The Power of Jesse Harless! Journey and resilience with drug & alcohol addiction!

Hello and welcome to The Power of Healing Your Energy Show. This show is all about unconditional love, your light, your intuition, and your soul's purpose. Depression and anxiety are a side effect of not living your life intuitively, not trusting your gut, the lost connections with your higher self and others. So let's go higher and feel deeper. Hello and welcome to episode 37, The Power of Jessi Harless. And this show is going to be about journey and resilience with drug and alcohol addiction. Now Jesse is a trainer, advocate, author, and founder of Entrepreneurs in Recovery. Jesse recently released his first Amazon bestselling book called Smash Your Comfort Zone with Cold Showers. I love that. I feel a little Wim Hof in there as well, but Jesse is the founder of recoveryfacilitation.com, Entrepreneurs in Recovery workshops and training, a platform and training that empowers people in addiction recovery to reach their full potential. Uh, he works with individuals, communities, companies, nonprofits, addiction treatment centers, programs throughout the Northeast US where he trains and facilitates his Entrepreneurs in Recovery workshops. And yes, here we are. It is no joke. Uh, this may be April 1st, but we are on and welcome Jesse. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Christine. Yeah. So grateful you asked me to come on your show.

It's great. Well, I, you know, I really— the whole premise of the show is to heal yourselves, and we all have different ways, uh, to get there, um, different methods. And the whole idea is just to bring together a whole tribe of folks that are doing their best and just sharing, you know, your gifts and your knowledge with the rest of us to maybe give us that aha moment, that epiphany, whatever that is, to bridge the gap. So, uh, and you are— you're in the U.S. Where exactly are you? I'm in Edmonton, Alberta. I always ask.

Yeah, I'm in New Hampshire, so I'm in the capital, Concord, New Hampshire. Yep, been here, nice. I don't know, 8 years maybe.

8 years. Are you originally—

I'm originally from Massachusetts, so not Massachusetts.

Okay. I do have some clients from Massachusetts as well. And hey guys, if you're here live, say hello, let us know where you're from, if this is your first time being here. And if you're on the replay as well, please, you know, feel free to interact because we won't leave you hanging. We're going to make sure that we answer all of your questions or respond to your comments. So I guess, you know, this, we were just talking before the show started everything that's happening right now. I mean, we've had 2 weeks pretty much to, I guess, go through the grieving process of losing all of our— well, it depends on who you talk to. Some people say freedom, you know, our routines, our patterns, everything. Like the carpet just went, right, got pulled out. So how— and you said that you've been preparing for this, so maybe give us a little bit of insight into how you see this.

Yeah, so I mean, when I say I've been preparing, I mean in the sense that for the last couple years I have been, you know, journaling more into myself. Meaning I left a corporate career, 14 years, that was very comfortable, and I had won an award that put me in a position to make money and to do what I, you know, thought I wanted. And I left it all 3 years ago. And I left it all to start chasing my own purpose and my own intuition and trusting my gut feelings. And as you mentioned in the beginning of the show, the gut feelings have never led me astray, not even in active addiction. So I, you know, so, so what I mean, um, I've been preparing for this— what I mean is I've been following my heart, and my heart has led me to starting my own business and to a business where I can serve others with integrity, when things that I have experienced myself, that now I can share what has worked for me. And so just like in life, you take what you need and leave the rest. You know, I share things with people and some people can use it and some people don't. And so, so for the last few years, I've been, you know, building this, this business and I've been eating a plant-based diet. I've recently been raw vegan for about 9 months, you know, so I've been doing things that are way out of the ordinary for most of society, even for me. And so, but since I've been doing that, it's been, it's been like, so now this happens, this coronavirus. And also, by the way, my business, more than half my business is online with Zoom. So I've been, I've been playing with Zoom for 3 years practicing and learning breakout rooms and how it works. And this happens, and that's what I mean by I'm prepared, is now I can deliver and help people in this virtual environment.

Definitely, yeah. And you know, that's the art of play, and I don't think that we play play enough or we're not curious enough. And look what happened. I mean, in— you kind of just— it just came together. I mean, you had an idea and you went with it, right? So Brandy's just saying hello. Thank you, Brandy, for joining us. Uh, thank you so much. We appreciate your time. Please share this out, tag a few friends as well. And, um, now you talk about drug and alcohol addiction. Is that something that, that's always been with you, or Do you remember, because some people will say, I remember the exact time, moment where I was when it started, or I've always kind of dabbled in it and then something just broke. Like, how does addiction work?

