219: Get in Flow by Stepping into Fear with Lindsay Sukornyk

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Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author.

Each week I'll bring you a guest.

Or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the show. It is always such an honor and a privilege to have some of the most pivotal people in my life on the podcast and today that is Lindsay Sikornick. She is a true sister in my life, shoulder to shoulder in the arena. She is also one of the women that my book A Tribe called Bliss is based off of. And she is the founder of Alive and Awake. She's a unicorn trainer, a transformational leadership expert, a master coach, a writer, a mama of four amazing children. She's living the dream with her family family in Costa Rica, in France and in Canada and in the surf town where she lives. She guides elite leaders from around the world through transformational activation experiences that is in Costa Rica. And I have been able to go to her retreats four years in a row now and they have been truly some of the most life changing experiences I have ever had because of who she is in the space that she holds and where she holds it. She's completing her first novel and screenplay, the Path of the Unicorn. I cannot wait to read it and to see it. She's a regular Huffington Post blogger. She's often featured as a speaker and expert in the media. She's also a certified professional co active coach and she began her career at A.T. kearney, which is a top tier global management consulting firm in the elite transformational leadership coaching space. For over 15 years, Lindsay has spoken and coached founders and influencers at global events throughout the world. So you guys, I am so incredibly excited for you to listen in on this conversation because I think that you are not only going to get some wisdom that might really help guide you on your path, but also we talk a lot about how you can have access to the same exact experiences that Lindsay and I have truly felt really transformed our lives, our views, our beliefs, our perspectives. And you get an opportunity to do that too. So stay tuned. Listen to the entire Episode. And let's get started. Lindsay, I'm so excited to have you back on the podcast. Not just to have you back on the podcast, but because every single conversation that I have ever had with you has been honestly some of the best conversations of my life. So I'm just so glad to have another one.

I am so excited too. We just had such an amazing time at the Bliss Project. Your book is out, so many exciting things happening and I always love collaborating with you and co creating and we just always have the most fun, don't we?

Always. And you guys, if you don't know, if you did not listen to our previous podcast, you can go back. I'll link that in show notes. But Lindsay is actually in my mastermind and she's one of the women that I have written my book about and we meet every other week for an hour and we do our every other week mastermind together. We've done that for like four years now. Where did that time go?

I have no idea. And I also look back on how much we've all created in that time and it's incredible.

I know it is mind blowing. And one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on again was because since meeting you, we have been going to Costa Rica to your retreats for the past. Has it been three years? I think so. Three different retreats in Costa Rica and I will say that they have been the most transformational experiences of my life for so many different reasons. And I really wanted to share that experience with people. And now that you're living there especially first, I would love if you would take us on that journey of how you even decided you wanted to move to Costa Rica and start doing these things.

