March 29, 2026 • 36 mins
You are not a problem to solve.
Your life is not a problem to solve.
Your body is not a problem to solve.
It’s easy to lose track of that.
It’s easy to get stuck in a loop of endless problem-solving, thinking that if you can just think harder, work harder, be smarter, or chase down the right information, you might finally feel at peace in your own life.
But has that ever worked for you?
What if your life is speaking to you, right here, right now?
The question is: are you listening? Are you really hearing what your life is trying to say?
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to you Write Your Story Podcast. Good job.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the word you write all the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's time to let them out and
write them down and cover what it's all about and write,
(00:29):
you write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and I want to
take a minute at the beginning of today's episode just
to say hi and welcome to all of my new listeners.
I did a thing and finally got over myself and
finally got over my own resistance and shared about this
podcast on Instagram, which I have done before. It's not
like I've never talked about it on Instagram, but usually
(00:57):
it's in stories, and usually it's very brief. And the
other day I decided to post a reel on Instagram
talking about my current health challenges and inviting people who
were interested in hearing more, hearing the whole story to
come over and listen on the podcast, and so many
of you came over to listen, and it just is
(01:19):
a reminder to me. First of all, there's so many
reminders in here, but one of the reminders is, like
my resistance, my hesitancy to sharing on Instagram was it
feels like this platform here is because of the structure
of the platform. It's just longer form content. It has
lent itself to me being more open, more vulnerable, sharing
(01:40):
about more aspects of my life that I just don't
talk about over on Instagram. I haven't talked about the
business failure on Instagram. I haven't talked about my health
challenges all that much on Instagram. I've barely dipped my
toe in the water. I haven't talked about my fertility issues,
fertility struggles, or wanting to grow my family on Instagram.
There's so much that I get to talk about here
that I don't get to talk about there. And I
(02:00):
think in my mind I had compartmentalized both. And I
have a lot of fear about using my voice on
a platform like Instagram. I've talked about this before too,
so I don't want to like beat a dead horse here,
but I think I have a block with Instagram where
I feel like you put content on Instagram people get
to give instant feedback. There's kind of a culture that's
created there where people get to be really critical, they
(02:23):
get to say mean things. It just feels like it
opens a portal to you know, people saying all kinds
of things about you, which maybe that's a growth edge
for me, is learning how to get over that fear
of criticism or that feeling like everything that I post
on Instagram has to be like all buttoned up and
well researched and have to make sure that I say
the right thing, otherwise I'm going to get just completely
like cut down. Athony's so, I mean, that is a
(02:45):
thing that happens on Instagram. But maybe that's part of
why I've been feeling pulled and invited to share more.
There is to really face that fear and get over that.
I've been facing so many fears, y'all since twenty twenty.
I'm like, this is like the decade of facing all
my fears. I have faced my fear of bankruptcy, I
have faced my fear of failure, I have faced my
fear of not being perfect. I've faced my fear of
(03:07):
all the things. Yeah, and I mean, that's so much
about what this podcast is about. And another thing I
realized when I got over myself and finally shared on
Instagram was that all of you who came over here
to listen here, I got so many loving messages, so
much support, so much love through Instagram DMS in my
(03:30):
text messages. I got pulled aside at the coffee shop
the other day from someone who said she was so
thankful that I shared so honestly about my struggles on
the podcast, so she came over from Instagram to listen.
It's just like a big, warm hug and a reminder
that sometimes, yes, when you face your fears, you realize
the thing you were afraid of was actually not that real.
(03:51):
You know. I think about my kids being afraid of
like monsters under their bed or all the regular kid stuff,
or like my son is really into this thing right
now where he is afraid that when he sits on
the toilet that an animal is going to come up
from the toilet and like bite him in the butt,
like a snake or I don't know what he thinks
is going to come up. But it's like no amount
of logic telling him you're safe, Like nothing is there's
(04:13):
no living thing in the toilets, like it's that's what
you're scared of is not a thing, and it's not
going to happen. There's no amount of explaining that to
him that will help him. So now every time he
goes to the bathroom, he's like, Mom, can you come
and watch the toilet? And I just told him the
other day, I'm like, listen, I'm happy to come and
sit here and watch the toilet for the thing you're
afraid of, which is an impossibility, which would never happen.
(04:36):
I can do that for a little while, but at
some point you are going to learn how You're going
to have to learn how to face this fear and
discover that the thing that you're really afraid of is
actually not there. And maybe that's a good analogy for
me in this case, is that the biggest thing for
me to realize is that the thing I'm afraid of
being criticized, either it will happen and I'll realize, oh,
it wasn't that big of a deal, or it won't
(04:59):
happen at all. We like, in this case, all the
criticism that I was expecting, the fears I had of
like bringing people from Instagram over to this platform, and
like opening the floodgates of having more listeners in this
really vulnerable space that I've created. Whatever I was afraid
of didn't take place, and so hopefully that I can
(05:19):
put that in my little back pocket and go, you know,
you don't have to be so afraid of opening your mouth.
And I've shared this before, but I have been feeling
really pulled to share more on Instagram and I need
to just like what's the word, like just freaking do it,
Like I need to do the damn thing, and I
(05:40):
have been putting it off and there's so much resistance
around it for me. But I think because like I've shared,
I have these two sides of my brain. One side
is like Instagram is you know, it's addictive, It's a
time waster. It sucks us into these rabbit trails that
we don't need to know anything about, Like I'm not
talking about like world events. I'm talking about like what's
(06:02):
the latest like Taylor Franky Paul and Instagram like reality
TV stars, like pulls us into those sorts of rabbit
trails that we don't need to be on, Like I
don't need to waste my energy worry about what's going on,
with Taylor Franky Paul like that is not my business.
So there's that side of my brain, and then there's
another side of my brain that says, Instagram is this
amazing tool that we have at our disposal to connect
with each other. And also Instagram has the opportunity to
(06:27):
show me to myself because I can't realistically, I cannot
show up there every day and say a thing and
do a thing and not see myself more clearly. And
that has been true absolutely for this podcast. It's the
main motivation that I have for doing it is that
when I come here and I process through my life
and I talk about what's going on with me, and
(06:47):
I do it in an unfiltered way, and I don't
try to perfect it, and I don't come here with
notes and I don't come here with a bunch of data,
and these episodes are not researched, like this is just
Ali off the cuff, shooting from the hip. The reason
that I do it that way is because this is
really about me listening to my life. It's about me
allowing my life to speak to me and showing myself
(07:08):
to myself. And in that I grow and I change
and I become more of a I'm able to make
more of a contribution to the world, and in that
hopefully also you connect to it and maybe there are
some things that you get to learn or take away
as well. Either way, like watching someone else discover their freedom,
(07:29):
discover their voice, discover their life is always inspiration to
go discover our own. So I hope you know, if
you're new here, First of all, you should know this
that I don't come to these episodes with a bunch
of data or research. I don't write these episodes ahead
of time. I don't come knowing what I'm going to say.
I come with sort of a theme of what I
want to talk about, and then I just shoot from
(07:50):
the hip. And I also have an amazing producer named
Houston who does a lot of editing and makes me
sound like a little smoother than I usually am. Sometimes
I start over, like fifteen times in an episode. I'm like, Gough,
can't get the words out. So I do my best,
and Houston definitely makes me sound more put together than
I would be otherwise. So I have that gift in
(08:11):
my back pocket, and I'm just grateful to have you here.
I hope that whatever happens in this episode. I know
that I know that I know that I'm doing it
because it makes me better, it helps me grow. I
learn so much from listening to myself talk to myself,
and I hope that you have something that you can
take away from it as well. Welcome, I'm so grateful
to have you here, and let's go ahead and dive
(08:32):
right in. I also have a quick update that I
want to share before I guess we get into the
meat of the episode. Although one of the reasons I
want to share this update is I do think it's
applicable to the meat of this episode, which is that
my book, the power of writing it down, is making
a resurgence, and this is really cool. Like, this is
a book that came out at the beginning of twenty
twenty one. I've shared about this before, but the book
(08:53):
came out at a time a few days before the
insurrection happened at the Capitol. There was so much going
on in my personal life. I had just given birth
to Nella, I had just maybe not quite found out
I was pregnant with Charlie yet. We had moved from
LA to Nashville. We had moved into this brand new house.
