
The Secret to Manifesting Your Wildest Dreams (Even a $1 Million Dollar Client) with Adam Roa | EP 44
Whether you’re ready to start doing more of what you love, you want to make your dreams your reality, or you want to learn how to handle a breakup, we’ve got it all in today’s episode of the Healing & Human Potential podcast.
We’re sharing insights on how to break through the fear of failure when pursuing your passion and giving you guidance on overcoming comparison and self-doubt. We’ll also unpack how to navigate different relationships so you feel empowered knowing how to use everything for your growth + healing.
Today’s guest, Adam Roa, is a poet, speaker, creator, and has one of the top 5 motivational talks on Facebook of all time with over “250+ Million Views” + he’s sharing all of his best tips, advice, and wisdom with you today!
This episode is full of insightful nuggets to help you clear whatever's been holding you back so you can manifest all that's available to you + start living the life you're called to!
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EPISODE TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
4:23 - Energetic Clean Up Practice
6:48 - Clearing Blocks to Manifest a Million-Dollar Client
11:58 - Are You Really Ready To Have All Your Dreams?
20:50 - Growth Edges as a Business Owner + Leader
25:13 - Alyssa’s Journey to Love
29:01 - “You Are Who You’ve Been Looking For” Poem
34:02 - Becoming The Face of Self-Love Overnight
39:24 - Leaning Into Fear
41:48 - Finding Safety In Your Body to Take a Leap of Faith
50:09 - Using Life As Our Mirror
53:36 - The Gifts In Breaking Up
1:02:08 - The Power of Creativity to Change Society
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GUEST BIO
Adam Roa is an internationally touring poet, coach and speaker who helps people build a fulfilling life through embracing their inner artist and inner entrepreneur. His “Creative Path Podcast” breaks down the creative process of some of the world's most influential people and his viral poem, “You Are Who You’ve Been Looking For" is the most viewed poetry performance in history, seen more than 250 million times.
GUEST LINKS
Instagram: @adam.roa
Facebook: @iamadamroa
Website: http://www.adamroa.com
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Have you watched our previous episode about using relationships as a vehicle to awaken consciously?
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2omfwQcA8Ew
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Want 3 Life-Changing Tools you can use on yourself (or your clients) from inside our Accredited Coaching Certification? Click here to get them for Free: https://www.alyssanobriga.com/tools
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Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - Disclaimer
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. We shall in no event be held liable to any party for any reason arising directly or indirectly for the use or interpretation of the information presented in this video. Copyright 2023, Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - All rights reserved.
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- Instagram: @alyssanobriga
- TikTok - @alyssanobriga
- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6b5s2xbA2d3pETSvYBZ9YR
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Full Transcript
Why can't I not be paid a million dollars? What is it in me that doesn't feel worthy of that?
What were the things in me that were not a match, that could not hold that value, that didn't believe I was worthy of that? Anyway, 12 months later, I was paid a million dollars for my coaching. And so that 12-month process was a process of identifying what were those blocks.
Yeah. And I was at an event and I'm sitting there and I turn around and I look back at this audience, this auditorium, 1500 people.
And I go, I could hold this room. I could hold this room.
And I close my eyes very intentionally. And I say, I can do this.
I want this. And I felt it.
The next day I was brought on stage randomly. That recording of that was ultimately the thing that went viral.
It's the most viral poetry performance in history. It has been viewed over 250 million times.
The dreams that you have, there's a reason you don't have them yet. Why? And when you can identify why you're not ready for it yet, then you start doing the work to get ready for it.
Once you are ready, the universe is going to give it to you. Welcome.
I'm Alyssa Nobrega, your host of the Healing and Human Potential podcast. A place for you to discover the multidimensionality of what it means to be human.
Over the past 20 years, I've trained thousands of coaches in my methodology, leveraging my experience as a former psychotherapist, and I'm here to share with you all the wisdom and insights that I've learned along the way. Each week, I'll share with you life-changing tools to support you in awakening and manifesting your dream life from the inside out.
We'll be exploring the intersection between ancient wisdom and modern everyday life, really diving deep into the art of human potential through the lens of psychology, spirituality, and coaching. Let's let the magic unfold.
Whether you're starting out on your creative journey or you're wanting to handle a breakup, we've got it all in today's episode. So we're going to share insights on how to move through the fear of failure when you're pursuing your passions.
We'll also unpack how to navigate different relationships so you feel empowered knowing how to use everything for your growth and your healing. Today's guest is Adam Roa, who is a speaker, creator, and poet, and he has one of the top motivational talks on Facebook of all time, and he's sharing his best tips, advice, and wisdom with you today.
I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you for having me.
So good. I want to dive right into talking about this fear of being seen, aka fear of being judged, because I think one of the things that holds people and creatives back from sharing their gifts, sharing their art in the world is this fear.
And I know you had like a lot of growth almost overnight. And from what I understand, and you can fill in the blanks, also got sick right afterwards.
I'm curious to hear a little bit about what your learnings from that experience was having gone through it and what we can learn from it. Yeah.
So you're, you're referencing my poem. You are who you've been looking for.
And so it's the most viral poetry performance in history. It has been viewed over 250 million times.
Wow. And it got viewed 40 million times in the first 48 hours.
So it just overnight went bananas. And, uh, yeah, I broke down my body completely broke down.
And the way I describe it is you ever have that experience where you're thinking about someone and then they call you or text you, right? We've all had that experience. And have you ever had the experience of just feeling like someone's looking at you and you look and you catch someone's eyes and they're looking at you? So we are connected.
We moments of connection and so you could imagine what that would do if you took 40 million people and they put it in a short amount of time a very short amount of time and my body broke down and so that really helped me tune into and understand in a very visceral way the um social media dynamic of having eyes on you. And what does that mean to put yourself out there? I mean, you put out so much content and I put out so much content and those are new eyes.
There are new people becoming aware of you every single day. Lots of energy.
A lot of energy. And so ultimately what it led to was needing to tighten up my energetic practices and energetic cleanup.
Yeah. I like this.
Tell me more about how you did that or what some takeaways were from that. Yeah.
So every single night before I go to bed, now I smudge, which is Palo Santo sage or some sort of spray. I use Florida water.
Okay. Yeah.
There you go. And so, and intentionally cleaning and, and removing that, especially before you go to sleep and you go into kind of the astral realm where your body's going to be the number of people who message me and say, you came to me in my dreams.
I don't know if that's the same for you. I get a lot of those messages.
And so before I go and do the astral work while I'm sleeping, really cleaning that up. And, um, and then also before I go on stages, after I come off of stages, any sort of public appearances, that sort of thing, it's really important for me to reground.
And, uh, I don't think I was doing that as adamantly before, but to, once you have an experience, I, I, when the poem went viral and I got sick, I meant I couldn't see, have any light. I had to completely black out my room and laid in bed and just was like shivering and shaking for days.
So it was really intense. So, so it really, um, has helped me tighten up and pay attention to my energetic practices.
What are some of the grounding practices that you do? Feet in the earth. Yeah.
Feet in the earth is one of the clearest ones. Like a daily practice.
Yeah. I like every morning I try and put my feet into the grass and greet the sun.
