Consciousness: The Gateway to Transformational Leadership
Consciousness- The Gateway to Transformational Leadership
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Flashback to a Fabulous Future, where you are on a journey to understand the past so that we can move forward into the future with focus and energy. Today we're going to be talking about consciousness, whether it's just consciousness in our everyday life or conscious leadership, which is one of my favorite topics these days, so I'm sure we'll get into that.
But there's so many other aspects of it that, um, I'm sure our guest, Sarah Shepard, can go into in more detail. So, um, without further ado, I'll let her introduce herself and then we'll go from there.
Thanks so much, Cheryl. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here. co create and share on leadership.
I believe, actually, when we come together and share ideas in this way, we are consciousness embodied and we're, we're furthering and trailblazing what's possible just by sharing our [00:01:00] words and our hearts together. So yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super grateful to be here. My name is Sarah Shepard. I'm um, Oh my gosh, this is such a, such an evolving experience to kind of introduce myself.
I am, first of all, I'm a mother. Um, I'm a single mom. I live in Vernon, British Columbia, and I have an autistic son who's nine years old. I've been working in leadership and health for a little over 20 years, primarily as a regulated health practitioner for many years, as well as a founder of multiple businesses.
Currently, I coach a leadership from, um, human design, gene keys, and anatomy and physiology teaching role. And I'm the founder of a company called Carmel Well Health, and we build awakening health programs for people that employers can donate to, and people can gift to one another for those times in our life when we're a little bit challenged by what's showing up in our soul work and, and our health.
And, [00:02:00] uh, I, I believe that as human members of this tribe and this fellowship that we all deeply long to help one another on what I, I basically call the awakening journey.
Well, thank you. I totally agree. I think that, um, in the fast paced, crazy world that we've lived in, and I would say in the last couple of years, You know, but in the last couple decades, and the more I go back and study the Industrial Revolution, then, you know, you know, even, you know.
little pre industrial revolution. Life just got really fast. Um, and you know, as women went into the workforce and both parents were working, it just became much more challenging to slow down and to take the time to sit on your front porch and talk to your neighbor and get to know people. And if you don't get to know people, it's hard to know what their needs are and to be able to help them.
But I look back in my [00:03:00] life and despite those challenges that have come about, um, I have been blessed, um, with many people who were very generous during some difficult times in my life. And it made me recognize what a connection that made. Um, although I was on the receiving end of a lot of the, the charity, I guess you'd call it.
Um, it made me grateful, number one, which I think is a major contributing factor to consciousness. But it, it just built that connection. I don't know how to, you know, I don't know the, A better word where, um, even though we went our separate ways and we don't communicate anymore play into the whole consciousness idea.
Yeah, I agree. And I think you spoke to some really important parts there. And that is like the essence of gratitude and the frequency of [00:04:00] gratitude and what that does, the implications of gratitude on our physical health. have a lot to do with the frequency of gratitude where when our heart is open and as one being my nervous system is recognizing gratitude in relationship to your nervous system and that is both a humbling experience but also a deeply connective and healing experience and so those, those sort of markers in time they really stand out as opportunities that leave an indelible imprint on us moving forward and they propagate this um, this really beautiful miracle which is This kind of natural thing where we want to pay it forward.
You know, when somebody does something good for us, it creates this opportunity within us where we see what it felt like. And then inevitably you will, by the nature of it, look for opportunities where you can pay that forward to somebody else. And I believe this is the essence of actually what we're here to learn in our life is how to greet each moment, uh, as a, uh, as an invitation to find a [00:05:00] higher frequency to connect with each other and that if each of us do that and keep showing up in that way, like a wildfire of love, we can really change this world that we're living in and it's neat that you spoke to some of the elements of like the earlier the earlier revolutions and industrialization that happened at various times.
I believe we're in another one right now, a renaissance of coming together and seeing each other in a new way. And that leadership in this way is also being reorganized and We spoke about this briefly in the opening where you and I were just connecting and talking about how so often, you know, leadership of the households and the mothers and the teachers are things that we maybe not think of as leadership, but really communal leadership and the raising of children and raising our future generations.
That's really where all of it starts. And it's such a fundamental part to give credit to, you know, this is where all of us came from. We came from mothers. We had at some point mentorship or teachers and As [00:06:00] we've evolved from those industrial changes where mothers are less in the home and people don't connect in neighborhoods in the same way as they used to, some of those skill sets of us wanting to be interconnected, um, they're there.
We, we're all still longing to connect our hearts and minds in this way. And so I really feel like mentorship is this lost art that we're all actually longing to have more of. And certainly there's many, many people that have, Plenty to offer as far as their life skills and they want to they want to guide and lead in that way and sometimes they wanted to be paid for it but a lot of time people just have a lot of information that they want to be able to share with one another.
They want to share in a caring way a healing treatment or just. You know, something as simple as going for a walk and how profoundly healing that can be is something that I believe shouldn't be overlooked.
I agree. I think that it just brings to mind, I don't know why, but the first thing that kind of came to my mind as you were talking is I, I am also a mother and of all of the roles I've played, I've been a working mom.
I've been a [00:07:00] single mom, you know, I've been a wife and a sister and I have a wonderful mother. Um, of all the roles I've played in my life, the most fulfilling has definitely been being a mother. Even though I certainly, I'm sure all mothers can say this, I, I didn't do everything right, and I'm sure my kids will attest to the fact that I wasn't a perfect mother, there's still that connection there.
I think it's obvious that, you know, there are connections amongst people that you're close to. The one thing that jumped out my mind while you were talking was many years ago, um, my husband and I used to drive back and forth across the United States a lot. or not a lot, once a year or so. And every year we take a different path and we go off these way off the beaten road kind of thing.
And it was really interesting. It was really fun. We met a lot of people and that was always exciting. Um, but we also came across a lot of people who were in need and, you know, just as simple as a flat tire and getting out and helping an elderly couple. You know, change the tire on their car, and then there [00:08:00] was a time in Las Vegas, just right out of Las Vegas, where a car in front of us crashed and, you know, kind of blew up into flames, and, you know, all we could really do at that point was call 911 and get help.
But there were two other times that were really pretty significant. We came, we were driving the back roads of West Virginia, late, late at night, and a woman in front of us hit a tree and her car broke into flames. You know, at the immediate moment of impact, it was possible, my husband was able to get out and, you know, go try to help her, but as the fire intensified, he wasn't able to, because it just got too hot.
You know, obviously would have ended up costing him his life, probably. And we never got to know that woman's name, but it's interesting because for months after that, we would drive out to West Virginia, maybe, I don't know, we live in Virginia, so it's not that far. You know, once or twice a month, we'd drive out there to that location and just try to find out who she was.