I think like a few days before my book came out,
I was recording podcast interviews in a completely empty house.
(09:16):
I had locked myself in one of the closets, or
shut myself. Sorry, I not locked myself. I had shut
myself in one of the closets with some pillows around
me so that it wouldn't sound quite so equy because
I was like in a completely empty house. Matt hadn't
even got here yet. Nella was like six months old.
Then our furniture showed up, like, you know, a few
days after Christmas, I think. And then the book came
(09:36):
out on like January fourth or sixth, or something like that.
I can't remember the exact dates. But it was a
wild time in my personal life. It was a wild
time in the world. And then it was a little
tragic because I did everything that I had done for
past books. But when the Power of Writing It Down
came out, which everyone was saying this was going to
be my breakout book, the book just didn't do as
well as everyone expected it to do. It did fine,
(09:58):
but it didn't like off the way that people expected
it to. It was just again such a wild time politically,
it was probably poor timing for the book. To come out.
Nobody's fault, just one of those things. The book has
consistently sold. It has what we call a long tail
in the publishing industry, which is great, like it has
sold well over time so slowly, like when I get
(10:19):
my royalty reports, I'll see the book is still selling,
like that's so great. And then several months ago, I
want to say, this was like back in like early
twenty twenty five or mid twenty twenty five, something like that,
my mother in law showed me that there was this
Facebook post not for me, from someone else who had
read the book, who I guess must have had a
platform or been some sort of influencer, because this Facebook
(10:42):
post went somewhat viral. It had like millions of views,
It had several thousand shares, I don't remember how many comments,
but someone was sharing about the book, and Matt was like, oh,
you should check and see if that share or that
post that went viral has affected your sales numbers at all.
So of course, the first thing I did was get
(11:03):
on Amazon and realized like the book was completely sold
out on Amazon. And that thing that the book being
sold out on Amazon happened a couple of times before
I'm assuming like the publisher must have Amazon must have
ordered more books, or something happened where now it's not
selling out every couple of weeks like it was. But
for a while, the book was selling out on Amazon
(11:23):
every couple of weeks. Then I was getting messages about
other publishers and other countries wanting to translate the book
into different languages, and then I wrote a new forward
for one of the languages. And it's just cool, like
to watch the book come back around and watch people
react to it and have people tag me on Instagram.
It's random, but like at least once a week I'll
get a tag on Instagram from someone saying that they
(11:44):
read the book for the first time. It didn't, you know,
maybe catch their interest when it came out in twenty
twenty one, but now here it is and they're reading
it for the first time. So this is just it's
a cool reminder. The most, the easiest reminder from this
is just you just never know when a book comes out,
Like you always worry as an author, no one's going
to read this or no one's going to care, or
what if I write it and it doesn't sell. You
(12:05):
just don't know when you write a book if it's
going to sell or if it's not going to sell,
and you don't know when it's going to sell, and
you don't know who's going to read it. And I
love what Julia Cameron says, which is just that none
of that is your business anyway. Your business is just
about writing it. So that's one thing that I wanted
to share is if you have a book idea and
you are stopping yourself from starting, if you're getting in
(12:25):
your own way the same way I am with Instagram,
you're feeling the resistance, you don't want to do it.
Maybe consider that you have no idea how long this
book will take to write. You have no idea when
it's going to come out. You have no idea who
will read it. You have no idea if it comes
out and it doesn't get read immediately, Maybe it'll get
read somewhere down the line. That to me, is one
(12:46):
really brilliant takeaway from this book right now. Making your
resurgence another takeaway for me that's just cool. Is one
of the things I wanted to talk about in today's
episode is this idea of listening to your life that
your life is constantly speaking to you, and how do
we get in a posture where we can learn to
listen to our life, because I think usually we're in
(13:06):
this posture where we want to fix our life. We
want to control our life, we want to lock it down,
we want to get our ducks in a row, we
want to achieve whatever it is that we're trying to achieve.
We want to make our life be something. And I'm
not saying there's not a place for that, but I
am in a place in my life where I'm starting
to learn, Oh, if I can actually stop trying to
(13:28):
fix my life and start trying to listen to my life,
if I can stop trying to solve the problem immediately
and get an answer, you know, to the equation right now,
if I can step back and be in a posture
of surrender, there's more that my life wants to show
to me, or more that my life wants to say
to me, And even the structure of this podcast it
(13:49):
reflects that. It's like I have been following my intuition,
really felt invited to share in these episodes in a
way that's more surrender. It's more, you know, I'm not
coming to this episode with like here's what I want
to say, and here's what I want to teach you.
I'm coming to this episode with like, here's a topic
that I want to explore more. What happens if I
(14:10):
just open my mouth and let myself talk it out,
let myself talk it through, let myself ask the questions.
I don't have the answers, but can I ask the questions?
And can I sit with it for long enough to
see what it wants to say or see what it
wants to show me? And I was just thinking about
this in the last week, that the fact that the
power of writing it down is making a resurgence, the
(14:32):
power of writing it down versus Write Your Story, which
is my more recent book that came out in twenty
twenty four. Write your Story really is the framework. It's
the framework that you use to take an experience from
your life and turn it into a story. And when
we talk about narrative arcs and stories, I've shared this many,
many many times before, but a story is built around
(14:53):
a problem that you're trying to solve. And so if
you're going to try to fit your life into the
structure of a story, which I do believe that there's
a place for this as well. The whole reason I
wrote the book is because when I went through my
divorce in twenty fifteen, I needed some structure and some boundaries.
That was just where I was at in my life.
I would never have come out of that time in
my life. I told my husband this the other day.
(15:14):
I'm like, if I hadn't in twenty fifteen and in
twenty sixteen, asked myself, how do I keep ending up here?
How do I keep ending up with the wrong guy?
What do I need to clean up on my side
of the street, What do I need to think about?
How could I change or edit myself, or how could
I look differently at this scenario in order to create
(15:34):
a different outcome. If I hadn't asked myself those questions,
I never ever ever would be married to my current husband.
I would never have my current two kids. I would
never be enjoying all the perks of this life that
I have now. So thank God that I was curious
about that and gave myself that structure and sat down
to write the story and thought about myself as the
hero of the story. And this was the inspiration for
(15:56):
writing write your Story, was that I feel like that
structure saved me from utter chaos and despair during that
time in my life. And yet now I feel like
I'm being invited to maybe lean away a little bit
from that structure and more into what I talk about
in The Power Writing It Down, which is just letting
your life speak to you. The Power Writing It Down
(16:17):
is a book that's really more about stream of consciousness writing.
It's more about listening to your unconscious or listening to
your subconscious than it is about putting anything into a structure.
I don't teach a structure in the Power of Writing
It Down. What I teach is a process of showing
up to the page every day where you journal about
what's going on with you and you notice the patterns.
(16:41):
That's it. It's almost like step one that needs to
come before write your story. And maybe as I'm saying this,
I'm realizing, like, maybe this is part of what is
being called for in my life right now, because I
do feel like I'm in this phase where, gosh, in
some ways, I'm like I've been here before, so I
feel like I should know a way out, But I
do feel a little lost and confused sometimes, like the
(17:03):
health stuff is really confusing to me, don't. I don't
have an answer for any of it. I don't know
which steps to take next. I feel frustrated that, you know,
this is what's going on with my body. I wish
that I could just keep going at full speed. My
body is not. My body is saying no to that
right now. Like I talked about last week, my body
is saying no to all the things that I think
I want, to the structure that I've been trying to
(17:24):
give to my life, to the things that I've been
trying to manifest or actualize. My body is saying no.
