63. Snacking On Joy with Grace Harry

Sweet friends, welcome to today's episode of Why Isn't Everyone Doing This? The show where we ask our guests, when is a time in your life that you found something so amazing, so life-changing that you genuinely asked yourself that question? So this show is brought to you by Ziva Meditation, and if you want to learn more about learning meditation, making more magic in your life, you can check us out at zivameditation.com. So I am your host, Emily Fletcher. I am Broadway performer, turned meditation teacher, turned magic maker, and I'm

delighted to share this show with you so that we can solve the challenges that we're facing as a species and have a great time doing it. So today we have a very special guest Grace Harry. Now Grace is a friend and she's also known as the Joy Strategist which is a title that she created herself and we're going to dive into what that means to be a joy strategist for yourself and in the world. So today we're going to explore the deep connection between joy, creativity and how to listen to your own heart especially in a world that often pulls us in the opposite direction.

So Grace is going to share how to access more joy in your life by packing joys and acts. How to embrace both the light and the dark and practical tips to help us reconnect with the wisdom of our own hearts. So please welcome to the show Grace Harry.

Woo! Grace, I feel so happy to be reconnected to you. We've had these beautiful dates where we get to watercolor and paint together and pontificate about life, but we've had a moment apart. And now we're reuniting. It feels like both of us are in different chapters of our lives. You're on a big chapter change today. You're moving cities today. You just had a book come out.

And I'm fascinated with the title of your book, The Joy Strategist. So can you like, what even is a Joy Strategist? Yes, thank you. I made it up. I made it up because I just felt that we'd gotten to a place in the world where we're smart and we want to grow a lot of people and there's so much at our fingertips. And yet it's made us just actually more committed, I find a lot of ways to our pain.

You know, like, oh, I don't move on because I'm this, or this is my issue. And I really want people to understand that if you want to feel differently, you have to create that. And that you have your own energy, PS, it's your heart. And that we've gotten so far away from us listening to that real guidance because we were up here. And up here is great. It helps us, it assists us, but it's not the boss. It's not running your world if you want to feel

pleasure and happiness and joy and connection and truth of your heart, you got to jump in there and live in there. So your joy strategist is your own heart. But what if I don't even know how to hear my heart or feel my heart? Like what if I'm just like, all I know is my head? Oh yeah. What do you say to those people? Well, that was me. You know, this journey really mirrored my own reality. I'd come from a situation that I created a concept of love based on my young parents.

And then I found myself in a very successful version of life and aspirational life. And I wasn't feeling great. What was the thing that you created based on your young parents? What does that mean? Meaning that when I came into the world as a young person, I had these very young parents. How old were they? 17. OK.

And so I got in with them when we were making life happen. And my pre-verbal self decided that that's what love is. If I'm in service to you, then I get love and deserve love. Oh, like they were still kids themselves. And so you felt like, oh, if I help take care of them or parent them, even as a baby, then you got more love. Yeah, and I don't even know if it was that clear of formative of a thought.

But just the way the relationship was evolving, a lot of help was needed. And I felt that I got my gold star as the most when I was in service to everything that we were doing versus my personal needs. Grace is a good girl. Grace did the dishes. And not a burden. She handled herself. She put herself to sleep and not a problem. That's why I'm going to be, you know, no one's going to get rid of me kind of concept, you know, because our lives were very tumultuous in a lot of ways early on.

And so now I'm in my early 40s and feeling like shit. And not even understanding what to access. And I'm using my brain and I push my heart to the side because I've been heartbroken before. And so I had to just find that version of myself. And I realized I've done it. I was five. I was six. There were times how animals in the wild shake when they're hurt. I find you talk to a little kid. I'm sure you're son.

You know, if you're having a serious conversation, it might be a time to move your leg or to make your shoulders and turn the circle. And when do we lose that permission to do what felt great in our bodies? When do we lose that permission to just live inside joy and however we need it? Well, also when do we lose permission to feel our effing feelings?

Because sometimes if there's rage, unexpressed rage, unexpressed sadness, and then like how on earth are you going to get to joy? How on earth are you going to get to pleasure if you've got like a tsunami of clogged, blocked, repressed feelings? And I think the toddlers are a great example of like they just rage, they throw temper tantrums, they sob. And then two seconds later they're fine. And then we teach them how to be more like us instead of us learning to express like them.

I literally make the joke all the time that the most important job in the world maybe is making another human, but only amateurs can apply first. So either that's the joke of the universe, or that means that we're supposed to realize that's a rebirth for us as well. And they're now coming in with the next level of our course, the next level of our introduction of moving on in life.

And only amateurs can apply. So we have to grow up. We have to repair it ourselves as we do it with our children. That's right. And at the same time, if we are, like you said, if you're taking all of these tourly energy and all this pain and this fear, and then you're coming into a parenting situation, your kids do as you do, not as you say. So what are you mirroring for them? You're mirroring fear and panic.

definitely not leaning into your own heart. But if we realize this new being, to me, is closer to the veil, has more of an embodiment of their truth, and we find that balance of this new relationship and what that intimacy is. It's an unveiling and an opening for both of us. And so I started to see my adult children not doing that, because I wasn't doing that. And that was the most heartbreaking. And what age were they when you started seeing that?

Teens, late teens. I was about to make my third divorce and really taking a look at the world that I had created around myself and what it was missing most was joy and permission to just be. Also, I just want to take a minute and celebrate your intellect. Let's celebrate that piece of you that was a good girl that did get those gold stars from your teen parents because it created a lot of success and art.

status in the world and influence in the world and your ability to influence people now to create more joy in their lives is largely because of that, like, intellect and what you built. So I guess my question would be, like there are likely people who are in their 20s, who are in their 30s. They're like, I'm on my way up, I'm establishing myself, like I need my intellect. Now is my time to strive and suffer and

You know, I'll be happy when. And then once I get the Grammy, once I get the gold, once I get the XYZ, then I can be a joy strategist. What would you say to that person? I mean, that's how most of us feel. And I take it back to what you just said about toddlers. You know, we live this world and I made a joke that when I got my book deal, Disney, in the book proposal, I was crapping on Disney.

Saying that like love is this complete me love this thing of like we're all striving for this big happiness where we will never feel sad again But there's nothing in nature that goes up and doesn't and doesn't go down We forget it's expand contract all the time the universe is expanding and contracting

So it's not like I'm going to always be happy and always be in joy. It's celebrating the entire cycle, the full rainbow of our experiences all the time. It's the toddler knowing that if I yell and scream and pull this rage out, I can then have that experience of joy. I can have that emotion of

you know, heightened delicious feelings, but feeling safe enough in our bodies and doing the work. And what I tell 20 year olds is build the life now. That's the reality of all of it, right? Like all the shades of it. So if you're successing and you're successing and nuts your model and you're later on, right, or I have a lot of family members that are older and they're Christian and their concept that they feel is very strong is

No matter how hard life is, I'm going to go to heaven and not to eat you the bahaki sticks. So it doesn't matter if I'm feeling pleasure and joy now, but that's not the truth of life because I believe that our bodies keep the score, right? So all of that turns into disease and eventually it'll come around to get you. So if you could build a life that is also the things that kind of make you money and the things that you feel safe and secure, but also you're always working on joy being the number one driver.

I think the best example when I worked in the music industry, I sometimes worked at record labels that was run by a creative, and sometimes I worked at a record label that was run by someone who was much more business minded. And those were data, you know, focus groups, strategy. It just wasn't as fun. And also what you would get was maybe a hit every once in a while, but when I worked at companies run by a creative, somebody who was passionate and in their heart and in their imagination, everybody was in that experience.

And it was always much bigger than you can even imagine, because everyone's putting their passion and their joy. So that's just a different way to live. But just out of curiosity, which one would make more hits, like statistically? Was it the data-driven one, or was it the people who are leading with the art and the passion and the creativity? Art and the passion. Because what you'd get often here is like, yeah, you can get a moment, right? Like, hit it out of the park. But here, you're building careers. Yeah. You're building

your culture. You're letting things take time to gestate and have their own development and following that magic versus containing it in this one formula. Just not the truth of us. How the truth of anybody? So I want to just rewind a little bit and double click on this subject of saying you have some older family members who are Christian

And so they've spent their lives in this paradigm of no matter how hard this is, no matter how much suffering I'm enduring here on earth, it's okay because there will be this payoff in the afterlife. And to me, and there are so many, I'm not here to criticize Christianity. There's so much beauty that happens inside of Christianity and the teachings of Christ, of Christ's consciousness. There's so much love and joy and forgiveness and bliss there.