What was her story? Who was her family? We, we [00:09:00] did fortunately find out who they were and went and talked to them and just said, Hey, we're really sorry. We did everything we could. And of course they were very gracious and everything, but I was just amazed at how connected you felt to somebody who you really didn't have any.
interaction with, per se. And then we were driving through the New Mexico up into the National Park up there, and it was starting to rain, and there was a group of motorcycles ahead of us. And if you know anything about motorcycles, especially on a windy, twisty mountain road, you don't drive motorcycles when it's wet.
And unfortunately, um, all five of the motorcycles crashed, and it was chaos, and it was very tragic. There was a significant loss of life. But because everybody was that was involved in the accident was so chaotic running around. I just kind of got thrown into what I would consider somewhat of a leadership role.
You know, I was kind of like directing traffic and getting things done. You know, situated because it was going to be a long time [00:10:00] before, um, rescue vehicles were able to come because of the location and we were out of cell phone range. And I just remember once I kind of got everybody organized and everybody kind of situated, I just, I'm not a great big person.
I'm like five, five, but I, um, one of these very large, probably. six foot five, six foot six, you know, biker kind of guys, you know, was just sitting there and he was having a really hard time and he kept getting up and trying to walk around and he was, had severe traumatic brain injury, you could tell. And, um, you know, he could have fallen down the hill or whatever.
So here I am, this little tiny person trying to corral him. And I finally got him to sit down and I had to kind of hold him and put my arms around him and just kind of soothe him. And, you know, it was kind of an odd role to be put into. Um, especially since he kept trying to get up and, you know, he was having a lot of [00:11:00] physical symptoms that weren't very pleasant.
And within an hour, hour and a half, the ambulance came and they took him away. And I was like, he was so out of it. I never could find out what his name was or who he was. And to this day, I think about that and I think I feel connected to this person.
Yeah, we are. We are interconnected. And I think that sometimes that can get.
I can get it forgotten in our society in the way that we've been modernized, so to speak, right? We've come out of a tribal way of being and we've become these like, quote unquote, modern humans, but I sense that in this returning, um, evolution that's going on within humanity right now, it is, it's a remembering of our collective oneness.
And so those, those times of, um, charge, there's like a nervous system charge that happens when the nervous system is. been initiated into a fight, flight, freeze, protect itself. And within that we, we, we rally in ways that we didn't [00:12:00] understand or know that we have within ourselves. And, and then we get to know an element of our own consciousness as a result of that.
And that element of your consciousness has stayed with you in this space of like, wow, I, I recognized. that I didn't have a name for that person or I didn't understand their story but my heart was connected to and it was drawn to understand more about them and to feel into who were their people and why why did we not get to have more time together and really what was that about and I think it's quite fascinating that you've got a couple of examples of that happening you know it's not like it just happened once it actually has happened to you a couple of times so that's when you start when I start to get I get quite curious about consciousness of like why are these examples of life happening in this way where I get to experience myself in a new way and I also feel like there's something missing, there's something missing from the story that I'm still longing to understand who was that person and why did we have that exchange in that way so it's really in that space that I feel like we get to kind of live with the question that living in question of [00:13:00] consciousness and Remember that we're all aspects of consciousness and really what awakening is, is consciousness remembering itself, remembering that we are all one as a, as a, I love the experience, the expression, a fellowship, but yeah, the tribe, we are a human tribe and I believe we'll find a lot more peace as we come into recognitions of the value of the human tribe.
Yeah, I, um, I'll put up a graphic here. It's the levels of consciousness and, you know, as you talk about that, some of these different levels, I think, was, you know, the bottom, they go anywhere from 20 up to 1, 000, 20 is shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, up to, you know, 1, 000 full consciousness. It makes me think of COVID, you know, um, during that period of time.
where there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of, um, you know, unknowns and, and because of that, you know, that people tended to isolate. Well, we were ordered to isolate, but I think people probably naturally would have done [00:14:00] that anyway, just out of fear. I was watching a documentary not too long ago on the Black Plague, you know, during the, over in England.
And what was amazing was so many of the things that they did naturally that they weren't ordered to do are things that we did during COVID. But the biggest thing was isolation. And I think because of that isolation, people have started, like you said, this renaissance. They've started to come back.
They've started to say, Hey, we don't want to be isolated anymore. As much as we You know, our society kind of dictated that we are so busy and so involved in so many different things that we don't really have those kind of connections. I think COVID made people start longing for those connections again.
Yeah, there's nothing like um, taking something completely away from us to make us long for it. I know that whenever I try to do a diet, I might not want to eat sugar, but if you tell me I can't eat sugar, all of a sudden I'm craving cookies. So I used to be like, [00:15:00] I might not like people very much. I'm a bit of a hermit myself and I love to work and be on my own, but I've spent my most of my career working one on one with people.
I attributed that to needing to recharge my batteries, uh, you know, in between. And so when, when COVID first started, I was thrilled. I was just like, this is great. I don't have to see anybody. I love this so much, but it sure made me come to a recognition and appreciation of the enrichment that comes from interacting and what we bring to one another.
And I grew up going to Music festivals and being in spaces where a lot of people were coming together and sort of like a hippie commune kind of way of coming together and that was my nature. I thought most of my childhood growing up. That was just the way I thought everything should should be. And just the idea of for quite a while.
There was like, yeah, we may never be able to do that again. We may never be able to. collectively congregate. And I just, I felt like that was such an injustice, um, during that time of that potentiality, you know, knowing the feeling [00:16:00] of when people come together and sing a song, you know, at a concert or the anthem or these different elements of how we, you know, feel our hearts opening up and those frequencies of the, of the oneness coming together and how that communion is such a sacred experience.
And so we did go into a deep appreciation of communion as a result of not being able to come together. And we saw that in magical ways where people were, you know, really wanting to support one another to get through this hard time and to keep that collective goodwill up. And it was a really challenging time.
So it's given us the opportunity to really look at ourselves and go, what matters? What matters to me in this expression and what matters to me is important in evolution and that's what these levels of consciousness are speaking to is that there's frequencies that impact the way we see the world. Um, when you're in the lower frequencies, we're on your, on your diagram here, those victim abuser consciousnesses that are shame kind of all the way up to [00:17:00] pride, essentially.
Courage is where things really start to shift, but that shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, they're unconscious experiences. So when we're in fear, our limbic system within our nervous system, that old reptilian brain, it hijacks our consciousness. So we don't have a creative, impetus within us.