Let the sun be on my body. And I'm currently working with the sun as just an energy in my life.
So yeah, waking up and greeting father, son. Water is a really good one.
I'm big on baths. And so baths, showers, if you just need a reset, I think water's a really great one if If you have the ocean, you have the salt water is huge.
The best. But any other grounding practices that are really important? And then just, I think it's sometimes just really grounding just to connect to your body.
Stretch, move, dance, whatever it is to get you back into your body because that's really what that grounding is too, is how do we get back into to our bodies in that way yeah i'm also curious how you feel like you became an emotional or energetic match to call in such a quantum leap experience for people that may want to be manifesting a great jump in their life like what what do you feel like you did to call that in if you feel like like, well, I've had a couple of them, right? Cause, um, the other one was when I got paid a million dollars for my coaching. So that was like an, Oh, like that was a very quick five day, uh, experience.
So I, I think I talked to us about that before you move on. Um, yeah, had, um, so I have a new podcast called the creative path.
We were just talking about that. Uh, before that podcast, I was doing some, a podcast called the deep dive and I had someone on, um, who had been paid a million dollars for coaching.
And I sat across from her and I said, I have no idea how you tell someone with a straight face. It's a million dollars to coach with you.
I can tell in my body, I can't hold that. And she left after that podcast.
And I remember just being really bothered that. And I thought, why, why can't I not be paid a million? What, what is it in me that doesn't feel worthy of that? Good question.
And, um, anyway, 12 months later, I was paid a million dollars for my coaching.
And so that 12-month process was a process of identifying what were those blocks? What were the things in me that were not a match, that could not hold that value, that didn't believe I was worthy of that? Yeah. and starting to move that, that led to identifying a lot of my fears and doubts around money and insecurities around that.
That led to a huge period of time where I was working on my sexual abuse because that had been, I was molested when I was five. That was a repressed memory until I was 30.
And so I had 25 years of shaping my beliefs about life that were done in a way that actually weren't aligned. They were, they were deeply infiltrated by a trauma.
And so, um, that led to six months of somatic sexual healing work and that, and all of these things that had been deeply impacting my level of self-worth and the value that I perceived about myself. And lo and behold, within 12 months of, of that, there's the, the million dollar client that comes in.
So, um, that was for a one-on-one oneyear contract. And when you talk about the poem going viral,
I remember at the time I had been touring Australia
with a spoken word poetry show called Permission to Think Freely.
I lost money on that tour.
I had no social media following.
I had less than 5,000 followers.
You put it together.
You were touring.
I put it together myself.
Good for you.
I toured.
I brought my friend on the road with me to be my opening musical act i just like leveraged everything and some of the smallest shows were maybe 25 people yeah people to travel to australia places to do this yeah and so um to shorten the story i was at an event with kyle cease he he had an event called Evolving Out Loud. He's like a spiritual comedian, just for people.
Spiritual comedian. I really like him.
Yeah, he's lovely. He's lovely.
And he had this event, and I'm sitting there, and I turn around, because I was invited. I was a guest, so I was in the second row.
And I turn around, and I look back at this audience it's auditorium 1500 people and I go I could hold this room I could hold this room and I close my eyes very intentionally and I say I can do this I want this and I felt it I felt it in my body and the next day I was brought on stage randomly. He called me on stage, not knowing that it was me and invited me to do this poem.
And that poem was ultimately what that recording of that was ultimately the thing that went viral and, and did 250 million views. And so this has been a long winded way of answering two different questions.
But I think that why that poem went viral is because I was ready when life presented me the opportunity. And so I had been investing, losing money to do something that made no business sense at all to tour this show.
And so by the time I'm pulled on stage, it was memorized. I'd been practicing.
I was ready. I had actually envisioned holding that auditorium of people.
I had been holding auditoriums of much smaller amounts, but they were my own shows for two hours. And so I was ready.
And the same thing with the million dollar client. Sure, the million dollars came in super fast, but I did 12 months of getting ready when I was examining, when I first had the realization I wasn't ready.
And I think that for people listening to this, the dreams that you have, there's a reason you don't have them yet. why and And when you can identify why you're not ready for it yet, then you start doing the work to get ready for it.
Once you are ready, the universe is going to give it to you. And so that's kind of the process.
I hope that answers the question. No, it does.
And I'll share also some of the nuggets that I'm hearing to help highlight too. So what I hear is you energetic, well, for one, you were all in, you went all in on going on tour, not waiting for somebody to say, here you go, but actually creating your own permission slip.
And you energetically were also calling it in, manifesting it and knowing that you could hold it energetically. And you did the inner work to get clear and free along the way.
So I also, I just want to highlight that for people because then it's a learning for people like,
oh, I can do this too.
Yeah, it's an inner work and an outer work.
That's right.
And I think that today I was doing an Instagram live
and there was someone who was so in the vision,
like her vision was so big and she wanted to do this and this
and she could see how this book she was going to write could become a children's, like not movie and all these things. Right.
And then I broke it down into, okay, what are the next steps? And then there was all this resistance that comes up into the actionable steps. And it's interesting because I reflected to her, it's safer for you to be in the vision.
That's right.
Because the vision you have no resistance to. But the moment it becomes time to take action on that, steps one, two, three, that's where all your fears, doubts, insecurities are, you really have to face off with them because now you're facing off with actually moving in the direction of your vision instead of just being able to have the vision without any accountability.
And I think that this process of actualizing our dreams is one in which we have to become radically self-honest to what's in the way. There's a reason we don't have it yet.
What's in the way? And we have to be radically self-honest and then overcome that through action. That's right.
The action is so important. This is why I moved from therapy to coaching.
And then there's a place for therapy. And I loved being a psychotherapist for me, a real healing is a change of behavior.
And so like you're saying, you have a vision that you put it into place, an action plan, anything that's unresolved comes up so you can clear it to then manifest and step into what it is you want. So I love that you're speaking to that.
I think we very much align. And I also just want to normalize if people are like, all this stuff's coming up, that's normal.
That's a part of it. And the courage that you had to still keep moving forward is what helped you step into your dreams.
Well, I think that we need mirrors in order for us to see what's in the way. We need mirrors to see our obstacles and everything can be a mirror, right? Our relationships, plant medicine, breath work, whatever it is that can reveal through sort of the physiological changes in our mind that allow for us to see different patterns than we couldn't see before.
And I think in the new age sort of spiritual world, there's been a bit of a bypass on the very human take action. Yep.
Taking action towards your dreams, taking action towards your goals are the things like those action steps are going to reveal your resistance. They're going to reveal where you're not yet a match to it.
They're going to reveal where you need more skills or you need more resources or you just need more experience. Yeah, exactly.
And so I'm, I'm really big in, in both of those areas. And I think, yeah, I've just seen this, this bypass of a lot of the action and like, let's just manifest what we want by
talking about it and dreaming about it and having a cacao ceremony.
Totally. I think we pendulumed.
I think there was this hustle culture that people started being like,
no, thank you. And then went into the inner work, but then sort of bypassing the outer work.
