333: Soul Shifts for the Weary with Rachel Macy Stafford

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If you're working on really getting quiet and listening to yourself, which means listening to some uncomfortable feelings and memories and conversations you had, but trusting that there's no judgment there, this is just information. This is just awareness. And so I just constantly am reminding people as they go through the book. Okay, it's your turn to think about how this looks in your life. But remember, this is not a time to judge yourself. You're just getting information that's going to help you figure out what the next step is.

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.

Welcome back, Pivoters. Jenny, here you are in for such a delightful surprise. Today, Rachel Mae Stafford is on the pod. She is the New York Times bestselling author of several books. Today we're talking about her fifth. It's called Soul Shift the Weary Human's guide to getting unstuck and reclaiming your path to joy. Rachel is a sought after speaker and creator of her perennially popular course, Soul Shift Lift. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks for having me, Jenny.

I want to dive right into the middle of your journey. You share. It was about five years into your writing career and you'd made it. You made it to this pinnacle moment that so many of us dream about of hitting the New York Times list. And yet you confided in your friend Shannon that being an author was no longer bringing you joy. What was happening at that moment as you were simultaneously, from the outside, hitting this peak? It feels of success. What was happening behind the scenes?

I always like to talk about behind the scenes because I feel like when we're watching people be really successful, we can feel insecure, like, oh, I'm never gonna make anything of myself. But we don't see what's the struggle is behind the scenes. And so I try to be really authentic in this book that way. So in that situation.

I confided in my friend Shannon, who's pretty much like one of my truth tellers. Like, you have those friends that, you know they're gonna tell you the truth and not give you what you want to hear. And so I said to her, you know, this creative outlet for me writing is something that I've loved to do since I was a little girl. I am finding myself wanting to quit. And I said, as this platform grows and the readership grows, I find myself doing tasks that aren't in alignment with who I am, with what's important to me. And I was just meeting all these expectations outside myself that I thought, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do as an author, and this is what I need to do. But in reality, to talking with Shannon, she really put it in a very straightforward term for me, which I could actually envision in my head. And she's like, rachel, you're not supposed to be carrying everybody else's bags. Like, you're not a travel agent. You're not here to give the itinerary for people's journey. You're just there to be the guide. And she just kind of helped me think about what is it that I feel like I'm here to do. And if I made a list of the actual things that I was doing, the tasks and the demands that I was meeting, would those line up? And they didn't.

It's interesting how successful can kind of snowball, and then you accumulate all of this along the way. I thought it was so powerful how you said you admitted that you commonly felt stressed, depleted, and used, and that you made this list of everything you had been doing, both what you love about your job and what you dislike, and that you say I was spending too much energy fulfilling aspects of the job that were either assigned to me or assumed of me, or purposeful at one point in time, but only hindering me now. Now everyone listening knows I'm like a complete curmudgeonly grump about social media. But I'm curious. What did you feel that you had accumulated at that point in your career while that success snowball was happening from the outside? What were some of the things that felt like sandpaper to your soul?

Well, I found it really interesting.

How many people felt.

That they could have access to me just because I write very vulnerably. People tend to feel like they know me, and they feel like they can come into my inbox and ask me personal questions. Or they'd say, I read this and now I want your help on this. And it would just kind of blow my mind. Like, I just would never think of reaching out to an author that way. But this is the culture that we live in and we are so accessible through social media and it can be a problem. And when you have a lack of boundaries, which I have always struggled to have boundaries because I've been a people pleaser all my life and I get a sense of worthiness from doing and pleasing that I've been really trying to work on. And so I would say that was the number one sandpaper on my soul was just I didn't feel safe. I felt like people were coming in to my space and I didn't know what to do about that because just not answering them also hurt my heart because I care about the people who read, you know, So I was like, oh, what do I do? And then just social media in itself of this constant pressure to make content every single day and just for people to consume, consume, consume, and never really sit with it. That's where I felt like I was being used. And I was like, I'm allowing this to happen, though, so I'm going to have to put some parameters in.

Shannon said those wise words that you stated, and they're in the book. Rachel, you're a map maker, not a baggage carrier, not a tour operator, and not a travel agent. What shifted for you or what started to shift around social media, around people, as Liz Gilbert says, coming into her living room of her email inbox, kind of asking for a cup of. It's like, wait, I didn't invite you here. What started to shift when you thought of yourself or gave yourself permission to drop those other roles and say, I'm a map maker, I'm not the travel agent, I'm not the tour operator.