Well, addiction for me has been there before I was even born. So addiction runs in the family very deep, very, very deep. It's taken many family members' lives, you know, my father, my uncles, many, many, many, many. So And it affects, you know, the whole family, immediate family, brothers. So the reality is like for me, addiction, if I was to just say that it started before I was born, and then when I was born, you know, I was immediately had some addictive tendencies. And so, you know, and some of those addictive tendencies were exacerbated by trauma. So, you know, when I was 4 years old, my father left forever. And when he left, he not only just left, he was in a car accident that put him in a coma for 22 days and he had brain damage. So it wasn't just that he left. He was alive for another 16 years of my life and I couldn't communicate with him. So there was some deep underlying trauma that exacerbated underlying conditions that were waiting for fertile ground to grow. And so, um, you know, addiction in the beginning really just looked like sucking my thumb, which might sound really, really funny. Or absurd, but sucking my thumb was a coping mechanism for the pain. And that lasted until I was about 10 years old because the, the fear and the pain of embarrassment caused me to quit. So guess what happened? I picked up another addiction, which was— and it's really ironic where we are today— online addiction. So gaming addiction, pornography addiction at 11 years old. So this is 1990 4. And so, um, you know, 1995, 1996, those are the times when high-speed internet was just starting to emerge. And so I fell into that world. And now that, that problem is just out of hand today. It's in a whole nother realm of, of, of an issue for you, especially for the youth and the younger generation. So I, you know, so that's where it started. So then when I got into high school you know, it was only a matter of time before I was going to isolate and I was going to not— I was going to struggle. And, and so, yeah, and so on and on and on. Eventually, I really didn't pick up drugs and alcohol excessively in a way that you'd call an addiction until I was 18 when I went to college. And then that was when, you know, I just— I attracted the people who I was being. We attract who we are, we attract who we're being. So I was being someone that was very— I had very low self-esteem. I had very low self-worth. I really was very, very uncomfortable in my skin. So I attracted people that are getting outside of themselves and escaping. And so weed, alcohol, prescription drugs started in college, and then it just took off because I think that I might have had something in me that made me more prone to addiction with the lottery, the gene pool lottery, if there is such a thing. And so I, you know, it just took off. And by 22 years old, heroin, opioid addiction, alcohol, cocaine. And, you know, I had a lot of things happen in between. I'm actually finishing a book right now that's going to have a lot of that story in there. But the reality is just, it got really crazy. And then it all came down to a crashing halt when I got arrested when I was 22. And I'll pause there because that's where everything really, really changed.

Oh my goodness. Wow. I mean, just up to the age of 22, I, I felt, I mean, there's a lot of like when you said your dad left when you were 4, I had the same experience, although, yeah, he didn't, you know, wasn't in a car accident. But just there's a lot of stuff in your story that I resonate with. And I'm sure that there's others out there that, you know, are going, aha. Yeah. Oh, yes, that makes sense. I did that. Um, very— and then you were arrested at the age of 22. Now, was this your first run-in with the law?

Uh, it wasn't my first run-in with the law, but it was certainly the first time when there was federal agents involved and it was serious. So this is the first time when the gig was up, and if the gig wasn't up, it was 7 to 14 years in a federal prison. So that's how the gig was up at this point. Where the other times it was like open container charge, caught with alcohol, stuff like that. This one was very, very, very serious. And so I was, I was forced literally to make a decision. Do I want to change? Do I want to develop new habits? Do I want to listen to people around me who could be potential mentors? Or do I want to continue to try to run my life with the same thinking that got me into the mess and, and go to prison? So, you know, I, I made the decision to open to what was around me. And I opened to, you know, recovery meetings. I opened to a mentor. I opened to books. I opened to self-care practices at 22, which really shaped the rest of my life. And I still do those practices, some of them today. They look a little different, like journaling. You know, I still journal every single night without exception. It's been 14 years now straight. So I have 14 years of journals, and it's really powerful to look back. Those early days and see, wow, you know, this is amazing. Even to look back last year in your journal and see how far you've come. Because we don't always know how far we've come because time is an illusion, right? So we don't really know how far we've come. And so having journal, you know, journal practices and different practices I was doing at 22, it just started to kind of multiply. And so today, you know, I was 22, I'm going to be 37 here soon. And, you know, I'm still in recovery from drugs and alcohol. It's been 14 years and it's just been a real gift because now I can, with the work that I've done on myself, you know, I can be that person so that I can help other people to get through, whether they're in the beginning stages of addiction or even, even people who are very, very successful entrepreneurs who still struggle with addiction. So, hmm.