I love this story because I think so many people can relate to it at different points along my journey and I'm so happy to share the story. And also I wanted to start out by saying that it doesn't need to look like everybody moving to Costa Rica. That's been my version of the story. But as you've experienced it in even just one week's time, you can really plug in, I call it Avatar style. To the magic, to the vitality, to the replenishment, the creativity, the clarity that comes from this place and these experiences that we share. And so my journey has brought me here to hold space for other people to come. But it literally can happen in a very short period of time. And that's how my journey started. So I started out in a pretty stressful, high intensity, elite career out of Business school in management consulting. And I really felt like I had won the game, whatever that means, in the sense that getting recruited, getting all this money offered to me, ticking off all the boxes that I thought that I should tick off. And I was really driven at that time by a lot of perfectionism, kind of overachievers, Anonymous going on over there. And what I was very shocked and surprised by was that even though I had followed all the rules, I had done everything I thought I was supposed to do to chart my path, what I found was that I was deeply unhappy and dissatisfied in this path that I had created. And it took me by surprise. And it was, I felt, I think, doubly badly about it because I felt like, what's wrong with me? I should be happy. I have everything that I thought I wanted. And so there was almost like a double layer of disappointment at the time. But luckily, I broke free from that mindset, and I took a huge leap of faith at the time, which was to take a leave of absence from my very safe and feathered nest of achievement and of ego satisfaction. And I took time to travel around the world. And travel has been one of. I know you guys travel all the time as well. It has been such a profoundly opening and expansive experience for me every time I've gone anywhere. And from this travel, I started to really study. I'd been studying human performance and thriving, really, since I was a child, whether through literature or books, or studying different leaders, different, everybody from the Kennedys to Martin Luther King. I just always had a passion for human behavior. And I started to, of course, people watch as I was traveling around the world. And I noticed that people in different cultures had different sets of values and valued things like work and life and family and gratitude and wellness differently than what I was seeing on Bay street in Toronto, which is sort of like the Wall street of Canada, where all the bank towers are. And it really struck me, the contrast of having what seemed to be very little from a monetary perspective, but yet seeming to have this overabundance of happiness, of joy, of fulfillment, of all these things that we think that money is going to get for us. And it really struck a chord for me, the contrast of the two worlds that I was straddling. So I came back, and this is something we talk a lot about in our work and at the Bliss Project and the work that I do, which is really aligning to a higher purpose. And I got clear at that time. I did some work with a coach, and I started taking all kinds of different Trainings and coach training and emotional intelligence and all these different certifications, neuroscience training. And I got really clear that I wanted to guide people till their ultimate potential, to their ultimate natural highs. And at the time, I didn't even know what it was. I called it being like a guidance counselor, but for adults. But I really, yeah, I was like, how can we help people? Just because we graduate from high school doesn't mean that we need to stop getting support. So I aligned with this higher sense of purpose and I started coaching people and have done that for the last 16 years. And because of my background in business, I started getting asked to go into the same boardrooms that I had left as a consultant, I was getting invited back into as a coach. And so I've really had the opportunity and the privilege to, for the last 15 years, to be invited into the most sacred spaces, the innermost worlds of some of the most powerful leaders, influencers, founders, entrepreneurs in the world, and have gotten to really understand what makes people tick, what their fears are, what their dreams are, and really be a sounding board and to be able to hold space for them to step into their highest potential. So that was the story from a professional side of things. But at the same time, I was also traveling, initially just with Chris, with my husband, and then, as we had children, bringing them into the mix, but continuing with this travel and specifically coming down to Costa Rica. And at the same time, I had this third piece, which was this deep passion for yoga and ultimately mindfulness and spirituality. So I had these three different pieces of passion. I would say that at the time were very separate, but were each informing my own journey and my own process in such a powerful and profound way that it was all like a spiral effect, kind of