A Preview of "It's Not You, It's Me" (the remix)

0:00 Hey, it's Laura Giles, and I have missed you guys. I've had guests on the last few podcasts who took center stage to bring a fresh perspective, and I'm glad to be back here talking to you, especially now that it's fall, the season for letting go, and that means that it's time for change. Do you guys do the whole spring cleaning ritual? I do it in the fall too, because the seasons are drastic, particularly different.

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And as I'm looking in my closet, I can see all my clothes and I'm going lean. I'm looking at the things that are a little worn out, things I don't want to take into hibernation mode because they're taking up space. I don't use them or they've come to the end of their natural life. So as I was cleaning out my closet and doing the rest of my fall cleaning, I thought, you know what? It's time to update the podcast too.

0:00:50

So in today's podcast, I'm going to tell you about what's going and what's coming and why. If you've been a loyal listener and subscriber in the past, I hope that you will still be here in the next season. But if not, I get it. Not all relationships last forever and everyone doesn't grow at the same pace or in the same direction, and that's why the change is happening. My podcast is a reflection of my work life and my personal life, and I love variety and evolution, so I never want to be doing the same thing all the time.

0:1:22

It's natural for me to want the podcast to evolve, too, so that it stays current with where I am, what I'm interested in, and what I have to offer. I think that keeps things current and healthy. So about a month ago, I hosted the Initiation Into Womanhood event. If you're a longtime listener to the podcast, you've heard what if I had to say about initiations rites of passage, the male and female archetypes, and how we have so many issues in modern society because we don't have initiations rites of passage community and don't have a relationship with natural leaders like the Maiden, Mother Seductress and Crone or the Seasons.

0:02:01

All that is in previous podcasts, and I'll link to those in the show notes, so we won't go over that again. But the Initiation Into Womanhood was an attempt to remedy that by bringing that back into the participants lives. And I thought it was going to be a reunion with a single archetype that reflects the stage of life that each participant was in. But it was so much more than that for me. I thought I was going to be a facilitator, not a participant, but it ended up being a deeply engaging transformational process where I got to experience wholeness in a way that I hadn't even envisioned or embodied before.

0:02:40

When something that big happens, it's like being slingshotted out of the galaxy and into outer space. Nothing looks the same. There's no ground underneath you, and it's incredibly disorienting because you're not you anymore. Reality is not reality anymore. You're far more than you ever imagined. And having been to a similar place before, I know the temptation is to go back to what's familiar. I can't tell you how many clients come to me saying, I just broke up with the love of my life and I just want things to go back to the way they were before, or, My mom just died. I don't know how to live without her, and I want things to go back to the way they were before.

0:03:22

You can do that. But why? The whole gift of that huge sudden shift is to quickly shift you to a different reality because it took so much momentum to get you out of your comfort zone. If you go right back, you lose the gift and you will never have that momentum again. For the first couple of days after the initiation into Womanhood, I just felt like I was crazy. My mind was not in this reality at all.

0:03:52

My thoughts and literal dreams were so much bigger. When we get angry about a hangnail or even something legitimate like how to pay the rent, those are real things. They have consequences for our day to day lives. The perspective that I had after the initiation to Womanhood was for Earthlings, not just myself or my family. It was for centuries, not today. It was for all aspects of myself, not just my ego.

0:04:20

This is something that really defies explanation in words. But what I'm trying to say is that as we grow, we expand. We bring things out of the darkness that were always there, but we were blind to them. We become more compassionate towards the things we didn't understand, and we encounter new ideas that weren't even part of our reality paradigm before. And now the podcast is evolving to include that because it's not just happening for me.

0:04:48

It's happening for my clients and my private community. I want to have a place where we can talk about those things and start to incorporate them into our new way of being. I want to shine a light on that to help people who are in the flow of transformation or are just considering it to have a path to follow to make it easier, because it's not an easy journey. So the name of the new podcast is it's not you. It's me.

0:05:15

Have you seen the Seinfeld episode about that? George wanted to break up with this girl, and I think Jerry told him to let her down easy by telling George to say, It's not you, it's me, meaning that George was the problem, not her. This is not what the podcast is about. It's actually the opposite. It's about taking radical responsibility for your life. It's about getting in the driver's seat of your life and realizing what an awesome co creator. You are not just of your own reality, but our shared reality.

0:05:49

It's about letting go of the blame and focusing on what someone else is doing and living a mindful conscious life. It's about being your true self and owning your true power. Sounds scary, right? Typically, we can't do that simply by making a decision to do it. Sometimes that happens in the flash of an eye. But for most of us, it's a process. It's a journey of healing yourself, growing yourself, knowing yourself, being yourself, loving yourself, and sharing yourself.

0:06:21

As that happens, you will shine the light into the dark crevices of your life and illuminate the ways. You learn to love, to fit in, to cope, to do all the things that you do. And you may see that those ways really don't work for who you are. They're too small, too limiting. As you do your shadow work and healing work, you will see all the ways that you hide from life and all the ways that you withhold love.

0:06:49

It's really about living in fear. And I hope that you find the courage to stop the self sabotage and live boldly. I want you to keep coming back here to hear these messages in this framework so that you don't fall asleep again. We all need constant reminders of our greatness. And I don't mean that in an egotistical way. I mean that in a grounded, humble, I'm a part of you and you're a part of me way. So we are one.

0:07:16

Each spoke in the wheel is an importance to the integrity of the whole wheel. And if I'm the best spoke that I can be, the wheel will be the best wheel that it can be. That's what I mean. That's the big picture view of the podcast. Our new logo or mascot is the unicorn. And this is to remind everyone that we're all magical and unique. As a fellow unicorn, I understand how hard it is to be one of a kind creature.