Okay, yeah, no, that's interesting. Um, the journaling part, I mean, that's pretty, uh, usually, you know, I don't know too many, uh, guys, and I wish there were more men that would tap into the journaling part. I think that what, what, um, because for myself I use gratitude and then I'll go into, um, you know, my day. But what does journaling look like to you? Do you just recap your day, or how does that work for you?

Well, so in the beginning, when I started journaling at 22, it was simply just to recap the day and throw in a couple affirmations, you know. And today what it looks like is a little different. I actually have a little template I created. So in this template, what it says is it says great. And what great means is what was great about today? And then the next one would say ideas. What are the ideas that came to me today that I learned from others? Or maybe I can implement into my business or help others to implement. And then there's one that says evidence. And the evidence one is about what is the evidence that I've seen today that shows that there is some type of infinite creator, some type of being, some type of spirit that's guiding things that I don't know how it all works, but it's there. So it's really proof that there's some type of underlying creator that is, that is doing things. So I put that in there as well. Yeah, so that's the start of the template. And then the rest of it, I just fill in with highlights, aha moments. Of the day, and then that's it. That's, that's what the journaling looks like. And it's gone from— what's interesting, it's, it's always been written by hand, but recently I've been trying to play with Evernote and putting into Evernote. And I don't recommend that if you're, if you're starting out journaling. I journaled for 14 years straight with a pen and a notebook. I would recommend doing that. And I still do journaling in the morning, so that's another discussion. But the nighttime journaling, now I do it in Evernote only because it's something that I can go back to now as I write books and as I write different things. I can really reference it a little easier. So I'm experimenting with that.

Hmm. Yeah, I know, that's a great idea. So morning and night, what— it's interesting that you do both because I only, for myself, I do morning. I might recap my night with a meditation. So why do you do both? I guess that's a good question.

The morning is a little different. So morning is a time for me to, as you said, meditate. So I get up, I have, I have a, I definitely have, I'm a routine person. So sorry for all those people that don't like routines, um, but I am, I am a routine-oriented person. So if you can just take some of these snippets and bring them into your daily habits or your daily life, could be really helpful. So the, what I do in the morning is I start the day with, uh, there's actually a lot of steps before I even get to this point. I'm gonna spare you that, but when I get to the meditation part of my day, after the meditation, what I do is I have a, I have a to-do planner, which is a notebook. And what it, what I write in there is I write my intentions for the day. That's what I write first. I write my intentions for the day because the night before in this planner, I already wrote down what my goals were for the day. I already wrote the to-do list. So in the morning, I'm actually writing down, here are my intentions for the day. Here's what I love and appreciate about myself. Here's what— and by the way, some of this is stuff that I've taken from other mentors that I have. Then I write something like, what am I grateful for? And I put HighLevel, and it's usually gratitude for the people I'm about to meet in the day. And then from there, I write some type of affirmation statement. So that's my journaling in the morning because the to-do list is already done as far as written out.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And everybody has their way. I mean, I like it. I can actually visualize seeing what you're doing and why you do it, um, because you're— you probably have quite the self-care routine or daily routine. Um, I mean, everybody has a different routine, but, um, as you know, it's a few components for me that are mind, body, spirit oriented. And, um, however, you know, you look at it, um, and it was interesting. I, I did— I took a quote off of your bio, Johann Hari, he has written a few books about addiction and he quoted— and I love the stuff that in how he talks about addiction, but he says the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.

Yeah.

And that's— and when I read his book, I mean, I just, I had so many aha moments with his, um, you know, his discoveries and meeting people and, um, just finding more about it. How did you come across him? Is— has he been someone that you've referenced a lot?

