Heather Falenski — Navigating Conflict Zones, Recovering from Chronic Illness, and Being Your Own Light

The greatest power that we have is to then go, I am that, and whatever that is, is what we're defining ourselves to be. It's what our concept of self is, and we can define ourselves in any way that we want. We can say, I'm a filmmaker, you know, I am healthy, I am respected. And once we hold that state as our dominant state of consciousness over a period of time, the outer world will start to conform and reflect that back to us.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. All right, everybody, welcome back. Today I'm speaking with a very special guest. She is the founder and CEO of One World Media, who also happens to be producing our podcast. How are you doing today, Heather?

I'm doing really well. Thank you for inviting me, Brett.

Yeah, thanks for joining us. So could you tell me a little bit about who you are and what your business is and what you've done in business and in life to get to this point? Sure.

So I have been in film production for pretty much my entire career. However, I started in a much different area than where I am today. I started out working on the African continent, and I was working with a lot of NGOs. I worked with the UN. I mostly worked in areas of the world that had been affected by war. So either areas of active combat or areas where refugees were currently living. And so I spent a lot of time working with displaced populations and recording their journeys, recording the projects that were going on in the camp. And from there, I transitioned into adventure film. So I spent a couple of years working all around the world in Europe and in the US and in South America filming with adventure athletes. And eventually I started my own company, One World Media, about 8 years ago. And I've been running it ever since. We do documentary film. We also do commercial work and other types of film as well, but we're best known for our documentaries.

To give the audience a little bit more context here, Heather and I have known each other since 2007, partially from the adventure sports world, that's how we met. And also we spent some time together in Africa I visited her in Zambia for a 5-week period while she had been there alone for a year producing film for an NGO and had a lot of really interesting experiences that some of them might come up in this podcast. Having known Heather for 15 years, I know that like she and I have both had a lot of different experiences where we learned something really important about ourselves, sometimes in a very difficult way and by going through a lot of pain to get there. And Heather, I'm curious to, to hear one reflection that you have that we'd like to focus on today that really impacted your business and your life.

That's a really good question, Brett. I would have to say, if I had to distill it down into one sentence, it would be the sentence that I woke up to, um, one morning in December during a really difficult year for me. I had had a ton of health challenges. I was, uh, dealing with chronic illness, and, you know, my, my company was in a very big transition point, um, And at the same time, I was starting to come out of it. I had learned a lot of lessons and I had grown a lot, was feeling a lot more in my power. And I just woke up one morning with a sentence in my head that said, "Be your own light." And upon first glance, like this sentence is pretty self-explanatory, but it means something really specific to me. It was a really important shift that I made during the course of my healing journey, and it really impacted the way that I showed up in the world and my ability to reach my full potential.

Be your own light. Sounds like one of those things you might see on a cliché, you know, a mug kind of thing that you might find at a garage sale. And it's also something that, it's the kind of phrase that people come up with after having a really deep experience. And there's just, it means something way deeper than just those words. And as you mentioned, it means something specific to you. And before we get more deeply into that, I'm curious to talk a little bit about what your life was like before you had this particular recognition that led to it.

So in the years leading up to this realization, I had been encountering several challenges at once. You know, as I mentioned before, I had been working on the African continent for nearly a decade at that point. And although it was really rewarding and it gave me a lot of freedom to define my career and understand myself on a deeper level due to the independence that I had and the situations that I faced, it also— the The territory came with a lot of stress just inherently. Working in high-risk areas is inherently dangerous, and it requires you to be constantly vigilant of your own safety. And in addition to that, when you're working in unstable regions, you encounter a lot of logistical difficulties as well. So we were constantly battling access to resources, and just basic living things. For example, not having running water, not having access to regular power, and so, That accumulated into a lot of unprocessed stress from my very fast-paced career. And I ended up, you know, over time developing a chronic illness because of that stress. And I also had, was diagnosed with complex PTSD, which for people that don't know, that's post-traumatic stress disorder. And so I was dealing with a lot. I was very burnt out and my body wasn't functioning properly. I was spending, most of my time in bed. And additionally, my relationships weren't doing that well, and I wasn't sure why.

