295: Create a Memory of Your Future Self — On Hypnotherapy with Inna Aizenshtein

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Every time we Re experience a memory, it changes with regards to what else is happening to you in this moment. So if right now you remember something, let's say you're feeling really good and you remember a traumatic event that happened to you in the past, that memory is now updating based on the things that your current state is bringing into that memory.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello, hello Pivoters. I am so delighted, excited and grateful to be recording in person today with my dear friend of over a decade of living in New York City, fondly remembering all our Friday dinners with our friend Julie, all kinds of antics and life ups and downs over the years. I'm here today with Ina Eisenstein, who is a hypnotherapist and coach, examining the role that shame and fear play in the unfolding of our lives. Prior to her career in hypnotherapy, Ina worked in the fashion industry for 14 years, most recently as a Creative director. She initially became interested in hypnotherapy while searching for a healing modality to help repair her nervous system. After years of physical and emotional burnout, she now helps people work through and release outdated subconscious blocks so they can reclaim their worthiness and become more magnetic. She's doing this right now, much to my admiration through TikTok shorts where she has accumulated over 1.5 million views at the time of this recording, probably many more by the time this is released and in her one on one sessions with clients. Ina, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. This is so wild. It's crazy to be here and it's crazy to be in this physical location.

I know this is where I pretend that I'm totally making it.

You know you are. Oh my God.

We're here in this studio and it has this nice faux grass wall. The impetus for this, hilariously enough, because we've known each other for so long and it is funny, we've had so many casual conversations over coffees and brunches and dinners. You are leaving New York After 20 years living in the city, and we have to be recording this, as you pointed out, on a full moon. So I want to start there. What is it like to be making this enormous transition after 20 years of investing your energy here?

It's wild, scary, exciting, all of the things. It's hard. When I think about how long I've been in New York, it's kind of hard to really put it together. And I've been here for 21 years. I'm a different person now. Obviously, anyone after 21 years, you were just a baby.

You were early 20s when you came.

Right.

How old were you when you got here?

17, 18. Yeah.

And you were pursuing fashion at that time.

Yeah.

Isn't it interesting that your identity, you were a fashion designer and ultimately a creative director right up until the pandemic hit, Right?

Yeah.

So you've also pivoted very much in the last few years to go all in on your own business.

Absolutely.

How has your identity shifted from when you first got to New York and you thought that fashion was it for you, and that was so much your identity, to where you are now running your own business, doing hypnotherapy, which some would look, say, from the outside. Oh, Ina did a 180. They're so different.

Identity is something that I think about and talk about a lot in my work. And this is actually the perfect question, the perfect example of that, in that my identity had been shifting for many years before I made the switch. You know, thinking of all of the ways in which I was inspired to pursue any sort of healing modality or pursue entrepreneurism or any of that. Right. Like, that's kind of how you and I got started. That was freaking wild. And I was still in fashion. I'm absolutely a different person now. And I think that becoming more aware of being able to examine sort of my own drivers maybe have allowed me to sort of step into a more authentic version of myself. And like I said, that isn't something that just sort of happens overnight, as you know. Right. There's a lot that goes into it and there's a lot of behind the scenes things that even you yourself may not be aware of that I wasn't aware of that I was like, oh, I just enjoy doing this kind of research or I just enjoy doing this type of daydreaming. And all of that stuff adds up.

I think it was interesting how in your bio now, with the gift of hindsight, and it is cool that we're recording this, you're moving out of the city in two weeks. So maybe this is one of those caps on the previous incarnation of your pivots and your career, how you said that you became interested in hypnotherapy while searching for a healing modality to help repair your nervous system. And I remember I knew you in those years of being in fashion, a lot of burnout culture, a lot of short staffed teams and companies where it's hard to know whether it's just you, whether it's the whole industry, what's the issue. And then I know at that time it's very intimidating to think about leaving it because you probably were saying to yourself, well, I can't just quit my job in fashion. You've come to this certain level of creative director. I mean, leaving that to go start your own business feels so risky. And yet your health was a struggle. I wonder how you think about that now, knowing what you know now and having experienced all these healing modalities. Maybe you can tell us some of them in hindsight, like what your body was trying to tell you.

I think you and I have talked about this so much over the years of. I may not allow myself to consciously become aware of how I'm running myself into the ground, but your body always will.

How was it showing up for you? What were some of the signals?

