April 3, 2024 • 47 mins
Ally Fallon, coach, author, and host of the “Write Your Story” podcast joins the show today to talk about how writing can be a transformative tool to help connect to who you are and transform your life story.
After writing about her marriage falling apart, Ally learned that putting pen to paper helped her put her life back together while also finding her voice, meaning, and purpose. She now teaches others to do the same - helping them find clarity in their life stories and what the universe is trying to show them.
Amanda and Ally talk about the difference between who we present to the world and who we are when we look in the mirror. You can change the way you tell your story, change the way you see your story and take action in becoming the main character of your life.
Mercury retrograde is a perfect time to create a massive shift in your meaning and purpose. Journaling can help you break apart every aspect of your life, see what patterns emerge, and decide how you want to adjust your course for your next chapter.
Writing is a great tool to channel your truest self and it is proven that putting pen to paper can improve all aspects of your life - your mood, your immune system, your relationships, finances, etc and the best news is that journaling for 20 minutes a day for only 4 days in a row can provide benefits for 6 months.
Join Amanda live in Austin on May 7th - grab your tickets today!
Check out Amanda’s blog on The 4 Intuition Types
Pre-order Ally’s new book: “Write Your Story” and read her first book “Indestructible”
Listen to Ally’s episode with Amanda: Using Intuitive Gifts to Understand Your Story
Follow Ally Fallon on Instagram: @AllyFallon
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hi, everyone, It's Amanda Riga Green. Welcome to Soul Sessions Today,
I am having a conversation with my friend Ali Fallon.
If you don't know Alie, you should know her. We
just did a podcast together, her podcast which is called
Write Your Story. She and I are on the same
podcast network together. She is an author, a speaker, a
(00:31):
writing coach. She's also my friend. But I look at
Ali like kind of a wise life coach, and I
think it's an archetype that you know. And I'm not
gonna put words in your mouth, Ali, but I feel
like so much of what you do professionally and personally
with writing, supporting space for people to write, is helping
(00:56):
them tune in to their voice, to trust it, to
use it, and to evolve it. Welcome Allie.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
It's so interesting to hear you say that, because I
feel like I've been in this evolution in my career.
And I'll talk a little bit about how I got here,
but I feel like I've been like on the cusp
of this evolution of realizing that I'm not just a
publishing coach, but that I'm stepping into this more of
like a life coach. Although it's been hard for me
for whatever reason to like own that part of myself.
(01:25):
But it's cool to hear you speak to that, because
I've got other close and trusted people in my life
saying the same thing recently. So the way I got
here is my career has been in publishing. I published
my first book in twenty thirteen. After I published that book,
I realized it was going to be really hard to
generate a living wage selling a twenty dollars product without
selling hundreds of thousands of them, and so as a
(01:45):
way to bridge the gap in my income, I decided
to start working with other people who also wanted to
write books and coaching them on how to build out
the outline for their books so that they would have
like a really robust guidebook kind of for when they
sat down to direct the manager. So I spent many,
many years doing that with various authors, mostly nonfiction authors,
although I have worked with the Pea fiction authors, but
(02:07):
a lot of like help help books, business books, leadership books,
marriage books, books of pastors, olynthians, you know, just anybody
who's like a public figure, is an influencer on Instagram
or something, and has a story that they want to share.
I've spent most of micros sitting with those people and
helping them take their stories and their ideas and then
turn it into a book outline. And one of the
(02:28):
things that I've watched happen over and over again is
that people would have this really powerful transformative experience with
the act of sharing their story. So they would share
a story about their marriage and take it from their
brain and put it onto paper, and then they would
have these like epiphanies and insights in the process of
doing that that would more deeply connect from to themselves.
(02:49):
It would get them unstuck in these you know, circumstances
they were in inside of their relationships. Their relationship during
this process would like blossom and transform and become even
more like intimate and reward. And I was just watching
this happen over and over again. Someone will be writing
a book about business and their business would start to
do better. They'd be writing a book about relationships and
their relationships would improve, And I was like, what's happening here?
(03:11):
So I started to do some digging and found this
whole body of data that talks about the power of
putting pen to paper. There's you know, decades of research
that I've been done that show that the act of
putting pen to paper for as little as twenty minutes
a day for four days in a row, can measurably
improve your mood, It can measurably improve your immune system,
(03:31):
it can improve your relationships, it can improve your finances. Like,
there's not a part of your life that the act
of writing can't touch. So I was like having this
experience with my clients, uncovered this body of data and
was like really geeking out over it, Like I was
just like, this is amazing. This demonstrates exactly what I've
been witnessing happened to my clients over the course of
the last decade. And as that was all happening, I
(03:53):
also went through this really dark time in my personal life.
I went through a divorce, I left the church I
had grown up in. Felt like the rug had been
pulled out from under me in every area of my life.
And at the time, I was contracted to write a
book that was called Our First Year, as it was
supposed to be about my marriage, about how difficult the
first few years of marriage can be. And meanwhile, my
(04:16):
marriage is falling apart. So I was like, well, I guess,
I guess I'm not going to be writing that book.
So I sort of substituted the writing of that book
for sitting down to write about what was happening in
my life. I just started writing the details of what
was taking place. It was like more instinctual than anything.
I didn't think I was going to publish it. I
just knew that I needed to tell the story. And
(04:36):
then I started having the same experience that I'd watched
my clients have, where I was like piecing back together
my own sense of identity, my own sense of voice,
my own sense of like the meaning and purpose and
all of this. I was constructing a meaning out of
the story as I was writing about it. And I
literally put my life back together through the act of
(04:57):
writing about what was taking place. And so those three things,
like watching my clients have this experience and then reading
the data, and then having this own, my own personal
experience with the act of writing my story all together
set me up for this work that I'm doing now.
The book I have that's called Write Your Story, and
I've been teaching workshops called write your Story for the
(05:17):
last few years, and my podcast is called Write Your Story.
This is my transition from a publishing coach into like,
I don't know, life coach, whatever you want to call it,
but like, what I'm teaching people is really not about writing,
although the act of writing is very powerful, but the
act of writing it's a bridge to a deeper connection
(05:38):
with yourself, to more clarity in your life, to a
better understanding of what you're here for, to a deeper
sense of listening to what your life is trying to
show you and tell you. And when you can help
people get access to that, they feel better about themselves.
They're more confident, they have more clarity, they take more action,
and they just generally feel more at home in their
(05:59):
own Again.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
First of all, I told y'all you would want to
know Ali. Her story is amazing. Her gifts are practical
and useful. And we'll talk a little bit about when
we write, how we channel ourselves. We get to tap
into our truest selves, we get to pull back the
proverbial onion layers. Of course, she's mentioned that to you,
(06:25):
But what I really appreciate about your wisdom and your
experience is the parallel story of your personal experience. And
this dark night of the soul, you know, a difficult time,
a shift, a break up on multiple levels of your
(06:45):
life and going through this simultaneously doing it with clients.
And then it's like the universe.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We sometimes we think when things are totally falling apart,
they're actually falling together. And I think that's a main
theme of what I want everyone to take away today
because this conversation to me and Ali and I were
talking about this before we started recording. It's so divinely
timed because Mercury is in retrograde and if you listen
(07:16):
to last week's podcast, and I shared about Mercury retrograde
being this time to revise, rewrite, to edit, and it's
about editing yourself, your story, and it's retrograde in aries,
which is the I am so I love how the
universe orchestrated this. Ali and I didn't plan it this way.
(07:38):
It just we were laughing about how this is planned.
But back to when we think things are falling apart
and they're painful, and they're tough and confusing and uncertain,
and we fall into different versions of ourselves victim, roles, frustration, fear, anger,
All parts of us come out are not really pretty,
(08:01):
whatever that may be. And I know everyone out there resonates,
whether it's death or a divorce, or a career change,
a health challenge. You can look at this from so
many angles, but I do appreciate all the parallels and
where you are in your journey of how you saw
this happening for your clients by them getting their stories
(08:23):
on paper, getting it out of their heads and onto
the page, and it actually creating healing and transformation and
growth clarity too. But you walking through the same journey
and how it is evolved who you are, where you
are as a person. And I do want to say
this on a personal level, Ali today is in this
really healthy marriage and relationship and has a strong partnership.
(08:49):
So even speaking to detrimental things going on in a
relationship and a divorce, and obviously you were doing the
work and writing and seeing it in yourself and you've
written in this story to do relationship better, to do
it healthier, do it differently, but do it more aligned
with yourself. And also you were talking about leaving the
(09:10):
church that you were affiliated with. Yeah, that is a
huge shift in family infrastructure, values, systems of belief. So
it wasn't just the tangible relationship piece of things falling
apart and needing to be healed and mended within yourself.
To me, there was also this massive shift in your meaning,
(09:32):
your purpose and how that looks in your daily life.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Totally. I mean, one of the things when I talk
about the story of the divorce, it helps for people
to understand that this person who I was married to,
I was also in business mith. That was how we
made our living was near in business together. We also
planted the church together inside of the church community that
I grew up in. He also was acting as my
agent to the publishers. The other piece is there had
(09:58):
been some tension animosity with my family of origin. When
I married him, the family was kind of split, like
some people really loved him and some people were like
they weren't totally sure about him. And so then when
I announced that we were getting divorced, it was like
split in reverse. Like some people were like, we saw
this coming finally, and then other people were like, hold on,
wait before you get divorced, Like if you guys really
(10:20):
tried everything, and so the marriage ending more than just
about the marriage ending. It's exactly like you're talking about
It was like the breaking apart of every part of
my life. I remember thinking to myself, I'll never write
another book again, Like no one will ever publish me
because the first book that I wrote that did well
in the marketplace. That would be my leveraging point to
go to a publisher and say, look, I published the
(10:41):
book and it did well, but now my last name
is different, so there will be no name recognition. And
I mean now I can look back and think like
it's such a small detail that that's not going to prevent,
you know, my career from moving forward. At the time,
That's how it really felt. It really felt like every
aspect of my life was completely breaking apart.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
When you say that, you know, it's funny. I don't
mean to interrupt you, but I think about your inner
self and your outer self, like the reputation who people see,
and you know, our personality to me is at first glance, well,
how people read us or perceive us at first glance,
But then we have our reputation, how people see us
from afar, and then there's this inside version of ourselves.