You know, I don't— I, I have referenced him in the past, but what he's saying in that TED Talk, you know, that is my whole business model because my whole business model is all about connection. That's what it is. So Entrepreneurs Recovery Workshops and what's now called also XCHANGE Recovery Workshops and the work I'm doing today as a facilitator and a trainer is all about connection. But you can't get to connection unless you have safety and inclusion and wholeness. So there's principles that, that are involved with creating connection. And so that's the type of stuff that I really try to embody and learn and teach in my work is, okay, yeah, connection, But how do we get there? How do we really connect with someone so that they will take risks, so that they'll share their story, so that they'll be vulnerable? That doesn't just automatically happen. You don't just go up to someone who's struggled with drug addiction for 20 years and say, "Hey, tell me your story. What happened to you?" That's— they're not going to tell you the story. But if you can create an environment where they feel safe, where they feel they can take the risks, and there's that feeling of wholeness, then they will share. So that's what I've really studied over the last few years. Is how do you do that? How do you create that inclusion, that safety, that wholeness? And so that's really what I try to do in the workshops that I do and the trainings that I do and the workshop I'm going to be running tomorrow night. Like, that's the type of thing. Those are the types of things that I really— because if you can create that environment, you can go into a 28-day treatment center or sober living home or a group of entrepreneurs and you can have them move as the fastest way possible to the new self, to change, all in one group setting, you can actually create that environment so they come out as a different person. They're starting to walk towards that emerging self, no matter where they are in that journey. So, yeah, so I do love the quote. And then that's really like, that really embodies the work I do is what he, what he is stating in that TED Talk.

Mm-hmm. Because I had, you know, my struggles with my own addictions and depression, anxiety for most of my life. But Many, many of that changed with me opening up to my, my gifts, my intuition. And that's, you know, it's a beautiful thing. So how do you create— is it the group environment that creates this opening up, this connection?

Is—

or how?

Yeah, it's the way you choreograph conversations. You know, it's, it's how you choreograph conversations. So, you know, when I design a question to ask for a group, it might take me an hour or 2 hours just to design one question. Because questions matter. Today, it's not about who has all the answers, it's who asks the right questions. So, so that's really about— that's what I try to do is I take a lot of time with designing the right questions. And if you can design the right questions and then choreograph conversations in a certain manner, then you can create that safety automatically so that people will then open up as quickly as 10 minutes into a group or 15 minutes into a group. And so learning how to do that came from something called XCHANGE. Which is what training I went through. And then it taught me how to have these conversations, how to go into any business, any system, and actually create that environment. So now I've taken that, you know, that was kind of the backstory I didn't share is when I left the job at— I was working at Verizon. When I left that job in corporate, what happened was I said, okay, I'm going to be a coach, right? I'm going to be a life coach. I'm going to be a speaker. And then I took this training that changed everything. As soon as I took the training, I went right to a sober living home and I started to design workshops. And in 1 hour I had these men and women coming out of the workshops electrified with energy. And I said, there's something to this. And that was in 2017. So now 3 years later, I'm still doing that, perfecting it. Now I'm training others to do it, but it really all came from the XCHANGE training I had. And now, you know, utilizing that in all the work I do, you know, I don't go and speak. If someone, if a group asked me to speak, I'll do it. But I always incorporate facilitation. I always incorporate questions where I can crowdsource the communal strengths, not just the strengths of myself or a few people. I want to hear the voices of the many, you know.

Yeah, that's important because I've been to some workshops in the past and it's almost like they're talking at you. Yeah, yeah, um, there's no— yeah, very passive. And it's— or it's all about me. We get that ego, I guess, would be. They're there for a reason, and they're there to, you know, sell you something, and then they're gone. So I guess this 2020 and everything that's happening right now, we're going to find out. The gurus will fall. That's all I'm going to say.

It's an interesting time for sure. The world will never be the same, that is for sure, coming out of this. And, um, you know, and, and we have a lot of opportunities right now to change it for the good right now. And it starts with us, not them, not the government, not your parents, no one. It starts with you. And that's where it starts, with self, working on yourself. Because once you start to do that and you start to heal, you start to heal the trauma, you start to hear you know, people would call it shadow work or whatever. When you start to do that, that's when you start to see differently. And that's when you can really start to help others who have gone through the same experience trust you enough so that when you share your story with them, they actually can say, ooh, that is me too. How can I then proceed to change this and heal this? And, and that's really like some of the work I'm doing in the book I'm writing is about how do you do that? How do you do that? And obviously the, the The population that I've been really passionate about is people who struggle with substance use disorder, is people who struggle with mental health. Why? Because I struggled with both very, very— it was very difficult for many, many years with mental health, addiction. And now on the other side of that, I still have to take care of my mental health. In fact, I went to school and got a master's in mental health counseling just for myself, just so I could try to master the self if it's possible, but it's not. But what you can do is you can start to master the way you interact with your heart. You can start to master the way that you actually show up with self-care routines and practices. And so that's what you can get really good at, is get really good at practices that can help you create the day that you want.