I'm sure you see this is that there's a human interpretation that is basically this very intense, I'll be happy when syndrome. I'll be happy when. And we do it to ourselves once I make a million dollars, once I get the perfect boyfriend, once I have a kid, once I get married, once I get divorced. But it feels like this particular aspect of Christianity allows people to create hell on earth, to allow themselves to tolerate hell on earth for a perceived payoff in the future. And to your point, then they create disease.

because of the unprocessed feelings or even not seeing God in the contraction, not seeing the pain as also holy. So how have you yourself found a way to celebrate the expansion and the contraction to find holiness even in the darkness? Yes, and not a judgment on Christianity. I believe that all religions, right? There's a spiritual concept. There's a metaphysical principle that say, that's beautiful and there's an opening. It's in some version of joy, faith, grace, love.

But then when it becomes commodified and there's a business of religion around it, there's a lot of guardrails and a lot of rules about how to move and define yourself. And that was hard to come around because people really believe that, you know, that's what's keeping me safe. This is what my family said I should do. This is what my community said I should do. And so moving into those things, number one, right? That's the thing that has to happen.

Moving into the stringent structure of the rules of how to be a good person, a good family member, a good whatever the religion is, whatever Abrahamic faith, whichever one you choose, there's a lot of rules around it. So people lean into those rules, which is really taking yourself further away from yourself and not leaning into your joy.

and you were saying, how do you live in the duality and the fullness of yourself is what you were asking? Yeah, or like how do you find the holiness even in the contraction? How do you, how have you yourself, because I have a theory that it's impossible to feel full ecstasy, full bliss, full joy if you're not willing to dance with the darkness, but if you see that as other than God or other than good, like how have you sort of embraced or learned to dance with or find found the joy even in dancing with the darkness?

I feel like my age has a lot to do with it too, right? Just being the age I am now, I can see that everything comes back to my joy, actually. That when I actually try to suppress any one side of myself, even if it's in joy, like I'm only gonna be happy, I'm only gonna be in joy, that's not the reality of who we are. And when I let everything come to the surface and don't deem it good or bad or right or wrong, it's also joy because it's teaching me something. I love to say this, we talked about this earlier, I think a big example. People say, I'm triggered.

And I'm glad everyone knows this word now. But they say it in a way that means that you should stop talking. Like as if I'm hungered and you should now go and feed me. But really the word triggered is you're welcome because that's more for you to work on in your own self. So I feel like it's learning to put everything on the table and realize it's one recipe. And everything we're doing, every religion, every metaphysical teaching, the practices that you're bringing people to is all whatever is your particular recipe

of a life of joy. And that's what I think we have to look. We go to a supermarket and we're like, I want things on aisle seven. I don't want anything on aisle two. But we feel when it comes to our heart, we have to just get with what we were given. And that's not reality. Like our heart, what does it feel? What does it want? We knew when we were little, I like this kind of ice cream. I like these kind of toys. These people make me feel good, but just giving ourselves permission. So for me, it was that. It was like, is it true that I feel joyous all the time? Absolutely not.

So am I penalizing another part of myself all the time that's not there? Or am I realizing, oh, I have to go through this day of, do you see this movie, the invention of lying? The invention of lying, no. You have to watch this movie, it's so good. Okay. Everyone's just direct and speaks their truth. And there's this one moment where Ricky goes on a date and she says, well, I'm not always perfect. Some days I feel miserable and think my life is horrible, eat a bunch of ice cream and then get back up.

But I think that that's seeing that every day is joy. Even the days where you feel like you're in an icky, mucky thing or you're walking through complications because if nothing else, it's showing you what you don't want to feel and giving you some more information to get back around to the things that do light you up and feel good. So when we met, I was really in a place where we talked before, I was scared to make the courageous changes I needed to make to get closer to my own joy.

to get closer to my heart. Right. I think we bonded over that early and won the game together anyway. I was so proud of that. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. A lot of people know about the game. A lot of people know about manifesting. I call it daydreaming now. I have a whole like a mastermind with Lauren's blessing. We met through our mutual former coach, Lauren Adel Zander and Dell Group. And one of her missions is to rid the world of lying. Yes.

And I just want to really like shout her out because I am so much more brave to speak my truth now as a result of it. And I just, I just forgot somehow that we were partners in the game. And what? And what? And what? I was so proud. By the way, yes, Lauren changed my life, you know? Everybody's not for everybody, but that level of

You know, that really worked on me. Like, do you see yourself? Do you see yourself in presenting all the options? And I just got such more clarity about myself and such a different perspective of how to be embodied and powerful and strong and let that still be a softness within myself. And all that was very hard to untangle without Lauren's wise words and bullying at times. Yeah.

And really celebrating the invention of this game. So some people know it, but I'll just quickly share. So it's this game where there will be eight of us and we will go into four teams who have partnered up. And we would basically manifest. It was a manifesting game where every day we had to design our day by 10 a.m. and send it to each other. And then before we go to bed, we will report on our magic. What had we manifested? What had we not? And I think there's so much magic inside it. To me, this is a joy strategy.

because you are designing your life, you're writing out your day in past tense in the morning. And then what I really found the magic is that reporting back, because it makes you go through accountable. Oh, right. I did make it, but I think there's also the recency bias of it, where you're like, our brains are always going to look for the most recent input. You're like, oh, wait, I did manifest this and this. Otherwise, you just forget and you're onto the next.

And then I also thought that when we would meet up every six weeks or so, and then going through all of your magic that you would manifest it for six weeks, again, is changing the neuroplasticity for your brain to start to look for what's going right. How am I manifesting? And I just, it's really shifted the way I, I dance with reality. And it was so fun being your partner. And it's just amazing that like we had such an intimate relationship. We made so much magic together. And then I totally just like that file folder in my brain went away. So shut it up.

No, I appreciate that. And it really did change for me too because back to how we were taught, you know, being a woman and being bragging and boasting about yourself, that could be so garish and tacky and all these things that I was taught. And so it was fun learning into leaning into that braggadocious energy to win the game on most competitive, so that helped. Yeah, like competing on magic. And yeah. And then guess what? Everyone wins because if everyone is competing to have the most magic, if everyone is being like, look how much I created,

Everyone wins and then just the money is like a little sprinkle on the icing on the cake. But it also taught you to look for the small magic in your everyday. I think that was a really important thing for me was I was always looking again back to this way we live our lives for the big high things you put the big numbers on the board. But it's all those little juicy tiny things in between all day that really

become the full puzzle and then you are living a joy. That was very helpful. Change my belief around finding magic and bragging and boasting. I love that. And even finding the joy, even in the times that you fall flat on your face, you're like, oh, I really ate it.

And I learned being in that community, like even the like colossal quote unquote failures, we would name as magic. Like, whoa, look how much you learned. And some of the people would have like quote unquote the worst six weeks of their lives would win the game if they were framing it and learning it and actually taking the lesson that nature was serving up.

And that's what you were saying a little bit before, like how do we become the full expression of ourselves and realizing that it might not make sense today, but that's going to be a lesson or a teacher or a building block for some other magic that's coming in and not deeming anything as negative. But yeah, all of this is my magic. All of it is God. That's right. Right. So I know what are you understanding? What's that God of your understanding?

What does that mean? Well, I feel like the big issues we're having right now in the world is we're fighting over God. And so... Do you really think that's what we're fighting over? Or do you think that's just the... That's a headline. Yeah. The headline is we're fighting over God, but I believe what we're really fighting over is, I'm coming to your house, that's my toy, I'm taking it, and going home.

That's what we're dealing with. That's my shit. I'm taking it. It's over. What I realized that even though we talked about Christianity a minute ago, I was raised Quaker. So Quakers believe that God is the inner light within everybody. And often...