(11:20):
So when I call it a dark knight of the
soul for you and moving through that, it was every
aspect of your being, your yes, your family of origin, business,
your belief system internally, your sense of self and who
I am and what I do in the world, and
how is this impacted. So I think that paints the
(11:42):
picture for everyone. And I know people resonate. You all
resonate out there. We've had times or maybe you're going
through something now where you feel like it is this
revolutionary identity shift and how that has been navigated. And
that's what I want to talk talk about a little
bit in writing your story, and you know your podcast
(12:04):
and the book that you have coming out, which is
on pre sale by the way, it's called Write your
Story Why Ali Fallon The official launch date is May seventh,
but it's on pre sale now, so you can definitely,
I assume, get it on Amazon. Yes, yeah, yes, Okay,
So let's talk about like all of this, like your
internal self and all these external versions of yourself that
(12:25):
you had worked diligently to create and live in life,
all of that being just torn apart or broken down.
Let's talk about like all of this, like your internal
self and all these external versions of yourself that you
(12:46):
had worked diligently to create and live in life, all
of that being just torn apart or broken down.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
So what would happen is I would wake up every morning,
I would go to the coffee shop that was in
my neighborhood, and I would sit for two hours and
just about what was taking place in my life. I
always talk about writing like looking in a mirror, so
when you put the words on the page, you're able
to see something more clearly. It would be the difference
between looking in a mirror or having someone else describe
you to yourself. So like that's sort of what you're
(13:16):
talking about, where it's like I had my reputation on lockdown.
In fact, I've eventually published the book which is called Indestructible.
It's the story of my divorce and then finding myself
outside of that marriage. But I tell a story in
the book about my friend Sarah, who was a yoga
instructor who was a really huge guide to be in
the story, and she says something really funny to me
about how when she first met me, I was like
a Christmas ornament. You know. She's just like you like
(13:39):
had your nails perfectly done, you presented yourself in this
like very proper kind of a way. Like she's like,
I could have hung you on my Christmas street, like
you were just so perfect. And then while we're having
this conversation, I'm sitting on the floor of the yoga
studio just drenched and sweat And that was a bit
of the transformation from the beginning to the end. Was
like the difference between the person that we present to
(14:01):
the world that we hope looks good and the person
who is like looking back at this in the mirror.
So this idea of writing the words on the page
and being able to see yourself clearly in the mirror,
and sometimes the things that you see are not things
you like very much. Sometimes that first time that you
look at yourself in the mirror and you go like, oh,
I didn't realize that I had luodsmear across my face
(14:22):
or whatever it is. And so the writing experience gives
us this opportunity to make adjustments, make changes, to see
things in a different kind of a way, to see
them from a different vantage Stree. And that was what
I did as I wrote the stories. The first draft
of the story was really chaotic. It didn't have any
kind of structure. The other thing that happened in the
first draft is I started to notice patterns in myself,
(14:46):
Like one pattern I really noticed is that I was
very very bitter and resentful toward this person, my acce husband.
I would read the writing back to myself and I
would be like, Wow, this girl doesn't sound like very
much fun to be around. Like the narrator that was
coming through was like there was a lot of bitterness
and a lot of resentment. And I don't bought myself
for that. I have a lot of compassion because I
(15:07):
had been through hell and back with him, and so
the anger makes sense and the bitterness makes sense. But
I just got to the point where as I was reading,
I was like, I don't want to be this narrator,
Like I want to narrate the story differently. And that's
the opportunity that writing gives us. Is when we see
something on the page that we realize we don't like,
that makes us not a very sympathetic hero to the story,
(15:30):
we get an opportunity to make it upgrade, to see
the story in a different kind of way. I always
still writers, there's a thousand different ways you could tell
this story, So just make sure that you're aware that
there's a thousand different ways, and then you get to
pick which way you want to tell it. Even if
all of the details are the same, there's still infinite
ways that you could put those details together to frame
(15:51):
them for your reader and for yourself. And that's the
agency that we take when we take the time to
sit down to write our story, is the agency of saying,
how do I want to tell the story? What details
do I want to stand out to a reader? How
do I want to come across as a narreor what's
the energy of the person that I want to be
in my life? And those are really empowering questions to
(16:12):
ask yourself and really empowering decisions to get to make.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I'm having all these mind blown moments over here because
you're articulating things in experiences I've had and giving life
to and meaning to or to what I've experienced. And
what I liked about what you were sharing just now
is as the reader not seeing the being sympathetic to
(16:36):
the hero and seeing those patterns come out, and you're like, gosh,
all this bitterness that keeps coming out, And for me,
the way that I think you know that I know
that I've done that in my life. I do quite
a bit of journaling and write intentions, and I'm pretty
routine in that because I love it. It flushes out what's
going on internally, so I can look at all the
moving parts and what's consistent or inconsistent. And sometimes I
(16:58):
don't like the consistency, you know, if it's if it's
shame or self pity or judgment, you know, whatever, these
repeating patterns that come out. But I've experienced that, you know,
and in recovery and in twelve step work, where we
have to get out on paper all of our resentments,
all of those old feelings, and we have to disclose
(17:19):
that to another trusted human being who can help us
look at our part, look at our role, look at
who we are in the story as the central character
and the big revelation in that apart from forgiveness and healing,
and of course there's making amends, you know, if anybody
out there is in twelve step work or familiar with that.
(17:41):
But also it's this opportunity to say, where can I
take action? You know, what is my side of the street,
and how do I begin to own it and clean
it up? And then once those things begin to happen
and you're aware of all those those faulty, gray, dark
areas and the beautiful area too. It's this ownership and
(18:03):
what you and I were talking about before we started recording,
becoming the main character of your own life.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yes, I love that you talked about taking action, because
this is one of the really big epiphanies that came
from writing Violin story, was realizing that what I learned
in school and in my training for writers about narrative
structure is that stories are built around one central character,
and that character is the character who we follow from
the start of the story to the end, and human
(18:31):
brains have an expectation for a few things about that
character in a story. If these elements are not in
a story, we disengage. We just don't have any interests.
We won't go watch the movie, and we'll leave the
theater early. We'll put the book down, we don't finish
the book. The expectations that we have for that main
character of the story is they need to transform from
the beginning of the story to the end, that they
have to change. The other expectation that we have is
(18:54):
that the only way the plot moves forward is when
the hero takes action. So we intuitively understand that the
lot of the story cannot move forward when the main
character sits on the couch. If the main character sits
on the couch and wants to meet the love of
their life but does never leave the front door, they're
never going to meet the love of their life. It
wouldn't even be an interesting movie to us if it
(19:14):
was a romantic comedy where she sits on the couch
waiting for her nine shining armor and he shows up
at the front, like, we'd be like boring, Like it's
not an interesting story. And so understanding those things about
how narrative structure worked helped me to start to put
some structure around the chaotic stories that I was telling myself.
And as I put that structure in place, I realized, like,
I don't have to compromise the integrity of the details
(19:36):
of the story. In other words, I'm still telling his
true story. I'm just giving it a structure that wasn't
there before. And one of the main things that I
did was I put myself in the position of the hero.
So when I put myself in the position of the
hero of a story, it stopped me from feeling resentful
because I stop asking questions like how could he do
(19:56):
this to meet? How could anyone act like this towards
someone else? I stopped worrying so much about him. I
started asking the story if I'm the hero in this
story and my action is what moves the story forward,
and it's lie transformation that this story is about. How
am I transforming as a person? How is this making
me better? Who do I want to be on the
other side of this. I also asked the question what
(20:17):
makes a woman marry a man that she doesn't want
to marry? You know, like, why did I make that choice?
I knew on my wedding day. I remember feeling like
I don't want to do this, and I was like, well,
it's too late, you know, people are all here. What
else am I going to do? And walk down the aisle?
So I had to really dig deep inside of the
story to get to the root of what motivates the hero,
(20:38):
what happened in her backstory that made her act in
this way to find a position of deep compassion for
her and also a resolution, like a resolve to get
to the result. It was like, there has to be
a conclusion to this story, and the conclusion of a
personal story comes in the transformation of the hero. So
who am I trying to become this story end? Until
(21:00):
I become her and moving into that position, it was
like all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, I'm
the author of my story. Literally, I'm the author. I
used to tell people all the time, years ago, before
any of this happened. I would say, like, personal stories
don't work the way the movies do because we don't
get to write our own endings. And I don't agree
with that anymore. I think the ending to your story
(21:21):
comes when you decide how you would like the story
to end. You do not always get control over other people,
or over what happens in the world or what other
people decide to do, but you always have one hundred
percent agency over what you choose to do, the meaning
you choose to make of the story, the kind of
transformation that you want to actualize inside your story. Nobody
else can take that away from you. And I titled
the book my memoir about the divorce. It's called indestructible,
(21:44):
which is a terrible title for a book because nobody
knows how to spell that word. But the idea of
indestructible was like when everything else is stripped away. The
part of me that no one can take from me,
that no one can destroy, is the part of me
that gets to choose who I am, what makes me matter,
what makes me valuable? What am I here for, what
am I doing? What am I about? Nobody can take
(22:05):
that from me. I don't care how much money you
take from me. I don't care if you betray me,
de fil me, blame me, abuse me, hurt me, kick me,
kick me out, like nobody can take that from me.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
First of all, I hope everyone out there realizes, like
Ali threw out about twenty journal prompts, and Ali is
the Queen of journal prompts because this is what she does.