First, emotionally, there was a lot of trying to keep myself very busy. It is cool. Work is really busy, but I'm also gonna do this other thing on the side. And by the way, this other thing. And I'm going to be impressive to these other people in this way. And look at how good I am at follow through. Right? That was one thing. Physically, what ended up happening, I wanna say around 2015, maybe so 7ish years ago now. At that time I was competing on a local level in weightlifting and I was in a very strict macro tracking diet. My body just kind of rebelled, which of course I look at it now in a very different way. But I started gaining a lot of weight. I realized, oh yeah, it's not just the weight. I also can't sleep. Oh, and by the way, my digestion's really bad. Oh, and by the way, my skin is, you know, has always been really good. Now I'm breaking There's all of these symptoms that force me to slow down. And I remember working with a nutritionist at the time, and she was like, I need you to look at all of the things that you're doing in the day and cut them at least in half, and just throw that half out the window. Because you can't, because your body is like, this is not a drill.

This is not a drill.

This is it.

I love how you said so in the moment. It felt like your body was rebelling, and I bet you were kind of frustrated, like your body is getting in the way of all this stuff you're trying to do, and it's holding you back. How do you see it now?

Oh, my God. So right now, I really look at any sort of in quotes, setback, right, as an opportunity to sort of reflect. And I know that everybody and their mother says this, and it's also so almost cringy. It's like, oh, be grateful for what you have, all that stuff. But honestly, one of my biggest mottos is like, how is this happening for me? So anything that's tripping you up, whether it's TikTok views or health stuff, like, how is this happening for me? Because what is this actually showing me? Eventually, I found out through a lot of seeing many specialists and whatever, it was just much more difficult to get diagnosed than it should have been. I found out I had hypothyroidism. And the way that it's described is your body's just confused and it's attacking itself, and we need to fix it so it won't attack itself. And I think one of the bigger turning points that I had in my healing journey, and I don't know whether at that time I was like, holy shit, this is amazing insight. But it is something that I think about that moment all the time. Cause I remember where I was walking to the subway to go to work in the morning, and I was listening to a podcast, and what I heard was, it's not that your body is attacking itself. It's that your body is trying so much harder than you're allowing it. You are just pushing and pushing and pushing, and your body is going at 300% right now, and you are not listening. And so your thyroid isn't sluggish. It's not confused. What it's doing is actually following the things that you're asking it to do. And these are the results. And so that was a huge turning point for me. And what's funny is, now that I work with clients or Even, I mean, TikTok culture is like TikTok therapy, right? It's such a thing. So I'm watching a lot of these. I'm just exposed to a lot of these stories that people tell. And it's funny how much easier it is to see through the lens of watching somebody else going through something similar where you're like, wait, are you kidding me? So the story that I have is an acquaintance that I was following on Instagram, she was training for a marathon and she had all these health issues and she's like, I am pushing through. This is what I need to do. This is my biggest goal. I need to complete this marathon. And as she's running the marathon, she broke her ankle or something really traumatic happened. And the post that she wrote afterwards on Instagram was like, I can't believe this. I can't believe that my body betrayed me. And it's so easy to see it from the outset and be like, girl, you are pushing through so many challenges and you are just blind to them. And you are saying no. For me to complete this marathon is the most important thing where your body is like, I am running on a thread. There is nothing left here. And so I didn't at that time, but I really wanted to comment and be like, why have you betrayed your body? Ooh.

Wow, that's so powerful. That's so powerful.

Thank God I didn't say that, right?

It's like, not everyone's ready to hear that, but it is very fascinating to turn that around. Like Byron, Katie, and the work and turnarounds and it's, oh, my body betrayed me. Is that true? And what you said about our bodies being for our benefit and they're actually. I really love thinking of my body a, as a friend, but also like a dog, unconditionally loyal, always trying to do what I'm asking of it. It needs water, it needs exercise, it needs fresh air. All the things that for me, having a dog reminds me to do. Play, plenty of rest. And yet we sometimes, when we do, make it the enemy. It's so crazy to hear about your thyroid issue. And you're so right. It never occurred to me the language that oftentimes doctors will use because I had a hyperthyroid the entire time I worked a full time job. And it wasn't until I left that I could set my own schedule and take care of myself better. And the doctors were always telling me, you need to kill your thyroid. Yeah, we need to give it a radioactive iodine pill. You need to eat this radioactive iodine pill we need to kill your thyroid. And instead you'll be on this medicine every day the rest of your life. And even then, this doctor was adamant that that be the solution. And I remember thinking, I'm going to kill an organ in my body. Why? Because my levels aren't normal. And I get it. Sometimes that is the only course of action. But at that time I was skeptical. It just didn't seem like the only way forward. And I think sometimes doctors, they would tell me, oh, do you have stress in your life? Can you reduce stress? I wouldn't have known really how to reduce stress in the context of the pace and culture and full time job the way that I can on the other side. Not saying as an entrepreneur you can reduce all stress, but at least I can sleep without an alarm or take care of my body and just try, at least attempt to be working in partnership with my body. And Gabor, mate, I'll put it in the show notes. He wrote a book called when the Body says no.