And
it's the integration, the balance of being and doing human and being yes. And, and so I love
that we meet in this integration and that it's the self-care is not just like, let me go to the
beach, but it's like, how can I be compassionate with myself while I'm moving my feet, while I'm taking steps towards the things that I want? Imagine having a fulfilling career, doing what you love, working from anywhere in the world, setting your own hours while making good money and a big impact. If that lights you up, then I'm super excited to share with you today's sponsor, the Institute for Coaching Mastery.
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And so whether you want to do your own personal development, you're wanting to become a coach, or you're just looking for a cutting edge approach to really grow your business, the Institute for Coaching Mastery is for you. You are held every single step of the way.
And so if you want to get behind the scenes access to the Institute with three proven transformational tools for free to help you create the business and life you love, All you have to do is go to alistanobriga.com forward slash tools, or you can find us at alistanobriga.com forward slash apply now to see all the details and apply today. Well, let me ask you a question.
Have you found, because I used to speak from a place of it doesn't have to be hard. Yes.
It can, it can actually be very much in flow and it can feel easy. And I found that to be true when my vision was smaller.
So basically when I was coaching, I was doing six figures as a coach for many, many years. It felt very effortless.
I got to share authentically, whatever the moment that it became, okay, now I have a vision of building a big, like vision of a big business, global impact employees, like the whole thing. Then it became hard.
And I, I coach a number of founders and I don't know a single one that doesn't say it's hard. It is really hard.
And every entrepreneur I know is really in that space. And so it didn't feel hard until the vision grew.
And I'm just curious for you around your relationship to the actual building of something and how hard or easy or in flow or effortless it might feel. Totally.
Yeah. You know, as you're asking the question, I'm reflecting on when I got into coaching, I did very well, very quickly and it was easy.
And yet I like growth and I like challenge and I wanted to move my business online. So in 2017, I moved my business online and that was a bit harder because, and so at the, but the harder I think is the inner work to clear, to be able to align with the skills and move through the fears to arrive at the next level.
And so I think that the, yes, having a bigger vision can be harder, but I also think, you know, we have competing desires. So we say we want to grow our business, but we're afraid of being seen, or we say we want love, but then we're afraid of getting hurt.
So we've got this competition inside with these two parts.
And so doing some of the inner work can make it easier, but it doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
And I do think that there are ways to align with flow and zone of genius and stuff.
And I also know that there's going to be times where there will be growing pains and we have
to be able to keep optimizing for letting it be easy, but also being honest about putting in the work and developing our skills and really going all in for what we want. But I agree.
I think the bigger the vision, it will call forward the things that we need to look at within ourselves to get free and get the skills to really be able to manage a team. I know we were talking at a friend's house and it's like growing a company for me has been initiation.
And so, you know, learning through hiring and managing and also learning to delegate and let myself receive, those are the things that were hard for me. Making money, serving, like building a program that I know deeply and profoundly changes people's lives, easy.
So we all have different skill sets. And I don't think, I think we're both, I think a lot of people, us us and people listening to this are growth oriented and so there's always going to be another edge that we grow towards and so having the capacity to just learn to navigate the inner world while we're also just learning the skills makes it a lot easier along the way yeah i remember that conversation i think i was sharing with you how my growth as edge at the time was becoming a better leader yeah really transitioning from okay I'm I'm great as me and maybe two people or whatever yeah but when it becomes nine people and I'm not directly speaking to each person every day uh how do I need to evolve as a leader in order to hold that? And I think that's a tiny microcosm of just life in general, that whether you become a parent, you hire more people, you have this health dynamic in your own life, and you have to become more in tune with your body and your digestion or whatever it is.
There's always this edge. And I think one of the most powerful things that I've seen in all the successful people that I know is that they're able to identify that edge and they're willing to go into it and become better at that particular thing.
That's right. The courage to lean in.
Right. Yeah.
And I think it's buffaloes who actually move towards the storm to get through it because they know and sort of that resistance, the storm, most people opt out, but they don't realize that if you avoid, it just postpones. And so through testing and being willing to experiment, it's like, oh, actually if I lean in and if I have the right tools, it's so much easier.
And then it gets lighter and I get, it's almost like my life is freer because I have more that I can hold. And then I feel like I trust myself to go to the next level.
It's a lot easier. Yeah.
I use the analogy of going to the gym. We go to the gym to get stronger.
We lift weights that are right at the edge of what we can lift. And no one gets mad at the weights.
You know what I mean? I go to the gym, I go, it's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be heavy.
And then that's how I get stronger.
And we have this association.
Meanwhile, we go out into life and we face this new skill that we have to learn.
And it's hard and it's difficult.
And yet people rage against it and complain about it.
Totally.
I'm going, no, you don't know how to show up as the partner that in your romantic partnership, you don't know how to be that person for your wife right now. And that's okay.
That's right. What you feel is the emotional equivalent of trying to lift something that is really heavy and you will get stronger as you continue to go back and lift it over and over and over again.
But if you go to the gym and every time you try and lift weights, you're upset at the weights and you're screaming at the weights and you're saying this is stupid and you're not doing it. That's going to be one, an awful experience.
Two, you're going to get suboptimal results. And yet we do that so much in every other area of our lives, it seems like.
And so I think just reframing it for people about what it's supposed to, quote unquote, feel like. I love that because then their mindset is expecting it and having more of a welcoming relationship with it.
Like, yeah, it's hard. It's going to be hard.
And then it'll get easier. I'll have that muscle memory.
Yeah. Yeah.
I say this very easily while yesterday I was like in tears, having like a mental health crisis, had to go on a two and a half mile run for totally out so totally good I love it being real because totally we can low it and then we learn it and it's like three steps forward two steps back it's okay I literally have a glucose monitor in my arm because I'm trying to track mental emotional states to glucose levels right now like just for my own interest and so like that's the level at which I'm constantly trying to figure out how to just you know be in love with life as much as possible it's beautiful yeah yeah okay so something you don't know is in 2008 I did a documentary called you're the one you've been waiting for huh and I I was learning I was in a spiritual master's program in spiritual psychology and I I really took nine months to date myself, to not outsource love, to discover what is the source of love as my true nature and not project unconsciously onto men or anyone else. And I did a lot of healing work around my mom, who was a more challenging relationship for me growing up, although she's an angel and I had her on the podcast.
It was just where my work was. And so I looked at, and I was always in relationship.
So that was my nine months to just be with myself and discover what that was like. And I didn't feel, I was a student.
I didn't feel like I could speak to it yet. And what I was discovering was changing my life.
So I wanted to share it with people. And I created a documentary.
I signed up for film school in Los Angeles, got a camera, had Neil Donald Walsh, the founders of the university. You filmed it? Yeah.
I filmed it. I edited it.
It was just like my way of being like, and I really love media. And I think transformational entertainment is where it's at and where we're moving towards.
I wanted to be a part of the conversation to help shift humanity through a narrative that I knew would go scale. And so ironically, my husband, this is a side story, but my husband had a media company doing mainstream media.
And I met him while I was producing and creating this. We started working together.
I was doing the inner work to really embody and know that,
although he was a friend at first and he ended up hiring me later to bring more consciousness to mainstream media. That's how we connected.