a positive spiral of getting grounded and rooted through my spiritual practice, going away and getting perspective and, and inspiration, and also just resetting my nervous system from living in downtown Toronto and living that busy, busy hustle life by coming down to Costa Rica and unplugging. And then the third piece was being able to take the wisdom, the clarity, the practices that I had in these other realms and then sharing them back with my clients in the coaching work I was doing in the speaking in the workshops, etc. So I started, I did that for many, many years, about 15 years. And this is the important part that I really would love to share with everybody, was that once again, just like I had had in my early management consulting days, I started to get these whispers from my soul again. And it is one thing that I can Say, looking back, if I could offer this to anybody, listening is listen to the whispers. And for me, it started out with just a general feeling of, first of all, elation when I would come down to Costa Rica on vacation and that feeling of like, I've come home, like, these are my people, this is my place. And this could be a place you go on vacation. It could be just a new group of friends you're hanging out with. It could be, I know you guys go to Soul Cycle. It could literally be anywhere. But just listening to those indications of this is resonating for me. I belong here. This is, this is expanding me and this is making me feel good. It's as simple as that. Does this make me feel good or not so good? It's really as simple as that. And then I ultimately had some experiences and this is again, I'll share this because I know some people can relate because they've shared stories with me of on my last day. I always remember my last day of vacation. I would be here initially for just a week and then a couple of weeks. And then I slowly expanded to a month, a year. And I remember the first time I came for a month and I was here alone with the kids for the full month. And Chris was in crazy startup mode. So that's another thing people say, oh, I can't go because my partner can't go. So my invitation to people is to try to just be really creative about how you can try to do things in a capacity that works for you. So for me, it really looked like coming down here with my mom and we were these two jungle women from Northern Ontario and we would come down here and plant ourselves with the monkeys and the iguanas and these four babies and let the kids run wild all month. And I was lucky to have my work was mobile, so I was able to have clients call me down here. I would also do a lot of my writing and things during that time and I would pre plan a lot of the creative work. So that's another question I get a lot is about working remotely and how can you do it and how can you do it with kids? And then Chris would come down with my dad when they could, and they would come down for a week or two weeks and we just figured it out for a while like that. And I remember the first time I came for a full month, I was at my last yoga class on my last day and I was lying in Shavasana, which is that corpse pose at the end of the practice, which is Really a nice form of meditation. And the teacher said, just think of one thing you're grateful for. And I remember I just had this flood of emotion, of gratitude. And in my head I was like, everything, this whole place, this whole country, this whole community. And it was through my tears and my deep well of emotion that I got real clarity that I needed to spend more and more time down here. So this whole journey for us has been really one of leaping into the unknown and making it up as we go, and then ultimately listening to the whispers of our souls, but also taking the actions required. So, for example, with our retreats, you are asking about how we got started and how we ended up down here. Initially, I just came here as my own healing place. And it was the most profoundly healing place for me for about 11 or 10 or 11 years. And then I got this knowing that as I was transitioning my career, it was time to integrate all of the separate parts of what had been very separate for me in my life before being the coaching and the positive psychology work I'd been doing in a very corporate setting, plus the mindfulness and movement piece, plus the travel. And I got this again, these insights, intuitions, guidance, however we want to articulate it, which was bring them down here. And at the time it was, okay, it's time to do a retreat. So I heard this intuition and this knowing. And as most good intuitions go, I was terrified and thought, I have no idea. I have no idea how to run a retreat. I have no idea how to do any of this stuff. But. And I know a lot of your listeners also are thinking about doing these types of events. And whether it's a one day off site or a retreat or a week long. And again, I just made it up as I went and trusted that the right people, the right questions would arise as they were meant to. And that's basically how we got to where we are. And as I continued to step into my fear and try trust at every step, the most incredible, beautiful people showed up being you guys. And the magic has unfolded since then.