0:07:43

It's easy to feel left out and misunderstood when you look around and you see no one's like you. I grew up the daughter of an immigrant parent. I'm a multicultural in ethnicity and religion. My mom was a seamstress who sewed all my clothes when I was very little. So all my clothes were tailored and not of the popular fashion. So we dressed differently. We ate different food just about every way we could be different, we were.

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But I had a close and warm family where I felt a sense of belonging. I always had a really good friend or two, and I wasn't excluded from everyone else. I could go into any crowd or event that I wanted to. And that's the type of unicorn village that I envision for all of us. Everyone can be their version of My Little Pony, but together we're a rainbow herd where our differences are respected and honored, because that's the reality.

0:08:39

We're all rays of the rainbow, not individual lonely waves of light. And I hope you love our unicorn as much as I do, and we can embrace our individuality together. Another thing that the podcast will hit hard on is identity and shadow work. We live in an information age where you can find out the answer to just about anything in the blink of an eye. But most of us can't answer the question, who am I?

0:09:06

If you don't know, how do you show up in a relationship? How do you make decisions about what kind of work you want to do, who you want to be as a partner or how to parent, how to do your job, or anything in life? Nobody can show up authentically until they start looking at that question. Now, it's not something that anyone can answer fully, quickly, or easily. Finding out who you are is a process that unfolds because we're always changing.

0:09:37

But I think the most important task in our lifetimes is to figure out the answer to that question. We all come from pure spirit, but once we come into the physical form incubate in our mother's body and pass through that birth canal, we're already tainted with our parents trauma from their DNA, our prenatal environment, social rules, and all the expectations. Yeah. Did you know that if your mother was stressed out during her pregnancy, you're incubated in cortisol? So essentially, you're born with PTSD?

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That's one of the ways that intergenerational trauma is passed on. Then we get into learned behaviors. If your mom avoided pain by being emotionally unavailable, she taught you that. If your dad avoided pain by making mom happy, you learn to put others needs ahead of your own. You learn to take on other people's feelings as your own. This is another aspect of intergenerational trauma that may have happened to you before you were even verbal.

0:10:43

There's a whole lot more of that than any of us is consciously aware of, and our job is to release all of that purify, find ourselves, define our own values, and choose each moment consciously rather than to live by a past program. We can't be the gift that we're meant to be unless and until we do that. And that requires being strong enough to detach from our family and society and stand on our own. 2ft it also requires that we go into the shadow and make friends with all that crap that we're too afraid to face.

0:11:17

What's it like? I think that has two Facets. Marianne Williamson said it best when she said, our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. That's what I felt at the initiation into womanhood. Part of me rising into that power is the podcast rebranding and talking about it, making a community for it, where we can all do this without fear of being labeled selfish or self absorbed.

0:11:54

It's part of normalizing being strong, powerful, self aware, connected and loving at the same time. The other facet of facing the darkness inside is the spooky stuff. It's looking at all the times we thought we were bad, ugly, unforgivable, manipulative, hateful, selfish, and all the things that threaten to ostracize us from the tribe. We all have this innate fear of being outcast because humans can't survive alone.

0:12:24

We need each other's resources, conversation, emotional support, skills and companionship, so we can't shove all the things that get us kicked out of the tribe into a closet and pretend they aren't there. This has to come out if you're going to be amazing and whole. I can tell you why, but it's best experienced. It's just words. If I tell you so, I won't. We do have live and virtual events, so you can join and that'll help you to have that experience.

0:12:52

Just join my free community or sign up for my newsletter and I will share what those are and where they are. I don't have a calendar on my website. I always forget to tell you about them on the podcast, so that's really the best way to get involved. Sometimes I remember to post things on social media, but that's not that reliable. Anyway, that's where I'm heading. The new podcast is for people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired and are ready to get in the driver's seat of their life and embody radical responsibility.

0:13:22

It's a buck stops here mentality, a readiness to dig into the shadow and fearlessly live. I mean, you're here. Why not go all the way, right? One of my favorite poems is Go All the Way by Charles Bukowski. We can use that as a rallying cry when things are slow, depressing and not motivated. He says, if you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. If you're going to try, go all the way.

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This can mean losing girlfriends, wives, relationships, jobs and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision, mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst ODS. And it'll be better than anything else you can imagine if you're going to try go all the way.

0:14:30

There's no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the knights will flame with fire. Do it. Do it. Do it all the way. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is to give you chills. Gives me chills every single time. Your life is not about the economy, who your parents are, what you look like, your skin color, your gender or luck. It's up to you to wake up, figure out who you are, and accept no excuses to be part of that.

0:15:08

That's all you're here to do. And just like Bukowski says, it's not going to be easy. You have to accept that you're a unicorn. People are not going to understand. Some won't like your vision, some will reject you, and you do it anyway, because it's the only way to be your true self. I'm going to be here every week, helping you through by illuminating blind spots, explaining what's happening and keeping you motivated.

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Don't forget that I have a free private community where you can go and be a unicorn, where nobody will judge you. We talk about real stuff, joke around sometimes, and just have a sanctuary away from the negativity, violence, objectification, invalidation, superficiality and consumerism of the mainstream world. If you want to kick back and Zen out, come and join us. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for being with me here for the prequel.

0:16:04

The grand rebranding kicks off next week. I will upload several episodes next week to set the groundwork for the new focus, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of them. Can't wait to see you then. Love you guys. Ciao.