Yes. And be, and be, you know, the change that you that you've always wanted to. So Liz is just saying hi, and she's saying, starts with self, be the change you want to see.

Yeah, it's a great point.

Exactly, exactly. Um, now the old— the correlation with, um, trauma, addiction, and like, it's all intertwined, is it not?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. It feeds into each other, you know. I You know, there's people who never— I don't really know anyone on the planet that hasn't had some, some form of trauma. Because the thing is, is I don't think people understand the definition of trauma and just having the what it is. So like, for me, I had like, you would say, oh, you had trauma. If we were looking at like the ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, like, oh, you had trauma. But there's many people who have had similar situations. Like, let me give you an example. Okay, I was 8 years old, 9 years— I think I was around 8 or 9 years old. My best friend moved away. This was someone that I was inseparable with. This is someone that we just spent all the time together. And by the nature of kind of my personality, I'm more of like an empath, intuitive empath that like is fine being by himself. But when I found this best friend, which is how empaths usually are, we have one best friend, a couple. But with this one particular best friend, when he moved away across town It devastated me. Guess what? That's trauma. That's actual trauma. And people don't look at things like that as trauma. In fact, there's things that are actually trauma that are physical abuse or things that it's been brushed aside because of the family belief system that like, you know, be strong. And that, you know, that's very, very unhealthy. So we're coming from that. Thank God we're moving away from that now. We're starting to wake up. To get away from that and realize, because we're getting more into being our authentic self, so we're starting to realize we need to work on this stuff. Oops, I was wrong, you know, and then start to heal that. But oh my God, it is all connected. It is all connected for sure.

It is. Yeah, I mean, I read somewhere just being born is trauma, coming into this process, or being in the womb as, um, who was it, Joe Dispenza, or is it— who said that? It's It starts even in the womb with, you know, if the mother is stressed. Yeah, yes, it's good. And it's just, you— I believe you went and you went and met them and they were having a workshop, Gregg Braden, Joe Dispenza.

Yeah, that's really interesting. But that's how it is when you just start to open up to what could be possible. All of a sudden, these opportunities— when you start chasing after your dreams, it's not cliché. Literally, the universe conspires to help you.. And so me just being, putting it out there, like, oh, I'd love to meet Gregg Braden someday. Cause I watched the show Missing Links on Gaia and it was life-changing. And so what happens less than a year later, I'm with Debbie Rosman, the CEO of HeartMath. I'm now HeartMath certified as of this January 2020. And then I get to go meet Gregg Braden, have dinner with him, and then meet Joe Dispenza. It's like, how did that even happen? It's not because I'm special. It's because I put out my intentions every single day. I do these daily practices. That put me in a more probable chance, or you, whatever you want to call it, a chance to, for it to happen. Some would call it law of attraction, some would call it the law of averages, some would call it quantum, whatever you want.

Yes, works.

And so that is, is how I got to meet, and I got to ask Greg before the coronavirus hits. I said, hey Greg, what's an event that you'd recommend? Because he was extraordinary. It was 2 days with Greg Braden, and he said things that I won't even share here, just go read his next book coming out. You'll learn all about it. But he essentially told me to come to this workshop in Mexico in May, and that's now gone. So the world is so different right now. You know, I had all these plans on my calendar and they're not there anymore. So, so this is why— this is what is teaching us. This is teaching us that, oh, you have all these plans? Gone. Because we need to be doing the inner work right now. We need to be looking hard at what we're doing to Mother Earth, the planet, and really start to, start to heal ourselves so we can start to heal others and help the animals and help the planet to, to become more whole. And so it's a win-win for all, not just for a few.

Exactly. It's a collective consciousness.

Yeah.

And that, no, that's amazing. I've been following them as well. So, I mean, I've put one day, you know, it would be wonderful to meet them. And I do watch a lot of their, um, you know, their webinars and such as well, read their books. So that, that's great that you got to do that. Amazing. So I guess, what, uh, you know, what else are you putting out into the universe? What else are you looking to manifest?

Well, I guess the big thing right now is, is, you know, I had this book idea for 10 years to write a book about, about my story of addiction, and then how did I implement routines and habits to help me come out of it.. And so it took me 10 years to get the courage to finally start to write it. And I'm writing the book right now. And so the book, it has a framework and I can share it right now because maybe this could be helpful to some of the listeners.

