345 Transcript: Being Authentic with Rachel Macy Stafford

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Jen: [00:00:00] You're listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast. We're talking about authenticity today, not only how we can be authentic, but how we can allow our kids to be their authentic selves as well.

Intro: [00:00:14] Are you ready to expand your soul's capacity for joy? Then this podcast is for you. I'm Dr. Jen Riday and welcome to Vibrant Happy Women.

Jen: [00:00:26] Hey, my friends, I'm Jen Riday and welcome back to Vibrant Happy Women. I am so excited about today's topic today because it's about authenticity. Being true to ourselves, but also allowing our kids to be true to themselves. I've been facing a big challenge with one of my daughters lately regarding schooling and what she needs to be her most authentic self. In this episode, I share very vulnerably what that has been like, what we've experienced, how I helped my daughter cut her hair. And I hope that you can resonate because if you're a mom, there comes a point when you want things for your kids. You want them to be liked, to be successful, to have friends, to achieve, to be able to work a job that pays well one day, which would require good grades to get into college. It can be devastating. I know by very many experiences with some of my six kids can be devastating to see our kids not following that socially constructed path of, “success.” This episode is very important not only to see how we can be authentic, but how we can allow our kids to live true to themselves and not need to control that or feel shame about that. So I hope this helps you.

Jen: [00:01:47] I want to mention that the Vibrant Happy Women retreat is live. The 2024 retreat is happening. You can learn more at jenriday.com/retreat. The early bird prices end soon, so check that out as soon as you hear this: jenriday.com/retreat. This past year we were together in Punta Cana, 60 women and myself and we had a lovely, lovely time. I can't tell you how good it feels for me to get away from my family. The pressures of, you know, daily life, the cold of Wisconsin, and to be together with women who truly see here value me and everyone else who's there. Women who are willing to take off their masks and love each other, be there for each other, hear each other. Oh, that level of connection is so soul-fueling for me. I'm super excited to do it again in 2024. If you would like to experience that level of love and friendship and connection in a growth-oriented setting, learn more and sign up at jenriday.com/retreat. Alright. Well, let's dive into this episode with Rachel Macy Stafford talking about authenticity.

Jen: [00:03:17] Hey there my friends. I am super excited to be here with Rachel Maysie Stafford today. She is a New York Times best-selling author of Hands Free Mama, Hands Free Life Only Love Today, and Live Love Now! Her new book, Soul Shift, releases on March 28th. And we're going to talk about especially her chapter on authenticity. Rachel is a certified special ed teacher whose personal strategies are universal invitations to embrace life with urgency. I love that phrase and cultivate connection despite the distractions of our culture. Rachel lives in Georgia with her beloved family. Welcome to the show, Rachel.

Rachel: [00:03:57] Oh, it's so good to be here. Thank you.

Jen: [00:04:00] I'm excited to have you. You sent kind of a pre-print copy of your book and your chapter on authenticity kind of blew my mind. And you told me before we began recording that you're getting the same feedback from many of your readers. So go ahead and give us an overview of the book and then we'll dive into that chapter on authenticity.

 

Rachel: [00:04:21] Okay, perfect. Thank you. So the way that I set up my book, I wanted people to feel like they were taking a journey. Because when you're working on reclaiming your joy, being your most authentic self, this is not something that's going to happen overnight. So I wanted people to have the feeling that this is a process. This is taking slow steps in whatever direction feels like that's the way you need to go because this is basically based on my own journey to be my more authentic self and put joy back into my life. But I don't want people to think that their journey has to look like my journey. So in the back of the book, there's this beautiful map. I call it the living map, and it has all the different territories that we take on the journey. And like you mentioned, being our most authentic self. That's one of the eight practices. And so on this map, you can see the practice of presence, the practice of true self-worth, the practice of self forgiveness, like all of these areas that can be painful to go in and delve deep into, Like, okay, who am I? What are my obstacles in these areas? But I wanted people to feel like they weren't alone. So I share a lot of really vulnerable experiences of how I came to a lot of these healing truths that I share in the book. And I wanted them to also feel like this was their journey. So there's no right or wrong answer. So if you read the book, you're going to hear a lot of this really encouraging voice that says there are no right or wrong answers. This is all about just gaining awareness.