Yeah, no, it's amazing. It actually is really amazing. And there's nobody that's closer. There's no intermediary to God. There's nobody who stands up and says, God, talk to me. So let me tell you what he said for you. You sit in silence for an hour and whoever feels that God has spoken to them, stands up and gives the message of the day in friends meeting. And so that was a very helpful foundation for me because it didn't penalize anybody's particular God or anybody's particular belief around connecting to God. It just made me have a real deep appreciation

that there's many, many, many different versions. Some people think God is nature. Some people believe God is a singular man. Some people believe that God is multiple spirits. And so I feel that it's a gift of love to people to say God of your understanding because I'm not negating their particular belief.

Oh, so I'm talking about my relationship with ISIS or the way that I feel energy moving through my body, and rather than naming like, oh, like, ISIS is goddess. That's right. There's like, oh, this is the goddess of my understanding. That's right, because that might not be my goddess understanding. So now we're at odds, which is where we all try to, you know, we all end up getting to when we're holding something so tight. But god, if you understand, it means that I respect that you have this insane light embodiment, too, that maybe is different version.

When I used to work in the music industry, I would start with new art directors and video commissioners saying, okay, if you told six people to come in with jeans and a white t-shirt, everyone would look different.

And so we have to understand that no one sees anything the same. We all have with us a perspective. I want to lose sound. I want like a jazzy this. Two people are going to hear two totally different things. You put on music you thought was sexy. That might not be sexy music to somebody else. Sexy of my understanding. Sexy of your understanding. That's true. And I feel like that's a human man. It's a different way to deal with people with humanity. Because it's not saying that if you don't come to my side, you're not my people. Which is, again, a big part of what's happened. And you're wrong. And therefore, I can be at odds with you.

and believe that God would want me to even hurt you. I mean, I'm oversimplifying to death, but that's the thing. So I think the concepts themselves are simple. The political and human situations are extraordinarily complex. The fear around not understanding it that makes it complex. And I feel like that scales back to the first conversation. If you know it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to ask a question. Think about people who come to a country and they don't know anyone.

and then they come with their whole family. It's a very scary thing to admit you don't know things to people who are also scared and looking at you in this new place. So we have all these things we started to put on ourselves that take us away from our humanity and our own joy and our own curiosity and beginner's mind out of fear. And when we let that fear drive, that's why I say joy as a paradigm shift, because if we're feeding that monster all the time of fear, then we're only acting in fear.

But if you're realizing that, actually, I'm going to joy is my teacher. Joy is my stepping stone. Joy is, and you're putting a different energy around intention around that. Yeah. So how do we, how does someone snack joy? Yes.

We wake up in the morning, right? Let's say you have already practices, you realize that if you don't run the day the day runs you, and you already get up and you do whatever, you do a morning dance party, you yoga, you run, you take a walk outside, whatever brings you into an exalted state within yourself and makes you feel like you've done your part to start your day, but now you're going to go outside into the world and you're going to be impacted by other people's experiences. And so if you're going on a long trip in a car and you know there's no food, you're going to make snacks.

But if you're walking into the world, you're unprotected if you don't have little joy snacks. If you don't have things, let's say I came in here today and you didn't like what I was doing right now. And the energy shifted and we couldn't get it on track and we weren't having this fun time together. All of a sudden, I'm starting to, I'm gonna get wobbly. So what do I need? Okay, I brought my matcha. This team makes me relaxed. I have, maybe I have a little bubbles. Maybe I have a little pad and I can color. We need little kids do that.

We take a kid to the restaurant, we bring all these things for them to feel good and relaxed. But we don't do that for ourselves. And then we're out in the world naked, and somebody else who maybe doesn't have a joy practice and has got a lot of fear and a lot of venom in their energy, now it's impacting us.

For example, for me, if I'm home, I have many things I do. When I'm out on the road, I have a little, a different kind of practice. I love it. But now I'm out. It's now four o'clock. That was the six o'clock this morning. I'm tired. I'm wobbly. In the old me, at four o'clock, I would have went for some sugar snack.

to try to pull in a little sweetness, to try to pull in a little, but now I carry things around with me all the time and it's different based on how I feel that day or where I'm going. Can you give us an example? Yes, like Joy Snack? In my bag, last week I was in Brooklyn, I was walking around and I was watching these two little kids and they were playing and one of them had a balloon and they were popping in the air and I could see this other kid was starting to freak out. They couldn't get to it, they weren't sharing and I just happened to have some balloons in my bag.

And so I just, as I'm walking down the street, I pull up a little balloon, I start blowing it up and just casually gift it to the other kid and keep walking. That made my whole day. It's a simple thing. It's a balloon. I know, yes, my kids, I'm sorry, it's plastic. I'm not buying more balloons, I promise, but I have old ones and I took it out of my bag and that's what I mean. It's not hard, it's not complicated. You know, if you're somewhere- And there's a sort of generosity in that and a gift inside of that. So I have a little bubble things. What does that mean? Like you blowing bubbles.

I have little wands and stuff, or sometimes I have a pad that I care all the time, and I'll draw things, and I'll write. And I think of a thing too. Do you ever gift your drawings to people? You know, I have not done that. I love that. But what I will do sometimes, if I'm in an airport or something, and there's other people, and we're all just wait, I'll be like, do you want to play hangman? Uh-uh. Yeah. Come on. And I'll just draw a little hangman, and I'll just invite someone, and yeah, I even tell people who have social anxiety to do it on dates. Take a hangman, you write a sentence.

I'm really excited by you. Whatever game of my life is my point. The Joy Snacks are the game of my life. And to continue to remind yourself, like little kids, they walk around, they want to carry a whole bunch of, they want maybe a whoobie. Maybe they have a favorite toy. They're carrying markers around. We need these snacks. We need to keep nourishing our joy and feeding our heart. And we have situations you're going to feel amazing. Two minutes, someone gives you some terrible news.

You're not in a different state. How do you bring yourself back? How do you get yourself back on your joy mission? So how do you know when you're, what's the internal alarm of like ding, ding, ding? It's time for a joy snack. I'm so happy as this. This is literally the thing. You know, it goes back to this range of emotions. We have these other emotions and they're not here just to torture us. So if I'm feeling frustrated,

If I'm feeling short with people, I know that I'm out of my heart. So I use those complicated emotions to be a reminder. It's not like I'm triggered and I'm just like, ah, Emily? Oh, okay. I need to do some stuff. I mean, sometimes I have nothing and I'll walk around and I can feel myself feeling very venomous. We're both areas. You know how fast we can go there. I'll just do a little tapping.

Even though you'd like to rip that person's head off, what would really feel more sustaining is to come back into our heart. So let's remind ourselves, you know, whatever feels good, like a little kid. Your favorite song. Your favorite song. Make a three song playlist when you wake up in the morning of songs that make you feel delicious. Make a playlist that when you're out at 12 o'clock, you know, every day is when you feel more grumpy at that meeting.

Take two seconds at your desk, have a tiny dance party. Listen to a song, write a little letter, something. Yeah, I love this. So here's the question is how do we not use joy snacks as spiritual bypassing? So how do we... So like I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling venomous, I'm feeling triggered.

But sometimes that is the lesson. Sometimes I need to just feel that or name that or clear that or there's something that nature is telling me. But if I go straight to the joy snack and I don't say that truth, I don't feel that feeling like how can you talk us through what's the strategy there?

Yeah, I wish that a joy snack would bypass. But really, it's the same as if I'm really hungry. I've been eating all day and I grab a bar. It's still not a meal. It's still not a meal. It's something that's going to get me through. But the work of evolution, the work of actually changing programming within yourself to feel differently in your body is work. And it's very difficult to just take a small bubble moment. And really, three days later, something else is going to come up.

So I think that these really go together. It's really in a moose-boosh and a meal. The snack is not the full experience, and I haven't seen really in my life that someone's having some real emotions and real things, and it's gone by one joy snack. It's a lifelong practice. It's a secondly practice. It's every second.

Oh, second over second. Secondly practice. You know, it's not like I came in this morning and I'm feeling it. No, when I walked in the door, what you did, you started us regrounding us, reconnecting to joy. And we have to do that all day, every day. And that's, I feel like, why it's on a bypass? Because it's one thing leading to another thing. It's still captured into this big experience, this big emotion.