When I talked to Shannon, I just realized what I'm doing currently is not sustainable and did I want to keep going at this pace and doing all these things which would cost me my joy, really. My joy of writing, my joy of living, my joy of having peace in my evenings. And I thought, no, I'm not willing to give that up and I shouldn't have to give that up. Shannon's just full of wisdom. And she said, rachel, why not instead of following the algorithm to post every day, you know, because that's what you're told. Like, oh, you need to post something every day or you're not going to build your audience and she said, what if you just posted when you felt like posting? When you have something important you want to say or you want to share, why don't you let that be your guide? And that really did help me pause and really analyze how I was just posting to post and I'm like, why would I want to add to the noise? Why wouldn't I want to just wait till I have something meaningful to say and not get caught up in this? It's basically like this scarcity mentality. These people are going to go away if you don't post every day. And it's not true. So instead of feeding the machine, I started listening, doing more living. Because living your life is where the creative juices flow. They're not gonna flow if you're constantly creating content. So I did more things that really fulfilled me. Like I was like, I gotta put my walking back in my daily schedule. Because when I'm outside walking, that's the place where I find things will come up for me that I'm like, oh, this is important. I want to expand on that. So just giving myself time to breathe and knowing no one sets that schedule for me, I'm the one who sets that schedule. And taking that back from what the culture teaches us we have to do.

You're the first person I've heard put it in the way that it also bugged you a little bit how rapidly it's all consumed. It's like these social media companies and the algorithm, Capital T, capital A. But they give these best practices, oh, to be seen to go viral, to stay relevant. Post this many times a week. But nobody is saying, well, how many posts help people integrate what they're reading or what they're learning from you? And what you're describing is even from the perspective of the person infinity scrolling on the never ending home feed, just consuming more does not make a shift. You know, the subtitle of your book is the weary human's guide to getting unstuck and reclaiming your path to joy. It's like just the infinite scroll and quickly consuming a quantity of this content that you, the Rachel's of the world, are so thoughtfully putting out also isn't going to do it. That's also not healthy or beneficial for anybody.

Exactly.

Later in the book you say, for the life of me, I could not understand why I continually fell into a damaging and unhealthy pattern every single time I wrote and published a book. Now I know this is number five. So that means probably you noticed a pattern of four times There was this. Why, you know, and writing a book is its own kind of soul project. As you reflected when you were writing this one, what do you think it was? What were the particular ingredients that were leading to that unhealthy pattern specifically around something that you did care so much about was getting each book into the world?

Well, one thing that I know I did with the first four books that I couldn't do with the fifth was put myself on a writing schedule. And you'll hear that's one of the best practices. Like every day, like this is the goal number of words. I would make a calendar kind of outlining, this is where I need to be. I need to have this chapter, this chapter, the intro or whatever. And during my fifth book, my youngest teenager went through quite a turbulent time, to say the least. So what happened as I'm supporting Avery through what she was going through, my schedule kind of went out the window. And not only that, but I was emotionally exhausted from what I was trying to do with my own family. So instead of pushing myself as I had with the other four books, I decided I would create, like this hub on my ping pong table where I would have, like, I had all this construction paper of the different practices. There's eight practices in Soul Shift. And when I couldn't form sentences and paragraphs, I made notes, I did doodles, I wrote down ideas. And I didn't force myself to make it into a book per se if I wasn't feeling it that day, because I realized I cannot push myself to do this, and it's not going to be good if I do that. So I would find myself saying, I can't do this. But then I would add one more word, I can't do this today. Well, what can I do today? Well, I can do some mapping, some visualizations, anything that felt like it's part of the journey. Because of course, the things I'm writing about in Soul Shift, working on emotional triggers and my responses to uncomfortable feelings, I was living that in real time. So I was able to just take all of this real life energy and experience it and put it out on this ping pong table. And it's so interesting because how that evolved into the book is, you'll notice there's a lot of space in the book. There's a lot of room for the reader to doodle and map and journal and color. And I love that that translated into this book. And it wouldn't have been that way if I had pushed myself in a formal writing fashion. It Just wouldn't have turned out that well.