Jen: [00:06:25] Um, that's so, so resonant for me. You know, we -you and I- most of our listeners grew up in a society where right and wrong was shoved in our faces with “shoulds.” So tell us kind of your story of facing that pressure and how you've let go of it to find what's right for you?

Rachel: [00:06:47] Well, I feel like as I grew up, probably starting in my adolescent years, that I figured out what could give me accolades and approval and even made me feel loved, which was roles like Go Getter and Helper and Perfectionist. You know, “Rachel does such a good job.” And so every time I got praised for those doing those things and bending over backwards and really being selfless, um, I thought, “well, this is the way to go.” Well, as you know, you can go along and really just keep putting on these masks, these roles and it gets really, really heavy. So my epiphany came during a run one afternoon or actually it was morning. It was really hot. And I was in Alabama and I had this question going around in my head, this question. That was something I'd kind of patted myself on the back for, which was, Rachel, how do you do it all? And I thought, Oh, that's a compliment. Well, I thought, what would be the truthful, honest answer if I were to answer that question and that day, for the first time, I said something. The most honest thing I've said to myself in a long time, which was I can do it all because I miss out on life. I miss out on the moments that matter, the laughing, the playing, the memory making and realizing that, especially when it pertained to, I realized what I was missing in my family's life and a chance to get to know my daughters. That was painful. You know, there's no other way around that. But as much as it hurt and I actually cried, I also felt relief. I felt relief because I thought now that it's out there and now that I've said I don't want this, I don't want to wear ten masks and have all these roles that some of them, they're no longer serving me. They're actually depleting me. And so that moment was the moment that I said, okay, what are you going to do about it? And I am a certified special education teacher and I've worked with kids. I have like over a decade of experience with working on behavior issues. So I thought, well, I know a little something about changing habits. And I knew that I was doing a lot of depleting things, a lot of self-abandoning behaviors. And that is where my journey started, with one small step to be present in my life. And that's where the book starts at the practice of presence, which I kind of call my home base.

Jen: [00:10:07] So presence with whatever is around you that sounds, you know, mindfulness is very closely related. It always sounds good, but then things keep presenting themselves. How do you know what to be present with?

Rachel: [00:10:21] Yeah, absolutely. And if you're like me and you are living this really highly destructive, you know, productive, busy life, it's really hard to even imagine, like being still with your thoughts, allowing yourself to be available and feel, you know, because we're really good at, at escaping, thinking about hard things because we've got all these distractions. Well, I had to start very small and some people think, Oh, what can ten minutes of presence do? Well, ten minutes of presence can do a lot. And when I say I started my practice of presence with ten minutes, I will tell you that for me, what it looked like was it started with being available to my daughters when I would see them in a moment where I could connect with them. That was a cue for me to let go of the phone, put the computer away, put the to-do list away, set aside the guilt, the expectation, all of that stuff in here, because we got a lot of distraction going on in our head. And I thought, can I do this? Can I be all there in this moment, not cleaning up around them, but just being there, noticing their freckles, noticing the colors of their eyes, noticing the gap between their teeth, and those few minutes of just allowing myself to BE were some of the most peaceful moments that I had felt in years. And it's amazing when you decide I'm worthy of showing up for every moment in my life. I don't have to give it away to whoever is bidding for my attention, which is really hard now because we have the phone. So at any time someone can grab our attention. But when we decide I'm worthy of putting these protective boundaries around my family, around my mental health. It's a game-changer.

Jen: [00:12:54] Wow. And so you mentioned the phones. Do you just turn your phone off for those ten minute sessions?

Rachel: [00:13:01] Well, I actually had, when I started, I had to put it where I could not see it.

Jen: [00:13:06] Oh, okay.