And so because it's saying no, can I tune in
and listen a little deeper and ask like, Okay, body,
what do you want? What do you think? What does
come next? And can I? Yeah, can I surrender to that?
Can I allow that to be true? And it's just
(17:47):
a little bit of a different energy than the right
your Story energy. The right your Story energy is more like, Okay,
we're going to bring some structure to this. We're going
to put this story in a system where I'm going to,
you know, put myself as the hero of a story.
What's the problem that I'm up against? And by hero
of the story. If you've been here while you know this,
I don't mean that you deserve all the praise and accolades.
(18:08):
I don't mean that the world centers around you. I
mean the inside of this particular story, you are the
only person who can take action to change the direction
of the narrative. So you're the hero inside of the story.
You're the protagonist. You're up against a problem that you
cannot overcome in your current state. Who do you have
to become in order to overcome that problem? The power
(18:40):
writing it down is really about getting to the raw
materials of your life. So it's about opening yourself enough
to get plenty of content on the page. I always
use the example that this is like either dumping out
the junk drawer, or this is like the clay that
the potter starts with, so there's no former shape to it. Yet,
it's just about getting everything that's in here out there.
(19:03):
So creating an environment that's safe enough. This is one
of the things I teach, creating an environment that's safe
enough and working with the body in such a way
that it will give you access to what's going on
in your subconscious So I don't talk about this in
the power of writing it down. But it's something I've
been doing recently in order to access that subconscious is
dream journaling, And I thought it was wild. I got
(19:24):
this idea from a friend of mine who's a Union analyst,
who got me started listening to this podcast called This
UNI in Life meaning Carl Jung, and I was like, oh,
I hardly ever have dreams that I remember. It's like, very,
very rare. But what I started doing that they suggested
is putting a dream journal next to my bed with
a pen and asking every night for my subconscious to
(19:46):
give me a dream. And as soon as I started
doing that, I started having dreams and remembering them, and
I would wake up first thing and write down the dream.
So the idea would be just like as many dreams
as you can get in that dream journal, just keep
writing him down, writing him down, writing him down. Or
in your writing practice, every day you write for five
minutes a day, or twenty minutes a day, or forty
minutes a day, or whatever it is, you're just dumping
(20:07):
out your unconscious onto the page. Julia Cameron teaches this.
Her morning pages are really just that stream of consciousness
thought process, getting what's in your brain out on the page.
So and she would say, once it's written on the page,
you don't ever look at that again. I disagree slightly,
because I do think that what comes out on the
page is the raw materials that then you have to
(20:28):
work with, and that's what write your story was about, right,
Your story was like bringing some structure and formatting to
what's on the page that you can start to make
sense of it. So, I don't know, I feel like
I'm in this place. I was telling my husband the
other night that I'm in this place that feels very
similar to when I was going through the divorce from
the standpoint that my life is clearly speaking to me
(20:50):
like everything that I've wanted to create and manifest in
the last couple of years has not come to fruition.
Nothing is going the way that I've wanted it to go.
I've wanted to grow our family and that's not happening
for me. You know, we wanted this business opportunity to
come to fruition, and that's not what happened. We walked
a very scary financial path with a near bankruptcy and
(21:12):
other financial ramifications, which I'm not pretending that I'm a
victim to that, like that was just part of the
consequences of the actions that we took, and just so
many different things that I wanted to do that just
don't seem to be becoming a reality for me. And
so I was telling my husband like the same way
as when I was going through my divorce, I have
to ask myself the question, like, what role am I
(21:33):
playing in this? You know, like this has been going
on for a while now, and so what role am
I playing in creating this reality for myself? And the
answer that has come through for me is really about
this concept of being willing to listen to your life
before you try to solve your life. And I want
to share one other analogy before I bring this all together.
So if this is making no sense, just hang with
me and I will get back around to it. But
(21:56):
when I announced on Instagram and when I shared my
story here all the health challenges I've been going through,
I've had an onslaught of messages from people who are
giving me like different options to try, so like I
have met with so many different practitioners, so many different people,
like so many different people, so many different tests, so
(22:16):
many different options, so many different things that this could
be possible diagnoses. All of it is extremely helpful, and
all of it is also really overwhelming because it's just
like where do I go next? Like how do I
figure out what the next right step is? But one
of the things that I have noticed in meeting with
these various practitioners is some practitioners come to the table
(22:36):
with more certainty about They come with a lot of certainty,
They come with a lot of expertise, they come with
a lot of data, a lot of research about here's
what's going on, Here's what's going to help you, Here's
how we're going to treat it. Here's what the program is.
You know, I'm certain I'm going to get going to
get you feeling better. And my chiropractor, I want to
(22:57):
give a shout out to my chiropractor, doctor Canna Speaker,
because she's here in Nashville and she's amazing. She used
to work it Nashville Brain and Body and now she
started her own practice. But she said something to me
that really stuck out to me and feels like it
it really gets at this point that I want to
make because I had met with this one practitioner who
was like, so convincing, so certain that she knew what
(23:20):
was going on with me. She was also really expensive,
but the way she presented it was just like, I'm
certain I know what's going on with you. I'm certain
that this can help you. And doctor Kenneth said to me,
when it comes to the body, you always want to
make sure that you're listening to what it wants to
tell you instead of just trying to force it to
change or instead of just trying to fix it. And
(23:43):
I was like, wow, hold on, that feels like a
message for me, and like something that I need to
sit with, this idea of holding space for the body
to speak instead of immediately jumping to here's how I'm
gonna fix you. Here's the plan, here's the program, here's
the formula, here's the framework. Formulas and frameworks are extremely helpful.
I'm not dissing a formula or a framework, but I
(24:05):
feel like sometimes we jump to the framework because it
gives us a sense of certainty, and it's certainty, that's
really what it is like. It gives us a sense
of certainty about what's coming next, what we can expect,
how things are going to go. And yet if we
jump to that without first listening to what the body
is trying to tell us, we might miss the mark completely.
(24:28):
And sure we may end up achieving something, but is
it the thing that we were really trying to achieve.
So I don't know if I'm making total sense here,
but here's what I'm trying to say. I feel like
in my life, I'm trying to manifest all these different
things I'm trying to actualize. If you don't like the
word manifest, I'm trying to actualize the growth of my family.
I'm trying to actualize a different financial reality. I'm trying
(24:51):
to get us out of debt. Now, I'm trying to
actualize a handful of different things in my life. None
of them are coming to fruition. Perhaps apps part of
that is because I'm so fixated on the outcome. I'm
so fixated on the end of a story. I'm so
fixated on shoving this thing into a framework. I haven't
(25:12):
stopped for long enough to really listen to what my
life is trying to tell me. And this is what
I was getting at with the difference between the power
of writing it down and write your story. Both parts
of the process are totally necessary. Both parts of the
(25:32):
process are totally necessary. The first part of the process
is dump out the junk drawer, and the second part
of the process is sort the junk drawer. The first
part is raw materials and the second part is shape
the raw materials into something meaningful. Both parts are equally
important in the creative process, and without one or the
other part, you would get lost or you don't you
(25:55):
would live in utter chaos all the time. So both
parts are equally important, and yet I feel like because
we value one over the other in our culture, sometimes
we miss the one that I'm talking about on today's episode.