Sure.

So one of the frameworks besides telling my whole story, and yes, I tell my whole story to open the book and that's going to annoy some people. That's okay. Because this book is not for everyone, but I can tell you that by sharing the story, your story, Matters. So by sharing your story, you start to see the links and you start to see the synchronicities, which is the best part about sharing your story. Oh, it's so negative and all this happened. No, you start to see the synchronicities of the lessons that made you the person you are today. So that's how my book opens. And then I go into what I call— out of all things I could have called it— fears, the F.E.A.R.S. formula.

Okay.

And the F.E.A.R.S. practices. But here's what they are. Focus, Elevate, Appreciate, Resilience, and Self-Care. So I believe if you can embody these 5, and I can talk about more what they are, those are just the words, but like it's focus on your purpose, or if you're in recovery, focus on your recovery is number 1. Focus on your recovery is life and death for people in addiction recovery. So focus on your recovery. E is elevate your life or elevate your recovery. A is appreciate your life or appreciate your recovery. R is resilience in your recovery or resilience in life. And then self-care in recovery or self-care in life. These 5 principles is what have helped me in the last 14 years be able to literally live the dream. I'm living the dream. Am I super wealthy and rich? No, it's not about that. I'm rich in the inside and the outside material wealth has come and has gone and more will come and more will go. It's not about that. So that's— so the beauty of following this formula that I created for myself, I needed it. It was life and death. I needed to live this formula of focusing and elevating and appreciating and resilience. Those are all embodied within practices within those that I teach in the book. And so I actually teach those in my workshops that I run live now with the workshop. So one, one workshop that you can experience it firsthand is tomorrow night, Thursday night. I'm going to do it for the first time ever live, and I'm going to do it with people, strangers that I don't even know, and people that I know. It doesn't matter. It's— these are— a lot of it is just embodying universal principles. And so that's kind of what I'm up to now. Sorry, it's kind of a long answer.

No. Hey, this is, this is your show, not mine. You're the guest. But yeah, if you can put the links in afterwards, you are able to add comments. Comment. So then if folks want to join tomorrow, and, you know, I'm curious, I think I will as well. I just, I like the, I like, you know, the fear, like how you broke that down. I think that's beautiful. The fact that, you know, we met was not by accident, that we have a lot of things in common. Yeah, it just speaks from the heart. And the fact that you're certified in HeartMath, which I know quite a bit about as well. I'm not certified, but I love the teachings and, you know, what it stands for because I'm all about love. I'm all— that's— that was my lesson, was all about unconditional love for myself. And now I'm trying to kind of share that with everybody else so they can find it. I mean, that's really the end game, or the end goal. I don't want to say end game. Jeez. Um, your first book, um, Smash Your Comfort Zone with Cold Showers. Tell us about that.

Okay. Yeah. So that book has kind of a funny story. So in 2015, I had a friend, his name's Nick, who's an amazing musician. You can check him out. His name's Etheric. Okay.

Wow.