She helps people write their story. She is a publishing
and a writing coach. But you can tell when I
called her a life coach. She is pulling out purpose
and meaning and she does it in a very methodical
(22:38):
yet intuitive way and also through her own experience. But
definitely go back, and I'm going to do this after
we quit recording, because I'm going to journal and I'm like, Okay,
I'm going to go back and start asking these questions
to myself about who do I want to be? And
what that makes me think of a couple of things. One,
it really resonates with the new horology of this year.
(23:01):
We are in an eight universal year, and the eight
is about empowerment, So usually what the eight creates is
the polar opposite of that. So a lot of people
are going through phases of massive disempowerment, disillusion forgetting their
agency and their sovereignty. And everything you were saying to
(23:22):
me really resonated with a theme of twenty twenty four
us being in this eclipse season, this massive areas eclipse
coming in, which is all about the eye. What do
I do? How do I take action? How do I perceive?
How do I move forward? How do I want to
move forward? What is that story I'm writing? But it
also taps into co creating your own life, manifestation, the
(23:48):
law of attraction. And this is why Ali and I
want to share with you because we recognize the spirituality
and the spiritual practice that comes with right pace, and
it also helps with manifestation. Because Ali has already told
you she saw the transformation in many clients' lives, whether
(24:10):
it was around business or personal relationships, when they began
to author their own story and take the agency and
decide what kind of hero they wanted to be, and
they started to actually manifest and write that into their lives.
And she experienced that as well, and I have experienced
that in my life too. So I hope you all
(24:32):
recognize this podcast and what Ali has gifted us are
some great journal prompts through Mercury retrograde and eclipse season.
This could not be a better time to revise your story.
So take these next few weeks to spend time writing.
And Alie, You've got to tell us because my big
(24:54):
question and where I get stumped up with writing is
my consistence. And see here's where I'm consistent. I'm really
good with new and full moons, and I have been
for years. I'm really great. I always journal on new
and full moons, and I do at the beginning of
the month and usually the end of the month because
(25:14):
of the energetic shift, because that is the routine I've created.
So we know, I'm journaling typically about four times a month.
I journal more than that, and I journal often. But
I still can get inconsistent. And I feel like a
lot of us have we set ourselves up to fail?
Like we set these I set unreasonable expectations with my
writing or my journaling whatever it, to sit down and
(25:37):
have that time, and then I don't meet them, and
I shame myself and then I blow it off. And
I'm sure you've heard this. What do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
What do you share with people to help overcome what
feels like a mountain to me? Sometimes?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So this will be really really helpful for you and
for your brain. The data show that in order to
see I'M measurable improvement in your life, you need to
journal for twenty minutes a day for four days in
a row every sixth month. The pressure that we put
on ourselves for all of the things, including writing, is
just so bizarre to me that we get in this
negative cycle. It's like going to the gym or whatever,
(26:13):
where we're like, I'm going to go to the gym
five days a week for an hour every time, and
I'm going to lift weights, and you set the bar
so high for yourself that you don't get to get
into the cycle of like feel good emotions. You know
what I mean? What I teach people to do with
their writing is to create a relationship to your writing
where you want to do it because it makes you
feel good, because that's what writing will do, is it
(26:34):
will make you feel good. We all have experience with writing.
We also have some experiences with writing many of us
do that are traumatic. And so when I teach writing workshops,
I'll have people tell me the earliest memory that they
have as it relates to writing, because it's very telling.
You'll get half of the room that will say I
had a fourth grade teacher who just really believed in me,
and she, you know, praise my writing and call me
(26:55):
out with a great writer. And then you'll have people
to say, my mom found my journal and she got
it out, she read it to my friends. But if
you can create a positive relationship with writing where you
actually look forward to sitting down to the page to
do some journaling, you actually like you remember the dopamine
hit that you get, then you're going to be as
addictive to journaling as you are to Instagram, because it's
(27:16):
like it's just its own self fulfilling prophecy. It's like
I love this, I feel good when I do it.
But instead what a lot of us do or we're
like I'm going to write every day for an hour
every every morning, and of course you're not going to
do that. You know, life is going to get in
the way, and there'll be day's way, you'll miss your
writing practice. And people go like, oh see, I always
do this. I have no discipline, and it's like, no,
(27:38):
that's not true. You have no discipline. It's like life
is busy and it's crazy, and parving up this time
is challenging. But two minutes is better than no minutes.
Five minutes is better than two minutes. You know, don't
set the bar so high. It doesn't need to be
an hour. Twenty minutes. That was like with the sample
set that they used when they did these research studies,
So twenty minutes at a time for four days in
(27:58):
a row, but even five minutes is a great amount
of time.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast on addiction to
dopamine and how we've really disregulated ourselves because of all
the dopamine seeking behaviors out there, whether it's from alcohol
as an addiction or sex and relationships codependency, to all
of the screen time we have. I mean, we can
go on and on and then our dopamine receptors get
(28:23):
shot and they can't reregulate, and then we're not producing
dopamine and we have to get it externally. I mean,
it's a cycle, and it's also an epidemic. I mean,
this woman was an expert talking about it being an epidemic.
But what light bulb went off is when I write,
when I do my journaling, I jump in and I
get into it and I'm like yes, yes, and I
(28:45):
can just keep going and it floods and the channeling
that happens, which I want to communicate to everyone when
I start writing. Sometimes I'm writing so fast that it
is flying out of my soul and I look at
it and I'm marvel. Sometimes it's beautiful and incredible, and
sometimes it's ugly and I didn't even know those words
(29:07):
and that nastiness was in there. So it's not so
much about what comes out. It's almost like the force
in which it comes through that just feels true. Whether
I get to look at it, this truth comes out,
but there is also this adrenaline or dopamine. And I
(29:28):
never put two and two together with the dopamine and
the writing, but I feel good and I look forward
to it. I look forward to the ritual of it,
but knowing that it is also a healthy replacement for
those other forms of dopamine that we are all seeking.
The television food, I mean, whatever it may be. Knowing. Okay, Amanda,
(29:51):
maybe you don't need to watch another Netflix show. Maybe
you go right for five minutes, because if I decide
to write for five minutes, it's twenty five minutes, and
I just feel enriched and illuminated most of the time.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, And like, think of the positive cycle you create
when you when you do that, when you set the
bar really low, You're like, I'm just gonna write for
two minutes, and then you wrote for twenty five and
then you're like, I'm a rock star. Like every time
I do this, I go above and beyond. You know.
I was telling someone yesterday, a client who I've been
working with, who is telling me he has no discipline,
everyone says, and I'm like, that's just simply not true.
I'm like, you built a multimary dollar business. There's no
(30:24):
possible way you have no discipline. Everyone's discipline just comes
out a little differently. And I was telling him about
this running coach back in my twenties, I ran a marathon.
His name is Jeff, and I can't remember his last name,
but he wrote a book on how to train for
a marathon. One of the things that he taught me
that I will never forget is that there are going
to be days and you don't want to go for
your training run, and so you just tell yourself, I'm
not going to go for my training run today. I'm
(30:45):
just going to put on the outfit. So you put
on the running clothes that you have, and then you're like,
I'm not going to go for my training run, and
I'm going to go stand out on the front porch
and just see what's happening in the neighborhood. See you
stand out on the front port, so you just kind
of peer out of what's going on. And then you
tell yourself, I'm not going to go over my run today,
but I am going to go walk around with a
because it's just such a beautiful day. So then you
go walk around the block and then you tell yourself,
I'm not going to go for my training run, but
(31:05):
I'm going to just jog a little bit because what
did that feel good? And you just kind of trick
yourself slowly into like working your way up and then
you're just like, well, even if you don't complete your
eight mile training run. You ran four miles and you
were planning on running zero miles, and so you feel awesome.
And I love using that same kind of strategy for writing,
where you set the bar really really low. You just
(31:25):
tell yourself, I'm not going to write today. I don't
feel up for it. But I'm going to just sit
at my computer. We'll see what happens. Or I'm going
to get my journal out whatever. So I'm going to
make myself a couple of coffee and sit at the
table and just sit in silence. And then you say, like,
I'm just going to write down one word, Like what
if I had to pick one word that comes to mind,
what would the word be. I'm just going to make
a bullet point list of things that feel true for
(31:46):
me today that feels nice. Yeah, I'm going to make
a bullet whiteless and think for culture for me today
and just see like how much momentum you can pick
up sort of slowly trick yourself into doing the thing
that you know you ultimately want to do, because like I,
as as human beings, I just feel like we're pickle
creatures and we can sometimes let our feelings get in
the way. And then whenever, for me, at least, whenever
(32:07):
that negative fuckel starts to pick up, where I catch
myself saying like, oh, I'm the worst. I always do this.
I have no discipline. Like that story that we're telling
about ourselves is taking us away from the things that
we want to do and towards the things that we
actually really don't want to do, like binging you know Netflix,
which there's nothing wrong with that, No.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
I mean sometimes that is I set aside the time
and I actually, you know, to me, spirituality comes so practically.
I find it in the every day. I find it
in putting on nineties music in the car and rolling
the windows down, and when my spirit begins, when I
start to dance and move and groove and smile, and
(32:48):
then all of a sudden, I'm like, yes, I am light,
I am love. I mean, I practice spirituality and I
will do it binging Netflix. And I don't mean like
guts and gore, although I can watch any crime and
you know, all of the thrillers in a heartbeat, but
I mean I just recently was talking about how I
discovered ted Lasso, and I literally watched ted Lasso and
(33:13):
could feel all of I could feel the dopamine, of course,
but the lightheartedness, the joy, all of the upliftment. And
when I would watch it, I would consciously sit there
and when something would be sentimental or just joyful or sad,
I would say, ooh, that's what that feels like, and
(33:33):
then I would allow it to run through my body.
So sometimes, like you said, we can find value and
our truth in the most mundane places. But when it
comes back to this writing and a practice of writing
that does not need to be overwhelming, setting the bar
low so we can surprise ourselves. Like it's like a ball,
(33:55):
a snowball rolling down hill, you know it grows, or
a rubber band ball. You know, each time you put
a reber band on, it starts to get bigger and bigger.