So you got to this point where you started to feel cornered in by the stress of life, but it was really just this deep, low-level stress, a lot of it coming from this complex PTSD from this time in conflict zones, and also possibly whatever might've occurred in your life that led you to be attracted to conflict zones. And that might be something interesting to double-click on as well. So how did it start to bubble up in your mind, or the light bulb turn on, be your own light? And what did that mean to you? And what was the alternative that you had been living prior to that?

Sure. Yeah. So in order for a realization to truly bubble up for me in a meaningful way, I had to truly hit rock bottom. And for me, rock bottom not just meant that things were bad, but that I had tried literally everything I could to control it. Um, Control used to work really well for me because I'm a Type A person. You know, I'm very organized and I create strategies. That was my job for a long time. I, you know, part of my job was to escort people safely from one town to the next in areas of active combat. And so you basically, your job in that sort of situation is to control the uncontrollable because it's very important that you do so. And I found a lot of ways to manipulate my outer world in order to make things safe, in order to get my job done. And I think that hitting rock bottom for me meant that there was a situation that I was in, which was my chronic illness, that just would not relent no matter what I did. I tried to do everything right. I tried to clean up my health. I tried to meditate, to see a therapist to resolve my PTSD. I tried just about everything, even just relaxing for months in bed, thinking that if I rested enough, it would just go away. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. And I was relying so much on the outer world including my outer body, to— in order to have a sense of safety and security. And it just wasn't happening for me. And so I think that when you get to that place, demoralizing is a very nice way to put it. But I think that I just sort of gave up because even someone who's super motivated, if they try hard enough to get out of this cage that they're in and it just won't relent, eventually they'll just relax into it and they don't know what the next step is when everything you try to do fails. I think that the shift that happened for me was that I realized that nothing on my— in my outer world was going to change my situation, and that I couldn't wait on something to come from outside to save me. It just wasn't going to happen. And also, in addition to that, I realized that I might never have proper functioning of my outer physical body again because of the severity of my chronic illness. And so I realized that even my having a sense of self that relied on having a functioning, able body was not necessarily something that was going to be beneficial for me or reliable for me.

Something you just talked about, like being able to control your environment, you'd learned that like control is something that had worked for you in conflict zones. And something that we've talked about before is that there's a subtlety there where you're never really in control of a conflict zone. There's actually, there's more of a flow, identifying what you can control and then quickly changing and determining what else you might be able to, what else might be in your control as the situation moves and evolves. And there's a certain amount of faith and willpower there and having a goal. And then there's a certain amount of just reading the river and seeing where it goes. And it sounds like what you're describing here is that even that process started to get stopped up when your body was no longer responding in the way that you were expecting, and your interface to your environment was no longer responding the way that you were expecting. And that took you into a deeper, deeper level of flowing. And that seems to maybe point at the, at the realization that you had. And can you talk to me a little bit about what that realization felt like when, when it occurred?

So I realized after being disempowered for years and years of wanting a functioning body and waiting for it to get better and having it not get better to having quality relationships in my life in certain areas that just weren't coming in at the time and waiting for those relationships to really validate me and to basically tell me that I am loved, I am cherished, I'm all of these things. I'm looking to all these outer markers. I realized that I was going to have to be my own light, that I was going to have to generate that from within in order to see it without. And I don't mean that in a poetic way. I mean that in an actual literal way. That was the nuance of the realization was not just that this is a quote to put me in a happy space, but it's an actual reality that if I don't first give myself the feeling of being loved and cherished, if I don't feel that way within, then no one's going to come from without and validate what I'm not appropriating in myself. And the same thing for health because I was— I was embodying such a state of illness. There was a point in my illness where I couldn't remember the last time that I felt happy or healthy. I mean, just even having the feelings for a small thing. I spent most of my waking hours having thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that only validated being sick and alone. And so that realization of being my own light made me realize that in order to have consistent positive results in my outer world, I needed to start stabilizing my inner environment and being consistently my own light and giving myself these things that I wanted to see on the outside.