We're running old neural pathways that are there to keep us safe. They were designed and evolved within our nervous system to keep us, um, not touching hot items or not running off of cliffs or doing things that would not create propagation of the species, right? They did serve a purpose, but when we're In a reactive or repressive pattern, we're really in an unconscious part of our nervous system, and so the frequency of our consciousness is in these spaces of not really being open and curious to what's going on, trying to build a new neural pathway, but instead circling around old neural [00:18:00] pathways that are quite charged with the fear or the guilt or these elements that are the, um, the hormonal um, Circulation or the, the chemistry of that, that division of the nervous system and for many people, and this is just to kind of, I'm sharing this as like, uh, it's meant to bring about hope, but the truth is, as much of humanity.
is in this victim abuser consciousness and we're in a time of transition into coming into more and more what's you know fourth dimension self empowerment where courage when you when you shift from that experience of pride of individual and self and me and recognizing that there's myself and the vanity of protecting my experience and then there's an opportunity for curiosity and I would say.
Curiosity is one of the most courageous things we can do. It really leads to new experiences. It really leads to us opening up vistas in our [00:19:00] understanding of what's going on. And when we do that, we build new neural pathways. And then the next element of consciousness will start to come in. So neutrality can be this like, Oh, maybe I'm right.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm curious and I'm open to what else could be going on in this situation. For many of us, we have a lot of stored trauma. We have a lot of traumatic experiences that are still physically in our body that are governing a lot of our reactions. They're, in fact, affecting us so much that we react and not really respond to a situation.
We don't really stay open and curious because it's so uncomfortable and there's so much stored trauma in there that it doesn't seem like it's safe to stay open. It doesn't seem like it's safe for us to do something. In that situation, that would be giving of ourselves or giving up of something that we feel like we need to fight for or that we're trying to protect and it's really in these spaces where magical [00:20:00] things start to happen physically in our DNA as well as in our co regulated nervous system.
So. I have a nervous system, you have a nervous system, when we're within proximity of each other, and even quantum healing is based on this as well, you don't even really need to be in proximity of each other. But what's really kind of fascinating to discover is that my nervous system is seeking to feel your nervous system and understand where you're at.
Really, because I want to understand if you're a threat to me or not, but at a deeper level, I want to connect and understand how we can build together, how we can create something in the world together. What is your zone of genius and excellence? And what is it that you offer to the world? And the curiosity within my nervous system, once it's established, you're not going to chop off my head.
The next thing is like, okay, Well, could we build a garden together or could we build an art project together or something? And that's creative life force coming through. That's that self empowerment of like, all right, you're not [00:21:00] a threat. Now, what's next is the ability for us to bring about our inner wisdom and collaborate together.
And collaboration is a, is a much more, uh, a much more evolved, essence of humanity. And we see it in the plant species and we see it in the animal species all the time where there's examples of, uh, trees will feed other trees that have been, right, the root system from one tree will generate a new root that goes over to support the other tree.
Because there's this, This collective recognition of life force being necessary, consciousness being necessary. We're all sentient beings. And so what that means is everything has life force within it. And we come to that frequency in our consciousness. It's kind of like being, um, it's kind of like being in, and I love This visual for looking at that.
It's kind of like being in an elevator. We start to have more fun. We start to experience more flow. We start to experience that [00:22:00] it feels really good to recognize that we're interconnected with one another. And then that creative life force flows through us in ways that makes our body resonate with much more health.
It makes us less susceptible to illness. Our immune systems are healthier. We have a, um, greater openness to just being generous. to one another. And so all of these things that we're speaking about when it comes to leadership, it's really looking at, are we orienting to self and self needs? Are we orienting to collective?
And what are we doing to contribute to the greater restoration of humanity overall?
It's been very enlightening for me, because as I look at this chart and I think about myself, I was a very outgoing, I wouldn't say I was an extrovert, I'm definitely a hundred percent introvert these days. Unlike you, when COVID hit, I was like, yeah, I don't talk to anybody.
Then after a while, I was like, no, I think I kind of want to talk to somebody, but, um, As I was growing up, I was very confident, and [00:23:00] I, it seemed like every job interview I went to, I got the job, and, you know, I didn't really try to reach out and make friends, I moved around a lot when I was younger, and when I would go into a place, a new place, I didn't reach out and try to make a bunch of friends, I would just kind of sit back and people just kind of gravitated toward me and wanted to be my friend, and I was always kind of baffled, like, why do these people want to be my friend?
I'm just, you know, somebody sitting over here in the corner, you know, doing my own kind of thing. But I realized that I was like radiating some kind of confidence or something. But, and as I got a little bit older and, uh, moved into my, uh, You know, 20s or whatever, and had kids and things, this, this continued, and I, I felt very good about my life, and I, even though, you know, I had challenges, things weren't always easy, but then I, I started running into some really difficult situations in my life.
And I wasn't having the same level of success. And not only was I not [00:24:00] having the same level of the same level of success, I was failing. I, I'm an instructional designer by trade, you know, for 30 years, I was an instructional designer. And I wrote this whole program about failure long before failure was a topic of discussion mainstream these days.
about why failure is important. And so I was still able to rise above. There came a point where I started having difficulty in my relationships and I ended up getting divorced and my kids started going through some really challenging things. And as they grew up, The trauma from that, those younger experiences really started to have an impact on him, which impacted our relationship.
And I just started going down what I consider, you know, to the bottom where shame, guilt, I mean, all those just like, Oh yeah, that was me. That's me. And then when COVID really threw me for a loop too, even though I enjoyed being in my own little self isolated world, it fed this shame, guilt, fear. [00:25:00] And I've noticed, cause even today I was thinking, you know, I, um, I went and did a, a demo for, to be a Zumba instructor, and in the past I go do Zumba, and I have lots of classes, and people have liked me, and I did this demo, and she came back and said, no, that's not really what we're looking for, and I thought, wow, what did I do wrong?
Um, but the, and it's there. It made me start thinking about all of the things that I've done wrong, I guess you'd say in the last, you know, I don't know, several years of my life. And I've gotten to a point where I don't even really, I know I'm in that bottom level of consciousness, but I don't really want out of it.
It's like, I'm scared if I come out of it. Cause every time I've started to come out of it, something comes along and just kind of slaps me and says, no, you don't, you know, just go back down there. I made a joke and it's not really a It's not a joke but it's like I live in this deep dark hole. I feel like sometimes I don't really, but you know, I live in this deep dark [00:26:00] hole and every time I peek my head out, somebody comes and kicks my head.
I'd rather just stay in the bottom of the hole to get, keep getting my head kicked every time I, you know, peek my head out. And so as I was thinking about this, And then kind of leading down into the, you know, the leadership role, I do know that during those times in my younger life when I wasn't living in this hole, I was able to just sometimes, I don't know how to say this, but by my mere presence, I guess you'd say, affect other people in a positive way.
And so I think on some level I was playing a leadership role. And because I was living at these higher levels of consciousness. I was able to affect other people in a positive way, whereas nowadays I'm having a much more difficult time with that because I am living in these lower levels of consciousness.[00:27:00]
Thank you so much for sharing that authentic, vulnerable experience. Um, everything that you're sharing to me, I would say is a perfect example of what's actually considered like the imprint of leadership. So it's not off. Well, sometimes it's spoken about, but essentially there's. There's people that have a, an imprint.