So he came over my house and he said to me, hey, you need to start taking cold showers. He's pretty straightforward with his message usually. So I'm like, no, it's New Hampshire, December, not gonna happen. I'm totally fine taking hot showers. And, and so he said, no, you need to look into this and what this can do for you, because he knew that I still struggled with— at that point I was about 11 years into recovery and I was still struggling with social anxiety big time. Okay, I'd done so much. I'd been on medication. I've done everything you can imagine, therapy, all of it. I had a master's in mental health counseling, but I still couldn't overcome a lot of this that was still happening underneath, underneath this, this subtle anxiety. So, so he said, you should take this cold shower. And I did. When I— when he said it to me, I didn't take it right away. But eventually I jumped in the cold water, straight cold. And when I came out, you know, I was red, you know, I was like, wow, I have a lot of energy. But here's what happened. 2 hours later, I went to a meeting and I wouldn't ever have been to— I've been to this meeting 100 times and I went to this meeting and I had no anxiety at all. In fact, I just felt like, like, like I could breathe for the first time in a very long time. And so I said, how is this possible? I didn't do anything differently except take a cold shower. And so what I said to myself is I'm going to give it 30 days. I love 30-day rituals and 30-day challenges and 30-day trials. So I'm going to give it 30 days. I gave it 30 days. And what happened is my anxiety continued to decrease and I started to become more confident. I started to be more disciplined. I started to have breakthroughs at work, like starting setting records, like I'm like, what is going on? So it was what I think what happened is I was already doing some, a lot of positive habits, but I stacked this habit in between those habits and the cold shower. Just right at that time too, I started doing a morning routine. And so what I would do is I would do this morning routine and end it with the cold shower and I would just blast into my day. You know, one of my mentors, Hal Elrod, says how you start your day is how you create your life. So I truly believe that. And so I just started to accelerate. Doing this morning routine called the Miracle Morning, and then doing the cold showers, and I just started to launch. And that's what launched me into entrepreneurship, in fact. I just, the momentum would not stop. I found myself in Switzerland. I won an award from Verizon, the highest award called President's Cabinet, and I got to meet the president and vice president of Verizon at the time. And I just asked them directly about my dream, and I just started following my dream. And then what I found out is it wasn't with Verizon. It was actually a different course. And so then I followed that course. So the cold shower journey started in 2015. I've been taking them ever since. So it's been 5, almost 5 years of cold showers. And I ended up writing a book because what happened in 2017, right before I was leaving my job, people would ask me, why do you take cold showers? And I would say, because it helps me with, with a lot of things. I mean, it helps me with my health. I don't get sick anymore. My skin is clearer. But, but the big thing is, is, is not— and there's other stuff that is not going to come out in journals and studies because this is a free thing. So the powers that be do not like free stuff that helps. So, so here's the thing is, is having a practice like a cold shower practice, what it did is allowed me to help this anxiety and people got interested. So they said, can you write a book about this? And I'm like, no, I'm not a writer. I don't write books. And so eventually I said, you know what, let me draft the book. And I drafted this little, little book, ebook. And then what I did is I let it go for a whole year. I let the thing go because of fear, because I'm like, who am I? I'm not an expert. Like, who am I to write a book about cold showers? And then what happened is I saw that same person a year and a half later, and she said, hey, whatever happened to that book you were writing? And it hit me directly, a dart in the heart. I felt like, oh, that book is sitting on my laptop. I'm either going to go home tonight and delete it, or I'm publishing it. And that's what happened. I decided to publish it. So 3 months later, on 11/11/2018, I published Smash Your Comfort Zone with Cold Showers. And then I recorded the audiobook and the rest is history. And it's a very, very short book. It's so short, it's almost comical. It's very short. But here's the thing. I just got to the point. Here it is. You know, some would say, oh, it's very masculine. It's very— but, but I needed that at the time. We need both a balance of masculine and feminine. To. So at that point in time, I needed that masculine push. I needed that fire to get me moving. And now today, I do more of the feminine energy. So today, I'm now tuning more into my, uh, journaling, trusting my intuition, doing more meditation and yoga. But I still need the balance of both so I can get things done. Yeah, so I can't just be all one or the other. So the cold showers was that big catalyst push. And I'm not the only one. You can look up Yogi Bhajan and many, many people You know, there's many, many people who are both very masculine and both on the feminine side. You got Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss, and you have Yogi Bhajan, you have a few other spiritual leaders that do the cold showers. Why do they do the cold showers, right? I mean, there's a reason. Some would say it's a spiritual cleansing, but for me, it just works. It's fast, it's simple. And by the way, if you, if you're like, I'm not taking a cold shower, you don't have to take it cold the whole time. You can take a warm shower, end it 30 seconds cold.

That's what I do.

Perfect.

I do. And it's good for the nervous system as well. I mean, there's lots of benefits.

I completely hack my nervous system with cold showers.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great— and I mean, yeah, I get it, when it's cold you don't want to do it, but once you start doing it, it's like, yeah, it— there's the— the results are immediate. So it's not— you just have to, yeah, take the ego out of it and it's all good. She loves the title of your book, by the way. Yeah, I think it is Appreciate that. That's great. Um, so I always ask— well, usually I ask before we go in, uh, to do this, do the show— I always ask, how can we as a collective energy help you make your dreams come true?

Well, I think the big thing for me right now with what's happening in the world is really just giving away. Give, give, give. If you have gifts to give, please give. So I'm now— I'm just trying to give away these workshops for free and just run them so I can get people to just come together as a community, as one, to resource, to, to share the resources, to really tune into the heart and to share. And, and so that's what I'm doing is I'm going to be running a lot of these workshops. But if you want to know how to do that, obviously I have a training for it. There's another higher level training I can tell you about. You can reach out to me about it. How do I actually bring all the things that I just got canceled I was supposed to run in the actual Live space is all canceled now. How am I going to make a living? Well, I can help you with that because that's exactly the training that I went through. It teaches exactly how to bring it all into the online space, and the biggest masterminds in the world are now reaching out too.