Rachel: [00:13:08] Because I'm telling you and there's actually studies on this, just the presence of the phone, even if it's not notifying you or lighting up the presence of the phone makes conversations stop at a certain level so you don't go deeper. Like if you have your phone out at the coffee shop with your friend. They've studied this that you're not going to go into those deeper conversations as long as that phone is there. Wow. It does something to our brains. You know, it keeps us from being all there. And think about it. Do you want to go deep with someone? If you're watching and their eyes go down to their phone, you know, you're like, they're not really listening to me. And, you know, when I started thinking about how my family was feeling, like what would this feel like to them? I was like, you know, that's not fair and that's not who I want to be. And so, um, just putting that phone in a drawer like, out of sight really helped me. Now, I don't need to do that as much because I've been able to basically I've experienced the benefits of living life while it's happening rather than through a screen. And so it can be, you know, sitting on the counter and I can be cooking. And, you know, I don't feel that compulsion to check it all the time, which I did at first. But, you know, turning off notifications, it seems so basic, but a lot of us don't do it. Um, that's one way to really protect. And also, I love having rooms in the house that are tech free. Like we don't bring phones in our bedrooms. Like that's one way to really like have a protective boundary that helps, helps us all and have like, okay, this is where we charge our phones at night and having teenagers, it's been really important. Now, have they always followed the rules? No, but I can tell it's amazing. I can tell, especially with my younger daughter, how tired – I was like, she's so tired. What is going on? Yeah, she was using her phone in the night.

Jen: [00:15:44] Uh oh.

 

Rachel: [00:15:45] So now she's 16. In fact, we were talking about it the other night. She says, Mom, a lot of my friends are up all night on their phones. And she's like, Do you know that your brain does not grow if you have a lack of sleep? And I was like, Actually, I do. I've read a lot of research on that. Um, but, you know, it's, it's something that I talk about is like this idea of empowering our family to also understand the benefits of having protective spaces in your life, you know, time or spaces like when I'm driving, I'm not on my phone. That was something I went public with my kids. And of course, when they're little, they're going to keep you accountable. If you say mom's not going to be on her phone or whatever it is, or you say we're not going to bring the phones to dinner, it's good to put that out there and explain this is why we're doing this, because the world and its demands. It does not stop. It's going to keep infiltrating into your life if you don't set the boundaries.

Jen: [00:16:56] Beautiful.

Jen: [00:16:57] Yeah. So important. So that mindfulness was important to be present and to begin to witness who your kids really are. Let's let that be our transition to talking about authenticity. So in your book Soul Shift, by the way, the tagline I Love It The Weary Human's Guide to Getting Unstuck and Reclaiming Your Path to Joy. I love that we are a human raising my hand.

Rachel: [00:17:24] Oh, that's good. I'm not alone.

Jen: [00:17:27] Yeah. So in the book you mention I'll just read this quote about authenticity. You're talking, you're asking the question, “who am I as my most authentic self?” So everyone listening, ask that of yourself. “Who am I as my most authentic self?” And your answer, Rachel, was -Oh, this is page 119, by the way. “It's the version of myself that I embrace when no one else is around. It's the version of myself in which I feel most safe and comfortable. It's the version of myself in which my actions align with my beliefs. It's the version of myself that wears no mask, no persona, no facade. It's me at my deepest, truest core.” So Rachel, I'd love to kind of hear you answer that. Life is just- I really feel like continuously peeling the layers of the onion or pulling off layers of the mask that we're conditioned to live with. So who have you discovered that you really are at your deepest, truest core?

Rachel: [00:18:34] Well, I am someone who enjoys just to be surrounded by softness, like softness in the clothes that I wear. I do not want to dress up and be fancy, which is what I did for many, many years thinking, well, this is who I'm supposed to be. This is the image that I want to protect and portray. Now it's all about what? What do I feel most comfortable in? So soft things like that. I like to be around soft people, people who just they allow me to be myself. They don't have expectations. And who. Who am I supposed to be to them? No, it's. I love you, Rachel, for who you are. And there's a softness about those types of friends that you can just breathe easier. And I feel like there's a softness in just the way I want to interact with the world I want when I meet someone or I encounter a stranger or someone introduces me, I'm really not interested in the small talk and the platitudes like I want to know what lights you up. What, what's broken your heart. Um, that's the kind of thing that I feel like that's why I'm here. Like, I want to connect with people, and I feel like we learn so much when we connect to each other about ourselves and about just navigating as humans.