I'm going through a divorce. I can certainly carry around amazing things, but I'm going to come back that night to my house alone and start to feel some of those feelings again. So really creating a much bigger practice. I go, I mean, a lot of some of the things that I worked with Lauren, there was a time where I felt like I was always translating Lauren to people. And so I would do a lot of things to kind of think about how I felt. And I, the eight group, why it was so amazing is because I had my own advisory team.

So why are we, if we're a business of us, right? If I am a empire, but I need an advisory board, I need people because when I get in my loop, no one's here for me. So in that moment, I'm not going to call you because I'm doing my loop. But if I have it set up that every third Tuesday, I get to have a 30 minute conversation with Emily, I've already prepared myself. I've already given myself the bigger non-vipassing.

So to really go through, okay, I have a day, I've got podcasts all day, I have meetings, I'm not gonna be able to really get to it. So I have my snacks. But I'm so excited that today's Monday, because tomorrow at seven o'clock, I get to really have a deeper conversation with Emily and really unpack some of these bigger things that I'm having a hard time unwinding. So it's really creating your world, I say to people, you need a starting five.

You know, you have friends and they're fun, but if you're winning a game of life, meaning that you could access your emotions, you have love in your life, you really give love and receive love, then you need some support. We're amateur humans. We're trying to learn every day. We don't know. We're all amateur humans. We're all amateurs. I've never been 53 on a Sunday with Emily. So this is a brand new experience for me, this moment. It could be great or it could be horrible.

So it's coming in knowing, okay, I'm ready for this. I prepared enough to get here. But now when I'm here, something could happen. I might need more support around. Okay, so what I'm hearing is that the joy snacks are a strategy, a structure that you build into your life to boil you, to remind you of this constant joy that is available to you. And to me, that feels like almost a safety net that allows your nervous system to know that it is safe enough to go into those darker emotions

when they come, not as a way to bypass, but as a way to actually feel safe enough. Exactly. Yeah, gorgeous. Exactly. And you know, it's that simple. Yeah. I even really worked hard to write the book, like I'm talking to a six-year-old. Because I think that's really all we can... Yeah, a hundred percent. I love the way Marcus made things. He's like, Michael Biden, it sounds hard, but it's these little things and you're... Little bugs and you're gonna make you happy. But that's what we are, especially right now. Yeah. This big stuff happening. Yeah. It's a lot.

People are like, a lot of people have never lived through this level of uncertainty on all these ways. So we can either get pulled under and watch the news and get more afraid. Or we can realize like,

Okay. Ooh, this feels like a good way to strategize joy snacks. It's like, if I'm gonna choose to watch the news, I'm not allowed to watch the news unless I have a joy snack prepared for directly afterwards. Absolutely. This feels like it should be a mandatory. Yeah, I even saw people, you know what, if you know that every time you watch the news, you get upset, then you need to watch the news once a month. Maybe it's a different platform that even does, like we have the supermarket again. We have full choice.

to make this recipe, however it actually works for us. And so if you know that, I only can watch the news with some friends. I only can watch the news if it's written, because then I don't feel impacted by whatever it is, but exactly what you're saying. It's like creating your world.

the little pieces in front of your feet every second to still stay in the energetic state that feels best to you. Yeah, I find what's happening for me, so I assume it's happening for everyone, because I'm an artist. We all are right. To some degree, we only see the world to our own lives. But I have used social media as a way to connect with my friends and as a social function. It's a form of entertainment, it's a form of connection. I don't really watch TV, I don't really watch movies, so that's how I use that platform.

And so now I'm going to this place because maybe I feel maybe it was a joy snack for me where I would get to see my friend or celebrate something or be inspired and then to have it and not be a joy snack and instead be like a tsunami of terror is like oh I'm going to the place that I thought was going to make me happy and now it's actually feeling like very like

like a banshee coming out of a box. But I'm not prepared for that. And I was expecting something totally different. So it's like, all right, well, now I have that information, right? Now I know it's a banshee coming out of a box, not a place for socialization or entertainment. So either I choose to engage or not. But if I am going to choose to engage, so what would be a good choice to act to have on the other side of a news or social media?

Well, I love that you, yes. So when I was at the very end of the book and it just got, someone picked it up, it always said me. So the book is written, I really wrote it for my friends and my children. It wasn't necessarily, LZ was very like, ah, book, right? LZ is Lauren Sander. Yeah, I'll be like, ah, book.

So I just was like, you know what? It's from my heart. I want to do it. I really didn't have. And in the beginning, there's a little bit of misunderstanding about what I would write, like some ex-housewife book or some old crazy stuff. So I had a misunderstanding. Just when I started going out in the world, like publishers and different people had a perception that wasn't really what I wanted to deliver. OK.

So now I've written the book. It's gotten picked up. I'm so excited. I have a publisher and the pandemic happens and all the police things and BLM was happening. So now I'm starting to question, I'm so happy I've gotten to this thing placed in my life, this big dream I've always wanted, but now it feels

Light in the ass for what's really happening in the world. What does light in the ass mean? Light in the ass means it doesn't have weight. People are dealing with real stuff. Real stuff. And I'm like, Joy, that's how I feel right now. So now I cut to now. Okay. And the book comes out. I have this promo tour, Disney, and Anscape are doing amazing things. They booked a film in New York, and now here we are again. People are going through real stuff. Yeah. And I just felt like, but you know what I realized?

when people are going through real stuff, what they need more than anything is reminders that they already have it. And that's why joy and pleasure is so important because it's not like you need to go buy something else. You have all these things. You have all these sensors and feelings and you can access them. And really that is the most, that's the most, that's advocacy because we can't make any outer systemic change until we make real inner systemic change.

So if you can't access that softness and sweetness and lightness within yourself through this, then all the work is you. And so the way to deal with the news is maybe you don't watch the news. I even had one client during the middle of the pandemic and I said, just watch Saturday Night Live every Saturday. Just get the news there. It's accurate enough. It'll at least give you a sense before you're in the fray of the fear to feel what's happening in the world in a light way. And then you can decide to, as you said, double click on that one thing.

So you don't have to just sit there and just be getting the fear of mongering that they're putting out. You can say, oh, that was so funny that Saturday Night Live's get about Sarah Palin just to go back. Let me look into that one thing more. So we don't have to lean into news in the way it's being told. I only watch news once a week. I watch BBC and I watch some CNN and some world things for a few different clips and then I'm out.

Because it doesn't work for me to every morning wake up and make that my day. It doesn't work for me at the end of a long day to not give myself pleasure to miss my bubble bath or whatever it is to be on that ride again. So it's again, it's the recipe. And it's truth knowing what really is truth. Someone called it what?

Someone said it was like a meme that my friend Max Luger made where he was like, yeah, I just don't know why I have sleep issues. I wake up, I wear sunglasses outside, I don't get sunlight, I have a sedentary lifestyle, I'm eating sugar, and then I stare at the fear flashlight for two hours before bed, and just calling it a fear flashlight just really landed for me.

Yes. Oh, right. But it cannot be that. You can delete things that you're following. You could just follow your friends. That's right. We are in charge. We are in charge. And this is the, I think your point of like if you are not creating a strategy to find joy, express joy, give joy, receive joy,

then we will go on this someone else's roller coaster. That's exactly right. Because we are easy to manipulate. We're back animals. Yeah, and we're also like great consumers. If we're afraid we need to get all the things. And so it does feel like joy could be a form of activism. Yes. Joyful activism. If it's really locked in as your mission.

If what is? If it's joy. Okay, wait, what is my life about? Oh, I'm doing that. It doesn't mean you're eradicating anything else that's going to come in, but you have the tool of joy. You have the support of joy to see those things through that lens. So I want to talk about the relationship between joy and pleasure, because I know that you've mentioned that you've worked with clients before and helped them access their pleasure, even couples accessing their pleasure together. So I want to start there, but I want to move towards

How do we infuse pleasure into our manifestations and infuse joy into our manifestations? But can you just speak to what you would say is the relationship between joy and pleasure? Yes, I think they're the same, actually. I think that joy is the communication of your heart.