I love this small shift, which is, I can't do that today. It's just so beautifully said. It's not I can't do this, it's I can't do this today. And even in the book, you say you told yourself that a lot. That line came up a lot. And then as you're saying, if you were in this, like, hard driving, linear book writing, whip cracking person mode, it just wouldn't be the book that it is. And it wouldn't be called Soul Shift and it certainly wouldn't be for weary humans.

No, there's a lot of compassion in that book.

Yes.

I was giving myself compassion for the first time when I wrote a book. That's the first time I ever said, it's okay, let's trust that, that this is gonna turn out the way it's supposed to. And to let go of the expectation and the outcome is what I try to help the reader do. Because if you're working on really getting quiet and listening to yourself, which means listening to some uncomfortable feelings and memories and conversations you had, but trusting that there's no judgment there, this is just information. This is just awareness. And so I just constantly am reminding people as they go through the book, okay, it's your turn to think about how this looks in your life. But remember, this is not a time to judge yourself. You're just getting information that's going to help you figure out what the next step is.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I love the exercise you share in the book from Dr. Lisa Firestone. I wonder if you can tell us about it, because as I read you working through that exercise, I could feel a shift in pressure lifting. And then I did one for myself and I had this, like, nasty thought that I wrote down and by the end I'm like, oh, my goodness. I feel the weight of the world lifted just from going through this exercise. So I'm wondering if you can tell us even when you discovered it and walk listeners through this one.

Dr. Lisa Firestone does a lot of research on negative self talk. And what she discovered is that when you have a self limiting belief, and sometimes we don't know that we're talking to ourselves in a negative way or a critical way until we start paying attention and then we're like, oh, wow, I do kind of bring myself down. She talks about identifying the self limiting statement that you make, that you commonly make. I'll give you an example. For me, what I said to myself a lot when I was starting the book was, I'm so unmotivated, and.

I'm so unmotivated then becomes, I'm going to disappoint people. I'm not going to finish this. This book is going to be terrible. And then it just keeps going down from there. Well, what Dr. Lisa Spirestone teaches us to do is to stop and identify that. Okay, I just said to myself, I'm so unmotivated, I'm going to write that down on a piece of paper with three columns. So I'm so unmotivated. Now Dr. Firestone has us change that to second person. So then I'm so unmotivated becomes you're so unmotivated. Now, when I look at that, I think, would I ever tell my child, you're so unmotivated, or would I ever say that to a friend, you're so unmotivated? No, of course I would never say that. That's not going to motivate them. It's going to do the opposite. And I know that. So looking at that, then there's the third column. This is the column for the third person. Their name, or in my case, it would be my name. What would I say instead of, you're so unmotivated to my daughter or to my friend? I would say so and so, or Rachel, you have been working so hard on all these things. You're helping Avery get through this traumatic event in her life. You're being a good mom, a good wife, a good friend, and you're doing the best that you can on this book. And it's okay if you're not where you want to be. What do you have to do today? Let's look at it. Let's break it down into steps. And so that's the voice of self compassion, which when you start to think to yourself in third person, you start to use your own name. It creates like a psychological distance between yourself and that situation so you can have a more of a unbiased view. In my Workshops, people will talk about, I hate my body. That's a self limiting belief that a lot of people have. I'm a bad mom. No one at work likes me. Like those kind of things. We sit down with our piece of paper and we go through this process, we write down that self limiting belief, change it to second person, and people start crying when they say, I hate your body. Your body is ugly. They say, I would never say that to anybody. Why am I saying that to myself? And then to take that one step further and say, Jenny, your body has done wondrous things. Your body has got you where you are today. You have a beautiful body and you are worthy of showing up for your life in the exact body that you are in. And so that's how you learn to basically speak compassionately to yourself instead of tearing yourself down.

I love that you brought up this example because. Oh, to give you a peek inside my brain and my book, my copy of your book rather. I actually wrote down when it said write a self judgmental thought, I wrote, I am fat and out of shape now. Would I ever speak to someone this way? Never. We know it's like, oh, well, that's fat shaming. I know, look, I'm fat shaming myself. Or even this notion of a bikini body. I'm so glad the conversation is shifting to where, what, so only certain people can be on the beach in a swimsuit, you know, but so that thought, thanks to your exercise, I wrote right in the book, then third person Jenny is fat and out of shape. Okay, who's going to say that then? Then I flip it just like you said, into a realistic and impartial view. And I wrote, jenny is juggling a lot and making small progress every day, even with setbacks. Meaning there's a whole life picture here. And it helped me zoom out and see. I think weight is something that particularly women struggle with in this society. I don't want to speak too generally here, but I can say since I was very young, the number on the scale seemed very important. So still to this day, I'm now turning 40. I still have these moments where I'll have a thought like that and then I go, wait a second. First of all, you're fine. Secondly, it doesn't help to talk like that. Third, there's a whole life picture happening, swirling around. Like we can't just wake up every day and exist as a number on a scale. There's a whole series of factors and life gets more complex. Things happen and there are ups and downs and so anyway, this is a long tangent, a way of saying thank you for this exercise and for walking us through, because within seconds I could already find a more compassionate view, a bird's eye view on the situation, rather than just this old neural pathway of judgment.