And it's building that practice. And I want to ask
you this. I do want to talk about writing and
intuition and your spiritual journey because this is what Ali
(34:18):
and I have been talking about personally, and we talked
about it on her podcast recently, Write your Story. You
can check out that episode that the two of us shared.
We talk about intuition and intuitive development, but share a
little bit about your recent experience in intuitive development and
the growth of your enrichment of your spiritual life with
writing but in general.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
So I've been through a math and spiritual evolution from
the time that I left the church that I grew
up in. There, I think there was a period of
time where it felt like, what is my spirituality going
to become? Because I've always been a very spiritual person,
but outside of the container that I was taught, like prayer,
for example, I'm like, doing it in the way that
I was taught isn't connecting for me anymore? So then
(35:01):
how do I do it? And I kind of floundered
around for a while. But in the past couple of years,
I've really rediscovered like a really deep, much deeper than
it's ever been before, a deep and true and authentic
spirituality that is really working for me. And that's part
of like I reached out to you several weeks ago
because I've been using oracle cards and I actually was
(35:21):
calling them geral cards. I didn't even know that they was.
I was drawn to the cards and I saw my
friend of mine post a deck on Instagram, and so
I just went and about the deck and then you
recommended the animal Oracle. So I went and loft that deck,
and I was calling them Gerald cards because that's how
ignorant I am to this spiritual practice. I had just
never used it before. And so I reached out to
you and I was like, I don't know why, but
(35:41):
these cards have been calling to me, and I just
I want to have a conversation with me about it
on the podcast, because I feel like there's a strong
connection between spirituality and writing, Like the cards help you
to better understand your story and to tell your story
in a clear kind of a way, and then writing
also helps you to better understand your story and tell
your story more clearly. So there's I was just sensing
(36:03):
that there's this connection between the two. And then, you
know another thing that happened for me recently, because then
you came on my show and you were talking about
the blog post that you wrote about the Four Claires,
and so then I went to read that blog post
and I was thinking, like, Okay, for me, you know,
the way that I access my intuition is my writing.
That's how I know what's true for me is when
I see it on the page. It's sort of like,
(36:25):
what would that be like clairvoyance?
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I guess it's clairvoyance because you've talked multiple times about imagery,
and I can see it within you is imagery. It
is clairvoyant. But writing, and when we write and we channel,
I also think it's Clare audience because what happens is
it's not like you're hearing a voice in your head,
(36:48):
but you're you're free flow writing, and what comes out
on the page it's like it's audible, but it's written words.
So it's a form of Claire audience, of being able
to put words to the language that's going on in
the liminal brain and the subconscious and the intuitive self.
So it's giving word form, it's breathing that into life.
(37:12):
So I think it's this combination of clairvoyance and clear audience.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And the other thing that happens for me too is
when someone else writes their story, like when I'm coaching someone.
For example. I've never in a million years used the
word psychic to describe myself, but I do have a
bit of like a I feel like I know things
about them that I should know. It's not like I'm
walking through the grocery store and I'm like, Ooh, I
know something about this guy. Shopping for apples. It's more
(37:37):
like when I'm sitting down and someone's telling their story,
they'll tell me an aspect of their story, and I
can see more than what they're sharing with.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Me, which guess what that is clairvoyance and clear audience
because they are talking to you and you are starting
to see things and interpret things, which are very much
like oracle cards. Then that's what I shared with you.
With oracle cards, they're open to interpretation. They're usually beautifully illustrated,
and there's a guidebook that has messaging and prompts in
(38:10):
there to detail or outline the meaning behind the oracle
card you pull, depending on the deck. And there's this
element of seeing the unseen, reading into intuiting, calling forth
meaning and messaging through symbols, through colors, whatever it may be.
(38:30):
So again, there's overlap in that, truly, and you and
I talked about this on your podcast, But oracle cards
for me have been oftentimes the journal prompts I didn't
know I needed. You know, when I do my new
and full moon and whether I pull a big seven
cards spread of something, or I pull one or two
or three cards, even one card from three different decks,
(38:54):
depending on whatever I'm in the mood for, I use
that and it starts to take me in it into
my writing process, and I just trust that I'm going
to pull what I need to pull in order to
get out on paper or out of my heart, out
of my body, out of my higher consciousness, pull down
(39:15):
that wisdom and get it out so I can see it,
understand it, know it and know you know, ah, there's
the magic or ooh, shoot, Amanda, you got to work
on that girl.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Totally. Yeah, I've been really loving the practice with the
oracle cards because it does give you something tangible to
work with.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
It's like it.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Gives you the images and then I can piece it
together in some sort of a story arc. So it
feels like it fits really nicely with the way my
brain already works and the way that I already operate spiritually.
And I really feel like this is I guess, sort
of in response to the question that you asked, but
also like taking us all the way back to the
beginning of the conversation, I feel like I'm shifting into
this new space where like I'm really being asked to
(39:55):
pick ownership. I was telling my husband how like being
a publishing coach is like, no brainer. I'm like, oh, yeah,
I've got the credentials for that, no problem. But then
when he starts to suggest that, like I'm helping people
really understand their life story, I'm like, well, I have
no degree, you know what I mean? So I have
like a lot more imposter syndrome when it comes to that.
But I feel like I'm like really shifting into taking
(40:18):
ownership of how spiritual writing truly is. That you almost
can't separate the two. Like I could work with someone
in a publishing context who had no interest in spirituality,
and I still would be seeing things about them that
they don't know that I'm I may not be saying
it in that context because it's not as appropriate, but
I'm still like, oh, I have insight into your life
(40:40):
that you don't. You know that I shouldn't have that.
It's not something you've told me, but I can kind
of see it because we're working together in this like
really personal spiritual class. Well.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And that used to happen to me, gosh, I mean
forever in business. It would happen to me in my
twenties and early thirties and before I really embraced my
psychic and intuitive gifts. I would be in a business
meeting and the way that my gift comes through, and
I would never have known that this was what was
(41:10):
going on until, you know, finally I began to put
the puzzle pieces together. But I could be in a
business meeting and I could hear the voices in everyone's heads.
I mean, that's a lot of chatter, right, and like
a lot of stuff going on. But I would be
leading a meeting and I would intuitively know what to
bring up, what to ask. Alongside of whatever my agenda
(41:33):
was or whatever I was overseeing. I would be doing
my thing, and then I would hear all these words
and things and well, what are we gonna do about this?
How is this gonna happen? Oh, my gosh, I don't
want to do that. Uh, I'm not interested. I can't
believe she's talking about this. It would be a whole
audience of people talking and intuitively because it actually it
(41:53):
is my gift and it's the essentially the clear cognizance.
But also I'm very telepathic, and gosh, thank goodness for
energetic boundaries today because I can shut that off, you know,
but not always, but most of the time, and I
am not. I'm really I'm not nosy. I'm like, I
have enough going on in this brain. I don't need
to know. But I didn't know all of that and
(42:14):
understand it, and I wasn't being nosy. It just was happening.
But what was so interesting about it is I knew
how to assimilate what was coming through, and I had
the gift of orating and leadership in business to pull
the right people in in the right places, and I
intuitively knew about them who would work and then I
(42:34):
could hear their interest in things going. But I thought
I thought that was just normal. Really, I didn't know
to say, oh, does everybody hear everybody's voices? Because it
wasn't like their their personal voices were coming through. It
was like words and symbols and information. So it was
very confusing. But like what you shared, And I hope
this helps people out there with your intuition in whatever
(42:58):
job or profession you're in, or as a mother, a father,
you know, a brother, It doesn't matter what role. How
you can be talking to someone, working with someone, a
group of people, and information and things and insights are
coming to you and you get to use whatever your
(43:21):
role is so if it's in a professional role, you
get to use your expertise or your guidance or you
know whatever, you get to facilitate. You can share your
intuition without feeling like you're crossing a boundary or a line.
And you know, that is part of my story in
in the at the end of my healthcare degree, it
(43:43):
got to the point where, you know, dead people were
showing up in hospitals all the time, and it was
it was such a hot mess and overwhelming, and I
was so conflicted and confused because I didn't want to
overstep ethically or professionally, but messages were coming through in
a way that if I didn't deliver them I would
be denying a part of their story and mind and
(44:05):
so many things. But still for everyone else out there,
we all have the gift of intuition. Yeah, thank you
for being on today. Tell everyone where they can find you,
and give a little plug for your book that's coming
out please and your launch party, which Ali is having
her book launch party on May seventh in Nashville and
(44:29):
my live event is in Austin, Texas on May seventh,
So magical day for both of us. But it's like
I would have easily gone to Nashville. That'd have been
a great time and reason. And Ali's like I had
to come to Austin up.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
I know. Good, Well, we'll just be celebrating each other
from a bar. But yeah, the best place to find
me is Instagram. That's where I'm the most active. I'm
at Ali fallon on Instagram, ally at all o n
And then yeah, I would love to have you pre
order a copy of the book. It's called Write Your
Story by Alison Ballen. You can buy that wherever you
buy your books. And then after you pre order, if
(45:02):
you order before May seven, make sure you go to
write your Story dot com slash book and enter your
order number there and you'll get access to over eight
two hundred dollars worth of preorder bonuses. I put together
like an insane preorder bonus package because I really wanted
to incentivize people to go order the book before May seven.
They're all digital resources that they're the Write your Story Journal.
There's a video series that you can watch that's five
(45:24):
questions to ask before you write your Story. You get
to also download the first three chapters of the book
and read them before the book is even out. So
all kinds of stuff. There's like five or six different
things that you'll get when you enter your order number there,
so make sure you do that.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Love well, y'all. This is a great time to do
that and utilize Ali as a resource the resource she is,
and definitely checking out write your story, her book, but
also her podcast. It's wonderful. I hope you all have
enjoyed our conversation today, and I know for me, Ali
articulates things. This is what she does. She helps people
(46:00):
write their story, but she articulates things in ways that
to me empower and incentivize. And when I'm incentivized or
motivated by someone through their process, their toolkit, and their wisdom,
That's when I'm firing and wiring. We get to do
these things together and share our gifts. So thank you
(46:22):
for coming on today. I feel really illuminated and motivated
about some of my writing and some things that I
am working on, but some stuff I need to do.