It's just all these examples that you shared too, is our bodies saying, no, I've done as much as I can and I simply can't do more. What of all the healing modalities that you tried, when your body was speaking up and saying, I can't, I can't do this this way anymore, what was the most powerful?

Hypnosis was the most powerful.

And tell us all, what does that entail for people who aren't familiar with hypnotherapy? What is it? And were you afraid to try it at first?

I was not afraid to try it because at that point, first of all, I've always been kind of open to all of these more esoteric healing modalities, let's say. Right. Or however you want to think about it.

Yeah.

Hypnosis was the most impactful in that the way that it works is. And different practitioners do this differently. It is an opportunity for you to explore creatively without the distractions of your everyday doubts and limiting beliefs. So I believe that we have all of the answers for anything that's troubling us. We have all the answers to all of that already within us. What's blocking us in the conscious state from accessing those answers and those truths for us is all of the memories of all the times that you fucked up in the past and all the times that you thought you knew what to do and all the times that you had your golden ticket and turned out to not be a golden ticket. Right. And so if I ask you right now, okay, Jenny, what do we do about this thing that's bothering you? It's very hard to kind of push all of those doubts away that are literally clouding your vision. Right. In some ways, we can access that a lot in meditation, but meditation, in fact, hypnosis sounds a lot like a guided meditation. The purpose of meditation is to focus your awareness. The purpose of hypnosis is to heal. So we are focusing your awareness within, hopefully are able to push away some of those limiting beliefs or negative thoughts or whatever to the periphery and be able to tune in and really access your inner truth through your body and through your thoughts and through the things that you have already, over the course of your life, have picked up. And that is why I think kind of engaging in some sort of creative practice or even I just heard one of your recent podcasts where it was looking for inspiration. You were talking about cutting out articles or keeping articles right for Baby Tiago Forte. Yes, yes, yes. Just having these things available to you and just being like, I don't know why I need this, but someday I'll need it.

Yes.

And creating that practice as something that you just on an ongoing basis are aware of or are inspired by or whatever. And we are accepting and soaking up information all of the time, and we're not consciously aware of it. The subconscious mind is responsible for 95 to 98% of our actions and impulses, and it is constantly picking up information. And so when you are able to bypass your conscious state and get into your subconscious, all of that stuff that you've been inadvertently picking up and recording into your subconscious is now available to you. And that is why doing or having some sort of creative exploration, go to examples, morning pages.

What else counts as creative exploration practice?

So for me, it's funny because I was working in a visual field, you know, design, creative stuff. Pinterest is my best friend, has always been, and to this day really, really is looking at. For me, visual things are really inspiring. So keeping track of, I have folders and folders in every place. I have folders on my Instagram, I have folders on my phone, I have folders in Pinterest, I have folders on TikTok of all of the different things that are interesting or inspiring or whatever. And I really think of that's just how my brain works. I like to be able to access a thing that says cool videos or. Right now I'm really into embroidery. So I have fabric arts or embroidery or macrame or whatever. I have a macrame. But I have a folder of different cool stitches that are just sitting there. And once in a while when I don't know what to do or when I am bored, I'll just dig through that. Journaling is another really, really important. I think that's a really important modality. And journaling strengthens the prefrontal cortex where our executive function lives. And being able to process and name things verbally is really, really important to allowing yourself to like, actually get yourself out of some sort of a traumatic.

State or a, maybe even a state that's just draining you right. Or not serving you right.

But more so when you're activated, when we get activated, or when we get triggered, you go into Fight flight Freeze Fawn.

Yes, I even heard one recently. Fight flight freeze, please. That Fawn and please are pretty similar.

People. Pleasing and overly trying to ameliorate the situation. Yeah.