We miss the opportunity to listen to what our life
is trying to tell us. And I feel like I'm
in this season right now where my body is talking
(26:16):
to me. And my chiropractor said this to me, and
that's what inspired this episode. She was like, your body
is speaking to you, and my question for you would
be are you listening to it or are you just
trying to fix it? And that really sunk in with
me because I thought, I actually think, not only is
that true with my body, I'm like annoyed that my
(26:37):
body is responding the way that it is. I'm annoyed
at what it's saying, and so I'm like telling it
basically to sit down and shut up so that we
can get back about the business of my life. I mean,
I'm not really doing that, but I am kind of
There's like an attitude or an energy there of being like, oh,
this is such an inconvenience, Like let's get this thing
solved that we can get back to regular life instead
of trusting my body's infinite wisdom. That my body is
(27:00):
to me and it's showing me something important, Can I
slow down and listen enough to hear what it's trying
to say to me? Same with my life. My life
is speaking to me, and I've been trying so hard
to get to an outcome, or trying so hard to
get things into a structure that feels more organized, that
feels easier to understand where I get the outcome that
I'm looking for, that I haven't really stepped back and
(27:23):
gone like, wait, hold on, what is my life trying
to show me? And when I think about even going
through what I went through with my divorce ten years ago,
the first thing that I had to do was to
sit in the darkness and silence of that time. The
first thing I had to do was listen. The first
thing I had to do was dump everything that was
(27:44):
in my brain onto the page before I could ever
make sense of it. And now, of course, because I'm
ten years out, I feels like, oh, yeah, I always
understood that, but I didn't. I did not. There was
a long period of time I mean between at least
November of twenty fifteen when everything fell apart, and then
August of twenty seventeen is when I met Matt, so
(28:05):
almost two full years at least where I was sitting
in the darkness and silence without really knowing what was
going on. Then when I met Matt, that was when
things started to begin to click because I could see
like I was with this different partner and he and
I were like dating in August, but not really, we
didn't really start dating until twenty eighteen, but because we
(28:27):
were spending time together and we were both interested in
each other, that experience was bringing up a lot of
these old patterns in me. But then I was with
a different partner who didn't respond the same way, so
it was like, oh, this always was just about me,
Like not to say that my ex husband didn't also
bring many things to the table that made it that
(28:47):
made it impossible for me to heal inside of that relationship.
But when I was with Matt, it was like, oh wait,
hold on, here's the same old me with a different
person in a different setting. So so ah, I get it.
This is my opportunity to heal me. And I wonder
if I can bring that same kind of attitude to
(29:08):
this period of time in my life where you know
I'm talking about there's been six years where things haven't
really gone the way that I've wanted them to. And listen, like,
I'm not sitting here complaining about my life. I have
so much to be thankful for, and I hope that
in some ways that goes without saying, like, there are
certain things about my life that are like my kids,
for example, are just an absolute joy and a delight
(29:30):
to me. And I feel so lucky that I have
two happy, healthy kids, Like my kids are thriving in
their lives, and that is an absolute joy to get
to witness every day, Like it does not get past
me on a single day that I don't wake up
and go I'm so thankful that my kids are healthy
and that they're enjoying their lives anyways. Also, like, in
(29:52):
spite of our financial struggles in the last several years,
we're extremely privileged, and so not a day goes by
that I am not in recognition of that as well.
It's like, yeah, it's been frustrating, it's been stressful. We're
still in a lot of debt. We're still trying to
you know, figure that out. Things have stabilized quite significantly,
and yet like so it's stressful. And also I live
(30:15):
a life that's extremely privileged in comparison to the rest
of the world. So all of that to say, like
I do recognize that I live this amazing life, and
also I think it's so easy and maybe you resonate
with this to get in this mindset of like I've
tried to actualize this thing. I've tried to achieve this thing.
This is something that I want for my life, and
it's just not happening for me, and feeling the hopelessness
(30:37):
of that, or even just like looking at the world
and going like, oh my god, I want to contribute
something to make the world a better place. But like
there's the Epstein files, and there's these wars, and there's
bigotry and hatred and like just pure evil at work
in the world, and it's like, what are we going
(30:57):
to do? And what's the point? And does anything that
I even try matter? And I think when it comes
to that, it's like, can we also I'm not saying
don't take action where we can take action, but can
we also listen to what this time is trying to
say to us? Can we listen to what this time
is trying to teach us? Can we slow down enough
(31:20):
to receive the message to notice the pattern? The human
brain is very good at pattern recognition, So if you
dump your unconscious thoughts onto the page, you will quickly
notice that you see the same pattern. You see the
same thing happening over and over again. You'll see I
talk about this in the power of writing it down.
(31:41):
You'll see the same phrases, the same words, the same attitudes,
the same energies coming out again and again and again
and again. And this has been true with my dream
journal too. It's like whoa like I see the same people,
the same dynamics, the same feelings and sensations showing up
(32:02):
again and again, and before you can ask yourself what
that means, just notice that it's there. This is the
place that I feel like I'm at in my life,
And this is the offering to you, if you would
like to receive it, or if it feels helpful to you.
The offering is maybe before you try to fix your life,
you just listen to what it's trying to say. Maybe
before you try to organize your life. Maybe before you
(32:23):
try to tackle a problem by fixing it, maybe you
just listen to what the problem is trying to show you.
Maybe for you it's your body, or maybe for you
it's you know, fertility, or maybe for you it's a
business that's not working out or a relationship that's not
working out. Maybe before you try to solve the problem,
maybe you ask what could this be trying to show me?
(32:44):
And now that I think about this, if I had
taken that approach when I was married, before my marriage
probably would have ended a lot faster than it did.
I was always trying to fix the problem. It was like, Okay,
the problem is X that we're not getting along. We're
arguing that our house is extremely chaotic. There's all this
yelling and fighting and leaving and whatever. So I'm going
(33:07):
to try to fix the problem. I'm going to try
to fix myself. I'm going to go to therapy. I'm
going to read all these self help books. I'm going
to become a better wife, I'm going to be a
better person. I'm going to go to on site. I'm
going to do all these things. Not that any of
those things are wrong, But if I would have stopped
for a moment to say, what is this experience trying
to show me? If I had journaled my way through that,
(33:27):
if I had been really truthful with myself about how
I was feeling or what was going on with me,
I can guarantee you I would not have stayed in
that relationship as long as I did. So what would
that look like for us? What would it look like
for me to sit with what my life is trying
to show me instead of trying to fix Because this
is how this whole thing came up. I'm so desperate
(33:50):
to fix my symptoms. I just want them gone. Then
I'm like, Okay, what's the quickest way to do this?
Sure cost ten thousand dollars? No problem, Like sign me up?
Where's where do I write a check? You know, even
though like it's it's really probably not the best way
for me to allocate those resources right this second. And
doctor Kannis's invitation to me was, what if we don't
(34:10):
desperately try to fix the problem right this second, what
if we just take a minute to sit with what
your body might be trying to say to you. And
my question to you is, what would it look like if,
instead of trying to fix your life, instead of trying
to change the outcomes, if you just took a minute
to sit with what your body is trying to show you,
sit with what your life is trying to say to you.
(34:31):
And maybe part of how we do that is by
the stream of consciousness writing or stream of consciousness speaking,
or in my case, what I need to do and
you can hold me to this, This is my accountability.
What I need to do is freaking open up Instagram
and start posting there regularly. Every day. I just need
to post something. This is not about growing a massive
platform or anything. It's just about following that intuition that
(34:53):
has been there for such a long time. That's part
of how my life is going to show me to myself.
It's part of how my life is going to speak me.
And maybe you have something too on your docket that
you've known for a long time. I need to do
that thing. I need to start that business or start
writing that book or whatever it is. Like, all post
in the show notes a link to both a book
(35:14):
in six Months, the online course that I teach that
helps you walk through the process of writing a book
in six months in case that's something that's been on
your bucket list. And I'll also post a link to
the Power of Writing It Down so you can purchase
a copy of that if you haven't already read it.
And we can all just kind of take this path
together of committing to ourselves that we're going to do
the thing that scares us, because that's how our life
(35:36):
is going to speak to us. That is how your
life is going to speak to you. If you're constantly tiptoeing,
protecting yourself, closing yourself off, your life is not going
to speak to you that loudly, or maybe it will
whisper it first and then slowly over time, like I mentioned,
it'll just get louder and louder. But the more that
you face your fears, the more that you show up
(35:56):
in the world, the more that you chase down those
things that your heart is telling you to chase down,
the more loudly your life will speak to you, and
the more clearly it will speak to you, and the
more clarity and wisdom that you will have to continue
to move forward. I believe that I'm doing that for myself.