And we were just friends, quote unquote. And then obviously it turned into something else.
I mean, what is the quote on what is we were working together and, and then it became something much deeper. Yeah.
So I think he saw that right away. I didn't.
Yeah. And so I was doing the inner work and I, it was so empowering for me to know that I didn't, it was, I didn't need anyone.
There was no projection of an egoic love that I am the source of it. And because that is who and what I am, I can't get it from someone.
I can't lose it. It was an embodiment of freedom.
I've not really shared some of this. And later I become a couples therapist.
But I don't remember what year it was. A few years later, my mom sends me a link of this poem, and it's yours.
And this is very much aligned with my audience. And I took it from the Hopi tribe, their, their poem
around, you're the one you've been waiting for. For me, it was about sharing with people what I had discovered, but I didn't feel like I was embodied in the integration of it.
So I was like, it doesn't matter whose it is. Let me share this.
So I pieced it together. I'll put it in the show notes for people to watch.
You know, it was, you know, give a little bit of grace. I love, I want to see it.
And what's crazy crazy because you were talking about dating yourself. I have a online course that's called five days of dating yourself.
So we're just meant to be best friends. Yeah.
There's so much alignment, truly. There's so much alignment in what we stand for and how we live.
You from like a different lens, but we go to the same route a hundred percent. And I imagine having one of like having a poem go viral.
You're kind of like, this is one of my greatest hits, and I'm kind of done sharing it. But I would love if you're open to sharing a little piece of it so people can feel the magic of what this evokes within them.
And we can share anything that you want to share. But this is such a stand for the work that I do and the work that we do here to help them feel who and what they are beyond anything outside of themselves.
Wow. Well, thank you for telling me that.
I love that so much. And I'd be happy to share the poem.
Every time, while it is, yes, a greatest hit sort of thing, it's also, every time I'm invited to share it, it's for me.
You know, I told you yesterday was a really hard day, actually, for just emotionally for me.
And so, yeah, it's probably what I need in this moment.
So I appreciate the invitation.
You're beautiful.
All right.
So this poem is called You Are Who You've Been Looking For.
And if everyone could take a nice deep inhale. You are who you've been looking for.
So stop looking for more unless you're looking in a mirror because it's about time for you to see clearly that you are who you've been looking for. And that empty feeling you got, that hole in your chest, you only got that feeling because you think you're not blessed with everything you need.
You see, we live in a consumerist society, which means they need you to buy stuff. And the easiest way to sell it is to tell you you're not enough.
Buy this car, you'll get girls. Buy this bra, you'll get guys.
And we're seeing it so much that we start believing these lies. But the truth is, the makeup they're selling to make you feel prettier is the same makeup you buy to stop feeling shittier about this lie they keep telling you that you are not enough.
And what about the movies we watch, all the shows on TV? The more I watch, the more I see, I need you to complete me. And yes, love is the answer.
Love is the key. But if you can't love yourself, how could you ever love me? And loving yourself, what does that even mean? Like massages and selfies and that sort of thing? Because the more I think about it, the more it feels weird.
I've always thought self-love was something to be feared. I've been taught that arrogance is bad and vanity, it's not good.
And even my bracelets are telling me to act how Jesus would. So what should I do? How should I act? I'm supposed to love myself, but how do I even do that? Well, I got a trick that I picked up from a friend who noticed that I was quick to defend her when she would say something negative about herself.
She'd say, I'm so dumb. And I'd say, you're so brilliant.
She'd say, I'm so weak. And I'd say you're so resilient.
And when she said I feel ugly, and I said you look beautiful, she asked me why I was so dutifully filling up her cup constantly, and yet treating my own cup so irresponsibly. Because when I looked in the mirror, my voice was quite clear.
You're ugly, you're too thin, your hairline's receding, and you got a pimple on your chin. And that was when she gave me a piece of advice that changed my life.
She gave me a hug. And she said, treat yourself like someone you love.
Treat yourself like someone you love. And now I had been standing, but I needed to be sitting because I couldn't believe that I had been letting myself keep forgetting that I was who I'd been looking for.
And deep in my core, I knew it was time to stop looking for more until I could look through all my fear and look into a mirror and see clearly that the man looking back at me is the only one who can make me happy and I am already enough. And I'm not any more special or unique than you.
That's why I'm here to speak to you. You are already enough.
And when you start to see that, you will start to be that. Your world will get brighter.
Your load will get lighter. And you can see that with life.
You can be a lover, not a fighter. And that life, you deserve it because you are worth it.
And there's no point in letting yourself keep forgetting because no matter what you say or do, you are perfect. And so today I hope I leave you with a direction correction, away from the flaws you see in your reflection.
They aren't flaws to me, they are simply protection against all the doubts you have of your perfection. So start today.
Take a good long look in the mirror and say, I am who I've been looking for. Oh, wow.
The transmission of that is potent. Thank you.
Yeah, really, really blessed that I was gifted it. My goodness.
For so much of society that says look outward and just this U-turn back to ourselves, even with, I mean, I was imagining myself looking in the mirror. And I've been actually been called to do more mirror work, like really soul gazing, look deep in the mirror, not at the pimples, but like at who I am beyond, you know, what is looking, you know, to really inquire.
And I'm, I'm still taking that in. It's so beautiful.
Thank you for that. Yeah.
Thank you for the space. It's, it's, I feel emotion in my system because I've, I've been so hard on myself recently.
Um, and like, I have some pimples on my face right now from so much
stress and just all these things. And I've, um, yeah, just noticing even now, as I say that going,
wow, I've been really hard on myself these last, these last couple of weeks. And, um, you know,
when that poem went viral, I overnight received hundreds hundreds if not thousands of messages and DMS right yeah and most of them are just saying thank you yeah I loved this I sent this to my mom or my dad and that was amazing but I would say about 20% of them early on were people who were deeply hurting yeah people who were messaging me and me and saying, I'm suicidal. I'm thinking about killing myself.
I don't know how to love myself. Please help me.
Can you, what should I do? And I didn't know what to say. And here I was suddenly overnight, sort of like this face for self love.
And when people were actually asking for help I didn't know what to say and so following that poem going viral I dropped into a really deep depression for almost a year and why that's coming up for me now is because one of the things that I did during that time to get me out of that was a lot of naked mirror work and just standing completely naked in front of a mirror and talking to myself. Yeah.
And, um, the amount of love that I had to learn how to pour into myself during that time to pull myself out of it was really intense. And in a, in a funny, beautiful, synchronistic way, the poem about self-love was what taught me how to love myself.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I, I feel like anything that we talk about and it sort of highlights anything that's unresolved so that we can embody the teaching more fully and serve others from the overflow.
Right. And our mess becomes our message, as they say, right? Yeah.
And I think you and I both really resonate with this, I imagine, but, you know, welcoming all parts of ourselves, like that's the way we are the medicine. And so if there's a part of us that is critical, it's just a story.
It's not who we are. And by loving that story, we feel our wholeness.