Can you zoom in a little bit more on what you mean by stabilizing your inner world? What was the subjective experience that you had when, you know, you were laying in your bed and you only were seeing evidence for how sick you were and this was the reality that was continually being reinforced by your nervous system. What was that first moment of the subjective experience of something different that allowed you to start giving yourself your own love?

That's a really good question. I would say that the symptoms got so severe that initially, you know, it kind of came from a place of dissociation, full disclosure. I didn't really want to be completely present to my outer experience, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. And so what I would do is I would just shut out the outer world because what was happening for me wasn't desirable whatsoever. And I would go into this inner space, this very meditative space, sort of like the state that you're in right before you fall asleep. And I would start imagining what it feels like to have stable health and to be surrounded by quality people, doing a job that completely fulfilled me and that didn't drain me at all, just like, just for fun, you know, just kind of trying it on the way someone would try on a new suit. And at first that suit felt really uncomfortable because it felt unfamiliar. And I started small, but it sort of just, the whole process piqued my interest because it was, like I said originally, somewhat of an escape. But as I started doing it day after day, that suit began to feel more comfortable and I started to feel more at home in it, and it started to shift my entire, state of consciousness and concept of self to that of what I was imagining myself to be rather than that which I currently was.

Yes, it sounds almost as though the way that you had been experiencing yourself in the world was also a suit. And there's a way that you were changing suits or you're maybe just removing one suit and seeing what was underneath it and seeing what it would be like to see yourself, Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds almost as though there was a suit that was installed by your past experience and this complex PTSD, and you're exploring what was underneath it. Does that sound accurate at all?

Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So I think that there is— so that's a good segue into sort of me explaining exactly what being your own light is, because I feel that all of us have this unconditioned consciousness that we're born with. You know, when we're born as babies, we aren't you know, filmmakers or podcasters, we're just awareness, we're just consciousness. And, you know, maybe you could say we're a loving consciousness, because I do believe when you look at children who haven't been— who haven't experienced adverse conditions, their natural inclination is to love and be connected. So there is that, that essence which I could call my I Am-ness. It's an awareness. And I think that the most that the greatest power that we have is to then go, I am that. And whatever that is, is what we're defining ourselves to be. It's what our concept of self is. And we can define ourselves in any way that we want. We can say, I'm a filmmaker, you know, I am healthy, I am respected, I am lonely, I am alone. We're free to choose whatever we want to define ourselves as. And once we hold that that state as our dominant state of consciousness over a period of time, the outer world will start to conform and reflect that back to us, is what I discovered in my journey.

Yeah, it also even sounds like there's an aspect of falling more in love with the part of yourself, the identity of yourself as ill, as sick, like recognizing that even that part is you and that it doesn't fully define you, it's just a part of your experience and that it's not the whole thing.

Yeah, I think that that's a very important part of integrating these parts of ourselves that are wounded is to love those parts. Because I think that that part comes from an unconscious aspect of ourselves that hasn't been integrated from an earlier adverse experience. And it will keep showing up for us until we, you know, bring light to it. Again, being your own light, shedding light on it, and acknowledging it and then reintegrating it into our system. And I think that's a really important thing. And in addition to that, I think it's just important to realize the power that we have in our I am and our ability to choose, because a lot of times it feels like life is choosing for us. But what I've discovered is that we do choose what our I am is. And if we hold strongly and steadily in any I am, it will— it will start being projected into our outer reality. Obviously, if I say, you know, I am secure, but then that lasts about 5 minutes and I go back into my state of mind of not feeling secure and not feeling loved, well, that, you know, I haven't held on to it long enough for it to really take effect. But if I hold on to any state of consciousness for long enough, it will eventually start shifting my dominant state entirely. And it changes, you know, the that is the ego portion of our unconditioned consciousness. It's what makes us into the personalities that we are. And it's very, you know, it's very malleable. It's not as fixed as people think, because it's only fixed whenever there's some charge behind it that we're unwilling to look at.