This is really clear and, and, um, dogs, like, you know, most animals have a hierarchy where one has an alpha imprint and there's a, there's a cohesion within the pack when the alpha is holding the dominance. It actually creates a softness and a soothing to the nervous systems of the other animals within the pack to know one person's in charge, they've got the alpha imprint, they've got a smell, they've got a noise, there's a way that their body moves that we recognize that this one's got us.
And as other alpha starts to, other alpha pack members, start to develop their hormones and start to kind of [00:28:00] develop in their bodies and their prowess. There's an imprint for them to test themselves against that, right? Are you still the alpha? Are you still the strongest? And this is one of, there's three different types of, of leadership imprints.
And that one is this imprint of authority and authority is a physical expression in the body where when people. see you, or you get up to speak, or you go to do whatever it is that is your imprint for, that will be recognized. Not in necessarily a cognitive way where people are like, I don't know, it's this that she did, or it's, you know, that that she did.
It could more often than not just be this, I'm not really sure why I like Cheryl for this position, but I have a good intuition for her. That's often how we recognize leaders that have that authoritative way about them. Or sometimes it'll be people that just walk into the room and you'll watch everybody's kind of turn to look, not for any reason that you recognize that it's not like they said anything, and it's not that there's this, you know, big ostentatious, um, [00:29:00] presence about them, but we orient, right?
We orient to leadership, and we long to know where the PAC leaders are, because it actually makes us feel calmer. What you just demonstrated in The way you describe this experience is that I'm going through a phase right now in my leadership where I've been humbled a few times, you know, I thought that I was really good at all these things.
And, and in my earlier life, it came more easefully to me, but now it doesn't seem like it's easeful in the same way. And so what you're, what you're communicating to me is that you're going through a reorganization around that, what that means. And. That frequency of consciousness, that victor abuser consciousness, it's an element of our nervous system that's trying to protect ourself because we're meant to evolve in that phase.
We're meant to find a new way of taking care of ourself, of finding a new tribe, of The places that we're really meant to shine and sometimes that can be scary because we have to step out of the patterns [00:30:00] that we've had for so long and we have to be not good at something for a little while. So being humbled is a really important essence of being a leader to be able to fall down and get back up.
And then fall down again, and then get back up. That level of resilience is necessary in leadership. And sometimes the only way to learn that is to get knocked down so many times that you really start to question, Do I want to get up again? Do I want to show up in this way? Because that living question and holding that as the intention of, I'm not sure, but I'm inviting consciousness to work with me on this.
I'm inviting some level of like, give me a green light. because I don't trust my senses anymore. The way that I solve problems before is not working for me anymore. So how am I meant to solve problems again? And if you can do that and be in that process for a little while and add in compassion, this is a really important part.
There's a necessity for gentleness with ourself and self compassion. It's an [00:31:00] ingredient that the nervous system needs to rebuild another layer of what's possible in that resilience and that tonus of showing up again. And if we don't have compassion, it doesn't work. We're not able to rebuild a new neural pathway.
And I find it's important to name this. As women, we get, it can happen where we can be really great at leadership, and then we go into leadership of the home, and we develop a nervous system that is highly attuned to the needs of our children, and the needs of our family, and the way that the family works, and then a decade or two goes by, and those same skills that we used to have, aren't applicable because everything has evolved in the, in that time that we're in our home.
Now we have also developed many, many skills that translate over, but the esteem gets lost. You know, I'm not sure that I'm going to be any good at being out in the workforce anymore. I'm not sure I'm going to be any good at being able to relate with people in the same way because I've just been relating with my children and doing.
[00:32:00] Same thing over and over again for a long time. So the way that we do that is we connect in this way. We listen to podcasts, we start to develop more friendships with people that have a different way of looking at the world. We expose ourselves, even in going, um, new places for vacations or going a different way when you drive to somewhere or walk in a new location in our area that feeds our nervous system and our brain new information and without us recognizing it we start to build new neural pathways and then an opportunity will come along and there'll be an opportunity for curiosity with that within that there'll be this openness of maybe this could be my next thing and so my encouragement is just Keep being compassionate with yourself, keep showing up and you have such an incredible opportunity to explore this with so many of your, um, of your guests.
So you've been really wise in putting yourself in a position to be inspired for, for those elements [00:33:00] too. So great job.
Well, thank you. I just keep making me think of so many things because next week as one of my guests as the main focus of my podcast is typically, you know, historical inflection points because I'm a big proponent of looking at history to see, you know, what, what can we learn from that so that we can move forward without making all the mistakes?
I mean, we always hear people say that about history, but I don't think Until you really internalize that on a level, I do, um, what are they called? Tours, but they're, they're not ghost tours. I, at a cemetery down in, you know, in an area here in central Virginia, and we go around and we talk about the various people who are buried there and just some of their stories.
And we don't do it at night. We don't try to, you know, bring about ghosts or anything like that, but everybody always thinks of [00:34:00] it as a ghost tour because it's in a cemetery. But this particular cemetery is filled with confederate soldiers because I'm in central Virginia and a lot of times I will get college students or young people come and they're like Immediately, they're like, Oh, these Confederate soldiers, they fought for the Confederacy.
They're like, Oh, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So, I finally started my tour with a, um, little example, and from my own life, and also a little challenge to them. To put yourself in their shoes. Consider what their life was like at the time. Consider what prompted them to do the things they did. Instead of judging them, let's just try to understand them.
And, as a tour guide, you, you're used to being the one that does the majority of the talking. But I try to get people to engage and say, okay, now, now we've met this person. And, you know, this one of the people on the tour, he really, he embodied racism. [00:35:00] He really did. But it's like, instead of, you know, labeling him a racist and somebody had spray painted, he had a much bigger, um, not a headstone, but a pointed towel.
And they took red spray paint and painted racist on there and, you know, the city came and cleaned it up. But I just try to get people to understand where he was coming from. I'm not asking that you have to agree with him. I'm just asking that you understand him. And next week in my podcast, I interviewed somebody specifically, I specifically picked somebody who's on the different political spectrum than I am.
But in my conversations with him, I can tell that there's a lot that we have in common. We may disagree on a lot of issues and disagree about how we want to see things play out, but the whole premise of this podcast is to look at history and based on that, say, okay, um, we need to live in a world cause unity doesn't [00:36:00] mean that we all agree, unity just means that we respect one another and that we come together.