I'm inviting you to do it with me. I'm just
grateful for you. I'm grateful that you're here, and I
hope I see you back next week on The Writer
(36:17):
Your Story podcast
Hi, and welcome to you Write Your Story Podcast. Good job.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the word you write all the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's time to let them out and
write them down and cover what it's all about and write,
(00:29):
you write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and I want to
take a minute at the beginning of today's episode just
to say hi and welcome to all of my new listeners.
I did a thing and finally got over myself and
finally got over my own resistance and shared about this
podcast on Instagram, which I have done before. It's not
like I've never talked about it on Instagram, but usually
(00:57):
it's in stories, and usually it's very brief. And the
other day I decided to post a reel on Instagram
talking about my current health challenges and inviting people who
were interested in hearing more, hearing the whole story to
come over and listen on the podcast, and so many
of you came over to listen, and it just is
(01:19):
a reminder to me. First of all, there's so many
reminders in here, but one of the reminders is, like
my resistance, my hesitancy to sharing on Instagram was it
feels like this platform here is because of the structure
of the platform. It's just longer form content. It has
lent itself to me being more open, more vulnerable, sharing
(01:40):
about more aspects of my life that I just don't
talk about over on Instagram. I haven't talked about the
business failure on Instagram. I haven't talked about my health
challenges all that much on Instagram. I've barely dipped my
toe in the water. I haven't talked about my fertility issues,
fertility struggles, or wanting to grow my family on Instagram.
There's so much that I get to talk about here
that I don't get to talk about there. And I
(02:00):
think in my mind I had compartmentalized both. And I
have a lot of fear about using my voice on
a platform like Instagram. I've talked about this before too,
so I don't want to like beat a dead horse here,
but I think I have a block with Instagram where
I feel like you put content on Instagram people get
to give instant feedback. There's kind of a culture that's
created there where people get to be really critical, they
(02:23):
get to say mean things. It just feels like it
opens a portal to you know, people saying all kinds
of things about you, which maybe that's a growth edge
for me, is learning how to get over that fear
of criticism or that feeling like everything that I post
on Instagram has to be like all buttoned up and
well researched and have to make sure that I say
the right thing, otherwise I'm going to get just completely
like cut down. Athony's so, I mean, that is a
(02:45):
thing that happens on Instagram. But maybe that's part of
why I've been feeling pulled and invited to share more.
There is to really face that fear and get over that.
I've been facing so many fears, y'all since twenty twenty.
I'm like, this is like the decade of facing all
my fears. I have faced my fear of bankruptcy, I
have faced my fear of failure, I have faced my
fear of not being perfect. I've faced my fear of
(03:07):
all the things. Yeah, and I mean, that's so much
about what this podcast is about. And another thing I
realized when I got over myself and finally shared on
Instagram was that all of you who came over here
to listen here, I got so many loving messages, so
much support, so much love through Instagram DMS in my
(03:30):
text messages. I got pulled aside at the coffee shop
the other day from someone who said she was so
thankful that I shared so honestly about my struggles on
the podcast, so she came over from Instagram to listen.
It's just like a big, warm hug and a reminder
that sometimes, yes, when you face your fears, you realize
the thing you were afraid of was actually not that real.
(03:51):
You know. I think about my kids being afraid of
like monsters under their bed or all the regular kid stuff,
or like my son is really into this thing right
now where he is afraid that when he sits on
the toilet that an animal is going to come up
from the toilet and like bite him in the butt,
like a snake or I don't know what he thinks
is going to come up. But it's like no amount
of logic telling him you're safe, Like nothing is there's
(04:13):
no living thing in the toilets, like it's that's what
you're scared of is not a thing, and it's not
going to happen. There's no amount of explaining that to
him that will help him. So now every time he
goes to the bathroom, he's like, Mom, can you come
and watch the toilet? And I just told him the
other day, I'm like, listen, I'm happy to come and
sit here and watch the toilet for the thing you're
afraid of, which is an impossibility, which would never happen.
(04:36):
I can do that for a little while, but at
some point you are going to learn how You're going
to have to learn how to face this fear and
discover that the thing that you're really afraid of is
actually not there. And maybe that's a good analogy for
me in this case, is that the biggest thing for
me to realize is that the thing I'm afraid of
being criticized, either it will happen and I'll realize, oh,
it wasn't that big of a deal, or it won't
(04:59):
happen at all. We like, in this case, all the
criticism that I was expecting, the fears I had of
like bringing people from Instagram over to this platform, and
like opening the floodgates of having more listeners in this
really vulnerable space that I've created. Whatever I was afraid
of didn't take place, and so hopefully that I can
(05:19):
put that in my little back pocket and go, you know,
you don't have to be so afraid of opening your mouth.
And I've shared this before, but I have been feeling
really pulled to share more on Instagram and I need
to just like what's the word, like just freaking do it,
Like I need to do the damn thing, and I
(05:40):
have been putting it off and there's so much resistance
around it for me. But I think because like I've shared,
I have these two sides of my brain. One side
is like Instagram is you know, it's addictive, It's a
time waster. It sucks us into these rabbit trails that
we don't need to know anything about, Like I'm not
talking about like world events. I'm talking about like what's
(06:02):
the latest like Taylor Franky Paul and Instagram like reality
TV stars, like pulls us into those sorts of rabbit
trails that we don't need to be on, Like I
don't need to waste my energy worry about what's going on,
with Taylor Franky Paul like that is not my business.
So there's that side of my brain, and then there's
another side of my brain that says, Instagram is this
amazing tool that we have at our disposal to connect
with each other. And also Instagram has the opportunity to
(06:27):
show me to myself because I can't realistically, I cannot
show up there every day and say a thing and
do a thing and not see myself more clearly. And
that has been true absolutely for this podcast. It's the
main motivation that I have for doing it is that
when I come here and I process through my life
and I talk about what's going on with me, and
(06:47):
I do it in an unfiltered way, and I don't
try to perfect it, and I don't come here with
notes and I don't come here with a bunch of data,
and these episodes are not researched, like this is just
Ali off the cuff, shooting from the hip. The reason
that I do it that way is because this is
really about me listening to my life. It's about me
allowing my life to speak to me and showing myself
(07:08):
to myself. And in that I grow and I change
and I become more of a I'm able to make
more of a contribution to the world, and in that
hopefully also you connect to it and maybe there are
some things that you get to learn or take away
as well. Either way, like watching someone else discover their freedom,
(07:29):
discover their voice, discover their life is always inspiration to
go discover our own. So I hope you know, if
you're new here, First of all, you should know this
that I don't come to these episodes with a bunch
of data or research. I don't write these episodes ahead
of time. I don't come knowing what I'm going to say.
I come with sort of a theme of what I
want to talk about, and then I just shoot from
(07:50):
the hip. And I also have an amazing producer named
Houston who does a lot of editing and makes me
sound like a little smoother than I usually am. Sometimes
I start over, like fifteen times in an episode. I'm like, Gough,
can't get the words out. So I do my best,
and Houston definitely makes me sound more put together than
I would be otherwise. So I have that gift in
(08:11):
my back pocket, and I'm just grateful to have you here.
I hope that whatever happens in this episode. I know
that I know that I know that I'm doing it
because it makes me better, it helps me grow. I
learn so much from listening to myself talk to myself,
and I hope that you have something that you can
take away from it as well. Welcome, I'm so grateful
to have you here, and let's go ahead and dive
(08:32):
right in. I also have a quick update that I
want to share before I guess we get into the
meat of the episode. Although one of the reasons I
want to share this update is I do think it's
applicable to the meat of this episode, which is that
my book, the power of writing it down, is making
a resurgence, and this is really cool. Like, this is
a book that came out at the beginning of twenty
twenty one. I've shared about this before, but the book
(08:53):
came out at a time a few days before the
insurrection happened at the Capitol. There was so much going
on in my personal life. I had just given birth
to Nella, I had just maybe not quite found out
I was pregnant with Charlie yet. We had moved from
LA to Nashville. We had moved into this brand new house.