Nice.

Yeah, so this is something I'm happy to help with. Um, as far as other than that is my book, you know, just send that, send that energy that I can get this book finished by the summertime now because I have more time to write. Because I believe that this book telling my story is going to give other people permission, who have been in recovery, who have so much to offer, but because of the stigma, they don't share their story. They're gonna— it's gonna give them the permission to break the chains of stigma and say, I'm sharing my story out loud. And they're going to write books, and they're going to publish courses, and they're going to get out there in the world. I have so many friends in recovery that don't share it, and I love them, but I understand there's a lot of stigma and why they do that. But what if they— we broke free from that, and every person who is in recovery came out and started to share and say, these are the positive stories? We're always focused on the meth epidemic and the opioid epidemic. One of our stories. We should have a whole TV network about the stories in recovery. They're so powerful. So that's what the book is. It's, it's, it's a collection of my story. It's a collection of other people who use some of these things that I've taught, but it's really just the formula, the fears, you know, I don't know if I'm going to call it formula or practices or whatever. It doesn't matter. But that's what it is. It's just a guideline that I've been using for 14 years and it's really helped me.

Oh, and I, yeah, I can tell, you know, you've got so much passion and your intention is to connect and to share and to get other people to realize there gifts that, you know, that are masked as other things. I mean, very— a lot of synchronicities here, that's for sure. So it's, it's tomorrow, and how, how are people going to get a hold of you, or where's the best place to go for that?

Tomorrow night at 7:30 Eastern Time, it's gonna be a Zoom workshop, highly experiential. So it's not one that you're gonna sit back and watch people speak. No, you're involved. It's going to be pair sharing and breakout rooms. You're going to really see the power of Zoom and what you can do with Zoom, but it's going to be really about elevating your life. So it is for you, but it's also for the collective whole, which you'll see when we start to pool resources in a virtual setting. And so tomorrow at 7:30 Eastern time, um, I'll share the link out. Um, the, the, if you want the link now, it's, it's www.exchangeapproach.com/recovery. So X the word change.com/recovery. Okay, you know, we can share that out. Yeah, and so come on and join. I can only do 100 people max, which would be a lot of people, but Zoom doesn't allow me to go more than 100 with my subscription. So if you want to get in there, uh, I don't think we're gonna have 100. If we do, I'm— that would be so crazy having 100 with breakout rooms.

Let's, let's do 100.

Come on, you guys, we will do it. We will do it.

Yeah.

So come and join. It's going to be a fun time.

Like I said, I'm very curious and I, you know, just, you know, be open to everything and attached to nothing like we already discussed. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we, you know, say goodbye and, you know, thank you so much for your time?

Well, thank you so much for having me and creating this safe space to share and You know, it's amazing, you know, definitely all synchronicity. And I, um, the only thing I would say is like, we're living in a virtual world now, so please take care of your well-being, you know. Please take care of your well-being. Practice, practice, practice drinking more water, getting nature around you at your desk, going out in nature, going for walks, drinking more juices. Get more vitamin C, eat your mangoes, make the juice. You know, do the things that are going to boost your vitality, boost your immunity, and boost your spirit so that you can show up today for your family, so you can show up for your clients. Life is still going on. So, you know, really practicing well-being in a virtual world, I think, is just essential. So just really pay attention to that. And you can even Google search, and there's plenty of great resources now because there's so many things for free. It's really inspiring.

Definitely. And I, I'm just going to throw in grounding, lots of grounding.

Yeah, especially if you're an empath, you definitely—

yes, definitely, definitely. Well, I thank you for your time. Um, yeah, I've learned— I'm sure we can talk, uh, lots more. Uh, if you guys have questions, even on the replay, please, um, put them below in the comments, reach out, send an email, send a private message. We will get back to you. And I also want to let you guys know we're working on the 5D Love Summit for this Saturday. This is the third round, and I've got 4 lightworkers joining us this Saturday, April 4th, from 10 AM to 2 PM Mountain Standard Time. Go to my page for more information. It'll be shared out in all the social media links. Looks like— oh, Liz is just saying thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for joining. We appreciate you. I want to wish you guys love, light, and blessings. And please remember, healing Where the ego ends. Take care.