fashionista. I am a gay man. I am whatever I am. And we have all this pretense around us, but we forget who we really are underneath that, which is a loving being who is here to have a good time and teach others to do the same. Which is a loving person who is here to make authentic connections with all unique, different individuals, a loving person who’s supposed to say, it doesn’t matter that I’m the CFO of this company, I love the person who is the intern in the office.

It doesn’t matter that I am a gay man. I love all the girls in the room. It doesn’t matter that I’m a straight man. I love all the gay men in the room. It doesn’t matter. And that is the person that we all really genuinely want to be. But remember when we disconnect, we feel like our energy is lowered.

We feel sick. We feel out of flow and we feel misaligned. So starting to recognize that this is a shedding of who we thought we should be. And so first and foremost, let’s start to, if you have a notebook, write it down or just say it in your mind. Who do I think I should be? Get honest with yourself right now. Who do I think I should be?

Who have I been, trying to be? Ask yourself: What’s the false story I have been telling myself? Is it the story that when I have that job, I’ll be good enough? Is it the story that I’m the party girl and that’s how cool I am? What is the false story you have been telling yourself? What is the false pretense you have placed upon yourself?

How have you been, how have you been that person? Like me in that Whole Foods where you’re walking up and you’re like, how do you not know who I am? Right. Have you been doing that? Or have you been doing the opposite? Have you been walking up to people and feeling like you’re less than? Is that the pretense that you have placed upon yourself?

Have you been walking around wearing the garb of I’m the victim? Is that who you have placed upon yourself? What is the story you have been telling yourself and how has that story been blocking your authentic truth? Okay. Get honest. And then also recognizing what does it feel like when I’m disconnected?

So I know for myself, when I’m not in my truth, I start to talk really fast. I stop breathing. All of my energy is up here. It’s like all up here, like when I was talking to that woman in Whole Foods…

Of course, she’s gonna be like ‘cute’ because the energy I was giving off was like, I need you to like me. I need you to like me. And it’s inauthentic. Had I just said, I’ve got this really cool thing. Come check it out. Here’s my thing that would have left a much more empowering impact. Okay. And even the energy of it, sometimes it’s an energy when I’m not being authentic and I’ve got those moments of why am I talking?

It’s the energy of being conceited. I could be like, you know, I’ve got all this going on. And that is the girl who didn’t think she was good enough from decades ago, trying to prove to the world that she’s great. And so I’ll be in those moments of just, you know, I’m so great. And that’s, how does that feel?

That feels gross. It feels energetically like the other person can genuinely feel it. They feel like I can sense that the other person is you know, that energy is like not engaged, not excited, not wanting to be part of that conversation. So you can start to sense if you’re out of alignment based on how the other person’s acting because we’re just a mirror.

All of us are just mirroring back each other’s energy. We are a mirror recognizing all of our outside experiences of others are reflecting how we feel internally. So whatever you’re putting out, you are definitely getting back. So if you’re putting out static, funky energy trust that you’re feeling that back. Okay.

And so this is, I’m going to do something with you guys, which is what I call my mascara meditation. If you have mascara on, make sure you grab the tissues that are on the sides of all of the pews, if you feel moved to cry. So let’s meditate, and this is an opportunity for us to feel a little. So everybody take a moment, just shut your eyes and get comfortable and shut your eyes once again.

And in this moment, just feel as though you are the only person in this room. Take a deep breath in and on the exhale release it. Center into whatever it is that you’re feeling in this moment. Get honest with yourself about what it is that brought you here. Get honest with yourself. Maybe you’re just pissed that you’re here because you were just appeasing someone you like and feel that if that’s the truth for you, just feel pissed that you showed up.

If you feel angry with yourself because of something you did today or something you did 10 years ago, feel that. Feel the feeling of I’m not good enough. Feel the feeling of I’m so scared to be alone. Get honest about that feeling, whatever it may be. I’m afraid I can’t pay the bills this month. Get honest, allow yourself to feel that. I’m not in my alignment.

I’m not in my truth. I feel incomplete. I feel disconnected. I feel sad.

I felt eager to try to make something happen; I feel like I’m controlling and manipulating my life. I feel lost. Breathe into those experiences, whatever they may be for you. Just get honest, just allow yourself to feel whatever is coming up for you, breathing into that feeling.