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I want to come back to the prefrontal cortex and strengthening it because I think that's so fascinating. Can you walk us through the difference between. Let's say you have an hour with someone and it's a coaching session versus a hypnotherapy session. So in a hypnotherapy session, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are they in a different state of consciousness the entire time or is it a guided meditation almost in the first part and then coaching comes in in the second. Take us into the experience as a coachee or hypnotherapy.

Just for those who haven't tried it yet.

Yeah, so my sessions are a little bit longer than most hypnotherapy or most hypnosis sessions that you might get because I actually put those things Together. So we begin with. Half of the session, for me is a coaching session, and we talk about your current triggers. We talk about, what does that remind you of? Or how are you feeling it in your body? A lot of people come to me and they're like, I don't have memories of this event. I don't know why it keeps triggering me. And they come to me and they're like, help me remember an event. Meanwhile, memories are completely unreliable. And the fact that you don't remember them means that something about that is not safe. So you don't remember it because it's not safe. However, your subconscious mind not only actually has some sort of a stamp of that event, but also your body is recording it. So a lot of times what we end up doing is, okay, this thing feels like shit right now. We don't know why or we don't know what it's necessarily reminding you of. How does it feel in your body and digging into. And when you tune into your body and you say, oh, it feels like there's a bowling ball in my chest that's about to drop into my stomach, if I have you just begin to describe it again. Prefrontal cortex, naming the things beginning to describe it allows you to then tune in to. Your body is recording that in that specific way because it's actually tied to something else. And so the first half of the session, the coaching part of the session, is usually trying to access your current experience through the lens of something that's happened to you in the past. And the reason that's important is because I need to light up those neural pathways so that when we go into trance, when we go into hypnosis, we can very quickly jump from A to X or whatever. Right? I don't need to take you through each of these steps when you're in a relaxed state, because even just having a conversation where you're engaged is a type of hypnosis. When we're engaged or when we're having a conversation that is lighting up all these different things, the doubts and the negative thoughts are already further out, away from you. And so, especially when I ask you something that's a little bit confusing for some people, like, what color is that bowling ball? Right. That's just sort of like, wait, I have to tune into that. I have to notice that that is when you remove all of those doubts, you just are kind of exploring it. That is half of the session. And then once we go into trance, it really begins a guided meditation. Hypnosis works very well Via zoom or even on the phone. Back in the day, people used to do it like you call a number and somebody hypnotizes you over the phone.

Really? And you don't have to be laying on a couch in a psychiatrist's office.

No, I mean if you have a couch or if you have something that's comfortable for you, you can be sitting, you know, sitting in a comfortable chair. Yeah. You just need to feel like you are safe. And so in some ways doing it in your own space is better because that is where you are being triggered as well. When you are sitting in your bedroom and you're going over the things that happened to you that day, that's when you get triggered. Being able to reprocess it in a different way now through this, you know, via a zoom session that allows you to re experience that differently. The session begins with a pre talk. Then I take you into this meditative state and I then set up a very vague scene for you to find yourself in. My first sessions are always a future self experience. It's always creating a memory of your future self.

You gotta say more about that. Oh yeah, because it's so interesting.

Yeah.

A memory of your future self.

Yeah.

What is that?

That experience is I think actually what helped to turn around my health situation seven years ago. It is the process of finding yourself having achieved the things that you want to achieve. And what made it very difficult for me at that time is that and actually was a symptom of the place that I was in is that I didn't know what I wanted to do in my future. But you can find yourself in a place where you feel free or you feel calm or you feel happy or you feel healthy. Right. And your mind will unfold a visual or an experience of what that looks like. And what we do in hypnosis and what you can do in any sort of self guided meditation even is start to notice all of your senses. That visual or that experience that you're seeing. What does it look like, what does it sound like, what does it smell like, what does it taste like, how does it feel in your body? Or are you feeling, let's say the temperature of the air on your skin, Maybe you're feeling the clothes on your body and what you're wearing and how does that feel? And as you start to tune into each one of those senses, the experience unfolds in front of you. And I could tell you, Jenny, tell me, you know, find yourself in a place in the future a year to two years from now where you are at peace and joyful and you can tell me, I am just holding a cup of coffee and I will ask you, what does that mean for you and what else do you know about yourself? And like magic, you will know exactly what that means. You will know how you got there, what else is happening in your life. You will know what does work look like. You will know what do your relationships look like. You will know all of the things and how you've been able to get there from literally focusing on something that seems like a very simple scene. So we're not talking about, you know, unless for you, it's like I'm on a stage and there's a million people here.

Do you know what's incredible, and I have chills about this because I know you are building, flexing your intuition muscle as well and growing that stronger and stronger.