Rachel: [00:20:14] And so for me, it's been a process of really looking inward and saying, “but what do I want to do? Or how do I want to show up?” And even though I know I'm going to be walking into maybe a room where all these people are just really put together and I'm like, I just, I don't, that's not me. I'm going to be myself. I'm going to wear what's comfortable. Like, that's just a small example of being able to be sure of yourself and say, okay, I'm going to show up in the way that I'm comfortable so I can really exude this, this sense that. Realness is where the joy is at. Like I feel like when. When we are real, when we can be real with each other. Now you've probably known you can't be real with everybody. But when you find that person that you can be real with, it is so rewarding. I mean, there's laughter, there's vulnerability like there, there's a sharing that goes on. It's a belonging, a sense of belonging that we all long for and we don't know how to. I feel like I'm going to belong. Well, the secret is finding out who you are and then showing up as yourself instead of what you think you're supposed to be.

Jen: [00:21:56] So I'm guessing a lot of people listening are like, “Yeah, I want to do that, but I don't know who I am.” So how would you recommend they get started figuring that out?

Rachel: [00:22:06] Yeah, that's a great question.

Jen: [00:22:09] It's tough.

Rachel: [00:22:09] It's a great question. I encourage my workshop participants because I teach Soul Shift as a workshop. Um, and many people, when they come, they say, I don't know who I am. Like, I don't have the faintest idea. And it's, it's discouraging. It's scary. And then so, what I encourage them to do is when you have an opportunity to express your feelings or you express your opinion or you are asked to do something, I recommend that you begin to get in the habit of just simply pausing and saying, “What do I want to do? What do I really want to do?” Now, this can be as simple as your family says, “Mom, where do you want to go To dinner?” And if you're like me, you read the room. You try to figure out, “Oh, what do they want me to say? Where I know where they would like to go?” So that's what I'm going to say. Well, your authentic self is asking you to say, “Well, no, what do you want to do?” And then to say it. And, and I, I know from personal experience, when I, when I began to put my needs and my likes and my inclinations out there, it's not always received very well. And of course, my family was shocked the first time I said where I wanted to really go. Oh, you know, they're so disappointed. And so I had to be strong in that moment because as a recovering people pleaser, I wanted to say, “Oh, okay, that's fine.” But I said, “You asked me where I wanted to go and this is where I wanted to, this is where I want to go.” And so then it can go on to bigger things.

Rachel: [00:24:16] I remember getting a call from someone who I was the go-to person in this community, like a big project needs to get done. “Call Rachel. Rachel will get it done.” Yeah. You know, you get on that list and you are always called. Well, she said, “we need someone to head up the book fair.” And I remember. “Rachel, do you want to head up the book fair? What do you really want to do?” And of course, every fiber in my body was screaming, No, no, no, no, no, no. I do not want to do this. Now, the old me would have said, “Yes, I'll do it” because I want to be accommodating, you know, and that's where the worthiness, that's how I got my worthiness is to basically separate myself from what I need, what I want, my authentic self, to satisfy the outside expectation. So I said, “No, I can't do that this time.” And she said, “Oh, that's fine, I'll just go on to the person on the list that's after you.” And of course I was like, “There's a list?!” Like all this time I've been saying yes, and there's other people, you know. And so that is what it is. It's like sticking your toe into the water, like we don't suddenly wake up and go, “I'm going to be my authentic self. I'm going to start saying what I want, what I need, what I like.” It doesn't happen like that. It starts one choice after another choice and realizing I'm okay. The world did not fall down. Maybe someone didn't like it and maybe they even said they didn't like it. And that was hard for me to hear. But my self-respect is intact and that is a feeling you cannot get when you are constantly abandoning yourself.

Jen: [00:26:18] Mhm. I love that. You know, in your book you mentioned your daughter Avery's story and you just mentioned the phrase abandoning yourself. So I'd love to also talk about allowing our kids to be authentic. This is like, next level. I'm already about to feel sick, right? Because as parents, we want our kids to fit in, to have friends, to get approval from their teachers. So this topic really resonates with me right now because I have a child in middle school who has really struggled. Her grades totally dropped. Um, I'm trying to think, what would she be okay with me sharing anyway? I know she'd be okay with this part: By the end of the past month, in February, she was lying on the back of the floor of the classroom and completing no work. So it was a mental health issue. The school didn't adapt properly, so I made the hard choice to let her choose what felt authentic and what would allow her not to feel like she was abandoning herself. She kept saying, “I hate school. I can't stand the noise there.” There was sensory stuff going on. “I want to home-school.” So my brain fought this for a long time. But she is now homeschooling. I don't know how long it will last. Um, and I'm just letting her do what feels true to her. So you had a similar version with Avery? I would love to hear how you do that.