Let the mascara flow.

Take a deep breath in and feel it one more time and release.

When you’re ready, open your eyes to the room.

As uncomfortable as that might’ve felt. I see some tissues passed around. Did it feel good for anybody to just feel? Raise your hands if you felt good. Anybody feel like a sense of relief at all, do you feel right now, a little bit more connected to your own energy? Does anybody… just raise your hands high if you feel more connected to your own energy right now.

Okay, nice. That’s the point. The point wasn’t for me to make everybody feel like crap, right? It’s like it’s Friday night. We had a hangout. I wasn’t trying to make you cry. I was trying to make you feel. I was trying to remind you that whatever it is that you’re feeling is totally cool.

Totally fine. And if you get honest about it, you are the sexiest person in this room. Okay. Because, you know, I got honest with you about my experience at Whole Foods, and none of you are looking at me being like, wow, she’s lame. I think you probably looked at me. You probably, I hope. And I assume like me even more for sharing my truth with you for saying this was how I felt, this was what I did. This was totally uncool. And I did not like it.

And that’s my truth. And you identify with people’s truth. What people want, what the world wants from you is your truth. What is the most sexy part about you is your truth. And I’m not suggesting that we walk around like, you know, unloading our truth on everybody, but, but there’s something really powerful about having people in your power posse that you can teach that you can unload to.

Okay. When, when, when my group coaching groups come together, the girls will sit down and, and there’s actually a lot of men coming in now. So you’re all welcome. And the, the men, the women will come together and they’ll sit down and it’s a big room. And those that have been around for a little while, and they’ve been doing the work they’ll sit down and one girl will say, how are you feeling?

Other girls say, I feel like shit, right? I feel horrible. I’ve been in my ego. I have been stuck. And in that moment she just releases this whole truth. Because that’s the connection that you have when you have a power posse of spiritual people in your life. When you just say it’s okay to feel whatever you need to feel right now in this moment.

It’s okay. And I just gave you all permission tonight to do that. So if you want to, at the end of this, talk to say, you know what, I don’t feel that great. You will be sharing your truth with somebody else. And that is so beautiful. That is so authentic. And that is genuinely all we want. Be mindful of who you’re sharing with.

If it’s an, a community like this, this is a beautiful wide open space. And the experience of outing our fear is the most important lesson I’ll give you tonight, which is to bring it to the surface and out it. I called my spiritual running buddy last night and I said, O M G I am in, it, told her the Whole Foods story.

I told her another story. I told her all the stories, and by the end we were hysterically laughing. We were laughing, but I’m sitting here thinking I am, I suck. I’m not worth anything. And we were hysterically laughing. It was ridiculous. And that’s really what the Course teaches to laugh at the ego’s tiny, mad idea that there’s nothing more beautiful than your truth.

And so to wrap up my talk, I wanted to just give you the principles that you can take into your life to start to awaken that consciousness and to start to shed that perception of who you thought you should be. And so the first step for everybody is what we’ve begun to do tonight, which is to recognize the story we have told ourselves.

And you know what I’m talking about now. What is the story? What is the pretense? What is the image that you’re placing upon yourself. I welcome you now to become conscious of how, when you’re telling that story, how it makes you feel. So the same way that I said, I feel like I can’t breathe and I talk really fast and all my energy is up in my chest, and I feel disconnected from others.

And there’s this sort of barrier between others. I want you to, in your own self-reflective time, write it all out. What does it feel like when I’m out of alignment? What am I doing? You know, for me, I know I’m out of alignment when I’m talking about how cool I think I am. That is really not who I truly am, who I truly am is someone who genuinely just wants to help a lot of people.

And I know I’m cool because I love myself, but I know everybody else is equally as cool as me, rather than that person who wants to make everybody think I’m cooler. Right? So knowing when you’re acting out, knowing what it feels like when you’re acting out. And this is, A Course in Miracles is the main message throughout this text is to witness your ego, witness your ego, witness your ego, look at your fear.

Look at your fear. Look at your fear and see how you are not aligned. And not judging yourself for it. The Course teaches, do not judge your ego with your ego. So do not judge yourself for it. Get honest with another person, get honest with another individual in your life and just say, this is how I feel.