It sounds like the journey you're describing here is becoming more aware of all the different possible I AMs we can be, as different suits that we can wear and take them on and put them off at will.

Exactly.

Or just as the situation calls without even having to invoke our will, just to see what happens. And I think a lot of this really like harkens back to what you've described in active conflict zones or in adventure sports and being in the flow, being in the place of trusting yourself. For me, when I walk a slackline, for example, one of the ways that I like to describe walking a slackline is that to learn to walk a slackline is to learn all the different ways to fall off. And how to bring yourself back from the edge of each one of them. And there's a certain symmetry there to our identity too. I think that there can be a common misconception that, you know, that our belief creates a reality. So if we only believe the things that we want to believe about ourselves, then that will create the reality that we want. But that can also put us into a trap or create shadows. And this process that you're describing is really breaking free of any particular self-concept and then loving more and more of who you might find yourself to be in any moment.

Exactly. And just realizing that you have the power to do that too, because I think that it's easy. So for example, if you came from a wealthy household, it's easy to have the I am concept of I am secure, you know, I am abundant. But if you came from a less wealthy background, then trying on that suit's not gonna feel so natural at first. And I think that my message to the world, you know, if I could distill it into this sentence, by being your own light, is knowing that no matter what your current outer circumstances are, whether, you know, this shift is gonna be a little one, or if it feels so far-fetched that you can barely imagine yourself being financially abundant, is that if you are able to stabilize your inner world enough in order to shift your I am to a different self-concept over time, what I've discovered, not just through my health, but through many different suits or self-concepts, is that it will eventually take hold and it will start showing results in the outer world, but it just has to be consistent. And so in order for it to be consistent, you have to be your own light. You can't rely on getting a big paycheck in order to feel abundant, you know, because you might be in a financial desert. There might not be anything going on, or you might be so sick like I was that you can't get out of bed. And I had to teach myself how to hold the state of feeling healthy even under those circumstances, which were extremely trying. But I do feel like it— I feel that it's a powerful message to share that it's possible to actually shift your self-concept from within and to be your own light without having to receive validation from the outer world in order to start making that shift and therefore seeing the changes that you want to see.

Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like what you're talking about is really deprogramming a lot of these concepts that we learn about ourselves from the outer world and going back into that childhood, not even that childhood, that babyhood love that we just are, that consciousness, that awareness.

Yeah, exactly. It's a deprogramming, but not through mental gymnastics, so to say. I don't think that it's a matter of, I did do a lot of healing work and I did get to a root of a lot of my limiting beliefs, but that's, not what this necessarily was. It wasn't a mental exercise at all. It was shutting out my outer experience, getting to the state of neutrality of just this dark beginning that we all came from, and then imagining myself in this new state so that I could catch the feeling of it. Because, you know, the feeling doesn't necessarily mean an emotion. You know, like, for example, wealthy people are not happy all the time. And so if you want to imagine yourself as abundant. I don't think that it's making sure that you're feeling happy and upbeat all the time at all, but it's just how would a wealthy person feel as they move throughout their day? And what sort of thoughts would they have, positive and negative? And so I started just imagining myself to try on the suit to catch that feeling of what would it feel like if I didn't have to constantly worry about my health and that was all just stable. And I realized, I wouldn't be having all these thoughts. I would be, you know, feel— I just caught the essence of it. And it's really hard to describe other than, you know, just through imagining, feeling it to the point where you start to actually catch as if you already were it before it's actually being shown to you in your outer world.