Rachel: [00:27:55] Let me just. I want to commend you for asking your daughter, “what do you need? What do you need to thrive?” And it gets me emotional because I know that a lot of our kids are struggling right now. The past couple years have been really hard. And so when you ask your daughter to say, “what do you need to thrive?” And then you listened to her because she's listening to herself and that is key because when you want to be your authentic self, you're getting in touch with your needs, what you need to thrive. And then as her mother, you are validating the way she's listening to herself. So you're already building this window that she can say, “I'm safe to be myself here.”

Jen: [00:29:00] Yeah.

Rachel: [00:29:01] Oh, I really commend you for that.

Jen: [00:29:04] I have to add, while being really vulnerable here, my husband is 100% opposed. He is freaking out. He's still in the state of, “She needs to be in school.” Our two oldest also struggled. We've got a whole mental health, autism, ADHD and even bipolar theme going on in our family. The oldest two both ended up dropping out and getting GEDs. I think now understanding they had sensory issues, they had social anxiety and it was too big… And I know that will be my daughter's path if we don't start listening to her earlier. So I feel torn, between a rock and a hard place. But I've decided I want her to feel emotionally safe. And that was not happening at school. It was not happening for quite a long time at school. So yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that validation.

Rachel: [00:29:58] Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm listening to the, to you, you are giving a perfect example of what it looks like to live an authentic life. You are also listening to what your heart and your instincts as her parent are telling you and nothing against your partner, because believe me, we have we've had the same thing at our house. I do think that sometimes one parent is more attuned to their child and what they need. And it is very difficult when you are the one who is, who is saying, “I really think this is what we need to do.” And you're listening to her. So again, I commend you for that. I know how hard that is. But to know that my mom believes what I'm saying, and she listens to my feelings, that is incredibly important, like the significance of that cannot be underestimated. So if she is having a hard time right now and it's for many factors, she knows, “my mom is a safe place for me to be myself and to share my true feelings” because our kids don't have a place like that.

 

Rachel: [00:31:30] And when we're talking about authentic self, what kind of flipped the switch for me with my daughter Avery, who has a very different inner fiber than the rest of the world, and she definitely beats to her own drum. But when she was about 6 or 7, I remember her dressing herself to go to a community event that I was thinking, “Oh, we've got to look a certain way.” You know, we're going to project this image. And I go in there and she's in her her getup and she's done her hair all herself. And I look and she's twirling in the mirror and what I see is pure joy on her face. And I realized I could take that joy away right then and there by saying what I commonly said, which was. You're not going to go out like that, are you? Or let's pull something else out of the closet. And what over time, I realized when I would tell her how to play her guitar, you know, Oh, don't you think you should work on that note a little more? Because I'm what you said, Like, we want them to be successful. So we're saying, Oh, no, don't dress like that. People will make fun of you or, you know, you got to practice your soccer so you're going to be better on the field. But what they're hearing when we are criticizing them is we are rejecting them. They're hearing a message of you cannot come as you are. And I realized this is the voice that I had to combat for 40 years. I stood in front of that mirror and I told myself, I'm not good enough to come as I am. And I was like, I'm not going to do that to my kids.

Rachel: [00:33:22] And so for me, that day and this is what I want to make clear to people, it is one choice. You start with one choice. And when I became aware that I could squelch her joy, I kept my mouth shut and I decided I'm going to let her wear that. Interesting outfit and we're going to let this play out. And she met up with another little boy that was also very eclectic. And they started opening the apples, picking out seeds. They said we're going to grow an apple tree. And I'm watching them joyfully uninhibitedly interacting together and nobody could care less what her outfit looked like. And I thought. Good job, Rachel. You. You. You made a good choice. And that feels really good. And, you know, so it wasn't. It's not easy. I'm definitely telling you, like, every year that she grew, my fear of her not being included was fierce. But I also knew every time I tried to help her fit in by criticizing her or changing her. That is a message of rejection from the one person she needs to feel like she's okay with. So like you, what you're doing for your daughter is giving her that one place. And you might be the only place in her life right now where she feels like she can come as she is.