I'm like, Okay, I know I'm going to close by
saying I love the right for twenty minutes at a time,
four days in a row, and that in and of
itself gives you about a six month period where you
(46:45):
will see the benefits. I mean, I can. I don't
need to overachieve, but I'm like, oh, I can do that.
Thank you for joining us everyone. I hope you enjoyed
this episode. You can definitely connect with Ali Fallon and
get her book. Everyone take care and be well.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
M
Hi, everyone, It's Amanda Riga Green. Welcome to Soul Sessions Today,
I am having a conversation with my friend Ali Fallon.
If you don't know Alie, you should know her. We
just did a podcast together, her podcast which is called
Write Your Story. She and I are on the same
podcast network together. She is an author, a speaker, a
(00:31):
writing coach. She's also my friend. But I look at
Ali like kind of a wise life coach, and I
think it's an archetype that you know. And I'm not
gonna put words in your mouth, Ali, but I feel
like so much of what you do professionally and personally
with writing, supporting space for people to write, is helping
(00:56):
them tune in to their voice, to trust it, to
use it, and to evolve it. Welcome Allie.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
It's so interesting to hear you say that, because I
feel like I've been in this evolution in my career.
And I'll talk a little bit about how I got here,
but I feel like I've been like on the cusp
of this evolution of realizing that I'm not just a
publishing coach, but that I'm stepping into this more of
like a life coach. Although it's been hard for me
for whatever reason to like own that part of myself.
(01:25):
But it's cool to hear you speak to that, because
I've got other close and trusted people in my life
saying the same thing recently. So the way I got
here is my career has been in publishing. I published
my first book in twenty thirteen. After I published that book,
I realized it was going to be really hard to
generate a living wage selling a twenty dollars product without
selling hundreds of thousands of them, and so as a
(01:45):
way to bridge the gap in my income, I decided
to start working with other people who also wanted to
write books and coaching them on how to build out
the outline for their books so that they would have
like a really robust guidebook kind of for when they
sat down to direct the manager. So I spent many,
many years doing that with various authors, mostly nonfiction authors,
although I have worked with the Pea fiction authors, but
(02:07):
a lot of like help help books, business books, leadership books,
marriage books, books of pastors, olynthians, you know, just anybody
who's like a public figure, is an influencer on Instagram
or something, and has a story that they want to share.
I've spent most of micros sitting with those people and
helping them take their stories and their ideas and then
turn it into a book outline. And one of the
(02:28):
things that I've watched happen over and over again is
that people would have this really powerful transformative experience with
the act of sharing their story. So they would share
a story about their marriage and take it from their
brain and put it onto paper, and then they would
have these like epiphanies and insights in the process of
doing that that would more deeply connect from to themselves.
(02:49):
It would get them unstuck in these you know, circumstances
they were in inside of their relationships. Their relationship during
this process would like blossom and transform and become even
more like intimate and reward. And I was just watching
this happen over and over again. Someone will be writing
a book about business and their business would start to
do better. They'd be writing a book about relationships and
their relationships would improve, And I was like, what's happening here?
(03:11):
So I started to do some digging and found this
whole body of data that talks about the power of
putting pen to paper. There's you know, decades of research
that I've been done that show that the act of
putting pen to paper for as little as twenty minutes
a day for four days in a row, can measurably
improve your mood, It can measurably improve your immune system,
(03:31):
it can improve your relationships, it can improve your finances. Like,
there's not a part of your life that the act
of writing can't touch. So I was like having this
experience with my clients, uncovered this body of data and
was like really geeking out over it, Like I was
just like, this is amazing. This demonstrates exactly what I've
been witnessing happened to my clients over the course of
the last decade. And as that was all happening, I
(03:53):
also went through this really dark time in my personal life.
I went through a divorce, I left the church I
had grown up in. Felt like the rug had been
pulled out from under me in every area of my life.
And at the time, I was contracted to write a
book that was called Our First Year, as it was
supposed to be about my marriage, about how difficult the
first few years of marriage can be. And meanwhile, my
(04:16):
marriage is falling apart. So I was like, well, I guess,
I guess I'm not going to be writing that book.
So I sort of substituted the writing of that book
for sitting down to write about what was happening in
my life. I just started writing the details of what
was taking place. It was like more instinctual than anything.
I didn't think I was going to publish it. I
just knew that I needed to tell the story. And
(04:36):
then I started having the same experience that I'd watched
my clients have, where I was like piecing back together
my own sense of identity, my own sense of voice,
my own sense of like the meaning and purpose and
all of this. I was constructing a meaning out of
the story as I was writing about it. And I
literally put my life back together through the act of
(04:57):
writing about what was taking place. And so those three things,
like watching my clients have this experience and then reading
the data, and then having this own, my own personal
experience with the act of writing my story all together
set me up for this work that I'm doing now.
The book I have that's called Write Your Story, and
I've been teaching workshops called write your Story for the
(05:17):
last few years, and my podcast is called Write Your Story.
This is my transition from a publishing coach into like,
I don't know, life coach, whatever you want to call it,
but like, what I'm teaching people is really not about writing,
although the act of writing is very powerful, but the
act of writing it's a bridge to a deeper connection
(05:38):
with yourself, to more clarity in your life, to a
better understanding of what you're here for, to a deeper
sense of listening to what your life is trying to
show you and tell you. And when you can help
people get access to that, they feel better about themselves.
They're more confident, they have more clarity, they take more action,
and they just generally feel more at home in their
(05:59):
own Again.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
First of all, I told y'all you would want to
know Ali. Her story is amazing. Her gifts are practical
and useful. And we'll talk a little bit about when
we write, how we channel ourselves. We get to tap
into our truest selves, we get to pull back the
proverbial onion layers. Of course, she's mentioned that to you,
(06:25):
But what I really appreciate about your wisdom and your
experience is the parallel story of your personal experience. And
this dark night of the soul, you know, a difficult time,
a shift, a break up on multiple levels of your
(06:45):
life and going through this simultaneously doing it with clients.
And then it's like the universe.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We sometimes we think when things are totally falling apart,
they're actually falling together. And I think that's a main
theme of what I want everyone to take away today
because this conversation to me and Ali and I were
talking about this before we started recording. It's so divinely
timed because Mercury is in retrograde and if you listen
(07:16):
to last week's podcast, and I shared about Mercury retrograde
being this time to revise, rewrite, to edit, and it's
about editing yourself, your story, and it's retrograde in aries,
which is the I am so I love how the
universe orchestrated this. Ali and I didn't plan it this way.
(07:38):
It just we were laughing about how this is planned.
But back to when we think things are falling apart
and they're painful, and they're tough and confusing and uncertain,
and we fall into different versions of ourselves victim, roles, frustration, fear, anger,
All parts of us come out are not really pretty,
(08:01):
whatever that may be. And I know everyone out there resonates,
whether it's death or a divorce, or a career change,
a health challenge. You can look at this from so
many angles, but I do appreciate all the parallels and
where you are in your journey of how you saw
this happening for your clients by them getting their stories
(08:23):
on paper, getting it out of their heads and onto
the page, and it actually creating healing and transformation and
growth clarity too. But you walking through the same journey
and how it is evolved who you are, where you
are as a person. And I do want to say
this on a personal level, Ali today is in this
really healthy marriage and relationship and has a strong partnership.
(08:49):
So even speaking to detrimental things going on in a
relationship and a divorce, and obviously you were doing the
work and writing and seeing it in yourself and you've
written in this story to do relationship better, to do
it healthier, do it differently, but do it more aligned
with yourself. And also you were talking about leaving the
(09:10):
church that you were affiliated with. Yeah, that is a
huge shift in family infrastructure, values, systems of belief. So
it wasn't just the tangible relationship piece of things falling
apart and needing to be healed and mended within yourself.
To me, there was also this massive shift in your meaning,
(09:32):
your purpose and how that looks in your daily life.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Totally. I mean, one of the things when I talk
about the story of the divorce, it helps for people
to understand that this person who I was married to,
I was also in business mith. That was how we
made our living was near in business together. We also
planted the church together inside of the church community that
I grew up in. He also was acting as my
agent to the publishers. The other piece is there had
(09:58):
been some tension animosity with my family of origin. When
I married him, the family was kind of split, like
some people really loved him and some people were like
they weren't totally sure about him. And so then when
I announced that we were getting divorced, it was like
split in reverse. Like some people were like, we saw
this coming finally, and then other people were like, hold on,
wait before you get divorced, Like if you guys really
(10:20):
tried everything, and so the marriage ending more than just
about the marriage ending. It's exactly like you're talking about
It was like the breaking apart of every part of
my life. I remember thinking to myself, I'll never write
another book again, Like no one will ever publish me
because the first book that I wrote that did well
in the marketplace. That would be my leveraging point to
go to a publisher and say, look, I published the
(10:41):
book and it did well, but now my last name
is different, so there will be no name recognition. And
I mean now I can look back and think like
it's such a small detail that that's not going to prevent,
you know, my career from moving forward. At the time,
That's how it really felt. It really felt like every
aspect of my life was completely breaking apart.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
When you say that, you know, it's funny. I don't
mean to interrupt you, but I think about your inner
self and your outer self, like the reputation who people see,
and you know, our personality to me is at first glance, well,
how people read us or perceive us at first glance,
But then we have our reputation, how people see us
from afar, and then there's this inside version of ourselves.