I want to hear a little bit more then about how having had this deeper reflection, which of course is so many of the reflections that we have in our life are that we there are things that we've learned all along in newer and deeper ways. And a lot of what you described in this epiphany was actually very related to many of the ways that you moved around in the world, being a founder, being an adventure sports athlete, being a documentary filmmaker as a female in Africa, alone in conflict zones. How has that deepened your relationship with yourself and your, your work and your flow in the world, having had this, this experience and come through it?

It's made me much more authentic and much more able to stand in my integrity because I no longer look for validation from others or from outer circumstances. I decide who I want to be and what state I'm embodying, and it's a totally internal process. So I feel completely liberated. I don't feel like I'm at the mercy of circumstances even when they're adverse because I know from experience from doing this so many times that whenever I hold my inner world steady, the outer world will eventually reflect it even if it's not in the moment. And so for example, maybe I'm finding a situation where I might be traveling as I often do for work and I'm unable to connect with people the way that I want to. And so I'm feeling a little bit lonely. In the past, I was sort of embodying the state of loneliness and also just hoping that someone would show up in my life to relieve me of that. But what I do now is I go into my inner space and I get into the state of being connected and being supported by others. I imagine, even though I don't have it in the moment in my outer world, I imagine what that feels like. And it feels so warm and fuzzy and just fulfilling. And I get that state in me, and then I just hold it. And because I'm able to cultivate that feeling for myself, I'm not addicted to any sort of outer, you know, band-aid or fix to relieve me of my loneliness. And I walk through my day without discomfort because I'm cultivating that inner state independent of the outer circumstances. And inevitably someone will come up to me and strike a conversation. And before I know it, you know, I'm having a deep conversation with a stranger and we're exchanging numbers and, you know, planning another adventure together.

I find it interesting that you've used a couple of times the word holding steady internally. And the way that you just described that was, you know, like holding internally this, the feeling of that I am connected. And I feel like in order to do that, you have to be, it's actually not very stable. There's actually changes going on internally. And part of that is grieving the feeling of not having been connected. Like in order to want something that we don't have, there's a, like you have to kind of feel the not having. And feel through that enough to feel the want and enough to feel the other alternate reality. And that there's actually something like profoundly shifting in even that description of holding steady is that there's actually something going on, moving emotionally inside you. Does that sound accurate?

So what I've discovered is that the holding steady for me comes first, but what it does, okay, so there's a bridge that leads me from holding steady to actually seeing it in my outer reality. And that bridge is sort of what I like to call the purge. And so if I am holding steady in my feeling of like, let's, let's use a different example. Let's do something that anyone can relate to, which is relationships, romantic relationships. You know, everyone wants to feel loved and stable romantically. No one wants to feel in limbo or that they're, you know, they're in a hot and cold situation. And so it's a great example, but most of us still have a lot of strong feelings, both positive and negative, that are often churning inside us. When we get romantically involved with another person. And so what I would do is I would stabilize the state of, you know, imagine that I already have my life partner, that we are old, we're, you know, we're sitting in a rocking chair, 80 years old, and we're smiling back on the last 50 years of our life. And so I, every morning I embody that state. I get into it by imagining it, and then I hold it. And what happens when I hold it is that it initiates a purge of all of these contradicting beliefs that I'm holding inside myself. That contradict the state that I'm trying to shift to. And so what happens is all these fears and doubts will bubble up. Well, you know, I'm about to turn 40. What if I'm alone in another 5 years? You know, and like, oh, but people aren't reliable and they're constantly fickle. And like, it's this sort of maelstrom of thoughts and difficult emotions that end up coming up. But the more that I hold steady in that state and I don't allow it to sway me back into my, former disempowered state, they come up and they get processed and then they release out. And then almost like a storm in the ocean, you know, at sea, it will calm itself back out again eventually until the next wave hits. And I continue doing that until there are no more waves and it just is a natural dominant state.

It sounds a lot like what you're describing is gratitude, holding yourself in gratitude, perhaps a pre-gratitude for for what you imagine might come to your life and just being grateful for that this can be you or—

Yeah. Or that it is you, I would say, you know?