So rather than judging that part, identifying with that part, oh, that part of me is trying to protect me or make sure that I do X, Y, and Z, I am perfect so that then I'm safe, so that then I'm loved. And rather than than outsourcing it we can really insource it by welcoming that part directly and thanking it and ironically it feels whole it feels integrated in our system and then we do things differently moving forward yeah and i think that the balance or the the struggle sometimes is the acceptance and integration of our parts while simultaneously desiring for more or for a shift.
This, this balance between full just presence to what is and saying, wow, I have everything that I need. I am fully resourced.
I'm fully capable. I am, I am amazing.
And I want to be better here and I want to show up better in my relationship or in my business or whatever. And I know I have growth to do.
And so that dichotomy of, of inhale, exhale, expansion and being, being and becoming. Yeah.
Like that is the beautiful sort of journey that I think we're all kind of learning how to navigate. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
And remind people that when we talk about being in balance, I don't actually personally feel that being in balance is a center point that we are in at any given point in time. I don't see it that way.
I see when you were to look back on your life or the last year, have you been able to navigate the ebbs and flows in a way that you've more or less been able to kind of like bumpers in a bowling alley, right? It like hits one and you're like, Oh, I went too far here. I use this analogy all the time.
There's so many synchronicities I just have to say, but keep going. Yes.
It's, there's no balance. And what I would say is also the part that wants to grow is still a part.
Like who we are in our essence is presence, is acceptance, is... My favorite quote is from St.
Francis of Assisi. He says, what you're looking for is what's looking, is what's doing the looking.
And so that's being and the part that wants to grow i love
that part of me and that's a part right so it's like i i'm so there's a divine design within that where it's like oh it calls me forward to keep doing some of the healing keep expressing keep exploring um but not not to identify or judge right because for a long time i would judge those parts or try to heal them or try to change them rather than just fully accept them and then trust the divine intelligence within them. So, because I love pushing edges.
I think you and I are similar where there'll be something that, you know, every year I'll try to look at a different, at least I'll look at a different area of my life that I have edges with and I'll move towards it for greater levels of freedom. Or because I haven't looked at sexuality or health, like I really was into relationships and healing and business.
Those are my kind of expertise and specialties. But then personally, I'll explore, you know, different things in service to having greater freedom.
Yeah, I think we are similar in that way, where me, the way that I, I describe it is the moment I find a fear or limitation, I have to break through it. Yeah.
I can't say, because the moment I found it, I feel that every single day that passes that I've just allowed it to just be on a dress. It's moving me further away from where I actually want to go.
So whether that's sexuality or business or health or whatever, the moment I find a limitation or there's a fear, and this shows up in some really difficult ways sometimes because I say I will never make a decision out of fear knowingly. So there be decisions I make and I look back and go wow that was a fear-based decision but if I know that this decision is fear here I will not make it and that has that's really confront that sounds great conceptually but like legitimately there are so like the moment I know that I'm scared to end a relationship that I've been in for a year and it's because I'm afraid to be alone and I identify that or I'm afraid, whatever I go, I have to like end it now.
I have to end it now because I've just identified and I don't want to take another step away from my true alignment. It's that same, a ship that's one degree off course, you know, it's going to wind up way far from its destination over time.
And I feel like when we look at where we want to wind up in our lives, the longer we walk down a path that is not aligned and we know it and we feel it, the harder it's going to be to realign. And so many people sit in relationships that are toxic, in jobs that they hate, live in places they know are not where they're meant to be.
All of these decisions that they continue to walk down those paths out of fear, not realizing they're making it harder on themselves every single day. And so that is a commitment that I have to myself that I really do honor.
And the hard part for me is when I don't know whether it's fear or not, like that's the hard part. But yeah, I have that commitment for myself.
I love that. And I'm thinking of somebody jumping off a cliff, like the longer you're up there, the harder that choice is.
And what I found really helpful is
offering myself a lot of safety to be able to jump so that I, you know, I can insource that
safety so that I, those parts of me don't flip out as much. And then the leap is easier.
What does that look like? So like, um, I, part of my methodology is more integrative. So I do somatic work, really breathing into the sensation that's contracted being within the body.
It may be questioning what that fear is. Like, can I really know the validity of that fear? Like really sitting in the powers in the stillness, not the answer.
Um, unconscious reprogramming. Sometimes I'll say, what do I fear would happen if I got the goal? And then I highlight all the resistance that is unconscious.
So it's like, oh, if I got the goal, then I'd be working more and I'd be away from my family. So like there's an integrative process that I do.
It's very existential kink. Yeah.
Yeah. So her, yeah.
And I just discovered some of her work. I mean, she actually, I think took it a little bit from Gay Hendricks, kind of with the source of stuff I've had on the podcast.
He's great. And I don't know where she came from, you know, but just that's, I really enjoy his work as well.
But, you know, a big thing for people, creatives especially, is this fear of failure. Like they want to share their gifts.
They want to go for it. But there's this fear of failing.
And I'm curious what advice you would have for people around that. I know for me, anything that we haven't forgiven from the past, we project into the future.
So if we feel like we failed at something, we're going to hold ourselves back. We're going to be hesitant to go all in.
Most people, I think you and I are a little cut different because we move towards instead of move away from. But for a lot of people, you know, if they feel like they failed at something, they'll unconsciously try to protect themselves from pain so that they don't experience that pain again.
And part of the work that I would do as an example would be to go back to that moment where we quote unquote failed and to take our power back from not only the narrative but to see that i'm not a failure maybe my process failed but what can i learn from that how can i forgive those judgments and help set myself up to be even more successful moving forward so that's like one way that would be integrative in the way that i work with people in a mastery method way so but this fear of failure is a big one for people. They want to
go towards it, but they're scared. What do you advise for people like that? Well, I think that the first part is somewhat semantic of just what is someone's definition of failure and what is someone's definition of success? Because that right there is where ultimately we make the meaning.
And oftentimes just changing the definition changes our entire relationship to it. And so for me, the number of things that did not have the external results that I had hoped for are too many to count.
The vast majority, for every like for everything that anyone sees me doing that they're like, wow, he's done this or this or this. There's 10 other things that I did or I tried that you never heard of.
And there's a reason because it either wasn't good enough. It wasn't this or it wasn't like, and, but you have a comfortable relationship with failure is what I hear.
But, and I, but I also know not defining who you are with failure is important. Yeah.
I think that's, I think you're a hundred percent spot on. And I think there's ways that I'm still getting better at that.
There's ways in which my past quote unquote failures are still shaping how I'm viewing things. But I look at it the way that I relate to it is my fear of failure is the thing that has me double check all my work.
My fear of failure is the thing that has me practice memorizing my poems every day over and over and over again for a week leading up to any event. My fear of failure is the thing that has me call up my friends and be like, Hey, can I run this idea by you? It's the thing that has me hire coaches and therapists.
And like that, I, I think that I've just, I'm not fighting the part of me that fears failing. I've embraced that as a healthy push towards being my best.
And that is actually my barometer for success because there are going to be so many things that I try that I'm not actually good enough to, to do at the level I want to do it. And there are so many times where I reach and I don't get to the, how good I want to go, but I got better.
And my success, when you look at it is not overnight. There's a moment where the poem went viral.
There's a moment where my coaching went to a whole next level. There's a moment of these things, but growth for everyone.