And the way you get it to be loud is through pleasure. And I feel like the same way that we've been taught that there's horrible things in society, we also can teach ourselves that we have all the tools to feel every exciting, beautiful thing inside our own bodies, if we can really tune to that frequency. And so I always just, again, enjoy it, simple. You know, I think anything, anything, if you do it slow enough.

It's pleasure, you know? And I feel like it's hard for a lot of people who were raised in certain situations to access sex, what they deem as sexual pleasure right away. And so I during the pandemic, I found that I had a lot of first friends and then clients who were having a really difficult time because they picked a partner that was a great partner to be in a life that was outside, busy, full, lots of people, lots of things. And all of a sudden you're sitting next to someone,

We're going year two. Who are you? Right? And now you're trying to find a softer, quieter experience inside you. And maybe this is not the person you're going to do that with. So it was interesting to see a lot of breakups and a lot of changes during the pandemic. And then people leaning into what do I really want? And it was hilarious, especially my male friends, because they were going on first date, second dates, and they were ending miserably. And I loved details. So I'd get a call for a friend of mine and I'd be like, OK, how'd it go?

It was great. I thought it was fun. And then she was like, we sort of fool around. And she was like, you know, never mind. Oh, no. You know what? I'm cool. It's good. And so I couldn't understand what was happening. And I realized that people under 40 were raised a lot with two parents, sometimes out of the home, first generation where they had phones, internet, porn, experiences, posts that, you know, AIDS epidemic, post times up in me too.

I contact. No one knows how to connect or touch. And so I just wanted everyone to bring it back to fourth grade, you know, like a massage, a back rub. I did a birthday party last year and I got all my friends in a circle and everyone grabbed the foot of the person next to them. It wasn't sexual, we just gave them a full massage as we were having conversations, you know, or just touching someone's back.

I've got you. Just really simple, simple, simple pleasures. And then I think that's a beautiful entry into whatever you want to graduate from with that. But I find that people have a really hard time, even with that. You know, it's so uncomfortable for some people to be touched, to look in each other's eyes. I walk around and I'm like, Hi, you look great. I love your car. I love your car. And people are really freaked out by that.

Really freaked out, but which is okay, but can we get back to that? Yeah, I know I I Feel like it's possible. So my dream is that the simulation like it gets close enough. They're like, oh, but the real thing actually

actual eye contact, actually touching someone, actual play, like that this is, it's not a simulation, it's not a facsimile, it is, it is a hundred percent, and that's available to us right now for free. You just gotta give yourself the permission. I watched this, I haven't seen a lot of black mirrors, I don't watch a lot of TV, but someone told me you have to see this one episode with Anthony Mackie,

And it was so brilliant because it's what you were saying. They touched on what does happen if a simulation changes a dynamic with a friend, and now you're in something more intimate than you signed up for. But they also did a very good job of showing- What does that mean, a simulation ends up boring today? So the episode basically is that there's a game, but the game is you feel everything. And in a spoiler alert, but the two male friends end up having a relationship.

through this game. And it was a really complicated, it was many facets, like what does it mean about us, our sexual orientation? What does it mean as friends? What does it mean in society? But they did a good job in the episode, also showcasing the wife, and what she wanted was in real life.

She wanted to feel something else from someone else in real life. And so it's really mirroring what you're saying. It's like, yeah, that's great. That's beautiful. But it's really just highlighting a bigger desire. We know that there's more. These are machines. We're driving these little cars. They can do more.

and more, and more, and more. And the more I realize I cake the cement off my heart, I just access those things more naturally. Things feel deeper, things feel more delicious. Yeah, so I agree with you. And so how do you infuse joy or pleasure into your manifestations?

Well, all kinds of ways. Pleasure is a big thing for me because I realized that in that version of myself as a little kid, my father wasn't around a lot in my life and I became very promiscuous, very young, looking for love. And what I did wanting to success was I made the sex experience.

Right? I knew how to hook you. I could make you crazy. But I was gone. I wasn't in that experience. Oh, like you knew how to be one-ted, but you weren't in your own want. Is that accurate? That's accurate. I wasn't in any of it. And I was doing the thing really for safety. It was like a survival baby pattern of like, I'll do whatever to allure you so that I'm safe, that we're here.

And so this last... And what does this sex experience mean? I mean, it was an external show versus an internal... That's right. Meaning that I knew the things to do to blow your mind in a very binary way. I'm not saying it was even that special. I figured out enough what the males that I was trying to hook at that time, what they needed, what would work, what the experience need to be. But I had not practiced my pleasure in any way.

You know, even masturbation I was using, I would be using vibrators and all these very aggressive get-to-it type things. And so I decided to be celibate, which again was, you know, LZ did not, it was a big thing. I was like, but I needed to just get there. And my daughter said to me, she says, no, make sense. You need your Disney Princess moment. Like you've not had a slow path to pleasure. What's Disney Princess moment?

You know, like the concept of that people always joke about Disney movies. Think about how hard it is to get one of those princesses. They got to climb a mountain, you got to kill a dragon. They got to really show your thing before even a hello, let alone we're inside each other. So she was saying like, yeah, you need that like slow experience. I didn't even know where to begin. And what age is this for you?

This is 153, I think it was 47 at the time. Wow, I love that. At 47, you're like, I'm going to set a reset. I'm going to get an explorer. I'm going to figure out, for me, because I think so many people are like, oh, I'm in my 40s, and this is just what sex is now, or it's like a slow decline to the grave. And I just, I've personally found nothing could be further from the truth. I am living with a Virginia Thomas hour at 67 years old, having the most wild, adventurous, beautiful, ecstatic life.

And so I just want to really celebrate that at 47, you're like, I am going to make this a priority. I'm going to figure out what I want. Like, yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Because yeah, that was harder. And it was sad to me at first, because I felt like, first a liar, right? I don't have the spiritual work. I don't have the stuff. But I really hadn't done it inside. I kind of did it for the gram, maybe. Like, I did it because... The celibacy? No, the spirituality. Like, getting to the place where I felt I was at that time.

So I had to mourn a little bit how much I really didn't know. In truth, how much I really wasn't inside my body. And I just started super slow. I started just doing self-massage. Because I just wanted to feel what sense gets me excited, like what does feel good.

Did my toes turn me on? Is it my knees? And I just started working and just doing some practices around like massaging my feet and touching my hands softly, looking at my own eyes, just trying to find the access points. And what was interesting to me was it was all so much more simple than I thought. It was all so much more slow. It was all a much more long process. You know, what people always say like, oh, the honeymoon stage, the beginning is great. And then it's gone.

Because we lose a polarity, we merge so deeply into someone else that we no longer have this interesting dynamic to share with each other and find out and unravel. And so I look right now, I have newly in a relationship. We have not had sex.

We have just been making out for weeks on end, staring to those eyes, writing to the love letters and poems. And I said, I want to take this a hundred years. Let's take every step. How much can we feel just with our mouths? How much looking to our eyes, what can we feel in our bodies and just make gamifying it again? But based on how I really felt. What really lit me up? What really is exciting?

You know, do I, this penetration the whole thing? Do I like this? Do I like that? What does, you know, all of those things we get to explore and figure out for ourselves. And so I feel like we had all these things around sex and people are being taught every movie, if you've noticed in the last five years, what happens? To feel the little tension, one person grabs the one kisses them, and the male person usually turns the female person around, gives her a back shot, and then they're back into work again.

This is what I've noticed in the last five years. I think it's her back shot. You know, like, I've noticed an entertainment. You know, there's always trends in movies. Like, you look at the 40s, everyone gets a slap. Yes. Because a woman has to get into herself under control. Yes. And the men take charge. Then you have years, whereas, you know, there's times. The last five years, I noticed that entertainment, there's like, man, the woman, and then we're having tension, then one of us realizes it, and then you take control, and you kiss me, and then you turn me around, put me against the wall, and do it to me.