My number one marker of my future self when I first did an exercise like this in 2008 was me having coffee in a light filled apartment. It was exactly the coffee. It's so crazy. I mean, I know probably a lot of people visualize themselves with a cup of coffee in their hand, but truly, my one anchor, my memory of my future self, was having coffee, looking at a view. Sometimes it's of the ocean, but sometimes it's in the city in a light filled apartment. And then five years later, there I was on Mott street, living in the studio with a cup of coffee in my hands. And I go, oh my goodness, I've been here before when I did that exercise. And then 10 years later, I'm having coffee and I'm by the beach and I'm looking out the window and I go, I've been here before. I've been here. This was the vision. Even now, while you were talking, we're sitting here with our iced oat lattes, shout out, Cafe Grumpy. And it's a light filled room and we're just talking while hitting record. And as you were talking, I'm going, I'm having that moment again where these parallel universes intersect. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's here. And it always does involve coffee. My happy beverage. Oh, yeah, that is so interesting. So was there a rock bottom moment that you remember? Because sometimes for people it is a certain moment that goes, this is rock bottom. I have to change, period. End of story. And then what was the memory of your future self that somebody helped you create what's yours? Because I shared mine.

Oh, yeah. My rock bottom was kind of a culmination of a lot of these, seeing different specialists, constantly hearing that, you know, at some point it became constantly hearing from this doctor, my naturopath, my Reiki teacher. All these people are like, you need to let things go. It was feeling like I was completely incapable or like life was completely outside of my control. And every day waking up and being like, I literally don't know how else to make this work. And it's just every day was the same as the next day. And the one hypnosis session that changed a lot of that for me was this future self version of me. And I saw myself as a Reiki healer. I just saw myself in a room. There was a lot of implied, right, like, again, what your body knows what this means. So I just saw myself in a room with, you know, a basic table and a friend who was visiting me and who I was going to work on. And then I saw the look on his face when he, you know, at the end of the session. And I could, you know, smell the incense in the room, and I could feel and I could see the light, very gentle light in the room, all of that stuff. Feeling like I was able to in some way positively affect someone else's life. And the reason why that was powerful, that vision in itself just made me feel really good. And it made me be like, okay. Even though I'm coming into the office every day and I have a boss who is trying to sabotage me, and I can't possibly see myself working and leaving this career behind, leaving this life behind that I had worked so hard to get good at and to get to where I was, knowing that basically what ended up happening is I kept replaying that future vision of myself every day at work when I felt like shit. And the process of that, like, now I know more information about it, about why that's so important, about why that works, but it was rehearsing a different part of my identity. And again, having found the breadcrumbs earlier and having had access to, like, I was already Reiki certified. I was into all these things. I had met that friend through whatever some of the prior research had already been done, but then constantly being able to evoke and experience the version of myself who was actually helping people in a very different way than I was helping working in fashion and designing things. I mean, that's just.

Because it's so many steps removed when you're in fashion. I remember you would go into the office and you had to be there every day. It was about button seat time. And they were Understaffed. So you were juggling so much and you're on the computer, and then people are, like, taking credit for your work. All kinds of crazy drama. And I could totally see how ultimately it kind of reminds me how my friends that used to be traders on Wall street just trading money around isn't that fulfilling in your case? I mean, you were so influential to me, creating Pinterest boards for me of how to dress. And I know you would do that kind of on the side of helping people style and find their style. But I could see how pushing pixels around on the computer at a desk job was not going to be fueling your creative fire. And at that time, I just think it's incredible watching your transformation from having that future self vision and just going, could I do that someday? Like, it seems so far away when you're working at a desk in an office to imagine becoming a healer, solvent boy, a hypnotherapist. I know the pandemic hitting was also a big turning point for you. Was that something that sort of unleashed the final floodgates of permission? How did you take that as a moment of happening for you, even if it was kind of scary in the moment?

The pandemic definitely gave me permission to, as part of a collective, to feel like, all right, everybody's life is upside down right now, so don't feel bad that yours is too. But I actually left fashion at the end of 2019.

Really?

Yes. Whoa. And that was another thing. Like, I had worked in that industry for so long, 14 years. Again, I think partially it's the industry, but I never had a fulfilling work relationship. It was always abusive in one way or another. So by the end of it. Oh. What I was gonna say was I had always had a really hard time finding jobs, and it made no sense to me because I know I was so good at what I was doing, and everyone I worked with was like, you are so good at this.