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I love hearing that story. And the one thing that I absolutely there's always this one clear line about you that always comes through that has been so inspirational to me. And it's also been something that I've adopted because of watching you is that you are so willing to go to that fearful place and to that place where things feel counterintuitive to what they should be. Like, why am I getting this call to do this completely opposite thing? Or, wow, there's a lot of darkness over there. I'm going to dive in head first. I love that about you. And, you know, it's given me permission, so I want to go there in a minute. But what it's done for me is it's made me realize that that dark thing or that totally counterintuitive thing is not scary. It's like I used to have. And I know there's so many people on this podcast, same exact thing, right? Fears are our biggest block, typically. And it's like we're so afraid to go there because we don't know if we can handle it or we don't know what's on the other side. So what makes you always such, like, this insane warrior, going straight for the fear and straight for the thing that's opposite of what seems logical?

I'm laughing because I'm like, it's so true. I'm crazy when you say it like that.

I love it. I love it.

I call it good crazy, though. I like to think of it as good crazy. So I'll tell you, I actually have more insight about this in the last little while. I struggled with anxiety my entire life up till my mid 20s, and it still likes to rear its head every now and then with me. And I developed this habit when I was in my. I think I was maybe even in my early 20s or maybe even before. And I used to challenge myself to do one thing a day that scares me because I was living in kind of a chronic state of terror with anxiety, like the what ifs and the how, you know, all of that worrying and rumination. And so I developed this practice of instead of being limited by my fear or allowing it to control me, I remember I had this pivotal moment where I changed my perspective on fear and I changed the way that I looked at it and I changed the way, the meaning that I made about it. So instead of thinking like, oh my God, this is scary, what could happen? Those thoughts would arise. I really looked at it as excitement. So I simply replaced the word fear with excitement. And it sounds simple, but it's not easy. And then I also replaced the body sensation of knots in my stomach, which was quite common. And I decided that instead they were butterflies of excitement, excitement guiding me. That this. And I used to. I have this mantra that I say is like this way to the good stuff. If you follow us, this is where the good stuff is. And it's so interesting in hindsight now to be able to see. And I think this is how life goes. We see the path only in hindsight, as opposed to knowing where we're going in the moment. But that habit of reframing fear as an opportunity. And now there's all this research around growth, mindset and flow states, and all of this amazing research that's basically explaining this practice that I've had for a long time. And so reframing fear as an opportunity for growth, as an opportunity for aliveness. One of my greatest values is to learn and to grow and to experience all that life has to offer. And so for me, being stagnant and still not from a place of rest and stillness, I'm actually really good at that now, I've practiced that. But from a place of not learning, of not growing, of not expanding in a natural way, that to me is like death. It's like a pond that has no fresh water coming into it. And ultimately it gets. There's nothing can grow in there. And so for me, the fear and the. It's not adrenaline in an adrenaline junkie kind of way, even though I do like a lot of different sports that are a bit more adventure in nature, but there's aliveness there and there's energy. And I'm actually just literally right now reading this book on flow state, which I've been studying for many, many years, since 2008. I started really looking into it. And they really correlate Steven Kotler's work about flow state in extreme athletes. And there is a direct correlation between stepping into fear or out of a comfort zone and into novelty situations that helps to trigger flow states, which help us to focus intently, to be infinitely more creative, to tap into solutions, problem solving, and creation at what can be perceived as almost superhuman level. So it's so fascinating to me now to think about as we step into our fears, as we do the thing we think we cannot do. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, it's actually helping us to not only discover what's on the other side, but create our own realities. So for me, it was literally stepping into my fear of not having a clue how to live in Costa Rica, educate my kids, bring groups down here, teach yoga in a way that I've never taught movement before. And it allowed me to tap into creative resources, to new modalities, new ways of communicating that I didn't even know were possible. Before that. So I think it's really a beautiful practice to encourage people to get. And it can be baby steps. It doesn't need to look like moving to Costa Rica, but it's. It could be talking to that one new person at your spinning class, or it could be. I have many people who actually just recently have two clients, two different clients who just launched their very first workshops. I'm getting goosebumps right now because I'm so proud of them. And so they were afraid, and they're into this new area that they're developing, and they just did it. They put the word out there, they created it, and both of them were huge successes. So, yeah, I think it's really exciting to step into our fear.

I love that you were just talking about flow state, because I think a lot of people, including myself, I can actually pinpoint back to about a week ago and even right now with having to write a talk in, like, two days thinking, oh, it needs all this space. It needs all this time. I need to feel this way, it needs to look this way. And it's like the very thing that we think that we need could actually be blocking us, like, that story around. I need this. It needs to look this way. And you're actually blocking yourself from. If you had faith and handed yourself over to almost know that it's, like, always accessible. So how do you. How do you allow yourself to kind of lean in, have faith, and just say, wow, this is not how I thought it would look. This isn't feeling how I thought. I'm still in fear to get into that flow state that is. Is there for us at any time.