This is coming up for me. And maybe you established sort of like a relationship with that person that you can out your ego to each other. That once in a while, you can just call each other when you need to and say, this is what my ego is saying. This is what my fear is saying. This is how I’ve been out of alignment.

I just wanted to let you know, and then you can laugh about it. And start to create one of those relationships in your own life. Maybe simply you just have that relationship with your journal, you write it all out and you see how crazy it is and you laugh. It’s crazy. And then really begin to connect with the feeling of authenticity.

So recognizing those moments, like the one that we just had when you were just sitting here in a room full of strangers, feeling whatever it is that you needed to feel, that was your authentic truth. That was your true power. That is your power center. When you were just in it. Recognizing and allowing yourself to be whoever you are, wherever you are in the moment that you need to be there.

Now you may be in your office and you can’t necessarily cry, but you can go back to your desk and you can feel whatever it is you need to feel. And then you can show up for the rest of the day with more of your truth. And so recognizing how it feels to be in your authentic power. And I’d like you to describe that and write that out.

And maybe you just know from this one fleeting moment, this is how it feels to be in my truth and get honest about it. All right. And starting to know the difference is how we can begin to do the dance. And so this is the dance of recognizing am I in my truth or am I out of my truth? And this is the dance that I hope you can play for the rest of your life, because God knows, I am obviously on a mission to live in my authentic power.

I will do everything I can to be as authentic and truthful as I am, but I’ll have plenty of days where I want to tell the world how great I think am. I’ll have plenty of days when that little girl from growing up didn’t feel like people were watching over her.

Didn’t think that people thought she was great and needs to tell everybody I am awesome. Look at me. That girl will show up time and time again, and she will show up frequently or infrequently. It doesn’t matter. But the most important thing is I know what to do when she comes. I know how to let her go. And the way that I know how to let her go first and foremost is because I know the difference between what it feels like to be there versus what it feels like to be here right now.

And so starting to know the difference is a major step for you and then realizing that you are the cool girl and cool guy. Okay. Because I think many of us walk around and I see people shaking their heads. Many of us walk around thinking, well, I don’t have that kind of clothes.

I don’t have that much money, or I don’t have that relationship. I don’t have that. I want you to start looking and celebrating yourselves. What do you have? What are your gifts? One of my best friends was on the phone with me yesterday. And she said, my experience of happiness is when I’m sharing my gifts with the world.

Nice one. What are your gifts that you are here to share and celebrate those gifts? Celebrate those gifts. Are you an artist? Are you a friend who’s a really good listener? Are you an amazing dancer? Are you a great poet? Are you someone who just genuinely loves numbers? What are your gifts? And get honest with yourself and celebrate how great you are.

And then finally, beginning to recognize how much we need your truth. You are. This is serious business. We are in Middle Collegiate Church, a place that is doing amazing work, where they’re awakening spirits every single day. And my mission is much like this church’s mission, which is to wake y’all up because this is not a good time.

There is clearly a lot of negative energy, it’s confusing. And guess what? Those of us who are living in our authentic power, those of us who are on a spiritual path, those of us who are connecting to our truth. We’re the ones who will awaken the light in others. All it takes is a light in one person to wake up the light in someone else.

And so it’s not just about me standing here being your teacher. It’s about you all waking up, so you can go teach everybody in your life. So you can teach your Twitter followers. You can teach your Facebook friends so you can teach your lovers, your partners, your parents, whoever is in your life. So you can be a messenger for a more empowering conversation.

And sometimes all you have to do is just show up with your truth to be teaching. All you have to do is just show up with your truth and you are the most divine teacher in that room. And so there is a need for what they call light workers. I call y’all spirit junkies. There is a need for more spirit junkies in this world.

Right now, there is a massive amount of darkness and we have to combat that darkness with light. So the more of us that wake up, the more people we can wake up around us. So I invite you to join me on my mission. Which is to live in my authentic power, which is to be a power of example for everyone that I meet, which is to take an honest and fearless inventory of my behavior every day.

So I can cleanse myself of that and come back to my truth so I can wake up everybody around me because when you shine bright, people get blinded.
Thank you very much.

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