I'm on the wall, and then all of a sudden we're back to work and we're so happy. So this is what people are being taught. There's nothing happening inside there. There's nine million things where nothing happened. And so really it's just for me, what I've been working with people is what I'm learning. Like, oh, it's so sexy when I'm sitting next to you and our hands touch. How long can we feel that energy? And where does that rise? And where do I feel in my body?

and just really making it playful and letting pleasure lead you into a scavenger hunt of your own excitement. Ooh, I love that. So that's been my practice, and that's what I've been leaning into. It's been so fun. And how are you infusing joy or pleasure in your manifestation practice if you are? Do you have a manifestation practice these days? I think that, yeah. Oh, I see. You want a specific practice. Oh, yeah. I'm just like, what is your manifestation practice if you have one now? Yes. And then are you infusing that with joy or pleasure?

Yes. And yeah. So I feel like I'm not a second question is inspired by our friend Brooke. So Brooke is a real different of both of us. She was like, Oh, I want to hear you two jam on this. Okay. Okay. Okay. So my manifestation practice is now every second.

Because as I was saying before, I have a lot of big loops and they really stop me. I believe that we train ourselves really young to know what to stay away from and what to go closer into. So I have a lot of these invisible monsters all around. So it was very difficult at first to give myself permission to do that.

And so I start every morning with my diaphragm. I do a lot of singing, a lot of chanting. In the pandemic, when I started leaning into different spiritual practices and really starting to kind of feel the globe in that way, I realized there was so many options. And so I didn't know what to really lean into and I, you know, very me, I want to try them all. So I decided that I would make my heart

my spiritual practice. So all practices that embody heart work. So I do a lot in the morning of singing songs. I do a lot of yoga that's very yin. I do a lot of crawling on the floor and rolling and just really slow myself down as you know I can go very fast. So my manifestation thing is when I get myself into a juicy place,

So then I meditate. So once I kind of slow myself down, I meditate. And now my favorite thing is every night, because I've been redoing my childhood. So I do a bubble bath and a book. And so I started going to Evergory, New Evergory. Funny illustrator, but he has some old school kind of, they're not pornography's, but they're very naughty books. So bubble baths. What's not even the karatek?

Yeah, but they're from the 20s, so it's just very silly, it makes me laugh, and it's also sexy. So doing a lot of that, bath work, a lot of really giving myself very Venusian baths. Because if you think about now the trend, like what goddesses and everyone's a queen, but then we're all stressing and making ourselves crazy, but what a real goddesses and queens do. They know that they have to be the chief energy officers of their life, because what they have to do is meet another queen and have a beautiful experience so that we don't create a war.

If you really think about it, so they do a lot of things to get themselves in energetic state, right? So to feel beautiful. So that's been my big manifestation practice. Is that nothing manifests for me when I'm in scarcity or fear? So I have to... Nothing manifests for me when I'm in scarcity or fear. That's right. Because then I start to plan. I get on the pre-planning safety highway next. But when I... So pre-planning safety highway? That's me. I think I'm like the highway patrol of that.

I feel very good at that. Yeah, but it's great because that's all I would do is like I would literally hear like a little tape constantly like, okay, then tomorrow, then I'm going to ram. It was like safety like bridge. Okay, I'm gonna be safe about vigilance. Yeah. So now my manifestation process is to slow myself down, to remind myself of the feeling I want to have at all times, which is this

Very juicy, delicious, soft, anything that happened feeling in my heart. And that takes a lot of work. And then from that place, are you finding that then more things manifest because you're slowing down, because you're present, because you're focusing on the feeling, which is in fact a secret. Thank you, Neville Goddard.

And it's not even that. It's just that working with aid and working with the handout group is all about staying in your dream. So if you're telling yourself a story every day, all day, that's fear and scarcity and pain, you're only creating more stuff because your brain doesn't have a sense of humor. Your brain's like, oh, check, pain, more pain, fear, more fear. So I hold this different story all the time. I'm making different stories about everything. I have a lot of old experiences. Oh, plants, they're frightening. Or what if plants tickle my leg?

When I sit next to a plant, they whisper things in my ear. I only can play with life and create manifestations in a beautiful way when I'm feeling soft and feeling centered. So I'm constantly changing my story at all times. I'm constantly rewriting like in the beginning. I was late. I feel like I'm behind. Okay, well, what is the story? Oh, we got the chance to hang. So I have to be manifesting in that way all day every day to have the life I want. I play this game with people a lot.

make up a world, whatever it is. And what I made up with my world is we're in a void. But the world shows up in front of you based on what your heart says. So if you're keeping your heart clean, what is this magic world that is rolling in front of you at all times? But if your heart is like, that's the world you're living in. And so my manifestation is to stay in these beautiful stories and this love affair with myself and being in this embodied state, which is a lot of work every second.

Because we have so many stories, we have so many ideas. So it sounds like a lot of work, and it is. And I want people to get that. If I wanted to change my body, and you sent me your trainer, I'd be complaining bragging to you, oh, I couldn't even sit on the toilet. I wasn't so much pain. I'm so sore. I'm so sore, but yet with our heart, because I think it was pre-verbal, we don't want to go near it.

I gotta make changes around my heart. It's like going to your school and it looks really tiny now and it used to look really big. But if our heart aches, our first ones were pre-verbal. We're always holding that extra fear around everything with our hearts. So I'm always changing that story for myself. No, that person didn't reject you. Maybe they're busy. Maybe they didn't have time. Maybe they didn't hear you.

Maybe you need to call again. Maybe they don't know that they have permission to come sit with you. So just, I'm always manifesting by changing the stories and the characters and the concepts of myself in every moment. And I'm giving myself the room to do that by making a soft sweetness in my body experience every second.

Okay, I just want to say this back for my own. I love this. I want to say it back because I want to make sure I'm receiving this. This is medicine that I really want to savor and I want to make sure that our friends are hearing this. So that you are a manifestation practice now because you have a tendency to go fast. You have a tendency to be on the vigilant super highway of what's next. That planning and illusion of control. So your manifestation now is actually slowing down, finding that joy.

Finding what feels good and delicious in your body. And yes, there's sometimes practices like bath or erotic books, but also moment over moment. What is real? What is real? This is all a projection of this little grace, this little girl inside of me.

So if I'm creating all of this from this void, what world am I creating? And I'm doing that based on what my heart is telling me. Is it relaxed? Does it feel safe? Does it have joy? And if I'm in that state, then I can trust that whatever shows up is a wonderland of delights that nature is going. And it's going to be like the per se of manifestations. Which by the way, per se is one of my favorite restaurants in New York. You just sit down and they just bring you something that is far more elegant and delicious than I could ever conceive of.

Okay, is that a hundred percent? A hundred percent? Okay. And you know, it's like, I used to walk in a place and say, no, I'm like, oh, leather. You know, it's like, what a different experience. Just touching things slow. I touched my own self. My third husband once said this thing, I'd come out of the shower. I'd quickly wash my days. And he said, why are you racing to the grave?

Where am I racing to? So now I wash my face and I'm like, I really touch it. And I put lotion on and it just feels so good. And so what about just technically like when you're in a hurry? Like what if you're just late? Do you still just like, I'm just gonna be late and I'm gonna enjoy being late? Yeah, late is not my issue. I'm always too early. But it's more than just, what if you're late? What if you're, it's more starting to realize that if you don't run your day, your day runs you. So it's setting a morning up.

I am a goddess. I won't need 20 minutes. I'll need an hour to get ready. You know, oh, I should leave it because I want to be. It's creating a life the way you would a lover. You know, we treat other people better than we treat ourselves. Amen. A boss, a child, a lover. I would sometimes be home and I didn't even take a shower or make a meal.

But let a lover be 11 o'clock come over, all of a sudden I have energy, I want to put on something hot, I want to cook food, I want the house to smell great. So making myself my first lover is been my practice. I am my first lover. And if I am delicious and I'm feeling that I'm going to magnetize that same kind of energy towards me, would you date yourself as what I always ask people?

Start there. And if you have a list of what you want in a person, then embody it. And then they'll come. So it's that. It's like, I am my own lover. So it's not that if I'm late, sometimes I'll be late. That's a weird thing. But I really work in a life backwards of, what do I need today to not be late, to also feel delicious, to also embody that, to have that coming from my eyes, to be sending love out through my heart at all times. There's work around that.