That's so beautiful. Thank you for vulnerably sharing that too.

Well, yeah, Your intuition, because you happened to give the body example. So now I thought, all right, leave it to Rachel to be intuitive and pull out that example and you lead this way. You even say in the book that people don't want perfection. I mean, that's just not how we learn. And that you said, you know, you've really worked to be open and vulnerable as a map maker. You're not giving all of yourself over, but you're saying, hey, these are the things I've dealt with, that I am dealing with. And it really is such a gift to the rest of us because we can see ourselves in each other.

Yes.

There was another great mantra that you gave. Accept where you are. I'm not where I want to be. And there's something that feels so powerful in the truth of that statement of not papering it over or the spiritual bypassing of like, I'm exactly where I want to be, but just to accept I'm not where I want to be. And there was something about the way you phrased it that felt also that it had that self compassion. Can you say more about where this one came from?

When you are aware, you're becoming aware of really kind of negative patterns, really kind of harmful patterns in your life. And for me, having daughters really heightened that. For me especially. You just mentioned body image issues. And I came to the realization that some of my own destructive thoughts I was passing along to my daughters. And it's difficult to understand and admit that, wow, I have caused them to have this doubt that they're not good enough. And I got probably around, let's see, about five years ago, I did decide, okay, I think I need to talk to a professional about some of these struggles. And I told my daughters that I was going to see a therapist, told them a little bit about what I struggled with. And my older daughter was kind of like, yeah, I know, Mom, I already know. And I realized, you know, they've been watching, they've been learning from me. And the more open I can say who I am and what I struggle with, the less they're going to internalize that as they're. It's my thing that I'm working on. It's not a truth. It's not a truth for them and their body to be able to say I'm not where I want to be.

But that doesn't mean I can't love who I am. And where I'm at, that piece of acceptance, of knowing I'm still growing, I'm still healing, and I'm loving myself right where I am. It's a powerful thing because so often we think we can't have this until we do this. You know, we can't love ourselves until we overcome this. But that's not how it works. To love ourselves right where we are while we're still healing, while we're still growing, that only ignites the process.

At several points the notion of a facade comes up, which I think part of that striving that you were just talking about and you even said it, it comes from these trying to look a certain way, appearance or achievement, productivity, approval. Those are some of the examples you give. And as you said, we can say where we are and still pursue our own core values rather than the facade of what the world wants us to be.

We'll be right back just after this.

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The thing that I continually grapple with. I wonder where you're at with this now is why is the facade so hard to drop even when we know that it's there? And I can full well say that knowing that I'm a people pleaser too. So I feel like maybe there are just people on this planet that don't deal with this. I've had this podcast eight years. We've talked about people pleasing and perfectionism a lot. It doesn't matter how many conversations I have. Yesterday I cried to my husband saying I'm not an extrovert. I was like I said something because the Culture where he's from in Beirut is very extroverted. Party life, social. And I always feel I have to put on a facade to ramp my energy up to be the type of person that would fit in there. And even if I can somehow know it's not true. On the other hand, there is a lot of social pressure to, like, be social. And I said to him, I'll be in the bookstore, reading a book, having a cup of coffee. Like, where do I get to be that person? So I was grappling with this just yesterday. Sorry to give you another blurt out, but I'm just wondering, like, where does the facade. Where do you still struggle with it? And why do you think it's so pervasive even when we know it's there?