I think like a few days before my book came out,
I was recording podcast interviews in a completely empty house.
(09:16):
I had locked myself in one of the closets, or
shut myself. Sorry, I not locked myself. I had shut
myself in one of the closets with some pillows around
me so that it wouldn't sound quite so equy because
I was like in a completely empty house. Matt hadn't
even got here yet. Nella was like six months old.
Then our furniture showed up, like, you know, a few
days after Christmas, I think. And then the book came
(09:36):
out on like January fourth or sixth, or something like that.
I can't remember the exact dates. But it was a
wild time in my personal life. It was a wild
time in the world. And then it was a little
tragic because I did everything that I had done for
past books. But when the Power of Writing It Down
came out, which everyone was saying this was going to
be my breakout book, the book just didn't do as
well as everyone expected it to do. It did fine,
(09:58):
but it didn't like off the way that people expected
it to. It was just again such a wild time politically,
it was probably poor timing for the book. To come out.
Nobody's fault, just one of those things. The book has
consistently sold. It has what we call a long tail
in the publishing industry, which is great, like it has
sold well over time so slowly, like when I get
(10:19):
my royalty reports, I'll see the book is still selling,
like that's so great. And then several months ago, I
want to say, this was like back in like early
twenty twenty five or mid twenty twenty five, something like that,
my mother in law showed me that there was this
Facebook post not for me, from someone else who had
read the book, who I guess must have had a
platform or been some sort of influencer, because this Facebook
(10:42):
post went somewhat viral. It had like millions of views,
It had several thousand shares, I don't remember how many comments,
but someone was sharing about the book, and Matt was like, oh,
you should check and see if that share or that
post that went viral has affected your sales numbers at all.
So of course, the first thing I did was get
(11:03):
on Amazon and realized like the book was completely sold
out on Amazon. And that thing that the book being
sold out on Amazon happened a couple of times before
I'm assuming like the publisher must have Amazon must have
ordered more books, or something happened where now it's not
selling out every couple of weeks like it was. But
for a while, the book was selling out on Amazon
(11:23):
every couple of weeks. Then I was getting messages about
other publishers and other countries wanting to translate the book
into different languages, and then I wrote a new forward
for one of the languages. And it's just cool, like
to watch the book come back around and watch people
react to it and have people tag me on Instagram.
It's random, but like at least once a week I'll
get a tag on Instagram from someone saying that they
(11:44):
read the book for the first time. It didn't, you know,
maybe catch their interest when it came out in twenty
twenty one, but now here it is and they're reading
it for the first time. So this is just it's
a cool reminder. The most, the easiest reminder from this
is just you just never know when a book comes out,
Like you always worry as an author, no one's going
to read this or no one's going to care, or
what if I write it and it doesn't sell. You
(12:05):
just don't know when you write a book if it's
going to sell or if it's not going to sell,
and you don't know when it's going to sell, and
you don't know who's going to read it. And I
love what Julia Cameron says, which is just that none
of that is your business anyway. Your business is just
about writing it. So that's one thing that I wanted
to share is if you have a book idea and
you are stopping yourself from starting, if you're getting in
(12:25):
your own way the same way I am with Instagram,
you're feeling the resistance, you don't want to do it.
Maybe consider that you have no idea how long this
book will take to write. You have no idea when
it's going to come out. You have no idea who
will read it. You have no idea if it comes
out and it doesn't get read immediately, Maybe it'll get
read somewhere down the line. That to me, is one
(12:46):
really brilliant takeaway from this book right now. Making your
resurgence another takeaway for me that's just cool. Is one
of the things I wanted to talk about in today's
episode is this idea of listening to your life that
your life is constantly speaking to you, and how do
we get in a posture where we can learn to
listen to our life, because I think usually we're in
(13:06):
this posture where we want to fix our life. We
want to control our life, we want to lock it down,
we want to get our ducks in a row, we
want to achieve whatever it is that we're trying to achieve.
We want to make our life be something. And I'm
not saying there's not a place for that, but I
am in a place in my life where I'm starting
to learn, Oh, if I can actually stop trying to
(13:28):
fix my life and start trying to listen to my life,
if I can stop trying to solve the problem immediately
and get an answer, you know, to the equation right now,
if I can step back and be in a posture
of surrender, there's more that my life wants to show
to me, or more that my life wants to say
to me, And even the structure of this podcast it
(13:49):
reflects that. It's like I have been following my intuition,
really felt invited to share in these episodes in a
way that's more surrender. It's more, you know, I'm not
coming to this episode with like here's what I want
to say, and here's what I want to teach you.
I'm coming to this episode with like, here's a topic
that I want to explore more. What happens if I
(14:10):
just open my mouth and let myself talk it out,
let myself talk it through, let myself ask the questions.
I don't have the answers, but can I ask the questions?
And can I sit with it for long enough to
see what it wants to say or see what it
wants to show me? And I was just thinking about
this in the last week, that the fact that the
power of writing it down is making a resurgence, the
(14:32):
power of writing it down versus Write Your Story, which
is my more recent book that came out in twenty
twenty four. Write your Story really is the framework. It's
the framework that you use to take an experience from
your life and turn it into a story. And when
we talk about narrative arcs and stories, I've shared this many,
many many times before, but a story is built around
(14:53):
a problem that you're trying to solve. And so if
you're going to try to fit your life into the
structure of a story, which I do believe that there's
a place for this as well. The whole reason I
wrote the book is because when I went through my
divorce in twenty fifteen, I needed some structure and some boundaries.
That was just where I was at in my life.
I would never have come out of that time in
my life. I told my husband this the other day.
(15:14):
I'm like, if I hadn't in twenty fifteen and in
twenty sixteen, asked myself, how do I keep ending up here?
How do I keep ending up with the wrong guy?
What do I need to clean up on my side
of the street, What do I need to think about?
How could I change or edit myself, or how could
I look differently at this scenario in order to create
(15:34):
a different outcome. If I hadn't asked myself those questions,
I never ever ever would be married to my current husband.
I would never have my current two kids. I would
never be enjoying all the perks of this life that
I have now. So thank God that I was curious
about that and gave myself that structure and sat down
to write the story and thought about myself as the
hero of the story. And this was the inspiration for
(15:56):
writing write your Story, was that I feel like that
structure saved me from utter chaos and despair during that
time in my life. And yet now I feel like
I'm being invited to maybe lean away a little bit
from that structure and more into what I talk about
in The Power Writing It Down, which is just letting
your life speak to you. The Power Writing It Down
(16:17):
is a book that's really more about stream of consciousness writing.
It's more about listening to your unconscious or listening to
your subconscious than it is about putting anything into a structure.
I don't teach a structure in the Power of Writing
It Down. What I teach is a process of showing
up to the page every day where you journal about
what's going on with you and you notice the patterns.
(16:41):
That's it. It's almost like step one that needs to
come before write your story. And maybe as I'm saying this,
I'm realizing, like, maybe this is part of what is
being called for in my life right now, because I
do feel like I'm in this phase where, gosh, in
some ways, I'm like I've been here before, so I
feel like I should know a way out, But I
do feel a little lost and confused sometimes, like the
(17:03):
health stuff is really confusing to me, don't. I don't
have an answer for any of it. I don't know
which steps to take next. I feel frustrated that, you know,
this is what's going on with my body. I wish
that I could just keep going at full speed. My
body is not. My body is saying no to that
right now. Like I talked about last week, my body
is saying no to all the things that I think
I want, to the structure that I've been trying to
(17:24):
give to my life, to the things that I've been
trying to manifest or actualize. My body is saying no.
And so because it's saying no, can I tune in
and listen a little deeper and ask like, Okay, body,
what do you want? What do you think? What does
come next? And can I? Yeah, can I surrender to that?