Oh, you are.

You are.

You're super talented.

I truly believe that that was the case. But I also believe that, again, why is this happening for me or how is this happening for me? Is that the reason I couldn't find that I had such a hard time finding other jobs within fashion was I was really not meant to do that. The reason I got into that industry was there was obviously a piece of, like, self fulfillment, but much more so. It was about what it looked like externally and making, you know, my family happy or making, you know, impressing people who really don't matter. All of that. Stuff.

Quick interjection on that. Do you ever have moments where you look back and I could just picture people having this thought. So this is why I'm asking about it. Where you go. Was all of that for nothing? Now that you're doing something so different, of course we know it brought you here and you had to follow your own path.

Yeah.

Do you ever have a sense of, I invested 15 years in a thing I'm not doing anymore, or I got so good at something that I'm not using at the moment? How do you grapple with that sense of shit? Did I have my ladder against the wrong wall for 15 years? And is that ever going to come in handy? Am I ever going to get that time back or apply those skills? I don't know. Just like, how do you reconcile with. Maybe there's even a little grief around that? I don't know. Just curious.

I think I actually learned that lesson while I was working in fashion because I would always start working. Let's say I'm working on a line, I would start and do all this research and work on a thing for two months. And then in the last one week before the due date, I would be like, this is all garbage. I'm throwing it all out the window. And it would always be very hard to do that. But after doing it a few times, I would realize that, A, you have to be happy with the final product that you put out and that you present. And B, that stuff that I had worked on, I would always use that later. Maybe I didn't use it for this specific line that I was presenting. But then next week when I have to do a quickie short, whatever, I already have all this research done, already have all of these designs ready that maybe I just tweak it a little bit and it's the exact right thing that I need right now. And so fortunately for me, that was a lesson that I learned long ago while I was in fashion. So that is actually one thing that I can take with me. But the other thing is time scarcity. It's when we think about scarcity mentality, that is time scarcity. That is saying to yourself, wow, I wasted all of this. And therefore, maybe I should. Hang on. It's like saying financial scarcity. I only have $5 in the bank. Well, I can't give it away. I can't go buy bread because then I will have zero dollars in the bank. But it's like, no, you need to honor yourself. You need to trust yourself and to say, okay, I am Willing to let that go, because I know a. I know that somehow it will come back to me. Somehow the skills that I learned through this very long lesson will come back and assist me in other ways. And also just trusting that all of life is a creative process. So literally anything that you do to, like, waste your time, it is not a waste of time, because you are constantly picking up more information that you never know when you will need. And for me, I think my strength, or at least I believe my strength, has always been relationships with people. And even in my fashion days, I would create designs and lines for different types of customers for different stores, different stuff. Right. So I would always begin with doing research about. So if I'm creating a line for, like, a cowboy, I have to go and I have to do research about what do cowboys like and what do they enjoy and get excited about that. And that translates so well to me right now. Not only interacting with different clients, but also being able to create videos that resonate for different types of audiences while still staying true to myself. So having that experience not only is like the. I've met these different types of people, and these different types of people have taught me different lessons that are now invaluable. Right. It's literally all of it is just more juice. It's more inspiration for something else. So I recognize that that comes up for a lot of people, that I wasted too much time, especially in relationships. People will be like, I've been in this relationship for seven years. I don't want to let it go. Well, I just finished, ended, finished. That's a weird way of saying it. I just ended a marriage of. We were married for nine years, and we were together for 18. And I caught myself thinking the same way of, who knows? That there's something better on the other side. You don't know? And saying, no, no, no. I learned what I needed to learn from this, and I know that I trust myself that something good will come out of this. And it's always, how is this happening for me?

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, we don't talk too much about pivoting out of relationships and transitioning out or the relationship taking a different form. Because once you've been with someone for 18 years, not that everybody consciously uncouples or stays friends or can. But in your case, you are family with that person. There's no taking that back. In this case, it just does take a new form as you both continue to evolve. I've always thought that about relationships, that it's so Strange how we view endings sometimes as a failure or unacceptable. I used to joke that I don't think Michael likes this very much because I don't joke about it anymore. But when I was single, I used to joke that my wedding vows would be till fulfillment does us part, not till death does us part.

I love that. Yeah.