Oh, I love that question. That is such a good question. So my new obsession, which is everything I'm writing about, thinking about, talking about, is hustle in flow. I actually believe that we can transcend these old beliefs and patterns that I am totally a product of. I grew up in that FaceTime. How many hours can you work? And it was like this badge of honor. I remember I used to look at my calendar when I was first building my business and be so excited about. It was so full, you know, I had so many appointments and I was so busy and so important because everybody wanted me. And then I ultimately reached a point of almost burnout. And this idea of driving and driving and driving ourselves, it can get us so far. And it's very highly rewarded and recognized, specifically in North American society and maybe Western Europe. But ultimately, it's not sustainable. And I think that most people who are as driven as I certainly was. And many people I work with, most people I work with are, can attest to it's not a sustainable strategy. And ultimately you're not necessarily tapping into your highest potential. And that's what really intrigues me is this quantum leap of not only fulfillment, happiness, joy, passion that I believe is what fuels us, but also to the impact and the level and magnitude of impact we can have out in the world. So it's a complete mind shift away from the harder I work, the more suffering I endure, the more I push myself to the point of extreme exhaustion, the better. And what I learned, this is what I learned from my time down in Costa Rica, my time in my physical practices of yoga, my spiritual practice, meditation, etcetera, was that less is more. And it's not the quantity of work we're doing, but instead it's the quality. And I love what you just said about your talk because I know you've experienced this and I think you've shared it publicly, so I hope you don't mind if I share it again.

Go for it.

Okay. Okay. So my experience of coming down to Costa Rica and stepping away and I also have a cottage that I go to in Northern Ontario for the summers is that when I get into nature, when I get away from the noise of my everyday life, and we have a very busy life, especially when we were back in Toronto, but getting into nature, getting into silence, getting into stillness, rooting into practices, like for me now, it's a morning walk on the beach, or it's a morning surf session, or it used to be a morning run or any kind of physical activity that gets your blood flowing. So these rituals, now it's a meditation for now it's a seated meditation for me. But it used to be more of a walking or a moving. I wouldn't have even called it a meditation at the time. But these are what would not be considered to be productive activities according to old me of, you know, 15 years ago or 20 years ago. But what I found was that after I do these practices and get into nature quiet, my mind get into stillness. Sometimes it looks like turning on music and dancing and singing. And I know you love to dance, and that's one thing that we share, that when I go to sit down to do my creative work, it pours out of me and that's the flow state. And I remember you sharing that you had written some incredible chapters of your book down at one of the retreats that you were at. And I seen it enough times in myself in all of the people who have come down and in all of the research that I've done that that's not by accident that we can actually tap into infinitely greater levels of creativity, of focus, of productivity by stepping away from the busyness of our lives, away from the noise, allowing our nervous systems to quiet and getting into the inspiration of nature, the calming effects of being in these practices of mindfulness, of movement, nature and quiet. And then that's when we really have the disruptively game changing ideas and creations that come out of us.

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Think it was in Sean Acor's new book about nature actually it is scientifically proven and it opens up your mind to new ideas and new perspectives. So. Or in walking in nature especially. And you know that's something that I love about traveling, about going to Costa Rica, about getting in the jungle, about getting outside. And one of the things is I I don't even know how to explain what happens when you go somewhere that's totally new and into an environment. Talking about Costa Rica Again, when we go down to these retreats, you know, because the first time that I went I was like, what can really, like how transformative can this be? Because I'd been to so many self development events and it was like just the fact that you're in a completely new environment that you're opening up to kind of this idea that nature is always doing its thing without even having to do anything. Like you could actually just surrender in nature, in the jungle and you would transform in that week's time. So that alone, having that knowing and that belief around, that kind of setting, that intention around that was huge for me. And then also just what you have us go through, what you have us doing. The perspective that I come back with every single year is it's like I don't even know what I'm gonna come back with. And something profound happens that completely changes the course of my life or the way that I think about my life for the entire next year until the next thing and then the next thing. And it's like, I don't know how that happens every year. So can you explain that to me?

I can, I can. I remember, I remember the first year we did it and I remember the incredible profound transformation that happened for every single person on the retreat as well as for the group as a whole. And I remember at the end of that retreat thinking, oh my God, this will never happen again. This was like a one time thing.

I have felt that, yes.