I know it looks like a staircase, not actually linear. You go through these periods of time where you are being asked to integrate these lessons and become better.
And during that period of time, it can feel like nothing's working, nothing's moving. Again, we're trying to get stronger by lifting weight that's too heavy for us.
And that's a period of time where you are asked to integrate a new way of being become a better
leader become a better partner increase your somatic bodies capacity to hold things all of that and then at a certain point and this is beyond my comprehension but there's something mystical magical where the universe goes oh you're ready now yeah and there's a huge something that happens. Your offer that you just launched takes off far beyond what you ever thought a poem goes viral someone pays you more than you ever imagined whatever that is and I've seen that pretty consistently for most people that I know where the things that they thought were gonna be the biggest hits aren't necessarily the expectation Exactly, but something else did.
And I just think that our job is to keep showing up, to keep growing, to keep taking the lessons and let go of the attachment of how the abundance comes to us and how the growth comes to us. Because all we're supposed to do is follow that scavenger hunt that God is leaving clues of how to get to where our soul has called us towards in this life.
It's beautiful. I love that you see the failure is what has you, calls you forward into your excellence.
Like you're seeing the gifts in it and that it's not in opposition to success. It's part of it.
It's part of the other side of the coin. And I think that's a beautiful reframe that people can take that gets them to change the relationship with the failure and to let go of the timelines, the expectations, and to keep learning from it.
There's a book called Mastery. I love that book.
It's Robert Greene, right? I think it is. And it talks about, we think it's a plateau.
Maybe we start self-doubting and we get into our heads about it, but really that's a natural point before the staircase spike.
And most people want to give up at that plateau or where there's the hardest setbacks is right.
Like the breakdown is right before the breakthrough.
And so there's, I think, normalizing some of this and giving ourselves a little bit
more of that grit to sustain and to have the tools inside of ourselves to not make it such
a hard thing.
It's like, I'm just going to the gym right now.
And then we spike. Right.
And also recognizing that really you only failed if you quit. Right.
Until, until, until that point, you're, you're just in the process. You're in the learning.
You're in the learning. You're in the process.
You're in the skill acquisition. You're in like, you are in the process, no matter how many things you've tried and it hasn't worked, that's iteration.
And so you're just actually trying and you are in the process. It's a, it's, I think people quit and then they say they failed.
Well, at that point, maybe you could say you failed because you stopped. Yeah.
That's the only time that I would see or say that. Or you didn't get the learning or you blamed or, you know, cause I could see the only version of quitting if it was just genuinely out of alignment and not true.
But I think, yeah, a hundred percent. It's like, it's all part of it.
And to trust the process a bit more and to let go. So let's move over to relationships a little bit.
Okay. My favorite topic.
Okay, good. Creativity and relationships.
Yes. So I know me too, business and love and relationships.
So you and I both subscribe to life as a mirror. And my experience is when we're unconscious to something, life will show us where we need to get free.
Life will show us by revealing a situation. And it can very often happen in relationship, but every aspect of our life.
Is there a certain example where you were unconscious in a pattern relationally and life showed you and by doing some of the inner work and whether you worked it out with them externally, but doing some of the inner work, it shifted on the outside. Oh, I mean, there must be so, there's so.
You're like, am I everyday life? Yeah. Yeah.
So many. So one big one in relationship, I have a poem called Us.
The poem is about that it birthed because I was in this relationship and then we broke up and I was so torn apart by this breakup because I'd spent the entire
relationship trying to prove how much I love this person. I spent, I went out of my way tirelessly to put energy towards doing things for her and helping her and like trying to elevate her and, and all of these things.
and I realized in hindsight that I was so busy doing so busy, trying so busy, proving that I hadn't created the space to really listen. And because I hadn't created the space to listen, I wasn't able to attune to her.
And because I wasn't attuned to her, I missed certain things, certain signs, certain pieces that were way bigger deals to her that I would have seen. And so there wasn't anything necessarily wrong.
My love language primarily is acts of service. So it was just heightening that.
But where was the come from? The come from was a need to prove my love because deep down I didn't actually feel truly just embodied and worthy of it. And didn't think that I could just be be me and that was enough.
I had to prove. And that led to the dominoes of not actually creating the space for what she truly needed.
Yeah. And so, um, yeah.
And then I, I take those lessons and I turn them into poetry and art. And is poetry and art help? Is that what helps you transform it and do some of the deeper work within you? It's a huge part of it.
Absolutely. I see creativity as the most effective and efficient and sustainable personal development modality we have.
I love that. I 100% believe that.
I think that it is the way in which we are able to process, repattern, grow, align, integrate in a way that is completely free and also entirely coded to the uniqueness of each individual. It is your creative energy, which is ultimately your life force energy, which is the thing that beats your heart and breathes your lungs.
It is your soul's signature. And so allowing that to be the mirror for you is, I think, more effective than anything else.
I also know you talk about the art of breakup. Talk to us about this a little bit.
I had to learn these ones. So.
So the art of breaking up, uh, is a course that, that I created. And the reason is because I think most people misunderstand what is happening during the breakup process.
Um, a couple of things, one understanding, first of all, that a breakup is one of the only times similar to death that you have your past present and future all dissolve and change meaning simultaneously so say you get in a car accident well you're like present and your future might shift but when you have a breakup you're present in your future obviously shift but also the entire meaning of your past has just shifted. Your entire three years, five years, you were with someone, all of the conversations, all of the, all of the events that happened between you were leading to a breakup.
So it just is a different lens on how you view everything. And so your past, present and future dissolve simultaneously, which is super scary, just like a death can be.
And it's a huge opportunity because it's a blank canvas, depending on the stories you tell. And most people, when they go through a breakup, their goal is to move on.
Right. And that's great.
But what does that mean? What is, what is moving on actually mean? Well, there's an energetic frequency that keeps the two of you in relationship. And you played that out to a certain point and then it no longer works.
So you broke up. The process of moving on is not about forgetting someone.
It's not about letting it go. It's not about any of that.
The process of moving on is taking the lessons, integrating them into an embodied state so that your frequency actually shifts so that that new frequency that you have is actually not a match to the frequency of your old partner. And so you naturally will not be desiring or attracted to or wanting your old partner partner because your frequency has shifted internally.
And now when people get back together, it's because that shift has has happened and then their partner has done that as well and the shift your two frequencies now are actually more aligned this is like one in 20 probably but like more aligned and you come back together the people who get back together too early without doing the work they're actually going to just find themselves in the same exact thing. And the people who are not able to move on, it's because they haven't done the work.
And so there's a part of them, their inner frequency that's still attached to the idea that it could work with their old partner and old frequency. And so whether you're going to get back together or you're going to move on, so to speak, the only path forward is the integration of the lessons so that you can energetically just naturally move forward.
That's right. A hundred percent.
And when I was dating myself for those nine months, I was actually in relationship and I was doing the work and it was a beautiful, there was actually nothing wrong with it. It was a surprise to me that I was moving on because I was like, this is a beautiful man.
There's nothing wrong. But I was doing the core patterns that I attracted him into my life by healing them with my mom directly.