Can I allow that to be true? And it's just
(17:47):
a little bit of a different energy than the right
your Story energy. The right your Story energy is more like, Okay,
we're going to bring some structure to this. We're going
to put this story in a system where I'm going to,
you know, put myself as the hero of a story.
What's the problem that I'm up against? And by hero
of the story. If you've been here while you know this,
I don't mean that you deserve all the praise and accolades.
(18:08):
I don't mean that the world centers around you. I
mean the inside of this particular story, you are the
only person who can take action to change the direction
of the narrative. So you're the hero inside of the story.
You're the protagonist. You're up against a problem that you
cannot overcome in your current state. Who do you have
to become in order to overcome that problem? The power
(18:40):
writing it down is really about getting to the raw
materials of your life. So it's about opening yourself enough
to get plenty of content on the page. I always
use the example that this is like either dumping out
the junk drawer, or this is like the clay that
the potter starts with, so there's no former shape to it. Yet,
it's just about getting everything that's in here out there.
(19:03):
So creating an environment that's safe enough. This is one
of the things I teach, creating an environment that's safe
enough and working with the body in such a way
that it will give you access to what's going on
in your subconscious So I don't talk about this in
the power of writing it down. But it's something I've
been doing recently in order to access that subconscious is
dream journaling, And I thought it was wild. I got
(19:24):
this idea from a friend of mine who's a Union analyst,
who got me started listening to this podcast called This
UNI in Life meaning Carl Jung, and I was like, oh,
I hardly ever have dreams that I remember. It's like, very,
very rare. But what I started doing that they suggested
is putting a dream journal next to my bed with
a pen and asking every night for my subconscious to
(19:46):
give me a dream. And as soon as I started
doing that, I started having dreams and remembering them, and
I would wake up first thing and write down the dream.
So the idea would be just like as many dreams
as you can get in that dream journal, just keep
writing him down, writing him down, writing him down. Or
in your writing practice, every day you write for five
minutes a day, or twenty minutes a day, or forty
minutes a day, or whatever it is, you're just dumping
(20:07):
out your unconscious onto the page. Julia Cameron teaches this.
Her morning pages are really just that stream of consciousness
thought process, getting what's in your brain out on the page.
So and she would say, once it's written on the page,
you don't ever look at that again. I disagree slightly,
because I do think that what comes out on the
page is the raw materials that then you have to
(20:28):
work with, and that's what write your story was about, right,
Your story was like bringing some structure and formatting to
what's on the page that you can start to make
sense of it. So, I don't know, I feel like
I'm in this place. I was telling my husband the
other night that I'm in this place that feels very
similar to when I was going through the divorce from
the standpoint that my life is clearly speaking to me
(20:50):
like everything that I've wanted to create and manifest in
the last couple of years has not come to fruition.
Nothing is going the way that I've wanted it to go.
I've wanted to grow our family and that's not happening
for me. You know, we wanted this business opportunity to
come to fruition, and that's not what happened. We walked
a very scary financial path with a near bankruptcy and
(21:12):
other financial ramifications, which I'm not pretending that I'm a
victim to that, like that was just part of the
consequences of the actions that we took, and just so
many different things that I wanted to do that just
don't seem to be becoming a reality for me. And
so I was telling my husband like the same way
as when I was going through my divorce, I have
to ask myself the question, like, what role am I
(21:33):
playing in this? You know, like this has been going
on for a while now, and so what role am
I playing in creating this reality for myself? And the
answer that has come through for me is really about
this concept of being willing to listen to your life
before you try to solve your life. And I want
to share one other analogy before I bring this all together.
So if this is making no sense, just hang with
me and I will get back around to it. But
(21:56):
when I announced on Instagram and when I shared my
story here all the health challenges I've been going through,
I've had an onslaught of messages from people who are
giving me like different options to try, so like I
have met with so many different practitioners, so many different people,
like so many different people, so many different tests, so
(22:16):
many different options, so many different things that this could
be possible diagnoses. All of it is extremely helpful, and
all of it is also really overwhelming because it's just
like where do I go next? Like how do I
figure out what the next right step is? But one
of the things that I have noticed in meeting with
these various practitioners is some practitioners come to the table
(22:36):
with more certainty about They come with a lot of certainty,
They come with a lot of expertise, they come with
a lot of data, a lot of research about here's
what's going on, Here's what's going to help you, Here's
how we're going to treat it. Here's what the program is.
You know, I'm certain I'm going to get going to
get you feeling better. And my chiropractor, I want to
(22:57):
give a shout out to my chiropractor, doctor Canna Speaker,
because she's here in Nashville and she's amazing. She used
to work it Nashville Brain and Body and now she
started her own practice. But she said something to me
that really stuck out to me and feels like it
it really gets at this point that I want to
make because I had met with this one practitioner who
was like, so convincing, so certain that she knew what
(23:20):
was going on with me. She was also really expensive,
but the way she presented it was just like, I'm
certain I know what's going on with you. I'm certain
that this can help you. And doctor Kenneth said to me,
when it comes to the body, you always want to
make sure that you're listening to what it wants to
tell you instead of just trying to force it to
change or instead of just trying to fix it. And
(23:43):
I was like, wow, hold on, that feels like a
message for me, and like something that I need to
sit with, this idea of holding space for the body
to speak instead of immediately jumping to here's how I'm
gonna fix you. Here's the plan, here's the program, here's
the formula, here's the framework. Formulas and frameworks are extremely helpful.
I'm not dissing a formula or a framework, but I
(24:05):
feel like sometimes we jump to the framework because it
gives us a sense of certainty, and it's certainty, that's
really what it is like. It gives us a sense
of certainty about what's coming next, what we can expect,
how things are going to go. And yet if we
jump to that without first listening to what the body
is trying to tell us, we might miss the mark completely.
(24:28):
And sure we may end up achieving something, but is
it the thing that we were really trying to achieve.
So I don't know if I'm making total sense here,
but here's what I'm trying to say. I feel like
in my life, I'm trying to manifest all these different
things I'm trying to actualize. If you don't like the
word manifest, I'm trying to actualize the growth of my family.
I'm trying to actualize a different financial reality. I'm trying
(24:51):
to get us out of debt. Now, I'm trying to
actualize a handful of different things in my life. None
of them are coming to fruition. Perhaps apps part of
that is because I'm so fixated on the outcome. I'm
so fixated on the end of a story. I'm so
fixated on shoving this thing into a framework. I haven't
(25:12):
stopped for long enough to really listen to what my
life is trying to tell me. And this is what
I was getting at with the difference between the power
of writing it down and write your story. Both parts
of the process are totally necessary. Both parts of the
(25:32):
process are totally necessary. The first part of the process
is dump out the junk drawer, and the second part
of the process is sort the junk drawer. The first
part is raw materials and the second part is shape
the raw materials into something meaningful. Both parts are equally
important in the creative process, and without one or the
other part, you would get lost or you don't you
(25:55):
would live in utter chaos all the time. So both
parts are equally important, and yet I feel like because
we value one over the other in our culture, sometimes
we miss the one that I'm talking about on today's episode.