I think I'm like 10 retreats into it and it happens every single time in slightly different ways. But it's really this beautiful gift that has come to all of us to co create what has is, I say it's both an art and a science. And so my brain works very much in a left brain and a right brain way. And so I draw from all the research, all the studying, all the years of studying human behavior and we create these containers of body, mind, spirit. So the morning movement, the meditation, we're in nature. I'm tapping into what not only I've experienced. It was 100% experiential from my process. It's what I observed and led thousands of people through in my career. And it's also what the research shows works. So there's a reason that I get all these superstar beautiful people out of their comfort zones, in their offices, in their suits and all of this. And we get them into novel situations. So just getting on a plane, getting people out of their comfort zones, it gets them instantly into a growth mindset. It Gets them into play, it gets them into discomfort. So, again, all these triggers for what you're describing of massive breakthroughs, massive transformation automatically start to happen. Then we get into nature, and we start to let what's no longer necessary, the noise of the everyday world starts to get pulled away from us, and it gets absorbed back into the jungle, into the ocean, on our surfboards. And we add in the elements of play, of movement and movement. I know you're a very huge, huge advocate for movement, as am I, because I realized that as recognized and rewarded as I'd always been for my mind and my intellectual capacity, that I needed to actually lose my mind and get out of my head. And the way that I could do that, for me, was only through movement. It was through running, it was through yoga, it was through swimming. And I realized again that doing a lot of the work I'd been doing for many years was very cognitively based. It was a lot of stuff around mindset. And I think that's extremely important work to do. But I think it's only one of many facets. And so that's why we get everybody into their bodies, into their. Again, into the surfboards, into the. We have all different kinds of modalities. That's. Again, there's, method to the madness and as well, the spaciousness, the open time to just connect with. You know, we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And things like happiness, things like obesity, things like mindset are contagious. We know this from mirror neurons. So there's a reason we get together with these tribe of incredible people. We get inspired, and then we also have space built into the week, so we're not running from meeting to meeting and call to call, so we have time to read, to reflect, to journal, and that's when we tap into the stillness that can really allow these profound transformations to happen. And all of this is, of course, wrapped in a giant ball of fun and play and dance and lightness, because I also. And also research shows, know that when we play and when we have fun, everything can go way faster and way more smoothly, especially when it comes to transformation. We. We talk about spiritual growth and transformation, and I know you are a huge believer in this as well. Like, it doesn't need to be so hard and so significant all the time, right? We can have some fun and some playfulness, and it's also work, there's no question about it. But really, I think if we can find the funny, have some fun along the way, then it makes the entire process unveil. So that's kind of the science or the methodology behind it. And then we leave space for the art and the magic. Because when we just surrender to these callings, always the perfect people show up in the perfect combinations. And it always. I'm in awe and wonder and delight the entire time that these things are happening. Because I plan and I plan and I plan. And I remember the very first time that you guys showed up and we had planned meticulously the opening night and welcoming everybody. And then the sea turtles arrived to lay all their eggs and we canceled everything. And Mother Nature had a whole different plan. And we loaded everybody into to these cattle trucks to drive to this beach to watch, like thousands of mama turtles laying their eggs. And it was one of the most profound and beautiful experiences of my entire life. And everybody that was able to witness it, it was that alone. And that was like the first hour of the first day. So we can plan and we can create containers. And then there's also back to that word flow. There's that surrender to the magic that's available when we actually let go of our plans and throw what we think should happen and our expectations kind of throw them out the window and see what's actually available to us if we stay present and agile and open to receiving what's all around us.

So, yeah, I love that you just said just talking about what you think should happen. Because for me, a lot of the transformation at. At the retreats is it's in every single moment of looking at my brain saying to me, this is what you should look like. Or why. Why are you being so resistant to who you know that you are? And all of these shoulds or this feels weird, or, you know, all of these different things are coming up because it's your I'm. You're still wrapped in this other identity that does not match with who your soul is actually telling you to be. Like, it's all these moments of, I want to go dance too, or I want to go and do that too, or I want to beat on that drum too. And then it's like, yeah, but what if I'm not good? Or what if this looks funny? Or what if I'm not a good dancer? What if I can't let go? Or. Or, you know, it's not feel. It's like we know who we are. And that's the funny thing is when you get into the jungle too, is. It's just amplified. Like, you just want to play. You want to have fun. You want to just be able to feel free, like that freedom is calling you. And yet all of these restraints from. It feels like when you're in the jungle from the other world are still like shackling you. So those are some of the most profound things that happen for me is all of these shoulds that come in. So why are we so resistant to be ourselves?