And we can disagree and still, you know, have wonderful relationships. I am a very political person and I was out in California working on a contract that, I don't know, a couple of years ago, right before COVID. And I connected with somebody there and we became really good friends. And, and she was just like, we were like miles apart politically, but yet we could have political conversations.
in a very positive way. Because she was curious. You go back to your idea of curious. She was curious. Why do you think that way? Why do you feel that way? Why do you believe that way? Instead of attacking me for thinking that way and feeling that way, she was curious. What I'm hoping when I go into this conversation with this podcast next week is that we can both, and I, so I've said, I think we both need to approach it with curiosity and try to understand each other rather [00:37:00] than try to, I'm not here to try to prove you wrong, and hopefully you're not here to try to prove me wrong, we're here to understand each other.
Yep, that's those, that neutrality, willingness, acceptance. that self empowerment frequency that you're speaking to that's on the chart. There, there, there's a necessity for a willingness to be open and acceptance can be exactly as you're saying, you know, I might not agree with you. I don't see it that way, but I can accept that you do.
And I don't feel like that is, you know, um, a fundamental threat to me for you to have the view that you have. I'm entitled to mine and you're entitled to yours. And this is a big part of what humanity is going through in its evolution related to codependence. So the kind of the spectrum of consciousness, if we speak about the same levels of consciousness, but we apply it to codependence, um, independence and interdependence is really the higher frequencies where there's self realization as an interdependence and that's that oneness and that unity.
piece and in order to get to that what's often misunderstood is [00:38:00] that it's oneness or unity could be looked at as this big gigantic puzzle but for a big gigantic puzzle to come together to be one picture each of us needs to be an individual puzzle piece and I can't be you and you can't be me but I can't be you.
in me claiming and respecting who I am, then I'm able to hold that what's called sovereignty, that, that, that space of my views are my views and you're meant to trigger my views so that I can be curious about them for me to be open to be like, hang on, is that right? Like, Am I seeing it the right way?
Because if I can approach a conversation with you and really be open to learning from you of why do you see it that way, that allows me to, to really feel into myself and go, why do I see it this way? And both can be true, right? Both your view of the world and my view of the world are both instrumental and important, but the fund, the basis of co dependence is, is that I need you to be okay for me to be okay.
You know, it's, it's, [00:39:00] it's, If you, then I, if you ever catch yourself in that sentence of thought, where it's like, well, if this person behaves this way, then I'm going to behave this way, there's an, there's an invitation there for you to come into like, well, who are you in this? What is it you're believing is true for yourself?
And really acknowledging that that is right for you, it can evolve into something else. But in that moment, there's a necessity for each of us to claim ourselves. And as we do that, we come into independence. We can't skip up to interdependence or that unity space without us first claiming the independent piece.
And that's where you get to see that you have your independent view and she or he has his independent view. And that there's this space for the two to really kind of Nudge each other up in the frequency of consciousness through that, through asking each other questions, we end up kind of really giving one another the opportunity to really dialogue about like, hang on, why [00:40:00] do I believe what I believe?
Because more often than not, we've been conditioned to believe what we believe. We've been conditioned by our peers that we want to belong to in a codependent relationship, by our families that we needed to, because They were going to keep us alive. Like there's many, many reasons that we've developed a codependence with each other.
And that's fine. It's just where we're at. It's just a, it's a floor in a building. You can hit the button and go to another floor if you choose to. And it's the same thing with codependence. But in order to do that, there is a necessity that I can not need to be threatened or attack you because your views aren't the same as mine.
So if I feel like your views threaten me, what that says to me is I'm not so sure I believe them myself.
For some reason, I, I think when we think of conscious leaders or, you know, consciousness, it's almost always tied to like spirituality too, which is fine and that's a good thing. I'm a spiritual person, so it aligns with my worldview, so I'm okay with it.[00:41:00]
But this is interesting because the, when I ask people who don't know anything about this topic, I say, okay, if you were to list two conscious leaders, you know, who would you name? And the first one always is Jesus. Okay, that makes sense. Very compassionate person, very lived outside of himself. Everything was about, you know, those that he taught, whether you see him as, you know, the savior of the world or just a person who lived a good life and, and had a good example for the rest of us to follow.
And then Mother Teresa, she always comes up too. But both of those lend themselves to spiritual leadership. And that people want to follow them just because of the essence of who they are. You can just feel that they care. You can just feel that they want, you know, to, um, to help you or improve your station in life.
And to me, that's really what a conscious leader is about is, You know, I don't, and it would, this is why it's so hard to [00:42:00] define what it is, and you can't, it's hard to teach a class on conscious leadership, because how did Jesus do it? How did Mother Teresa do it? Well, I'm going to give you an example of somebody who wasn't spiritual at all, who was probably one of the, what I consider one of the most conscious leaders in my lifetime.
And I was in high school. Like I said, I've always been a very political person and um, I was living in Wyoming right before my freshman year of high school and I went back east and I did all of these historical tours and I just, Oh my gosh, I was like, I just fell in love with all of these people, you know, that I, all these dead people I could, and even to this day, that's why I do historical tours down in Charlottesville and stuff is because I live by Thomas Jefferson's and James Madison's house.
And I can just feel their spirit when I'm there. And, um, I can just feel the spirit of these people. And so I went back and I was all excited. I had to take a U. S. government class and I get into this U. S. government class and my teacher is like, Oh, these founding [00:43:00] fathers were terrible people. And these are all the horrible, terrible things they did.
And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. This doesn't align with what I just experienced, you know, but rather than, tried to convince me of his belief. He was curious. He's like, okay, what makes you feel that way? And I told him, and he's like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense. Well, I was a freshman in high school at the time, and he's like, if, if that's the way you believe, then I'm going to teach you, because he's my teacher, my leader, I'm going to teach you how to support your, what you believe.
And I want to teach you how to do research. I want to teach you how to, you know, and in the process, I learned a lot and I learned, well, yeah, what he said is true. These people weren't perfect. You know, I had this, I put them up on a pedestal here, like they never did anything wrong. Well, yeah, they did things wrong.
Oh, okay. Well, they're human. Okay. I can live with that. And for the next You know, um, the next year I took him for, I [00:44:00] think, Civil War, or, yeah, that was my next class I had from him. And then my junior and senior year, I was his, um, aid. And he's like, no, no, no, you're not just going to grade papers and put, you know, record the scores.
He says, every semester, you're going to have to do a research paper. And the main focus was always this research paper that I had to do, and he'd give me the topic, I didn't get a picket. And it was always something that he knew that I would not agree with, but yet I had to somehow come to him with a balanced approach, you know?
And I thought, wow, it really taught me, and I connected with this teacher, you know, on a level that I've never connected well with another teacher in, you know, my life. Years of going through school. And I think as a conscious leader, when I think of a conscious leader, that's the kind of thing I think of is somebody who's curious, somebody who wants to know about me [00:45:00] and wants to help me succeed and wants to show me a path to success for something that means something to me.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think you gave some really great examples there and you know, speaking about the, the independence part, like that, that element of what Jesus is teaching was, is the kingdom is within you. It's not outside you in somebody else's view. It's not in money. It's not in power.