So I was no longer a match to play it out with him. And that's why it naturally dissolved.
But I love what you're saying, because I think a lot of people can get focused on the person and miss the pattern. And so it's like, what is the pattern that's showing up? And whether I get back with them or somebody else, look at what the lesson is.
Am I afraid? Am I staying with them? Or am I hypervigilant focusing on them because I'm trying to avoid the fear of abandonment or fear of rejection or not feeling good enough? What is really coming up for me? And how do I tend to that within myself so that I don't put too much pressure on the relationship to give me that. I don't put up with toxic relationships because I'm not putting
up with anything less than I can offer myself. So that elevates.
And then I don't need to judge
my person or my ex to move on, but what were the lessons that we attracted each other to learn so
that I can integrate them and have a match for somebody that meets me where I'm at now?
Well, what you just spoke to is really important because you said it's about spotting the patterns. And so we need mirrors, first of all, but also being able to spot patterns is a skill and you can get better at it.
And that's where creativity comes in because creativity is the process of putting together patterns you've never put together before. Okay.
Yeah. Having more awareness.
That's it. So when you're painting something,
you're just putting together shapes and colors and patterns you've never put together before. My poetry, I'm just putting together words and patterns I've never put together before.
And so that's a skill. And we might use the medium of words or paint or musical notes,
but the skill is pattern making and pattern recognizing. And that is synonymous to
I'm sorry. use the medium of words or paint or musical notes but the skill is pattern making yeah and pattern recognizing yeah and that is synonymous to personal development that is synonymous to actually our consciousness and the evolution of our consciousness and so if you start to be intentional with your creativity you're expanding the skill of expanding your consciousness and you can take that and point it at relationships or at business or at anything that you want in life.
That skill can be developed. And I think it's really important.
And we can go down the whole conspiracy theory route about the fact that they're taking creativity out of schools right now. They're cutting arts programs.
They're cutting these things. And why are they doing that while simultaneously we're seeing a seeing a rapid expansion of consciousness on the planet.
And so that's, again, just tying it back to the creativity. Pattern making, pattern recognizing is everything.
Yeah. No, I think that's great.
And we're not so caught up in the loophole of what the pattern is and how we look or what views we see when we're in the pattern. Kind of like meditation, looking at the pattern helps us have greater awareness over it.
I do a love quiz. I give people a love quiz to see what are the unconscious patterns that they attract a person for, whether they're single or in relationship.
And it's a little bit more based on psychotherapy and my work as a psychotherapist. Like attachment theory? No, it's more through Imago psychotherapy.
So why did I attract this person? Because they're a match for my, the parent that I had harder experience with so that I can heal that younger wound inside me directly and not unconsciously projected onto them. So you can do it whether you're in relationship or you're not because you can have a friend, an experienced coach or a therapist hold space to actually support you in resolving at the root and not unconsciously projected onto everyone else moving forward.
And if we don't do that work, you know, we can project it onto team. Like I'm learning that I did it and combed through relationships, but I was like, Oh, you know, I'm like 48 people on my team.
I'm like, Oh, you can, I was playing out my over-responsibility pattern with my team. And I'm like, ah, same thing.
I usually, I, I, I thought team was an outer thing. I'm like, everything's inside out except for like certain things.
It's not, it's even those, it's everything. So yes, like if we can't see it, we're stuck into it.
We're stuck to the pattern and it's going to be hard to change. So I think meditation also really supports creativity, but also observing the pattern and not getting absorbed by it and going down the loophole.
But I also like these pattern interrupts. I don't know, as you're talking, like even doing something to take us out of our normal every day, we can sleep in a different part of the bed or move your bed or change your office.
Yeah. Just shift it up to kind of wake up some of this unconscious programming to also be able to recognize patterns.
Yeah. And well, the interesting thing is, so the vast majority of our thoughts on any given day we've had before, right? And so when we look at the, say the breakup, we're looking at our breakup, you're thinking the same thoughts about it every single day for the vast majority of time.
And the same patterns with different partners. Exactly.
And so the moment that you say, I'm going to write a poem about that breakup, you're actually intentionally forcing your brain to create new neurological pathways viewing that situation. You're forcing yourself to.
And so just by doing that, if you thought about a river running just in one direction and you just cut a new sort of pathway for it, it's going to divert some of that energy. And then if you wrote another poem and another poem, you're just diverting the energy because you're forcing neurological pathways to emerge that will give other opportunities for how you think about any given circumstance.
And this is just another way that I personally feel that creativity is vital to our healing, our growth and our development. I'm curious, how do you see creativity supporting social change? Well, that's a great question because so art bypasses the logical defense mechanisms of the human mind and penetrates immediately into the emotional body.
I see that. And so true change happens.
There's an emotional component, right? Whether that's, and you know, probably even better than me, but the fact that when we have a heightened emotional state, we're going into our limbic and we're going to these parts of our brain that are really where we're programming our instincts, like our deepest responses and rewiring at that level. But there's an emotional component that has to happen.
And so when we use art in this way, we're going right into the deepest parts that actually can change someone in a really deep way, as opposed to talking to a point where we have to appease the logical defense mechanisms and they go, okay, yeah, I believe. Okay.
I kind of believe. Okay, great.
And then now we've primed them to see it in their life where they have an emotional experience. And from that emotion, they take action.
Exactly. And so why did my poem go so viral? It's about self-love.
If I was on stage doing a TED talk about self-love, like so many other people, even if it's the best one ever, it does well, it does not get 250 million views.
and I believe that art is inherently bio it's a technology for us to go into someone's emotional
body in order to shift them in that way and it doesn't matter how shut down someone is they go
to a movie because of how they think it's going to make them feel. They put on music because of how they think it's going to make them feel.
So it is a permission slip to someone's feelings, which means it's a permission slip to help someone change. And so creativity is a, um, a massive tool that we have to shift consciousness.
I love your passion about it. I can feel it as you speak about it.
And I know that there are people listening that are like, I want to live more authentically expressed. Like I want to follow that.
And yet they have some fear about doing it. I just wonder if there is a story, because you're so courageous and you go head on, if there's a story of when you met an edge and you took the leap to follow your heart or reorient that can inspire people to listen to this and think about what they can do, even if it's a one degree shift in their life.
Oh, there's so many. So I would say, okay.
So I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career when I graduated college. I was 22.
And how I got there was when I entered high school. So I used to act when I was in junior high school, like plays and stuff in school.
And I always dreamt. I loved acting.
And then when I got to high school, everyone had gotten a ticket to puberty, but me. So I was just like not invited and I didn't grow.
I was tiny. I entered high school.
I weighed 73 pounds. I was like not even barely five feet tall.
And I went, I can never be an actor. I'm not that guy.
So I'm just going to have to be really successful and achieve. And being the son of an immigrant, that's how I equated love anyway.
It was like achievement equals love, do good, get good grades, et cetera. So I went, okay, I'm just going to just win high school.
How how do you win high school by the time I graduated
high school I had academic scholarship to college varsity in multiple sports student body president of clubs um you won at high school and I got I I remember so I was voted homecoming king and it's just a giant popularity contest totally and I woke up the next morning and felt absolutely nothing.