That's such. Such a good question. And I think, obviously, I think some of it, most of it is from evolution, right? We don't want to be shunned. We don't want to be kicked out of the herd. We don't want to be left behind if we stand out too much. But that's kind of an outdated, ancient fear. And it can also really get in the way of us stepping into our highest potential and doing the work we're meant to do here. Because it can be risky and it can be vulnerable. To step on a stage, to speak or to open create a new business that maybe hasn't even been done before, maybe it hasn't been done in the circles that you travel in. And all of these things that have us step into our highest potential may feel like we're having to let go of who we thought we were or who everyone else in our circles has thought we were. And so it's really coming here. I love that you brought that example of the drumming or whatever it is that. And I purposely curate experiences that I think will be new and different for people, because what it does is it's almost like a ninja training ground of, if I can try on being different in this context, how can I bring that back? And again, maybe it's as simple as wearing a slightly different outfit to work on Monday, but one that expresses who I am a little bit more. Or maybe it's outing myself as being somebody who's really passionate about fitness and wellness in my very corporate office setting. I don't know what it is, but it's. It's. Or maybe it's, you know, telling my family that there's a certain part of me that I'm really excited about expressing that I haven't shared before. So what we do is we create this safe space. And that's one of the things that's most important to me, is creating that safe space for people to really let go of and strip away what's no longer serving as it's ready to go. That's not to force yourself, like, I'm never going to be that way again. It's really a gentle, revealing of who you really are at this moment. And it's an opportunity. As you know, I'm a big believer in just observing and being aware as opposed to judging ourselves. Like why do I always do this? Or why am I always that way? It's really a path of compassion towards ourselves, self compassion, so that we can just observe patterns, habits, behaviors, and now start to discern, is that how I still want to be going forward or am I ready to try on something new? Like anything from being a wild drumming woman or, you know, wearing a purple shirt to work on Monday, I don't know. And it's really just creating that safe space to generate self awareness. And the transformation is by definition it's a change. So in that change we learn to let go of, to release things that are not true for us anymore. And at the same time, I have this. Recently I've been having this analogy of shedding a snake skin, like it's no longer serving us. We can just let that go and then the shiny layer that's right underneath can really shine. And it might even be a different color or a different pattern, who knows? But there's an allowing of what's no longer needed, allowing it to just be left behind and it will nourish the earth behind it. And so that's, to me, that's what happens. And I think it can be very vulnerable as we're stepping into new ways of being. And sometimes our closest people, our family, our people in our work circles are often the last ones to really necessarily understand what we're doing or buy into it because they may even have an attachment to us staying the way we were. You know, maybe it serves them in some way for us to not change. So there's also a huge opportunity to. I know this happens again when we immerse ourselves into a tribe of people who are like minded, who are like hearted, who are on a similar path of joy, of transformation, of growth and of service. It becomes our new normal. And then we get charged up with our inspiration, with our grounding, with our community, with our tribe so that we can go back into our other lives. And this is reality too. It's all reality. We create our own realities wherever we are. So we go back to our other lives and we just show them how we are. We don't need to change everybody all at once. We just go back and we, as Gandhi said, we be the change. But we do it now with this whole tribe of beautiful people cheering us on and supporting us. And also this imprinted experience of Having stepped into the unknown, of having tried new things, of allowing our spirits to shine about, allowing fun and passion and joy to be the drivers of what we do. Even when we have to do tough things, it can still be from a place of extra exploration and curiosity and ultimately love.

That's so beautiful. What is most exciting for you right now?

I would say two things at this exact moment are most exciting. The first is the Alive and Wake Unplugged group coming in at the end of April and bringing another group to the jungle and so excited to have that event happening. And the second thing is finishing my book. So writing a lot of this beautiful conversation that we're having, getting it into my book, Path of the Unicorn. So those are my two greatest excitements at this moment in time.