(11:20):
So when I call it a dark knight of the
soul for you and moving through that, it was every
aspect of your being, your yes, your family of origin, business,
your belief system internally, your sense of self and who
I am and what I do in the world, and
how is this impacted. So I think that paints the
(11:42):
picture for everyone. And I know people resonate. You all
resonate out there. We've had times or maybe you're going
through something now where you feel like it is this
revolutionary identity shift and how that has been navigated. And
that's what I want to talk talk about a little
bit in writing your story, and you know your podcast
(12:04):
and the book that you have coming out, which is
on pre sale by the way, it's called Write your
Story Why Ali Fallon The official launch date is May seventh,
but it's on pre sale now, so you can definitely,
I assume, get it on Amazon. Yes, yeah, yes, Okay,
So let's talk about like all of this, like your
internal self and all these external versions of yourself that
(12:25):
you had worked diligently to create and live in life,
all of that being just torn apart or broken down.
Let's talk about like all of this, like your internal
self and all these external versions of yourself that you
(12:46):
had worked diligently to create and live in life, all
of that being just torn apart or broken down.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
So what would happen is I would wake up every morning,
I would go to the coffee shop that was in
my neighborhood, and I would sit for two hours and
just about what was taking place in my life. I
always talk about writing like looking in a mirror, so
when you put the words on the page, you're able
to see something more clearly. It would be the difference
between looking in a mirror or having someone else describe
you to yourself. So like that's sort of what you're
(13:16):
talking about, where it's like I had my reputation on lockdown.
In fact, I've eventually published the book which is called Indestructible.
It's the story of my divorce and then finding myself
outside of that marriage. But I tell a story in
the book about my friend Sarah, who was a yoga
instructor who was a really huge guide to be in
the story, and she says something really funny to me
about how when she first met me, I was like
a Christmas ornament. You know. She's just like you like
(13:39):
had your nails perfectly done, you presented yourself in this
like very proper kind of a way. Like she's like,
I could have hung you on my Christmas street, like
you were just so perfect. And then while we're having
this conversation, I'm sitting on the floor of the yoga
studio just drenched and sweat And that was a bit
of the transformation from the beginning to the end. Was
like the difference between the person that we present to
(14:01):
the world that we hope looks good and the person
who is like looking back at this in the mirror.
So this idea of writing the words on the page
and being able to see yourself clearly in the mirror,
and sometimes the things that you see are not things
you like very much. Sometimes that first time that you
look at yourself in the mirror and you go like, oh,
I didn't realize that I had luodsmear across my face
(14:22):
or whatever it is. And so the writing experience gives
us this opportunity to make adjustments, make changes, to see
things in a different kind of a way, to see
them from a different vantage Stree. And that was what
I did as I wrote the stories. The first draft
of the story was really chaotic. It didn't have any
kind of structure. The other thing that happened in the
first draft is I started to notice patterns in myself,
(14:46):
Like one pattern I really noticed is that I was
very very bitter and resentful toward this person, my acce husband.
I would read the writing back to myself and I
would be like, Wow, this girl doesn't sound like very
much fun to be around. Like the narrator that was
coming through was like there was a lot of bitterness
and a lot of resentment. And I don't bought myself
for that. I have a lot of compassion because I
(15:07):
had been through hell and back with him, and so
the anger makes sense and the bitterness makes sense. But
I just got to the point where as I was reading,
I was like, I don't want to be this narrator,
Like I want to narrate the story differently. And that's
the opportunity that writing gives us. Is when we see
something on the page that we realize we don't like,
that makes us not a very sympathetic hero to the story,
(15:30):
we get an opportunity to make it upgrade, to see
the story in a different kind of way. I always
still writers, there's a thousand different ways you could tell
this story, So just make sure that you're aware that
there's a thousand different ways, and then you get to
pick which way you want to tell it. Even if
all of the details are the same, there's still infinite
ways that you could put those details together to frame
(15:51):
them for your reader and for yourself. And that's the
agency that we take when we take the time to
sit down to write our story, is the agency of saying,
how do I want to tell the story? What details
do I want to stand out to a reader? How
do I want to come across as a narreor what's
the energy of the person that I want to be
in my life? And those are really empowering questions to
(16:12):
ask yourself and really empowering decisions to get to make.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I'm having all these mind blown moments over here because
you're articulating things in experiences I've had and giving life
to and meaning to or to what I've experienced. And
what I liked about what you were sharing just now
is as the reader not seeing the being sympathetic to
(16:36):
the hero and seeing those patterns come out, and you're like, gosh,
all this bitterness that keeps coming out, And for me,
the way that I think you know that I know
that I've done that in my life. I do quite
a bit of journaling and write intentions, and I'm pretty
routine in that because I love it. It flushes out what's
going on internally, so I can look at all the
moving parts and what's consistent or inconsistent. And sometimes I
(16:58):
don't like the consistency, you know, if it's if it's
shame or self pity or judgment, you know, whatever, these
repeating patterns that come out. But I've experienced that, you know,
and in recovery and in twelve step work, where we
have to get out on paper all of our resentments,
all of those old feelings, and we have to disclose
(17:19):
that to another trusted human being who can help us
look at our part, look at our role, look at
who we are in the story as the central character
and the big revelation in that apart from forgiveness and healing,
and of course there's making amends, you know, if anybody
out there is in twelve step work or familiar with that.
(17:41):
But also it's this opportunity to say, where can I
take action? You know, what is my side of the street,
and how do I begin to own it and clean
it up? And then once those things begin to happen
and you're aware of all those those faulty, gray, dark
areas and the beautiful area too. It's this ownership and
(18:03):
what you and I were talking about before we started recording,
becoming the main character of your own life.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yes, I love that you talked about taking action, because
this is one of the really big epiphanies that came
from writing Violin story, was realizing that what I learned
in school and in my training for writers about narrative
structure is that stories are built around one central character,
and that character is the character who we follow from
the start of the story to the end, and human
(18:31):
brains have an expectation for a few things about that
character in a story. If these elements are not in
a story, we disengage. We just don't have any interests.
We won't go watch the movie, and we'll leave the
theater early. We'll put the book down, we don't finish
the book. The expectations that we have for that main
character of the story is they need to transform from
the beginning of the story to the end, that they
have to change. The other expectation that we have is
(18:54):
that the only way the plot moves forward is when
the hero takes action. So we intuitively understand that the
lot of the story cannot move forward when the main
character sits on the couch. If the main character sits
on the couch and wants to meet the love of
their life but does never leave the front door, they're
never going to meet the love of their life. It
wouldn't even be an interesting movie to us if it
(19:14):
was a romantic comedy where she sits on the couch
waiting for her nine shining armor and he shows up
at the front, like, we'd be like boring, Like it's
not an interesting story. And so understanding those things about
how narrative structure worked helped me to start to put
some structure around the chaotic stories that I was telling myself.
And as I put that structure in place, I realized, like,
I don't have to compromise the integrity of the details
(19:36):
of the story. In other words, I'm still telling his
true story. I'm just giving it a structure that wasn't
there before. And one of the main things that I
did was I put myself in the position of the hero.
So when I put myself in the position of the
hero of a story, it stopped me from feeling resentful
because I stop asking questions like how could he do
(19:56):
this to meet? How could anyone act like this towards
someone else? I stopped worrying so much about him. I
started asking the story if I'm the hero in this
story and my action is what moves the story forward,
and it's lie transformation that this story is about. How
am I transforming as a person? How is this making
me better? Who do I want to be on the
other side of this. I also asked the question what
(20:17):
makes a woman marry a man that she doesn't want
to marry? You know, like, why did I make that choice?
I knew on my wedding day. I remember feeling like
I don't want to do this, and I was like, well,
it's too late, you know, people are all here. What
else am I going to do? And walk down the aisle?
So I had to really dig deep inside of the
story to get to the root of what motivates the hero,
(20:38):
what happened in her backstory that made her act in
this way to find a position of deep compassion for
her and also a resolution, like a resolve to get
to the result. It was like, there has to be
a conclusion to this story, and the conclusion of a
personal story comes in the transformation of the hero. So
who am I trying to become this story end? Until
(21:00):
I become her and moving into that position, it was
like all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, I'm
the author of my story. Literally, I'm the author. I
used to tell people all the time, years ago, before
any of this happened. I would say, like, personal stories
don't work the way the movies do because we don't
get to write our own endings. And I don't agree
with that anymore. I think the ending to your story
(21:21):
comes when you decide how you would like the story
to end. You do not always get control over other people,
or over what happens in the world or what other
people decide to do, but you always have one hundred
percent agency over what you choose to do, the meaning
you choose to make of the story, the kind of
transformation that you want to actualize inside your story. Nobody
else can take that away from you. And I titled
the book my memoir about the divorce. It's called indestructible,
(21:44):
which is a terrible title for a book because nobody
knows how to spell that word. But the idea of
indestructible was like when everything else is stripped away. The
part of me that no one can take from me,
that no one can destroy, is the part of me
that gets to choose who I am, what makes me matter,
what makes me valuable? What am I here for, what
am I doing? What am I about? Nobody can take
(22:05):
that from me. I don't care how much money you
take from me. I don't care if you betray me,
de fil me, blame me, abuse me, hurt me, kick me,
kick me out, like nobody can take that from me.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
First of all, I hope everyone out there realizes, like
Ali threw out about twenty journal prompts, and Ali is
the Queen of journal prompts because this is what she does.
She helps people write their story. She is a publishing
and a writing coach. But you can tell when I
called her a life coach. She is pulling out purpose
and meaning and she does it in a very methodical
(22:38):
yet intuitive way and also through her own experience. But
definitely go back, and I'm going to do this after
we quit recording, because I'm going to journal and I'm like, Okay,
I'm going to go back and start asking these questions
to myself about who do I want to be? And
what that makes me think of a couple of things. One,
it really resonates with the new horology of this year.
(23:01):
We are in an eight universal year, and the eight
is about empowerment, So usually what the eight creates is
the polar opposite of that. So a lot of people
are going through phases of massive disempowerment, disillusion forgetting their
agency and their sovereignty. And everything you were saying to
(23:22):
me really resonated with a theme of twenty twenty four
us being in this eclipse season, this massive areas eclipse
coming in, which is all about the eye. What do
I do? How do I take action? How do I perceive?