We miss the opportunity to listen to what our life
is trying to tell us. And I feel like I'm
in this season right now where my body is talking
(26:16):
to me. And my chiropractor said this to me, and
that's what inspired this episode. She was like, your body
is speaking to you, and my question for you would
be are you listening to it or are you just
trying to fix it? And that really sunk in with
me because I thought, I actually think, not only is
that true with my body, I'm like annoyed that my
(26:37):
body is responding the way that it is. I'm annoyed
at what it's saying, and so I'm like telling it
basically to sit down and shut up so that we
can get back about the business of my life. I mean,
I'm not really doing that, but I am kind of
There's like an attitude or an energy there of being like, oh,
this is such an inconvenience, Like let's get this thing
solved that we can get back to regular life instead
of trusting my body's infinite wisdom. That my body is
(27:00):
to me and it's showing me something important, Can I
slow down and listen enough to hear what it's trying
to say to me? Same with my life. My life
is speaking to me, and I've been trying so hard
to get to an outcome, or trying so hard to
get things into a structure that feels more organized, that
feels easier to understand where I get the outcome that
I'm looking for, that I haven't really stepped back and
(27:23):
gone like, wait, hold on, what is my life trying
to show me? And when I think about even going
through what I went through with my divorce ten years ago,
the first thing that I had to do was to
sit in the darkness and silence of that time. The
first thing I had to do was listen. The first
thing I had to do was dump everything that was
(27:44):
in my brain onto the page before I could ever
make sense of it. And now, of course, because I'm
ten years out, I feels like, oh, yeah, I always
understood that, but I didn't. I did not. There was
a long period of time I mean between at least
November of twenty fifteen when everything fell apart, and then
August of twenty seventeen is when I met Matt, so
(28:05):
almost two full years at least where I was sitting
in the darkness and silence without really knowing what was
going on. Then when I met Matt, that was when
things started to begin to click because I could see
like I was with this different partner and he and
I were like dating in August, but not really, we
didn't really start dating until twenty eighteen, but because we
(28:27):
were spending time together and we were both interested in
each other, that experience was bringing up a lot of
these old patterns in me. But then I was with
a different partner who didn't respond the same way, so
it was like, oh, this always was just about me,
Like not to say that my ex husband didn't also
bring many things to the table that made it that
(28:47):
made it impossible for me to heal inside of that relationship.
But when I was with Matt, it was like, oh wait,
hold on, here's the same old me with a different
person in a different setting. So so ah, I get it.
This is my opportunity to heal me. And I wonder
if I can bring that same kind of attitude to
(29:08):
this period of time in my life where you know
I'm talking about there's been six years where things haven't
really gone the way that I've wanted them to. And listen, like,
I'm not sitting here complaining about my life. I have
so much to be thankful for, and I hope that
in some ways that goes without saying, like, there are
certain things about my life that are like my kids,
for example, are just an absolute joy and a delight
(29:30):
to me. And I feel so lucky that I have
two happy, healthy kids, Like my kids are thriving in
their lives, and that is an absolute joy to get
to witness every day, Like it does not get past
me on a single day that I don't wake up
and go I'm so thankful that my kids are healthy
and that they're enjoying their lives anyways. Also, like, in
(29:52):
spite of our financial struggles in the last several years,
we're extremely privileged, and so not a day goes by
that I am not in recognition of that as well.
It's like, yeah, it's been frustrating, it's been stressful. We're
still in a lot of debt. We're still trying to
you know, figure that out. Things have stabilized quite significantly,
and yet like so it's stressful. And also I live
(30:15):
a life that's extremely privileged in comparison to the rest
of the world. So all of that to say, like
I do recognize that I live this amazing life, and
also I think it's so easy and maybe you resonate
with this to get in this mindset of like I've
tried to actualize this thing. I've tried to achieve this thing.
This is something that I want for my life, and
it's just not happening for me, and feeling the hopelessness
(30:37):
of that, or even just like looking at the world
and going like, oh my god, I want to contribute
something to make the world a better place. But like
there's the Epstein files, and there's these wars, and there's
bigotry and hatred and like just pure evil at work
in the world, and it's like, what are we going
(30:57):
to do? And what's the point? And does anything that
I even try matter? And I think when it comes
to that, it's like, can we also I'm not saying
don't take action where we can take action, but can
we also listen to what this time is trying to
say to us? Can we listen to what this time
is trying to teach us? Can we slow down enough
(31:20):
to receive the message to notice the pattern? The human
brain is very good at pattern recognition, So if you
dump your unconscious thoughts onto the page, you will quickly
notice that you see the same pattern. You see the
same thing happening over and over again. You'll see I
talk about this in the power of writing it down.
(31:41):
You'll see the same phrases, the same words, the same attitudes,
the same energies coming out again and again and again
and again. And this has been true with my dream
journal too. It's like whoa like I see the same people,
the same dynamics, the same feelings and sensations showing up
(32:02):
again and again, and before you can ask yourself what
that means, just notice that it's there. This is the
place that I feel like I'm at in my life,
And this is the offering to you, if you would
like to receive it, or if it feels helpful to you.
The offering is maybe before you try to fix your life,
you just listen to what it's trying to say. Maybe
before you try to organize your life. Maybe before you
(32:23):
try to tackle a problem by fixing it, maybe you
just listen to what the problem is trying to show you.
Maybe for you it's your body, or maybe for you
it's you know, fertility, or maybe for you it's a
business that's not working out or a relationship that's not
working out. Maybe before you try to solve the problem,
maybe you ask what could this be trying to show me?
(32:44):
And now that I think about this, if I had
taken that approach when I was married, before my marriage
probably would have ended a lot faster than it did.
I was always trying to fix the problem. It was like, Okay,
the problem is X that we're not getting along. We're
arguing that our house is extremely chaotic. There's all this
yelling and fighting and leaving and whatever. So I'm going
(33:07):
to try to fix the problem. I'm going to try
to fix myself. I'm going to go to therapy. I'm
going to read all these self help books. I'm going
to become a better wife, I'm going to be a
better person. I'm going to go to on site. I'm
going to do all these things. Not that any of
those things are wrong, But if I would have stopped
for a moment to say, what is this experience trying
to show me? If I had journaled my way through that,
(33:27):
if I had been really truthful with myself about how
I was feeling or what was going on with me,
I can guarantee you I would not have stayed in
that relationship as long as I did. So what would
that look like for us? What would it look like
for me to sit with what my life is trying
to show me instead of trying to fix Because this
is how this whole thing came up. I'm so desperate
(33:50):
to fix my symptoms. I just want them gone. Then
I'm like, Okay, what's the quickest way to do this?
Sure cost ten thousand dollars? No problem, Like sign me up?
Where's where do I write a check? You know, even
though like it's it's really probably not the best way
for me to allocate those resources right this second. And
doctor Kannis's invitation to me was, what if we don't
(34:10):
desperately try to fix the problem right this second, what
if we just take a minute to sit with what
your body might be trying to say to you. And
my question to you is, what would it look like if,
instead of trying to fix your life, instead of trying
to change the outcomes, if you just took a minute
to sit with what your body is trying to show you,
sit with what your life is trying to say to you.
(34:31):
And maybe part of how we do that is by
the stream of consciousness writing or stream of consciousness speaking,
or in my case, what I need to do and
you can hold me to this, This is my accountability.
What I need to do is freaking open up Instagram
and start posting there regularly. Every day. I just need
to post something. This is not about growing a massive
platform or anything. It's just about following that intuition that
(34:53):
has been there for such a long time. That's part
of how my life is going to show me to myself.
It's part of how my life is going to speak me.
And maybe you have something too on your docket that
you've known for a long time. I need to do
that thing. I need to start that business or start
writing that book or whatever it is. Like, all post
in the show notes a link to both a book
(35:14):
in six Months, the online course that I teach that
helps you walk through the process of writing a book
in six months in case that's something that's been on
your bucket list. And I'll also post a link to
the Power of Writing It Down so you can purchase
a copy of that if you haven't already read it.
And we can all just kind of take this path
together of committing to ourselves that we're going to do
the thing that scares us, because that's how our life
(35:36):
is going to speak to us. That is how your
life is going to speak to you. If you're constantly tiptoeing,
protecting yourself, closing yourself off, your life is not going
to speak to you that loudly, or maybe it will
whisper it first and then slowly over time, like I mentioned,
it'll just get louder and louder. But the more that
you face your fears, the more that you show up
(35:56):
in the world, the more that you chase down those
things that your heart is telling you to chase down,
the more loudly your life will speak to you, and
the more clearly it will speak to you, and the
more clarity and wisdom that you will have to continue
to move forward. I believe that I'm doing that for myself.
I'm inviting you to do it with me. I'm just
grateful for you. I'm grateful that you're here, and I
hope I see you back next week on The Writer
(36:17):
Your Story podcast
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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