Yeah, and that feels like if there is a chronic lateness, then you're going to be in the state of perpetual rushing. And then there's a level of stress or anxiety that probably just feels familiar based on the vigilance of the pre-verbal trainings. That's right. And so then what are you not allowed to feel? What joy are you robbing yourself of experiencing if you are not running your life and letting that late pattern or over scheduling your life?

That's right. And let that late pattern be the indication that you have to go back to school. Oh, wait, it's interesting. I want to feel joy. Why am I always late? Okay, there's some work. Let's look at that. Oh, it's because I always was my mother was always late or I don't want to be early or we start to see these other stories underneath that's more work to unravel when we start to realize that when things come up that feel uncomfortable, it's where the work begins.

My friend Deirdre said this thing I thought was, it really blew my mind. She said that she's a black belt and she said that when she became a black belt the day of her ceremony she was like, I did it! I'm done! Fantastic! And her teacher said to her, great, now the work begins.

And that's the truth of us. It's like we're always going to be at work. We've been sold some lies about that. This is work, but it's worth it. Yeah, and I love the frame of like the joy strategist. It's not about perpetual joy. It's about doing the work, having the strategy to create more joy. And sometimes that is

Dancing with the darkness, or building the thing, or looking at the pre-verbal trauma or conditioning, but that that is the strategy. Just like, I love your analogy, like you wouldn't just be like, I'm hungry, and open your mouth, and expect someone else to throw food inside of it. Like you would order food, or go to the store, or cook a meal, and then feed yourself. Radical self-reliance. Thank you, Burning Man. Yeah, exactly. But it's true. Yeah, so why isn't everyone snacking joy?

What? A lot of reasons. I believe that the big, big, big issue is that when we are taught to become adults, all of a sudden we feel like we have to let all these things go, that we worked so hard to cultivate when we were two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Like what? Like our own pleasure. Like being honest about how we feel. About talking about things and our truth. And I believe that a lot of people for many reasons are taught that speaking to people is confrontation.

Like anytime I come to you with my truth, it's confrontation. And confrontation is scary because then you might get mad and then I might be ousted and then I might be alone to die in the wilderness. I mean, it sounds like a big dramatic thing, but that is where it goes. This is 100%. I had this story. I had this belief. Like, and not only a left alone in the woods, but I would be killed.

Like for me, conflict equaled death in my nervous system. Most people, I felt like if I were to speak my truth, like Grace, I really do not like those glasses. They don't like them at all. They are hurting my feelings. That's right. Like if I were to say that, that you would kill me. Yeah, I would take the glass, throw them down and run out. Yeah. Tell everyone, Emily's an asshole. Yeah. And then I would die.

And so, and I realized that this, I mean, talk about examining the patterns. I was like, oh, this came from my childhood. And I actually interviewed my mother. Again, thank you, Lauren Handel-Zander, because she made me interview my mom. And I had her, I asked her the question. I was like, look, you always said, like you wouldn't leave dad because you didn't know what he was capable of. And I was like, me as a child, like I interpreted that as he would kill us. And I was like, is that true? And she was like, no, that wasn't true.

No, your father would never hurt you. And I was like, I'm like, I'm 40. I'm 40 getting on the nose. And I'm realizing this. And so I've been like a total, like, freedy cat when it comes to confrontation and like how much of my life

was shaped by my inability to speak my truth. And so I just want to like, I want to hear this. I want to like, receive this wisdom of how do we communicate like we're children. How do we speak without those filters? How do we do it from a place of love and moving towards more joy like this?

Well, it was hard to hear about my glasses because I really love these glasses. And because when I turned 45, I started to not be able to see. And it made me feel really old every time I had to take them off and put them back on to see. So I decided to get myself like character glasses, like Beyonce has Sasha Fierce. And so that's why I like them. Can we do something so that I can still wear them and you're comfortable too? Mmm. Yeah.

And this is it. And I was terrified when I started this. I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna have no friends. But that's really it. You know, it's like, I don't know how you're gonna feel about this, but I've really had a crush on you for a very long time. And I'm scared to tell you, because I don't want you to laugh at me and I'm gonna be embarrassed. And then you're gonna tell everyone it was like, fun to me. But I just need to let you know, because if there's any chance that you feel that way about me, and then instead of you being like, you're an idiot, I can't stand you. And then you go upstairs and you're like, Adam Grace actually tried to come on. But instead you said,

Wow, I understand how vulnerable you had to be to save that to me. And I really hold and cherish that because you're such a delicious and sexy person. But I actually have a real connection right now with Adam. And I don't have room in my, you know, whatever. But just, and I tell people, because at first it was so hard for me to do it. And it was actually Lauren who even said, the first time you do it, start saying, because I realized that was my thing. One day I said, I have to tell you my whole life story. I don't know why I just feel like you need to hear it all, because I couldn't find it. And she was getting annoyed with me. Like, I think you know this stuff already.

But it was that piece. I couldn't. What piece? That I wasn't actually able to speak my truth. Because then what about the whole life story? I just want to understand that. So when we were working together and Laura was getting frustrated that I was hitting something that she would say casually, believing I knew that on that principle or that life idea, whatever, but I would hit a wall.

And I couldn't figure out why I had a wall, but it was because I realized that I love the people of my life who give me things, and I trained myself that you never go against that, otherwise you're out. So I was afraid that any truth I had that was in any way different than hers mean that I was out of this big experience that I was having that I loved.

And so she said, well, then out yourself. So then I started by saying, Emily, I'm going to say something to you that's really hard for me. And I'm very scared to tell you. So can you just not respond until I say anything? And then because I couldn't do it. I would stop or I would change it. So just in the same way you're creating joy, give yourself the foundation to learn to speak your truth, practice that as well. But until we get to that place and it feels so good.

I mean, I had giant bags like that Erkabodusan bag lady like I was just walking around like garbage bags and suitcases and duffles and as soon as I started doing that with people, I don't have anything. I feel free. I feel light. I walk around like, hey, nice person. I just met. I understand that you want to get ahead of me in the turn lane, but I'm actually in a hurry and so I can't.

Or, yeah, no problem. You don't have to honk at me five times. Come on in. I have an extra 10 minutes my day. What does it really matter if you're beating me to the light or not?

Yeah. But being that free. What is your truth? What is your truth? Yeah. So two things. One, this idea that I also learned from Lauren is that lying is not a morality issue. It's a happiness issue. That if you just assume that everyone is liars and everyone's either hiding or exaggerating or minimizing and that's just par for the course.

Everyone's liars. So you being a liar doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you immoral. It's just the question of how happy do you want to be? Are you willing to tell the truth because you want more joy in your life? Are you willing to tell the truth as a strategy for joy? That really changed me, but recently, so on the podcast, my best friend Layla and I went to Greece as I was mentioning, we went on this beautiful priestess pilgrimage, and we had these wild adventures where we would take psychedelics and have these beautiful ceremonies.

And so it's a kind of wild four-part series we were talking about. I mean, we liked it LSD and made love in this goddess cave. It's like 15,000 year old meolithic cave. And so I was like, oh, I have to talk to my mom and sister about this. I've never told my mom or my sister that I have romantic relationships with women because it was never my primary partner. That's right.

And so it never felt like, I never felt like I needed to out myself necessarily. So I wouldn't like call my mom, like, mom, I hooked up with this guy on Saturday. Like, we don't have that kind of relationship. So anyway, I was really nervous about it. And I was working with a handheld coach. And so I like wrote it out and bulleted it. And I practiced it. And then I called them and

And both of them were really, really beautiful conversations, but I want to just celebrate my sister for a moment. And the way that she received this, first of all, she thanked me. She's like, thank you for sharing this with me. And then she said, well, I want to share something with you. She felt inspired to share more of herself and more intimate truths of herself because I had shared more of myself with her.

And then it has deepened our relationship. It has deepened our love because how can you fully love someone if you don't fully know someone? Hello, starting this out. Yeah. And so, and then since then I've just felt like more happy, more free, more, more joyous. And so I just want to say thank you for incorporating this truth telling into your joy strategy. Yeah. Because at least in my experience it's been, it's been crucial for it. Yeah. And I'm a baby at it. Like I'm a teeny, tiny baby. So am I.