How do I move forward? How do I want to
move forward? What is that story I'm writing? But it
also taps into co creating your own life, manifestation, the
(23:48):
law of attraction. And this is why Ali and I
want to share with you because we recognize the spirituality
and the spiritual practice that comes with right pace, and
it also helps with manifestation. Because Ali has already told
you she saw the transformation in many clients' lives, whether
(24:10):
it was around business or personal relationships, when they began
to author their own story and take the agency and
decide what kind of hero they wanted to be, and
they started to actually manifest and write that into their lives.
And she experienced that as well, and I have experienced
that in my life too. So I hope you all
(24:32):
recognize this podcast and what Ali has gifted us are
some great journal prompts through Mercury retrograde and eclipse season.
This could not be a better time to revise your story.
So take these next few weeks to spend time writing.
And Alie, You've got to tell us because my big
(24:54):
question and where I get stumped up with writing is
my consistence. And see here's where I'm consistent. I'm really
good with new and full moons, and I have been
for years. I'm really great. I always journal on new
and full moons, and I do at the beginning of
the month and usually the end of the month because
(25:14):
of the energetic shift, because that is the routine I've created.
So we know, I'm journaling typically about four times a month.
I journal more than that, and I journal often. But
I still can get inconsistent. And I feel like a
lot of us have we set ourselves up to fail?
Like we set these I set unreasonable expectations with my
writing or my journaling whatever it, to sit down and
(25:37):
have that time, and then I don't meet them, and
I shame myself and then I blow it off. And
I'm sure you've heard this. What do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
What do you share with people to help overcome what
feels like a mountain to me? Sometimes?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So this will be really really helpful for you and
for your brain. The data show that in order to
see I'M measurable improvement in your life, you need to
journal for twenty minutes a day for four days in
a row every sixth month. The pressure that we put
on ourselves for all of the things, including writing, is
just so bizarre to me that we get in this
negative cycle. It's like going to the gym or whatever,
(26:13):
where we're like, I'm going to go to the gym
five days a week for an hour every time, and
I'm going to lift weights, and you set the bar
so high for yourself that you don't get to get
into the cycle of like feel good emotions. You know
what I mean? What I teach people to do with
their writing is to create a relationship to your writing
where you want to do it because it makes you
feel good, because that's what writing will do, is it
(26:34):
will make you feel good. We all have experience with writing.
We also have some experiences with writing many of us
do that are traumatic. And so when I teach writing workshops,
I'll have people tell me the earliest memory that they
have as it relates to writing, because it's very telling.
You'll get half of the room that will say I
had a fourth grade teacher who just really believed in me,
and she, you know, praise my writing and call me
(26:55):
out with a great writer. And then you'll have people
to say, my mom found my journal and she got
it out, she read it to my friends. But if
you can create a positive relationship with writing where you
actually look forward to sitting down to the page to
do some journaling, you actually like you remember the dopamine
hit that you get, then you're going to be as
addictive to journaling as you are to Instagram, because it's
(27:16):
like it's just its own self fulfilling prophecy. It's like
I love this, I feel good when I do it.
But instead what a lot of us do or we're
like I'm going to write every day for an hour
every every morning, and of course you're not going to
do that. You know, life is going to get in
the way, and there'll be day's way, you'll miss your
writing practice. And people go like, oh see, I always
do this. I have no discipline, and it's like, no,
(27:38):
that's not true. You have no discipline. It's like life
is busy and it's crazy, and parving up this time
is challenging. But two minutes is better than no minutes.
Five minutes is better than two minutes. You know, don't
set the bar so high. It doesn't need to be
an hour. Twenty minutes. That was like with the sample
set that they used when they did these research studies,
So twenty minutes at a time for four days in
(27:58):
a row, but even five minutes is a great amount
of time.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast on addiction to
dopamine and how we've really disregulated ourselves because of all
the dopamine seeking behaviors out there, whether it's from alcohol
as an addiction or sex and relationships codependency, to all
of the screen time we have. I mean, we can
go on and on and then our dopamine receptors get
(28:23):
shot and they can't reregulate, and then we're not producing
dopamine and we have to get it externally. I mean,
it's a cycle, and it's also an epidemic. I mean,
this woman was an expert talking about it being an epidemic.
But what light bulb went off is when I write,
when I do my journaling, I jump in and I
get into it and I'm like yes, yes, and I
(28:45):
can just keep going and it floods and the channeling
that happens, which I want to communicate to everyone when
I start writing. Sometimes I'm writing so fast that it
is flying out of my soul and I look at
it and I'm marvel. Sometimes it's beautiful and incredible, and
sometimes it's ugly and I didn't even know those words
(29:07):
and that nastiness was in there. So it's not so
much about what comes out. It's almost like the force
in which it comes through that just feels true. Whether
I get to look at it, this truth comes out,
but there is also this adrenaline or dopamine. And I
(29:28):
never put two and two together with the dopamine and
the writing, but I feel good and I look forward
to it. I look forward to the ritual of it,
but knowing that it is also a healthy replacement for
those other forms of dopamine that we are all seeking.
The television food, I mean, whatever it may be. Knowing. Okay, Amanda,
(29:51):
maybe you don't need to watch another Netflix show. Maybe
you go right for five minutes, because if I decide
to write for five minutes, it's twenty five minutes, and
I just feel enriched and illuminated most of the time.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, And like, think of the positive cycle you create
when you when you do that, when you set the
bar really low, You're like, I'm just gonna write for
two minutes, and then you wrote for twenty five and
then you're like, I'm a rock star. Like every time
I do this, I go above and beyond. You know.
I was telling someone yesterday, a client who I've been
working with, who is telling me he has no discipline,
everyone says, and I'm like, that's just simply not true.
I'm like, you built a multimary dollar business. There's no
(30:24):
possible way you have no discipline. Everyone's discipline just comes
out a little differently. And I was telling him about
this running coach back in my twenties, I ran a marathon.
His name is Jeff, and I can't remember his last name,
but he wrote a book on how to train for
a marathon. One of the things that he taught me
that I will never forget is that there are going
to be days and you don't want to go for
your training run, and so you just tell yourself, I'm
not going to go for my training run today. I'm
(30:45):
just going to put on the outfit. So you put
on the running clothes that you have, and then you're like,
I'm not going to go for my training run, and
I'm going to go stand out on the front porch
and just see what's happening in the neighborhood. See you
stand out on the front port, so you just kind
of peer out of what's going on. And then you
tell yourself, I'm not going to go over my run today,
but I am going to go walk around with a
because it's just such a beautiful day. So then you
go walk around the block and then you tell yourself,
I'm not going to go for my training run, but
(31:05):
I'm going to just jog a little bit because what
did that feel good? And you just kind of trick
yourself slowly into like working your way up and then
you're just like, well, even if you don't complete your
eight mile training run. You ran four miles and you
were planning on running zero miles, and so you feel awesome.
And I love using that same kind of strategy for writing,
where you set the bar really really low. You just
(31:25):
tell yourself, I'm not going to write today. I don't
feel up for it. But I'm going to just sit
at my computer. We'll see what happens. Or I'm going
to get my journal out whatever. So I'm going to
make myself a couple of coffee and sit at the
table and just sit in silence. And then you say, like,
I'm just going to write down one word, Like what
if I had to pick one word that comes to mind,
what would the word be. I'm just going to make
a bullet point list of things that feel true for
(31:46):
me today that feels nice. Yeah, I'm going to make
a bullet whiteless and think for culture for me today
and just see like how much momentum you can pick
up sort of slowly trick yourself into doing the thing
that you know you ultimately want to do, because like I,
as as human beings, I just feel like we're pickle
creatures and we can sometimes let our feelings get in
the way. And then whenever, for me, at least, whenever
(32:07):
that negative fuckel starts to pick up, where I catch
myself saying like, oh, I'm the worst. I always do this.
I have no discipline. Like that story that we're telling
about ourselves is taking us away from the things that
we want to do and towards the things that we
actually really don't want to do, like binging you know Netflix,
which there's nothing wrong with that, No.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
I mean sometimes that is I set aside the time
and I actually, you know, to me, spirituality comes so practically.
I find it in the every day. I find it
in putting on nineties music in the car and rolling
the windows down, and when my spirit begins, when I
start to dance and move and groove and smile, and
(32:48):
then all of a sudden, I'm like, yes, I am light,
I am love. I mean, I practice spirituality and I
will do it binging Netflix. And I don't mean like
guts and gore, although I can watch any crime and
you know, all of the thrillers in a heartbeat, but
I mean I just recently was talking about how I
discovered ted Lasso, and I literally watched ted Lasso and
(33:13):
could feel all of I could feel the dopamine, of course,
but the lightheartedness, the joy, all of the upliftment. And
when I would watch it, I would consciously sit there
and when something would be sentimental or just joyful or sad,
I would say, ooh, that's what that feels like, and
(33:33):
then I would allow it to run through my body.
So sometimes, like you said, we can find value and
our truth in the most mundane places. But when it
comes back to this writing and a practice of writing
that does not need to be overwhelming, setting the bar
low so we can surprise ourselves. Like it's like a ball,
(33:55):
a snowball rolling down hill, you know it grows, or
a rubber band ball. You know, each time you put
a reber band on, it starts to get bigger and bigger.
And it's building that practice. And I want to ask
you this. I do want to talk about writing and
intuition and your spiritual journey because this is what Ali
(34:18):
and I have been talking about personally, and we talked
about it on her podcast recently, Write your Story. You
can check out that episode that the two of us shared.
We talk about intuition and intuitive development, but share a
little bit about your recent experience in intuitive development and
the growth of your enrichment of your spiritual life with
writing but in general.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
So I've been through a math and spiritual evolution from
the time that I left the church that I grew
up in. There, I think there was a period of
time where it felt like, what is my spirituality going
to become? Because I've always been a very spiritual person,
but outside of the container that I was taught, like prayer,
for example, I'm like, doing it in the way that
I was taught isn't connecting for me anymore? So then
(35:01):
how do I do it? And I kind of floundered
around for a while. But in the past couple of years,
I've really rediscovered like a really deep, much deeper than
it's ever been before, a deep and true and authentic
spirituality that is really working for me. And that's part
of like I reached out to you several weeks ago
because I've been using oracle cards and I actually was
(35:21):
calling them geral cards. I didn't even know that they was.