Yeah.

Well, I think gratitude is a great way to describe it because you aren't thankful for something that you're not sure that you have. Right. And so you can know that you actually are embodying the state as the new you, not as a potential new you. You know, I feel like that's not quite it. But once you actually get into the state and you're like, no, now this is how I am now. And this is what I did with my illness. I just decided, I said, I am healthy. Like, this is who I am. And I know that my body is going to eventually reflect it because I completely disidentified with illness. And I had identified with illness for most of my life. So this was really challenging at first to switch from dominant states. But I think that you know that you're getting close and that you're almost there when you start feeling gratitude. Because it's like when someone gives you a gift, and you're holding it in your hands, and you know it's yours. Then you're going to start feeling really thankful for it.

Yeah, I think what you were describing with that purging process too is very interesting as well. Like when I imagine first trying this out and being grateful for— let's imagine that somebody's talking about a romantic relationship and so they're feeling lonely. And so they try this thing and they're like, okay, I'm just going to feel grateful for having the partner that I want. And that might go really specific. That might be like, it's going to be a blonde who's 6 foot 5 inches and like, into these, this and that thing and check all these other boxes. And, you know, that might not actually lead to that person coming into their lives because that just might be way too specific. But feeling the gratitude deeper under that, just for, wow, I'm a human who can be connected and the awareness underneath everything else that is me is connection and love. And feeling that leads to that state of being that attracts partners.

Definitely gratitude is a lovely state to be in, just in general, because I feel that gratitude is the closest to love, you know. It's a very open and receptive state, and also a state that minimizes resistance as well, which I think that is— resistance in its essence is fear, you know. So when, when fear is your dominant state, which I think illness is a form of resistance, it is a form of fear, having in the state of identifying with illness. It's, it's being afraid of constantly as I was, and understandably because I was experiencing PTSD at the time. I think that gratitude really is that state of surrender of, of allowing the process to happen and, and knowing that you already have it, even if you don't see it yet.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think you could have a similar, similar self-concept of being unlovable or of being incompetent or of being unwealthy or of being insecure, like being an insecure partner in relationships. Like having that belief?

Well, that's very fear-based. I think the reason why we're insecure is because we don't know when the ball's going to drop. And we're assuming that the ball is going to drop. And so we're waiting for it to happen. We're trying to protect ourselves in advance. And all the while, stymieing the love that may be very well trying to come in. So it's very self-sabotaging. And I was in that space for a long time, so I have a lot of empathy for it. But I also know that it is possible to move past these things. In essence, when you are being your own light, it's like being perched on a ledge, you know? And if you're perched on a precarious ledge of a branch of a tree, for example, you're always gonna be wondering, is this branch gonna hold me or is it gonna break? Am I gonna fall 100 feet to the ground? You know, but birds don't worry about that because they trust in their wings, you know? Like if the branch breaks, then they're just gonna fly away. They're not gonna be harmed. And I think this being your own, light business is about growing your own wings so that you can put yourself on the edge and be vulnerable without getting into that fear-based space of insecurity because you're so secure within yourself to be able to provide everything that you need that even if it doesn't work out, even if the worst happens and someone betrays you or just completely leaves you hanging, you can still fly away. And it doesn't mean it's not going to sting, but it's not going to decimate you.

Interesting. There's another thing that you mentioned earlier that I'm curious about where you had said, "Admittedly, this was partly dissociation." And two parts of that are interesting to me. Part of it is that there's something to admit about having dissociated. And then there's also something interesting about just dissociation as having been a part of this process that was a healthy process for you. And I think it's very common that, especially in emotional development circles or in spiritual practices, that dissociation has sort of a negative connotation, that it's leading you away from the source of your awareness. And it also just seems that in this case, and maybe in many other cases, that it was actually a tool that allowed you to feel safe enough internally to try this, try on this other suit and see what another self-concept might feel like.