It's not in these other elements that we often associate with leadership. The kingdom of God is within you. And it, it is important to come back to that simple process of looking at life of like, what? Is it that I'm seeking outside of me that I'm actually longing to experience within me and, you know, various times throughout humanity, the leaders that had the roles that they had, they did move the marker forward and consciousness ahead of what it was.
You know, it might seem atrocious now, some of those behaviors, because we've been [00:46:00] able to nudge that marker along so much that those behaviors are not acceptable anymore. They probably never should have been, but in the time that was, you know, that was allowed. The expression that I love to use is like, people use this one all the time, the rule of thumb.
And that. Expression comes from, you used to be able to beat your wife with a stick that was the size of your thumb, and that was called the rule of thumb, and that's an expression that we still use to this day, but sometimes it's easy to forget how far we've come. My mother, uh, when she was in high school, she couldn't wear pants.
You know, that wasn't that long ago. We've gone through many, many evolutions and humanity is going through many, many evolutions. So, you know, what are the qualities of conscious leadership? Well, there's a couple of different parts. It's that, that recognition of mutual respect. Your experience is your experience and my experience is my experience.
But can we be curious and open to where do our experiences overlap? And in that space, what's available to us where we could co [00:47:00] create together? What could be shown to us both being? you know, respectful of your views or your views of mine or mine, but there's somewhere where that space comes together and there's great opportunity within that space.
Um, and that there's many types of leadership. Leadership can be The person that is diplomatically standing up on a stage and sharing ideas of what's possible that have never been expressed to anybody before. So they're expanding consciousness through their words. They're sharing these concepts that illuminate and enthusiate people.
Enthusiate, I'm not even sure if that's a word. Um, illuminate and get people excited about what's possible when we work together, what's possible when we share our resources together and sort of other these, these other elements of what, what, what incites us to pursue being in alignment with that person.
And then there's the leadership that we spoke about where it's the mothers and the teachers and those who guide from within society that create [00:48:00] greater cohesion all the time. And they're sort of unrecognized, but going around and putting out fires. consistently as the way of being and really deeply listening.
And this is a really important element to speak to in leadership is I believe great leaders are the ones that listen the best. They ask really good questions and they listen to people. There's, um, there's an alchemy that happens when people share what it is that they see with somebody that is different.
imprinted or marked with that, that key of leadership or that, that, uh, that genetic expression of leadership. People's health changes, their ability to work together changes. And so really good leaders, the most important thing that they can do is spend time listening to whomever it is that they're interested in leading.
Yes, we could talk for hours because I could just think, keep triggering things in my mind. In that same contract I was working with in California. Um, my, it's interesting because I was a contractor. And my boss was a contractor and he was [00:49:00] actually the executive coach to the head of our department. And it didn't take me very long to figure out why our, I mean, I think every leader could use an executive coach.
I think that's a great idea, but he really needed one. He, um, you know, you mentioned that your son has, um, autism. And he definitely has Asperger's, Autism, something. He, he really struggles to relate to people. He can't read people, he can't read the room. He just, brilliant, brilliant person when it comes to, you know, IQ.
But EQ, whoo! Yeah. He needs some help, right? Well, technically my boss was this person, but I was so grateful that I had this, This other person, this other contractor who was, I considered my boss to be an intermediary because he's like, no, you, you, you're everything go through me, go through me, go through me.
I'm like, okay. But everybody's first there's like, yeah, that's great. But [00:50:00] I was there for, oh, I don't know, a year and a half, which is a long time for a contract job actually. And they hired me as an instructional designer and come to find out they didn't really need any instructional design because this.
Head of the department, couldn't quite make up his mind what he wanted for training, so he's, my boss really liked me, and he's like, so how about you do these other things, these other tasks, like data analysis, and UX, UI design, I'm like, I have no experience with that, he goes, yeah, but you're brilliant, so we'll, we'll do that.
You can do it. I'm like, Oh, but I had a level of trust. And I think that trust is so important. I knew that he had confidence in me. And I knew that when I went to him and I said, and I, you know, he'd give me an Excel spreadsheet and say, you know, you need to do X, Y, and Z with it. And I'd come back and I'd give him A, B, and C.
And he'd be like. Oh, we're kind of worlds apart here, but he's like, let me show you, let me show you how [00:51:00] to take this and change it, you know? And then at one point, um, he had me, um, mentoring some of the student interns and I'm like, Ooh, that's another one out of my, out of my comfort zone. But the whole time I was there, no matter.
What I did, quote, wrong, I felt comfortable going to him, even if I knew that whatever he assigned me, that I hadn't done it correctly or it was just not complete or whatever. I always felt comfortable going to him and saying, Oh, these students are driving me crazy. What do I do with them? You know, or I know I didn't get the spreadsheet right.
because he was there to help me fulfill my potential. It wasn't about him. It wasn't about making, you know, this department great, which, you know, in the end it does. But that trust, that level of trust was so important. And I [00:52:00] look into this day as one of the best bosses I ever had simply because of Jethro.
He put faith in me and even when I didn't do things right, he still had trust in me.
Yeah, the empowering other people to be greater than they are is like one of the greatest markings of leadership is that they can see something as your potential and then really nurture you into that potential through that trust, like you were saying, as well as speaking to what's possible.
And, and, and there's really cool studies about this with teachers where They found that a projection of what you believe is possible from somebody affects their capacity to show up in that, in whatever role that is. So if you expect somebody to do a poor job, that expectation, that projection on that person will actually make them be.
And if you expect them to do something, you know, reasonable, but well, and anticipate that they're going to do it well, their whole body [00:53:00] orients to that. It makes them believe in it themselves. And so some of the studies that they did was they gave bios to teachers where it was like, this is Sally and Sally is a really poor student and she comes from a bad family and she's going to be a real pain in your butt this year.
Sorry. And this is Jonah and Jonah is a great student and he comes from a really good family and he's really shown himself to be really lovely to work with. And, and then those children were actually the reverse of that. So Jonah was really bad. Boy, and Sally was a really good girl, but that was reflected in their grades.
They actually started to behave in the way that their teacher anticipated them to. And so we don't always recognize that our assumptions about people are impacting their capacity to thrive and do well. And this is important to consider that giving people what they need to thrive is a big part of management, but really helping people understand what's possible within themselves is leadership.
And there's [00:54:00] a big difference for that. And you know, we need the tools to thrive. Absolutely. We need to be able to have the, the basic, you know, pens, pencils or projectors or software or whatever it is to do the job. But somebody, uh, speaking to what's possible, giving us a clear vision of what their expectation is, and then really nurturing and coaching us into that is truly what I see leadership as.