Because I would always say, I don't want to hold anybody hostage. I want to set you free. I don't want you to be with me. If you feel stuck and stagnant and your soul is calling you to something else, even if it's someone else, who am I to hold you back? I genuinely mean that. It's not to say, oh, I don't believe we should work through problems and things, but I don't know. I think there are very valid soul connected reasons or soul evolution reasons to change the form of a relationship that don't have to involve death and then still a part of you does die. Essentially. When a relationship ends, like an old self, an old way of life, you do grieve the loss of even the future. Talk about the future self. I mean, with relationships and career, we can project a future we think is going to happen. And then it is kind of shocking to realize, oh, wait a second, my soul is crying, my body is crying. That must not be it.

Yeah. I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about the energetics of divorce and energetics of relationships. And the conclusion that they came to was sort of. Or that was at the end. What they got to was that every successful relationship is the process of death and rebirth over and over and over again. And so the point at which the relationship ends or that version of relationship ends, that was just another part of that cycle. So in my relationship with my ex, we had been through many births and deaths and births and deaths. Right. Of who we were as people, of who we were as a couple together, all of that stuff. And one of those deaths might also mean the death of the contract.

Right, Right. And now in my new current relationship, it's the same thing. It's like who I am today is not who I'm going to be in six months. And we have to keep re choosing each other. And that's built into our understanding of what relationship is. And I think, yeah, let's just be honest about that and let's just be very clear that the reason things sometimes don't work out is because that's okay. You're now different people and you are always going to be different people. It's just a question of are you different people together? Are you different people?

Not together, together, apart? Yeah.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Okay, so here's maybe one approaching final question as we wrap up this one. And then listeners head over to Free Time, because that's where I'm going to really dig into building a business through TikTok. We're doing a sort of semi crossover because I have this precious time with Ina in person today, so I don't know which one comes out first. I can't know that yet. I haven't built that memory of the future yet. But there's going to be two episodes. So if you're interested in the business aspect of attracting clients through TikTok, that's over on Free Time. Back here on Pivot. Whether it's relationships or career or business, this thing of creating a memory of your future self, sometimes I hesitate in my career, in my business, to even attach to what feels really positive of a vision of the future because I feel like I don't know that. I can't know that. Like in this example of relationships, I could imagine some idyllic paradise. But if that's not our soul's calling or the way things are sort of meant to unfold. So sometimes I actually hesitate to over invest is maybe a way to say it in some fixed future state, because I try to stay present with whatever is, whatever will be. And as you said, every day in the moment, try to accept and have gratitude for what is, and be surprised by what's next. So how do you strike the balance between Staying really open and not attaching to how something needs to be in the future, but still visioning and getting excited and magnetized by some future ideas.

Yeah. For me, the most important piece of that experience, of that memory is how it feels, is what it feels for you. So it's not I'm going to be wearing this dress on this day, it's how am I going to feel when I'm surrounded by people? It's what you take away from it. I understand the hesitancy to say, I think you use the word overinvest, but it's more like, I don't want to have too many details. Let's not focus on the details. Right.

Yeah. Or overly attach. Maybe over invest isn't the right, but overly attach. And sometimes I find setting business goals gets me attached to what is otherwise an arbitrary number. And that's not that energizing. Or it's like if I don't hit it well, then I've just been overly attached to something very arbitrary. But I like what you're saying to focus on the feeling. So, okay, that number is a means to a feeling.

Right. And it's the same thing as you and I talked about this before, but when you see someone else having a thing and you're like, wow, I think I want that thing. Meanwhile, getting that thing doesn't feel that good to me. So what is underneath that? So it's always what is underneath this feeling? And what does that mean for you? So.

That'S on that. But I also wanted to say something about memory, and that is that memory is not a reliable source of information. And the way that it works is that every time you recall something that's happened to you in the past, or every time you recall something that will happen to you in the future. Right. If we're looking at this future memory that's even more engaged than something that's actually happened, because you will have all of your senses engaged. Whereas something that happened to you last week, you might just remember what you saw, you might just remember what you heard, as opposed to this future thing where you're like, I know what I can see, I know what I can hear, I know what it feels like, I know what value this fulfills. For me, all of that stuff. Every time we re experience a memory, it changes with regards to what else is happening to you in this moment. So if right now you remember something, let's say you're feeling really good, and you remember a traumatic event that happened to you in the past, that memory Is now updating based on the things that your current state is bringing into that memory.

I mean, the stickiness, the grip of that negative memory.

Yeah, exactly.