Yeah.
I felt even worse because as simple as it sounds for a lot of people listening here knowing that that wouldn't necessarily change anything for an 18 year old kid that was watching movies like varsity blues that told me that winning homecoming king would make me like the cool popular kid. And all of the hot girls would
want me and all of their hot moms would want me too. So like, that's what's going to happen now.
And so I wake up the next morning and I go, I don't have another mountaintop that is going to change everything for me. Like, where do I go from here? I'm on the mountaintop and I'm just as angry.
I'm just as lonely. I'm just as confused.
And whether nature nurture divine intervention, for some reason I went, okay, well, what if everything else they're telling me would just lead to this, get the career, get the labradoodle and the 2.5 kids and the white picket fence, like do all of that nuclear family. What if that just leads me to this? And I had that moment.
It's funny because I coach a lot of people, um, over the years who have that moment in their forties. Usually people get there in their forties.
I learned early. I learned very early.
I learned by watching my dad, same thing. Right.
And so because I had that, that at 18 was when I started reading personal development books. And I started to ask questions.
And I started to ask a very important question that I encourage everyone to ask is, what is it that I can remember that I did that actually made me happy? And I think we go so long doing what we think we have to that we don't ask that question enough. When do I remember actually being happy? And I came back to acting and I started acting in college.
Luckily I was a business major, which means half the classes are just electives. You just take whatever you want.
And I started taking all these acting classes and I was emotionally shut down at the time, completely, um, had the repressed trauma that was in my system, all these things things and acting gave me this outlet and permission slip to access my emotions and it was so healing for me and so magical for me that i said i'm willing to sacrifice everything else and leave behind the job and the friends and all these things to go and pursue this thing. And that choice would ultimately lead me to where I am now.
And it was a decision to follow my heart. Yeah.
And your aliveness, it brought you back to life by following what you loved. Yeah.
There's something I teach called the joy journal. I just discovered, I just made it up because when I was looking at what I wanted to do in my career, I'm like, well, what are the things that bring me joy? And so I started tracking every night and I was in Bali at the time.
I'd graduated from a master's program. I'm like, what do I love? I loved Bali.
I loved like personal development and consciousness work. I loved bringing people together, creating experiences.
So I was like, oh, I'll lead retreats to Bali. And then I put it together, you know, so just for people to...
There's action that you took. Another synchronicity, um, cause we're just obviously best friends is, uh, I have a nonprofit called surrendered artist, surrendered artist.org.
We teach kids how to use their, um, create, how to use creativity and art to process their emotions. Um, and we have a product on Amazon called the big joy journal for kids.
No kidding. Big Joy Journal for Kids, which is 90 days of creative prompts for kids 5 to 10 years old to get them in touch with their emotions.
That's incredible. On so many levels.
Because when you're creating, really, there's a lot of studies that show when you're doing the shadow work, it supports, and any unconscious work, it supports more creativity. but also having a channel to express some of that, then they're not going to self harm or, you know, problematic behaviors because they're finding what lights them up.
So I love the synchronous. There's, I think there's a lot more that we're going to discover in our best friendship.
Yeah. And the joy journal can be simple or it's just like you're tracking what brought you aliveness, what brought you joy that day.
And then over time, you're going to see those patterns and how can you align your life to that even more. I think I'm going to have to have you back on.
I just love dropping in. There's so many other places that we get to go in our conversation.
And I want you on the Creative Path podcast next time. I'm so excited to come onto your podcast.
But tell my audience, because they're going to want to stay connected. Tell them what you're up to, what, where they can find you.
Yeah. So, um, a lot of online real estate.
My primary, uh, space is Instagram and YouTube. So Adam.roa on Instagram, YouTube, uh, just type my name and you'll find a bunch of stuff.
I put out videos in my podcast every single week, the creative podcast, the creative path podcast. And then, um, I run something called the artistic entrepreneur, which is an incubator for people who have the heart of an artist and the mind of an entrepreneur and really giving, there's this misconception because there's this inner artist conflict with our inner entrepreneur.
And one of the big misconceptions that leads to that is this idea that the artist needs to be completely free, free to just create and free whatever. And yet actually every artist needs constraints in order for their genius to unlock.
The guitarist needs a certain amount of frets on the guitar or a certain amount of keys and a piano or the painter needs a canvas of some size. And so the inner entrepreneur can actually create the structure that our inner artist can pour our unique creative energy into in a way that brings harmony.
So what you build, one, is sustainable and doesn't burn you out and also makes great money and is also very fulfilling because it does capture the essence of why you're here
and what you want to do. And so that incubator, depending on when this podcast comes out, we're launching that at the end of July.
So yeah, anyone who's interested in going like deep with me into that world. Yeah.
And just to kind of weave this in real quick, I know you also talk about creativity for productivity, right? And like, will you just share with us a tidbit about that because it sounds very related? Yeah, I think that ultimately your productivity is going to be directly related to the amount of life force energy that you have moving through your system. So it's really your vitality and your vibrancy.
You can have those days where you go and you do a bunch of things and you sit down for eight hours and you get very little accomplished because it's so hard and you can have an hour where you just crush. And to me, um, tapping
into our creativity is a way that we keep that waterfall of life force flowing through
us so that everything that we do has the, um, regenerative aspect to it. And, um, we
just need to create the space for creativity to happen.
Yeah. We need to talk more about that.
Cause I think some people are like the eight hour day and they go hard and then they're burnout. They think it's productive just to go hard, but then we can't keep doing that hurts our bodies.
And then in the long run, it's actually not that productive because we need time to heal. And yeah, absolutely.
And there's so many different, there's so many different aspects to that journey in terms of sometimes you were talking about at the very beginning, kind of full circle, sometimes delegating. Like, so sometimes just hiring the right people, the actually right people, not just hired the wrong people, like learning how to hire the, identify what you really need and how to hire them.
That can be the thing that unlocks so much. Sometimes it's just having a template for understanding how to create the piece of content that you've been trying to create for so long.
Like there's a lot of ways that we can create structure for the artist to come in. And I think for me, that's been my core conflict for a lot of my life has been my inner artist and my inner entrepreneur, which are by the way, the inner feminine and inner masculine.
And so that is shown through people in different ways. So your core conflict will show up a little differently, but once we can identify that, we create so much space for how to be with it.
And I think we've talked about that a lot on this. There's so much more because I look at the lens through the Enneagram and the four type, the individualist, which is also the artist who, you know, oftentimes like what they resist and how I train and coach coaches to support fours is to create some structure and knowing that they are going to resist it because, and, or sevens don't want structure because they want freedom.
And so how do you realize that the structure supports more freedom, that that masculine energy that creates the container helps the feminine expression dance within it. So there's so many different lenses and there's so many more conversations that we get to have.
And I'm so honored to now have you as my best friend. Yes, I just gave you the best friend today.
This is amazing. Have you on the podcast, come to my home.
You are such a beautiful human and I'm so grateful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and magic with us.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world starting with yourself. It truly does make a difference.
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I'm at Alyssa Nobriga.
Thank you again for being here.
I cannot wait to share more with you.