I was drawn to the cards and I saw my
friend of mine post a deck on Instagram, and so
I just went and about the deck and then you
recommended the animal Oracle. So I went and loft that deck,
and I was calling them Gerald cards because that's how
ignorant I am to this spiritual practice. I had just
never used it before. And so I reached out to
you and I was like, I don't know why, but
(35:41):
these cards have been calling to me, and I just
I want to have a conversation with me about it
on the podcast, because I feel like there's a strong
connection between spirituality and writing, Like the cards help you
to better understand your story and to tell your story
in a clear kind of a way, and then writing
also helps you to better understand your story and tell
your story more clearly. So there's I was just sensing
(36:03):
that there's this connection between the two. And then, you
know another thing that happened for me recently, because then
you came on my show and you were talking about
the blog post that you wrote about the Four Claires,
and so then I went to read that blog post
and I was thinking, like, Okay, for me, you know,
the way that I access my intuition is my writing.
That's how I know what's true for me is when
I see it on the page. It's sort of like,
(36:25):
what would that be like clairvoyance?
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I guess it's clairvoyance because you've talked multiple times about imagery,
and I can see it within you is imagery. It
is clairvoyant. But writing, and when we write and we channel,
I also think it's Clare audience because what happens is
it's not like you're hearing a voice in your head,
(36:48):
but you're you're free flow writing, and what comes out
on the page it's like it's audible, but it's written words.
So it's a form of Claire audience, of being able
to put words to the language that's going on in
the liminal brain and the subconscious and the intuitive self.
So it's giving word form, it's breathing that into life.
(37:12):
So I think it's this combination of clairvoyance and clear audience.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And the other thing that happens for me too is
when someone else writes their story, like when I'm coaching someone.
For example. I've never in a million years used the
word psychic to describe myself, but I do have a
bit of like a I feel like I know things
about them that I should know. It's not like I'm
walking through the grocery store and I'm like, Ooh, I
know something about this guy. Shopping for apples. It's more
(37:37):
like when I'm sitting down and someone's telling their story,
they'll tell me an aspect of their story, and I
can see more than what they're sharing with.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Me, which guess what that is clairvoyance and clear audience
because they are talking to you and you are starting
to see things and interpret things, which are very much
like oracle cards. Then that's what I shared with you.
With oracle cards, they're open to interpretation. They're usually beautifully illustrated,
and there's a guidebook that has messaging and prompts in
(38:10):
there to detail or outline the meaning behind the oracle
card you pull, depending on the deck. And there's this
element of seeing the unseen, reading into intuiting, calling forth
meaning and messaging through symbols, through colors, whatever it may be.
(38:30):
So again, there's overlap in that, truly, and you and
I talked about this on your podcast, But oracle cards
for me have been oftentimes the journal prompts I didn't
know I needed. You know, when I do my new
and full moon and whether I pull a big seven
cards spread of something, or I pull one or two
or three cards, even one card from three different decks,
(38:54):
depending on whatever I'm in the mood for, I use
that and it starts to take me in it into
my writing process, and I just trust that I'm going
to pull what I need to pull in order to
get out on paper or out of my heart, out
of my body, out of my higher consciousness, pull down
(39:15):
that wisdom and get it out so I can see it,
understand it, know it and know you know, ah, there's
the magic or ooh, shoot, Amanda, you got to work
on that girl.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Totally. Yeah, I've been really loving the practice with the
oracle cards because it does give you something tangible to
work with.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
It's like it.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Gives you the images and then I can piece it
together in some sort of a story arc. So it
feels like it fits really nicely with the way my
brain already works and the way that I already operate spiritually.
And I really feel like this is I guess, sort
of in response to the question that you asked, but
also like taking us all the way back to the
beginning of the conversation, I feel like I'm shifting into
this new space where like I'm really being asked to
(39:55):
pick ownership. I was telling my husband how like being
a publishing coach is like, no brainer. I'm like, oh, yeah,
I've got the credentials for that, no problem. But then
when he starts to suggest that, like I'm helping people
really understand their life story, I'm like, well, I have
no degree, you know what I mean? So I have
like a lot more imposter syndrome when it comes to that.
But I feel like I'm like really shifting into taking
(40:18):
ownership of how spiritual writing truly is. That you almost
can't separate the two. Like I could work with someone
in a publishing context who had no interest in spirituality,
and I still would be seeing things about them that
they don't know that I'm I may not be saying
it in that context because it's not as appropriate, but
I'm still like, oh, I have insight into your life
(40:40):
that you don't. You know that I shouldn't have that.
It's not something you've told me, but I can kind
of see it because we're working together in this like
really personal spiritual class. Well.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And that used to happen to me, gosh, I mean
forever in business. It would happen to me in my
twenties and early thirties and before I really embraced my
psychic and intuitive gifts. I would be in a business
meeting and the way that my gift comes through, and
I would never have known that this was what was
(41:10):
going on until, you know, finally I began to put
the puzzle pieces together. But I could be in a
business meeting and I could hear the voices in everyone's heads.
I mean, that's a lot of chatter, right, and like
a lot of stuff going on. But I would be
leading a meeting and I would intuitively know what to
bring up, what to ask. Alongside of whatever my agenda
(41:33):
was or whatever I was overseeing. I would be doing
my thing, and then I would hear all these words
and things and well, what are we gonna do about this?
How is this gonna happen? Oh, my gosh, I don't
want to do that. Uh, I'm not interested. I can't
believe she's talking about this. It would be a whole
audience of people talking and intuitively because it actually it
(41:53):
is my gift and it's the essentially the clear cognizance.
But also I'm very telepathic, and gosh, thank goodness for
energetic boundaries today because I can shut that off, you know,
but not always, but most of the time, and I
am not. I'm really I'm not nosy. I'm like, I
have enough going on in this brain. I don't need
to know. But I didn't know all of that and
(42:14):
understand it, and I wasn't being nosy. It just was happening.
But what was so interesting about it is I knew
how to assimilate what was coming through, and I had
the gift of orating and leadership in business to pull
the right people in in the right places, and I
intuitively knew about them who would work and then I
(42:34):
could hear their interest in things going. But I thought
I thought that was just normal. Really, I didn't know
to say, oh, does everybody hear everybody's voices? Because it
wasn't like their their personal voices were coming through. It
was like words and symbols and information. So it was
very confusing. But like what you shared, And I hope
this helps people out there with your intuition in whatever
(42:58):
job or profession you're in, or as a mother, a father,
you know, a brother, It doesn't matter what role. How
you can be talking to someone, working with someone, a
group of people, and information and things and insights are
coming to you and you get to use whatever your
(43:21):
role is so if it's in a professional role, you
get to use your expertise or your guidance or you
know whatever, you get to facilitate. You can share your
intuition without feeling like you're crossing a boundary or a line.
And you know, that is part of my story in
in the at the end of my healthcare degree, it
(43:43):
got to the point where, you know, dead people were
showing up in hospitals all the time, and it was
it was such a hot mess and overwhelming, and I
was so conflicted and confused because I didn't want to
overstep ethically or professionally, but messages were coming through in
a way that if I didn't deliver them I would
be denying a part of their story and mind and
(44:05):
so many things. But still for everyone else out there,
we all have the gift of intuition. Yeah, thank you
for being on today. Tell everyone where they can find you,
and give a little plug for your book that's coming
out please and your launch party, which Ali is having
her book launch party on May seventh in Nashville and
(44:29):
my live event is in Austin, Texas on May seventh,
So magical day for both of us. But it's like
I would have easily gone to Nashville. That'd have been
a great time and reason. And Ali's like I had
to come to Austin up.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
I know. Good, Well, we'll just be celebrating each other
from a bar. But yeah, the best place to find
me is Instagram. That's where I'm the most active. I'm
at Ali fallon on Instagram, ally at all o n
And then yeah, I would love to have you pre
order a copy of the book. It's called Write Your
Story by Alison Ballen. You can buy that wherever you
buy your books. And then after you pre order, if
(45:02):
you order before May seven, make sure you go to
write your Story dot com slash book and enter your
order number there and you'll get access to over eight
two hundred dollars worth of preorder bonuses. I put together
like an insane preorder bonus package because I really wanted
to incentivize people to go order the book before May seven.
They're all digital resources that they're the Write your Story Journal.
There's a video series that you can watch that's five
(45:24):
questions to ask before you write your Story. You get
to also download the first three chapters of the book
and read them before the book is even out. So
all kinds of stuff. There's like five or six different
things that you'll get when you enter your order number there,
so make sure you do that.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Love well, y'all. This is a great time to do
that and utilize Ali as a resource the resource she is,
and definitely checking out write your story, her book, but
also her podcast. It's wonderful. I hope you all have
enjoyed our conversation today, and I know for me, Ali
articulates things. This is what she does. She helps people
(46:00):
write their story, but she articulates things in ways that
to me empower and incentivize. And when I'm incentivized or
motivated by someone through their process, their toolkit, and their wisdom,
That's when I'm firing and wiring. We get to do
these things together and share our gifts. So thank you
(46:22):
for coming on today. I feel really illuminated and motivated
about some of my writing and some things that I
am working on, but some stuff I need to do.
I'm like, Okay, I know I'm going to close by
saying I love the right for twenty minutes at a time,
four days in a row, and that in and of
itself gives you about a six month period where you
(46:45):
will see the benefits. I mean, I can. I don't
need to overachieve, but I'm like, oh, I can do that.
Thank you for joining us everyone. I hope you enjoyed
this episode. You can definitely connect with Ali Fallon and
get her book. Everyone take care and be well.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
M
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