I had a big aha around that. I read this book. I didn't love this book. I can't say listeners go out and get this one click order right now instantly, but the one gem I took from this book called the Drama of the Gifted Child is that your worst fears have already happened to you. That was shocking to me because how did my fears get there? Will something happen that basically created that fear? Tailor made to me, it already happened. And it happened at a time when I was young and didn't have spiritual tools, didn't have practices, didn't have autonomy, didn't have any ability to react with a mature, conscious, spiritual approach that I could take as an adult. And that was such an aha moment where I started to realize my fears of the future, of things happening in some way. Maybe not in that exact way, but in some way already happened. And that's how they got there in the first place. Even I was able to kind of comfort. I know you do a lot of inner child work on your TikTok channel, but I was able to comfort that child and say, of course this was scary for you because you had no tools, no ability to deal with it at that time. Look, you're an adult now. Look, you have all these practices. You have the work by Byron, Katie, you have these practices, you have these new spiritual perspectives that I didn't have when I was young that it took so much of the sting of those fears away, really softened them and I was able to release not all of them slowly but surely. That was a really helpful shift for me.

Absolutely. And that is actually what a lot of what I do with my clients is after we have that future self experience. And that is a tool that you can just take and like I did take it in with you to your everyday triggers and just recall that future self is also having them with you. When we work on any past trauma or any past stuff that is holding you back now, being able to go back into that place where you just didn't have the same resources, the same tools that you have now and not the same resources and tools that you will have, you know, and bringing that version of yourself into that memory and the process is called memory reconsolidation, that is what happens. So every time you recall a memory, it changes. And being able to attach a positive valence.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

What's been your most popular TikTok video to date.

What was the topic the most popular? I did a series on habit change. I talk about neural pathways, how to start to update them and upgrade them. And it was a whole series and one of those videos went extra, extra viral for me.

How many views at that time was extra viral? Just to give us a sense right.

Now, I think it says 1.4 million views. Wow.

Isn't that a crazy feeling to go from being not having a public facing profile in that way to go for one piece of content, having over a million views, Almost a million and a half?

Yeah.

Does it make you self conscious at all where you're like a million and a half eyeballs have seen this?

No, but I think before I started there was a lot of negative self talk before I got on TikTok and it was like, well, you got nothing else. You have no other ways to get yourself out there, so you may as well get used to it. So we can save that for the other.

Yeah. To be continued on free time. If you could leave listeners with one experiment or one practice, we talked about some of them already to strengthen their prefrontal cortex. Because I did promise, I left an open loop that we'd come back to this, their solutions muscle, as you call it, what would you encourage them to do?

I love journaling. I know people don't like it. I love journaling and I love being able to tune in physically. So maybe this is a twofer. So two ways to process any experience is just to sit there and feel what it feels like in your body. And when you hear yourself doubting yourself or saying this is dumb, or saying, so what if I feel a lump in my throat just sitting with it and just saying, okay, here's a lump in my throat. And just continuing to repeat that statement to yourself and just watching that dissolve and change into something else, because it always does. When I do this exercise with my clients, I can see how they are rolling their eyes before we begin. They're like, come on, what is this gonna do? And it changes within seconds. 30 seconds to a minute of you actually addressing the thing physically in your body, allows it to show you what it's there for and allows you to kind of experience it from a different place again, from that place of your body is here for you and what is it actually showing you? And the journaling is sort of the other way of processing that I really love and enjoy. Again, it's naming the thing that you are experiencing. And I think that people don't like journaling. Because they're like, I don't want to sit here and continue to just repeat the same thing over and over. No, you repeat the same thing over and over when you're thinking it. How many times can you write that down? Okay, you put that sentence down. What's next? And what do you do about that? And then what do you do about that? And then can you question it? So journaling and just sitting with your body and both of those things can be done in as little as 30 seconds. I guess journaling a little bit longer. But if you give yourself five to ten minutes to journal things out, it can change your state that quickly. And sometimes that's all you need.

I love it. What a beautiful place to end. Ina, this has been such a joy to hit record after over 10 years of conversations on such a regular basis. What a treat to be here with you listeners. I'm gonna put Ina's links in the show notes because I'm guessing you don't know how to spell Eisenstein, but tell listeners where they can find you and then I'll put the links in the show notes too.

Yep, My website is inaisenstein.com and my TikTok channel where I do most of my social media is Naizenstein.

Amazing. Yes, we're going to put those in the chat. Even I after 10 years, I'm like, I actually have never had to say your name out loud. It was the weirdest moment before we hit record. Thank you so much Ina. And big thanks to everybody who's here listening.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter Ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.

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