The human need to belong and to be accepted is incredibly powerful. And that's the driving force when we have a facade, when we pick up a mask that we don't normally wear or we wouldn't normally wear. We're doing that because we want to belong, we want to be accepted. I mean, I don't think anyone can ever fully escape that, because I do think there's moments in our lives where we. Like you said, if you're with your husband and I want you to meet my friends, it's like, you love him, so you're going to do that for him. And you do have to go out of your comfort zone. But I do think there's ways that we can honor our authentic self while we're doing these things that we know. This is really outside of my comfort zone. This is really not who I am. And, you know, that's where the boundaries come in. You say, I can go with you for an hour, and then I'm going to need to go take a walk or whatever it is. I'm going to need to do this instead of knowing, okay, if you spend three hours there, how you're going to feel. So instead of giving all of that energy away and saying, I'm just going to completely bend over backwards, you say, here's what I'm able to do. And then to make a compromise for me, something I still really struggle with, is.

This idea that I have to kind of, like, look fancy if I go to certain, like, things where there's going to be colleagues and professional people, and I'm like, I'd rather just come in my soft pants and just have my hair in a hat. And I'll find myself going ahead and doing that part to look a certain way when all I can think about is taking all that off as soon as I can, washing off the makeup. It's funny because I did have an interview with the founder of Sounds True, Tammy Simon, who's just a scholarly, professional person. And I immediately felt like I was out of place in the interview. I was like, oh, my gosh, what a disappointment I'm going to be to this person who interviews all these very elite educators and visionaries. And I happened to say to her because she said, make sure you don't go away after that first part. We're going to break, but then you come back for Q and A. And I said, oh, I'm so glad you told me that, because I would.

Have had my pajamas on and five minutes.

And she said, you know what? She goes, one of the criticisms that I get is that I take myself too seriously. And so she said, why don't we put our pajamas on to do the Q and A, we'll come back.

Oh, my gosh.

And we did it. And my pajamas have my cat's face on them. So that made it even funnier. But I was like, you know what? Here I am being my authentic self. I wanted to put on that mask and act like I wasn't just who I am, but that wasn't gonna work. So I was my authentic self and I was comfortable and we had joy because we were real. I'm learning slowly but surely, like, it's okay to show who you really are. I mean, it's not always gonna work out that great, but in this case, it was awesome.

It was so much fun. I love this story because Tammy Simon is a notoriously tough cookie. Like her style as a host, she's the head of Sounds True, and yet it's like she brings a kind of skeptical, intellectual lens to even interviewing her own authors who are like, oh, gosh, it's so nerve wracking being in the interview seat, you know, and the fact that you got her to put on pajamas. I know, it's even better. What a great story. And then that's what I find so funny too, is that how many other people wish they were in pajamas in those moments. You were the one that had the wherewithal to say it. And I guess that's what I find tricky is like, how authentic do I really be? And I think that's something so many of us feel. But it's like, well, if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me at all.

But if you think about it, who are the people you gravitate towards? I Mean, it's always the people who are real who say, oh my gosh, I have this embarrassing habit, you know, it's like, oh, good, I do too, right?

And it's like, I know some people where I feel that their gift is. I don't know, they just have this gift to befriend a lot of people. Like, I think about the social chair in college or like the class president or they have such a gift for connecting to so many people. And sometimes when I'm being really honest with myself, I'm like, if I was my actual self and I didn't put on the mask to have a ton of energy, I would just be my chill, low key self. I'd be going on dog walks with my sweats. That's how I'd network with people, you know?

I love it.

Even when we show up for interviews like this one, my hair is a mess half the time, but I feel like my hair's a mess. I'm still in my sweats for these. Funnily enough. I mean, I don't record video, but that's why. But I feel like when I show up, super CAS then my guest as well. Like, I love when a guest shows up and is like, oh yeah, I'm in my PJs too. Like, oh yeah, it's so fun. I don't know. I don't feel the need to impress, but I'm not judging anybody, but, like, I guess I. It's so out of the realm of my personality, but like, to try to impress by what I'm wearing. So, like, that's just nowhere in my tools kit, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. And as a side note, my hack is jumpers. I wear jumpsuits for everything. My wedding book, launch parties. This is my uniform.

Wait, you walked to your wedding, did you say?

Yeah, a white jumpsuit.

I gotta see pictures. That is so fun.

I got so lucky because we were getting married at City Hall. I walked into Reese in downtown New York. They had a white jumpsuit on the rack and it fit.

What are the chances?

I know.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's kind of like a compromise between, like, okay, I know I'm supposed to look a certain way for this situation, but I'm still gonna be really comfortable. Cause pantsuits are comfortable except for the bathroom.