Dissociation is a double-edged sword. So dissociation is what gave me my PTSD. It's sort of what PTSD is when you allow enough of emotional content to build up in your, you know, in your nervous system by dissociating that it actually just manifests into a full-blown psychological condition and physical disorder. And so, but I will say that dissociation is a boomerang because it, it's not just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse to no end. What it does is it gets worse until you hit rock bottom, and then it actually propels you into the completely opposite direction because, as I said before, I had been dissociating for years, and it had been quote-unquote working until it wasn't anymore, and then it made me really sick. But that sickness forced me in bed, and then my last resort of dissociation was actually blocking out all of this mess that I had sort of created for myself and allowing me to get into a neutral space in order to redefine myself and to re-identify with the things that I actually wanted to experience and start disidentifying with the things that I had created for myself that I no longer wanted to be.

Something that's really striking me about the way that you speak of this is that I detect that you have come to a love and acceptance for that whole part of your journey, for the dissociation and for the rock bottom that you hit. And that really, I do feel from you gratitude for all of it. And I feel like that's really an important component of this, of this being your own light. This is the practice that you're talking about.

It definitely is. And I don't think it's something that can be forced because if you had told me 2 years ago to be grateful, or not that I should, but that I should consider it, maybe I would have, you know, I probably would have reacted badly to that because I was in the throes of it. And I think it's also important to realize where you're at. When you're in the throes of it, sometimes you can't be grateful for it. And that's That's totally okay because even that is part of the process. Gratitude is something that should always come naturally and it does if you just see the process through. You know, and it should never be forced, but just like keep stepping is how it was for me. You know, just keep taking steps. And eventually it just rose up in me naturally. I didn't try to be grateful for anything. I just was because I finally— it's like the clouds clear when you enter them. You know, when you're flying in a plane, you know, and so when you're— before you enter those clouds, they still look scary and it's not something that you can relax into and be grateful for. But after you enter the cloud and then fly out the other side, you have this greater perspective and you're able to naturally have the gratitude for your experiences that got you there.

Yeah. It sounds like what you're describing there is rather than sort of having a top-down imposition of gratitude, which could just feel tyrannical to parts of your system that are not feeling it, what you were doing was really looking for the gratitude that was there and cultivating that and drawing that up and letting that transform you from within.

Exactly. And I never throughout my entire journey, even in changing these states, attempted to control my emotions. I think that that's a form of resistance and that actually slows the entire process down. I always allowed myself to feel or not feel whatever was naturally occurring. But what I did control, again, was getting into the state of imagining what it would feel like, not emotionally, but just the sense, the vibe of what it would feel like to be healthy, to be abundant, you know, which like I said is sort of— it's not dependent on emotions. Emotions can flow through all of those experiences. You know, rich people are just as unhappy as poor people are in certain instances. But so it's not about controlling your emotions, more just reimagining yourself as almost like a new role. Like you're— it's like a character that you play, you know, because like we are, we are that essence, but we are also the characters. It's, it's a unified whole that comes with the human experience.

Beautiful, beautifully said. So to close this episode out, I'd just like to ask you, where do you see One World Media and your craft headed, and what is most exciting to you in life right now?

What's most exciting for me in life right now is to create films that are more authentic and that are more in line with this new sense of self that I have, that I've cultivated intentionally. Um, and I feel that processing these difficult emotions helped to release the bondage of these, of these weird attachments that I had to projects that weren't completely aligned. And it allowed me to remove those projects from my life and really create a wide space for new projects, projects that, you know, related to people that have gone through a similar journey of self-discovery and also just trying to illustrate things in the world that are that are beautiful and that are good and that are happening right now, that basically to say that, that not all is lost right now, because I know it's such a difficult time. I think there's a lot of beauty that's being created in the world right now and something is being born. And I would love to be the one to tell those stories.

Beautiful. Well, I'd love to tell them with you. And thank you so much for, for producing this podcast. And I'm really looking forward to continuing working with you and telling more of these stories.

Likewise.

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