Yeah, makes me think of mothers. When mothers look at their children and, and they can see what nobody else can see, it really helps that child rise above. And I think, to me, if I, if I were to think of the most conscious leader throughout all of history, it would be a mother.
Yeah, Elon Musk's mother, there's a great, her book is really neat, actually, the story of Elon Musk's mother.
Regardless of what you think of Elon Musk, the story of his mother is really quite fascinating and I'm really drawn to mothers for that reason too. Mother leaders in the world are something that, um, yeah, in consciousness and sort of, um, this, this [00:55:00] landscape that we're in around leadership right now where there's these, you know, conversations that are a lot more about consciousness, metaphysics.
different ways of looking at leadership, um, Divine Feminine is this term that's talked about quite a bit. This patriarchy is falling in the way that we've known systems and what's shifting is kind of this changing of the guard where women are coming in as leaders now and they have a different way of doing things.
And it is more collaborative, more cohesive, more kind of like, Really, how do we, how do we, how are we impacting each other with all of the decisions we make? How is our integrity as an embodiment affecting not just our teams, but the family members of our teams and the children of our teams? And how is that infecting future leaders that are being raised by those family members?
And so there's a lot of, I suppose, a dilation of the view that comes from the way women look at things.
It is, and I think, you know, [00:56:00] makes me think of the ying and the yang, um, growing up I had, I wouldn't call my father an alpha male, but you know, he certainly, I guess was on some level, but it always, I, I never worried.
I never worried that we were not going to be taken care of, you know, and because of that, I was able to flourish in that environment because, you know, I felt safe and I felt like, you know, that, and yet I felt the love and support of my mother in a different way. And she's the one that taught me to be a little more compassionate.
And she's the one that, you know, um, kind of picked me up when I scraped my knees where my dad would be like, Oh, come on, you know, get up. You can do it. Toughen up. Kind of thing. And I think about, you know, a mother and a father. And I'm putting them in the most idealistic perspective that we can, because I know not everybody has a wonderful mother and a wonderful father.
But when you have men and women in, you know, [00:57:00] corporate America, or whatever you want to call it, you know, whatever place they work, in the workplace, I guess is what I'm saying, there's, you know, a certain amount of assurance and it doesn't have to necessarily be a male or a female role, but you need the balance of, okay, I'm in charge.
I'm going to make sure that, you know, you get a paycheck every week and, you know, you're going to feel like you have all of the. physical things that you need to do your job. Whereas the alternate role would be, okay, now I'm going to make sure that you feel that you have all of the support that you need, the, that kind of thing.
And oddly enough, you know, the boss that I told you about was a male. So I'm saying it doesn't have to be a male, female thing, but I think we need both. I think we need the people who are kind of more, I don't know what the opposite of nurturing and whatever is, but I think patriarchy has gotten a bad rap.
I think there is a, a role for it and maybe it's not patriarchy, but just, you know, somebody who's in charge, [00:58:00] somebody who makes sure that physical demands are being met. Whereas, on the other side, the more emotional things are being met.
Yeah, I love how you spoke to the yin and the yang, the having the balance of the two and that each, however you identify each of those qualities.
And ultimately we have both individually in each of us, right? We have a, you know, a predisposition to a little bit more femininity or a little bit more masculinity, but in a, in an individual human, you have both. elements masculine and feminine within yourself. And then when we're in a dynamic with somebody else that has both elements, if they're in a dynamic where there's a masculine, that will, that will actually increase the amount of feminine polarity that's available.
So a woman around a really alpha male will actually become more feminine, more soft, more trusting, more receptive. If a woman is in a relationship with a masculine, and that could be a work relationship or a [00:59:00] personal relationship, and that masculine is collapsed in their energy, they're not in their alpha, they're not in their strength, they're not in a healthy expression.
That will engage the, the domineering qualities of the feminine in that. And so we see this a lot right now in this kind of confusion of, for a very long time it was pretty clear there was quite codependent roles of how a man was in society in a household and how a woman was in society in a household.
And that's all going through this evolution now, but we still still need both to be in their healthy expressions. As feminine, we still need and long for a masculine to protect and provide for us. And ultimately, that's not that we need to have somebody protecting and providing for us, but when there is that dynamic, What comes through is art, education, balance, beauty, symmetry.
That's the nature of feminine to bring about those qualities, right? When a masculine is with a healthy feminine that is in her [01:00:00] creative essence of life force and trust and beauty, she feeds the masculine by sending lots of love in his direction. Thank you for, for that. for protecting me. Thank you for making me feel safe.
Thank you for giving me a space where I know the boundary of myself so that that creative life force can come through. That's very different than being dominated by a masculine. That, that would be what I would call kind of like the healthy expression of the masculine versus the domineering patriarchal idea.
So the refinement around what we see in each of those is important. There's a healthy, mature expression, where Somebody that is in their masculine, that has done their inner child work, that has done their shadow work, that has really come to a space where they're holding clear boundaries, they understand the linear way of being that a masculine brings so well, right?
There's a real constructiveness that a masculine essence brings. That allows the feminine essence to be really creative and [01:01:00] liberal in the way that they see the world and, and, and an unhealthy feminine will be going around setting fires trying to get attention because she's hurt and she's wounded about these things that happened to her and she's longing to heal those.
She doesn't know how to ask for help. for what she needs because she's actually seeking boundary from the masculine. And so it's really a beautiful way to kind of have conversations about what is a healthy expression of a mature feminine look like in leadership, as well as what is a healthy expression of a masculine look like in leadership.
And again, I come back to the space of we are meant to work together. We're meant to be interdependent and not codependent. So within that, there's a, You're stronger. You would be better at picking up this heavy thing. It's not that I can't, but it's actually something you would do really well. Please help me with this and vice versa.
You have a great eye for beauty and cohesion and the capacity to come up with dynamic problem solving. Could you please [01:02:00] Beautiful woman, help me with this. And so when we start to work in this way, I think it becomes less about some of the, the confusion and the damage that's happened around the genders and the roles and all of those kind of parts that, like I said, we're going through a bit of a reorganization, but expressions of it.
that are healthy are really lovely to see and so you're really lucky for sure to have healthy parents in that way and it is lovely to hear that because that's not often what I work around and that was not my experience growing up and so I've moved to teaching and working in this because I've been spending so much of my life healing those parts that were unmet for me and it's, it's been, um, it's been confusing in my own evolution to try to figure out where do I stand in all of these parts and how do I want to create a space where I can identify and imprint on healthy expressions of it.
Like we were saying, who are the healthy leaders that we can orient to? Where are the people that we're longing to have as our role [01:03:00] models in the world? And there's some great examples, but there's also lots and lots of opportunity right now for more people to step into healthy expressions of what. So that's, that's where I'm working now is in that space of working with other mentors and working with people around coaching leadership and creating space for people to have, um, a bit of a multidimensional experience of redefining what leadership is.