And I even have one that's from Sweaty Betty, but it's a forest green. People think I look fancy, and yet the material is like full on athletic yoga gear. Gosh, that's awesome. Yeah. So these are the tricks of the trade. In fact, there's one last thing before we start to close out. Right after your wise friend Shannon said these words to you about being a map maker, you made this great list. And I just love where you took it because she said this to you and then you kind of took it to make a better list. Like, I'm trying to see if there's a title, but it starts with, I'm a connector, not an influencer. I'm a guide, not a guru. Do you remember making this list?

Oh, yeah, I totally do.

I am not a peacemaker. I'm a connector. What was that like for you? And what's the power? How can we maybe take this as an exercise for listeners of this role? Reflection.

I felt empowered writing down. First of all, I am not. Like, I was taking back my own identity because I got so sick of people calling me an influencer. I'm like, no, I'm not trying to influence anybody. I'm just sharing my stories, sharing my words and my experiences. I just want people to feel less alone. I do not want to influence people because they want me to, like, advertise and promote. And it's like, that's not what I'm here for. And so to kind of reclaim.

The rules. I'm a connector. I'm a map maker. I'm an encourager. Those are the things that I love to do and that bring me passion and fulfillment. So kind of like being able to say, I am these things. I am, not the other things. And I don't know what it is about saying what I'm not. But when I do this in my workshops, people get. It's like the tone of their voice changes. They like people who don't want to speak in front of a microphone. They're like, can I have the microphone? I want to say this. I am this, not this. It's a reclamation. And to be able to say it out loud, it's like putting it out there.

What I love about it is that it's nuanced, too. Like when you said, I am an encourager, not an advice giver or problem fixer. That's nuanced. That's very clear. Because it means that your book. Just like Ann Patchett. Ann Patchett doesn't have a cell phone, or at least one that's not public. She's not really available. And she said to my friend Jonathan Fields on his show, we'll link to it in the show notes. She said, my book is my gift. If you Want to know something about me? It's in my book. Everything I could say has already been said. Read the book.

Yeah. Isn't that so good?

Oh, my God.

Oh, my gosh. I'm going to get that on a billboard and put it somewhere.

And I love that you're saying the same thing. You're saying I'm an encourager. I'm actually not an advice giver or a problem fixer. Therefore, I'm actually not available for you to come uninvited into my inbox asking for detailed advice or for me to fix your problems or for you to volunteer to do that in your real life. It's like going back to the Liz Gilbert that was on Tim Ferriss. She said, of course, when she hit a certain point, it was like all these people were coming as if uninvited into her living room. She's like, who are you people? I didn't invite you here. Like, I can't host this many people in my living room that actually when you're the one on the inside of it feels so intimate. Like all these people sort of coming in, poking, folding and wanting things. I feel like that a lot. And I'm like nowhere near the scale of you or Liz Gilbert.

Oh, that's so powerful.

Yeah. So thank you for this. This exercise, listeners, is to finish this sentence, I am not a blank. I am a blank of how you want to show up in the world.

Oh, Rachel, this book is such a gift. Just like Ann Patrick. Swish, swish. You're done. Thank you.

The permission slip. I needed that I didn't know I needed.

Oh, my goodness. Well, you've given so much. But I mean, is there any other little encouragement or mantra or experiment you would like to leave listeners with before we close out?

I always like to talk about how it can be scary to allow these uncomfortable feelings and kind of painful truth come to the surface and not push them away. But the reason it's really important to do that is because the things that we keep hidden are harder to heal and easier to pass on to the people that we love. And the more willing we're able to show up as our full human selves, the more that we can fully love each other as our full human selves.

So beautifully said. Thank you for that great reminder, Rachel. Listeners, be sure to get your copy of Soul Shift, the weary human's guide to getting unstuck and reclaiming your path to joy. I truly, truly loved it. And I was already just a few pages in when I started sending it. To a friend. Rachel, is there anywhere else that you'd like to send people to learn more or keep in touch? Sure.

Really everything that you need to know is at my website and that's HandsFreeMama.com and you can get links to buy my books to follow me on Instagram or Facebook. And I actually still write long articles like it's not a dying art. I like to write the longer essays and that's also there on my website.

That's awesome. We'll put all that in the show notes. And I love it. You're like, I am a long essay writer. I'm not an influencer. So know what you're gonna get?

No 200 word sound bites coming from me.

Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much Rachel. Big thanks to everybody listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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 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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