So you guys, the three of us, Danette, Lindsay and I, who are in that mastermind that we do every other week, we have all kind of been on this book journey at the same time time. And that in itself has been so incredibly profound, especially to do all together. And I feel like we've been able to make our own story around what it really looks like to write a book. Because I don't know about you, but I used to hear, like, it was so painful and it's awful and it's this horrible thing and I wanted to change that story around it. And just watching you after watching Danette and I, I feel like you are just in pure joy, like in your bliss writing this book.

Yes. I want to share this because thank you for saying that that has been such proof of this lifestyle, because I do. I come in from my practices and surfing and movement and yoga and I sit down to write and I can't keep up with my fingers typing so fast on the computer. And I'm hearing all these intuitions and ideas coming into my mind. And so it really, for me has been the culmination of a lot of this work that I've done in my own life and that I've learned about, it's almost like the proof case of it. And also acknowledging that with four kids and writing, there are a lot of stories that could be made up about it being hard. And it is a challenge. And I guess I'll share my process that while I'm so excited about it, it's also been a deeply humbling practice and also cultivating patience to trust that one step at a time, one day at a time, one hour at a time, just doing our work in the world and creating as we're able to create. In the context of all the beautiful chaos of life and kids and other commitments, and as you said, just doing my best to go back to the joy that's at the core of feeling aligned with serving in the way that I'm called to serve in this lifetime.

Yeah, I love that you say that, too, because I don't necessarily know if people from the outside would be like, really? That's your bliss?

Because it looks like you're having a.

Challenging time, but at the same time, it's really. It's really all of the perspective and the support and the story that you've created around it. So, you know, while, yes, we have all had really challenging times through writing this book, and especially with you, with timing and with your children and with everything that you have going on, but it's just, what story are you going back to? What are you always pulling from? So I love that you share that. So about your retreats, because that is one of the most exciting things in my life. And I get. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to have you on is because I get so many questions about what is that retreat that you always talk about in everything. It's always through your book. It's through everything when you speak about it, because it's been such a checkpoint for me every single year. So I know that you have one coming up and then you have one in November. Can you. Can you share a little bit about those?

Absolutely. So this one in April is called Alive and Wake unplugged, and it's April 28th till May 5th. And this is an opportunity to come down here and integrate body, mind, spirit. And really, this one is all about unplugging and going into stillness and taking that time to recharge. So that is going to be amazing. And then the next one is my Founders and influencers is happening November 10th to the 17th. And this is for people who are really kind of more of a mastermind model and creating a lot of space for. Within the week, we're going to have a lot of the activities around movement around mindfulness, but also creating some space for things like if people are writing a book or if they're wanting to update some of their content, they're going to have a group of other founders and influencers who are really doing amazing things in the world coming. That's the one that you and Chris have been on and many other beautiful, amazing game changers out there. So coming down here to really plug into the tribe, have an amazing time, get refocused on what they're creating next and have some time to actually do some of that creating while they're here.

Linds, where can we find you, follow you and find your info on all of your retreats?

Aliveandawake.com is my website. You can follow me at Lindsay Sikornik on Instagram and on Facebook and I would love to hear from anybody who's interested and share this encouragement, incredible experience with anybody who's able to make it down here.

You guys, if you are ready and this is if you're kind of getting those things that we have been calling a soul hit that I've been calling a soul hit that, you know, Lindsay and I have always said you really should follow those, especially if it's a big soul hit. You have to go and check it out because something is probably calling you to be unearthed or to come through or just to be more you and get more joy out of your life. And I know that's been huge for me with these retreats. So, Lindsay, thank you so much. I just want to acknowledge you as not only my sister in this world, shoulder to shoulder, but just who you are and how you serve. So big and bold. And I'm so grateful for you.

Thank you. And I'm so deeply grateful for you. I'm inspired by your book. I've got goosebumps as I think about it, and it's been my greatest delight to have you guys down here and to see see your massive transformation in everything that you're doing in the world. So thank you.

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