Yes, I think of, um. And this is a direction I didn't plan on going, but it kind of made me think about it. It just made me think of all kinds of things. As we move into a whole new dimension, you know, we talk about the industrial revolution, and then the knowledge, you know, I don't know, all these different periods of time.
We're moving, obviously, into a whole new one that has the potential to really be destructive. I use artificial intelligence. I like artificial intelligence, but I don't deny the fact that there is some [01:04:00] really harmful things that can be done with artificial intelligence. And unfortunately, on the bad side, it has the potential to kind of overtake our society in some ways.
And there's this whole movement of transhumanism and, you know, trying to get away from being these conscious leaders, these feeling, caring human individuals to more, for lack of a better word, robotic type people. And, you know, there's just So many things on the horizon that in my estimation makes it almost, almost, I would say it is urgent.
that we develop conscious leaders, those that can take, I mean, when the internet came out, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago, however, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it really was. Everybody's like, Oh, the internet's going to destroy the world. It's going to take over everything, destroy jobs and everything.
And, [01:05:00] and it has had a really positive impact on the world, but it has also created a whole new. Not that pornography wasn't an industry to begin with, but just exploded, you know, that's the first one that comes to my mind, you know, of child sex trafficking and things like that. And so, with all the good, there's always going to be some bad.
And that's the way I look at artificial intelligence and a lot of these different things. Um, like Elon Musk, I, I like Elon, I like Elon Musk, it's funny, my executive coach that I worked for in California was actually Elon Musk's executive coach at one point. Um, but I like the idea of some of the things, you know, like the chips he's planting in the brain and things, because I think it could really help a lot of people and overcome a lot of some of the physical barriers that they, they face.
And I like the fact that he speaks out and says, we need to have, um, a practical approach to, you know, artificial intelligence and we need to put, you know, safeguards and things on it. But [01:06:00] I also see that, um, there's got, there has to be principled people who, you know, want to use this technology. for good and not allow a lot of the really bad that can come with it, especially as we move into this unfortunate place in our world where, you know, everybody's talking about World War III and that kind of thing.
And the use of artificial intelligence in that space would just be just beyond horrific. That's where we need people who really embody conscious leadership, I think.
Yeah, yeah, and this is actually where I also feel like as community members, we all need to take responsibility for ourself as individuals, and how are we contributing?
How are we voting with our dollars for what becomes the world that we're in? And, um, That's, that is meant to be an empowering directive, you know, that's meant to be a thing of like, stay curious, ask questions and, and [01:07:00] notice what you're choosing. Notice what you're choosing in, in life. I, um, I, I have fallen in love with using ChatGPT.
It's just such a fun thing for me. I have like, if I'm working on a little project and I'm like longing to understand how to organize myself in it, I'm a highly creative person. And so I can, you know, give chat GPT my highly creative idea and say now put this into an action list for me so that I can organize myself to achieve these things in four hours and it will do that for me in three seconds and I just feel like that's magic.
I just, I just think this is the coolest thing. And so, yeah, there's ways that, um, AI and the, you know, these evolutions in technology. I own a tech company, so I recognize that there's really beautiful and important elements of bringing humanity together. That's what I care about is creating a new health system where we're interconnected with the way we use technology, where we can bring about more ceremony in [01:08:00] our life, more connecting together with people that have shared ideas that want to collaborate on things and how, how, how healthy that can be to have other conscious businesses and entrepreneurs that are connecting to each other saying, we want to make sure that, you know, the spiritual wellbeing of our employees and our family members and our community members are accessible to everybody.
So we've developed a software that supports people and being able to gift that to one another. So. Like anything, it all has to do with how we use it. We are the ones, we're not victims in this, we're the ones that are, that are voting for or choosing all of these elements. And so, what are you choosing? And if you're raising your hands up in the air and just kind of going like, oh gosh, this world has just evolved past something that I understand anymore.
Well, then find something that you do understand, that you can recognize, like, what, how does that fit To not play a role in stick curious like follow that path. How does that play a role? We look at things like the Holocaust and times in the past [01:09:00] where really, you know, extreme atrocities have happened.
And we look at that and we go, we can never have that happen again. But I find it so interesting that a human life is roughly a hundred years and how quickly for we forget how things can happen again. And I think it has a little bit to do with that that side of like, we only live about a hundred years.
And so something that was really, really bad. fails to feel really really bad a hundred years ago. It's easy to write it off of like, oh, that was a long time ago. I don't have an experience of that in my life, but I would argue you do. We all have, in our epigenetic imprint, all of these traumas that are longing to be looked at again.
within us and then chosen. Am I going to choose to replicate that way for humanity to be in the world? And if we're not choosing consciously, we are choosing unconsciously. If you don't know what you're voting for and you don't know what you're standing for, somebody will tell you. So that's my guidance on [01:10:00] that.
I think that's the perfect summary and the perfect embodiment of what we a good close here, I think. Um, and I'm very interested in the work that you're doing and I'm sure many in the audience will be too. So if you could share, if you don't mind sharing, you know, your, how to get in touch with you, what your websites are, just anything that we can, and I'll put it in the notes so that people can reach out to you if they want to learn more.
Thanks, Cheryl. Yeah. A couple of things, if you're interested in leadership, and I imagine if you're listening to this podcast, that's something that's Perked your interest. Um, I teach a program called Liberated Leadership with a dear friend of mine, Chris Dykes, who's a really, really phenomenal leader as well.
It's based a little bit on the Gene Keys. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Gene Keys. Author Richard Rudd wrote this incredible book about all these different mystical traditions all coming together in this way that imprints our genetic expression. And, uh, it allows us to have these great conversations [01:11:00] around.
What is, what is affecting our choices and what are we choosing? And then how do we really want to claim that part of us that is our inherent individual expression? So coming to teaching people, don't be a leader like other people are a leader, be a leader, like you're a leader. And then there's this effortless grace and ease that comes out of that experience where you're not trying to be somebody else.
It's really an empowerment of coming home to yourself. So we're running a version of that in January for, um, um, for three months and um, if people are interested in looking that up, they can look me up on my website is goldenguidance. online. And then my software company, Karma Well Health, is um, really interested in practitioners as well as entrepreneurs that are looking for ways to support their employees um, with alternative health benefits programs.
So that's something where people are curious, they can reach out to me from that site and it's uh, Karma Well Health.
Oh, that sounds interesting. Well, thank you. [01:12:00] Thank you for taking your time to talk with me today. And, um, I'll get that information in the notes and get this up and I'll send you a link when it's published.
Thanks again, Cheryl. It was a lovely conversation.