I am too. I mean, what's that rom-dos famous quote where he says, I was the master meditator for 10 years and then I went to my family home for one weekend. It was all at the window. Yeah, like you think you're enlightened spend a week with your family. Right. And so I was, you know, talking about these things with friends and clients and very smug about the whole thing. And now, you know, a few months into a relationship with someone that I really have a lot of intention of it being clean and beautiful and having its own foundation, it's hilarious to see how hard a lot of these things are for me too.

And I'm just laughing at myself because I appreciate the ride forever. That's really the thing. We have to also give ourselves permission to be curious forever, to be beginners forever. My generation, you had to know. It was a bad thing. Your parents couldn't be like, I don't know, let's look up together, let's explore. So there's a lot of these habits of just like solid that really are our enemies.

And when we don't just open to the curiosity, I know you said there was a plant before, but that looks different. Is that a plant? And just that, you know, openness to whatever comes in a new way, that's when we really lean into fear because we've closed ourselves down from the delicious inquisitive nature that we had when we came here.

So yeah, it's been fun and also a beginner I think forever. Yeah, forever. So what's your dream? What's your magic wand for your book? Like if you could wave a magic wand over the ripple effect of the joy strategist, like what happens on the planet?

What happens on the planet is that everyone learns that their joy is a priority and so that everyone has these conversations. You can go inside a deli and the person can say, I know you ordered that thing and I'm so sorry, it's not there, but it's going to come on Tuesday. And I can say instead of, you ruin my thing, I can say, oh, well, you know, this is in position because you get it like a world where everyone feels free enough.

to speak from their heart and look into each other's eyes and respect each other's differences, understand that everyone has their own recipe and that's what makes us unique. And there's this book that I should stop penalizing because it's mean, but it's called The Rainbow Fish and it's a kid's book. And I had such a problem with it when someone gave it to my daughter as a gift because I read the book first before I read it to her and it basically is this one fish has these gorgeous, interesting scales and has no friends.

And so the advice given from an older fish was, if you give everyone one of your scales, they'll be the same and everyone will be happy. Exactly. I was like, this book, garbage. But that- Oh my God, I've definitely read that book to my child. And so thanks for- Yeah, get rid of it. I mean, it's funny, Mickey and I had a whole debate about the giving tree, because I was like, that's a codependent, no more book. And she was like, no, it's about love. So it's also, all these things are important. And it's also how you talk about it with your kids. But it was interesting for me writing this book to think of that book, because that is how we're trained in this country.

You know, fit in, fall in line. But what if we celebrate each other's differences? What if we were so excited like when we go to Burning Man to see what unique, interesting thing, the way we do with celebrities? We can't wait to go to a show or a movie and see the character they stepped into. So my wish, my magic wand is that we also have to be that free with ourselves. That we all start to feel like, I can do what I want. As long as I have integrity of my own heart, I'm making myself my own lover, I'm leaning into my truth,

It's gonna be amazing and then I'm gonna celebrate everyone else's and we're gonna be able to bring that collective together. What a different world. There's very little, this is my toy, I hate you and I'm going home.

There's more like, let's share. What else can we? Let's make a new toy. What can we create together? And we'll have a lot more fun. Yeah. I'd like more playmates, please. Adult playmates in the world. Let's explore the top one. Let's take the rules off. Yeah, more ways for love, more ways for joy, more creative solutions, which is easier to access when our brain is lit up and we are happy and we are enjoyed. We have access to more parts of our brain. So we will be able to solve these challenges any more creative way and have a great time doing it.

That's right. And you know that the heart actually comes online first in the body? So I don't think that the brain is the first. The heart is the first. You know, the heart is really leading. The heart is where imagination comes from. The heart is where creativity comes from and passion. And the brain really is a good COO to the heart's CEO. It really is a better position when you lead with your heart. You know, you get into an Uber sometimes and they'll say, this is the address even though it's not because the GPS said. Well, imagine if we really believed that our heart, we believed it that strong.

No, my heart said this thing. Even though it looks wonky, I'm going to do it because my heart said, and then the brain could be a great support system, a great GM or president. It can fly up all kinds of images to help you support this big dream of heart. And then ego can actually come in and say, you've got this, you've got this heart versus right now, if we lean in our brain,

then I just think we're working our team incorrectly, those three players of our C-suite, right? If our C-suite is heart, brain, and ego, then why wouldn't we just get brain to support heart and then have ego be the hype person for both of them, bringing the big dream together and then you're leading from creative, you're leading from passion, you're leading from joy.

Ooh, I love that. And then the brain falls in line, and there's an ally. Okay, so heart is CEO, brain is COO, and ego is hype, hype person. Yeah, ego is the person that come with the mascot. It's telling you got this, Emily, you look great in that happy joy dress. Like, ego is doing, if ego is not fanning your insecurities, but when brain leads and heart is suspended, then ego is just fanning your insecurities. It's showing you all the things that you've got to get more control. Take more of it. It's going to hype whoever's the boss. That's fascinating.

I really like this concept that your ego is going to hype whoever is in charge. So who are you letting run the show? That's right. You've got a little team in there. You've never worked with someone and they were in the wrong role. And then they were switched to a different role and they excelled. That's the truth of us as well.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Amen. All right, so people want to learn more from you. Obviously, they need to get your book, The Joy Strategist. Do you take on clients? Do you work with people? I am now again. Okay. The book is such a while. If anyone's writing a book, call me. I want to help because whoa. I'm going to do a book too soon. Please, I am here for you. Okay. Because the process is wild and doesn't need to be.

Um, so I have been doing these experiences called play dates with grace. And they have been so much fun. And I'm going to do some more at our basil. I'm doing these central experiences where we're using food and we're making necklaces and jewelry out of it. I've been trying to create these of an illusion experiences where you can do these sensual things with things that are not forbidden, but then feel into them in that same way and get back to that experience of everything in your world lighting you up.

So I've been doing that, that's really fun. And then yeah, I still, my website is thejoyshriages.com. So you can definitely book an appointment or a play date or see things that are coming up. But yeah, the girl, I made it like a workbook. And I really made it, honestly, I have so many incredible friends who are doing amazing things. But what I realized is when I go to a Tony Robbins conference, or I went to Omega and saw Pima Chardrin, or went and did a silent retreat or a breathwork, I was left with more

information than integration exercises. So the book is a lot of examples of ways and tools to just pull in these big experiences. I'm a little concerned as much as I love that people are really diving into psychedelics. We're also seeing a lot of people

use it in a way where they're getting these big experiences and not really understanding how to land them. So it's a lot of tools in the book, a lot of activities, use it like an oracle, open to whatever page, read it all the way through. I like people get a group together, do it together, but gamify it, make it fun and realize this is a way not to be different, but to be more yourself.

Mmm, I love that. And I love the idea of people getting together in their own groups, their own A groups, doing it as a workbook. I love the idea of using it as an oracle deck. Right. Yeah, gorgeous. It can be complicated. This has to be an intention. Well, guys, I'm so, so grateful to be reconnected to you. I'm so grateful that you've spent so much time and energy taking your vast life experience. You've had such a wild ride, so many incarnations in this one human life.

taking this and put it into this workbook and this guide to help bring more joy to the planet. Truly, thank you. Thank you. I'm so excited to be reconnected and rekindling our friendship. Yes. And I have a million ideas. Oh, well, wait, I'll tell you them all, but yeah, me too. I'm excited. Great. Well, sweet friends, thank you for joining Grace and I for this ride, for this journey. I really hope that it has inspired you to start snacking on joy, to start strategizing ways to bring more joy into your day, into your life. And

Perhaps the underlying lesson here is to start telling the truth in a way that will lead to more joy in your life. If you have learned something from this episode, if it has touched you in some way, then my invitation is to share it with a friend. Share it with a friend who could use more joy, which right now is a lot of people.

If you want to leave a five-star review or a five-star rating or write a review, I love reading. I read every single comment. I want to know what's touching you, what's moving, what you want more of. And then if you want to screenshot it and tag us, I'm at Ziva Meditation on Instagram. What are you on Instagram? At Grace Harry. At Grace Harry on Instagram. So tag us, let us know what you thought, and that's another way to help spread this media as medicine. I love you, and I will see you next week on Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?