Jen: [00:35:03] Hmm. Yeah. Okay, Well, then there's the checkbox I helped her shave her head, too. Yes.

Rachel: [00:35:11] Oh, my gosh. You are doing really good things, Mom. You are brave.

Jen: [00:35:17] Yes. She wanted it for a long time. And I'm like, let's do it.

Rachel: [00:35:22] I love Oh My gosh, If you were here, I would hug you so hard right now.

Jen: [00:35:27] Wow. Those are hard. It's hard.

Rachel: [00:35:30] It's really hard.

Jen: [00:35:32] You know, inner, inner child work is becoming a big thing and being just a little more in touch with how I would have wanted to be parented as a child. And my parents did great for the times, right?

 

Rachel: [00:35:44] Yes. Yes.

Jen: [00:35:44] That's also helpful. I would have been thrilled to be allowed to shave my head.

Rachel: [00:35:49] absolutely.

Jen: [00:35:53] In your chapter on authenticity, everyone, you should definitely get this book because Rachel has some prompts to help you think about your choices. So I'll just read one of them. “I felt forced into the box of blank by blank, but I think I'd really flourish in a space where I could blank.” I read this book just as things were really going down with my daughter. And I want to tell you how I filled that out, “I felt forced into the box of traditional school by society, but I think I'd really flourish in a space where I could travel with my kids whenever we wanted.” So that felt very liberating.

Rachel: [00:36:35] Oh, I love that. 

Jen: [00:36:37] Yeah, it is a box. It is a box. It's not working for my daughter. So yeah…

Rachel: [00:36:41] Uh huh. Oh, I love to hear how that how you use that. And it does it when you really get it narrowed down to like, okay, what is, what are the confines here? What's confining me and, and what would, what would be a flourishing space for me because I often hear from people, they will say, “I don't belong anywhere.” Like, “I can't find anybody with the same interests. And and I feel weird, you know, I feel like there's no one like me.” And what I like to say is there's nothing wrong with you. It might be where you've been planted. So think about uprooting, even if it's for an hour or a half a day. Uprooting yourself. Because I can tell you in my little proximity of my neighborhood and the area that I live in, I often feel like these are not the people I can be real with. So I will uproot myself to places that feel like, well, what I loved to do as a girl, like I think that's a really powerful way to get back to our authentic self. Like to know who am I? Well, what did you love to do as a child? What did you lose track of time doing? And for me, I always took care of any stray cat that would come into the neighborhood, and my parents would always say, Do not touch it. We don't know if it's sick. Well, I was like, when I got to be grown, I was like, I'm going to touch stray cats because I always wanted to do that. So where can I touch a stray cat? Yeah, well, I started volunteering at the cat shelter and I mean, it's a good 20 minutes from my house, but that's like me uprooting myself to go towards something that fulfills me. Yeah. And being with these cats has been so rewarding. But also the humans that come in to see the cats and they tell me they lost their cat or they want to tell me something. This one looks like a childhood cat I live for talking to those people and it's just been so fulfilling to me. And so I like to encourage people to think about where can you go. Like, let's say you love book club and you don't have a book. You know, you want to make a book club or you want to do knitting or whatever it is that interests you. There are probably groups for that out there, you know, somewhere.

Jen: [00:39:34] And so put the phone down and replant yourself somewhere.

Rachel: [00:39:38] Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's, that's definitely I always feel like the biggest tragedy to humanity is the time, the precious time and energy we spend on our phones that we could be doing something that, you know, that really fulfills our heart and our joy.

 

Jen: [00:40:02] It's true. I mean, there is no authentic self-engaging with Netflix. I don't think we can find it.

Rachel: [00:40:10] No, that's. Oh, my goodness.

Jen: [00:40:12] Well, Rachel, I love what you are doing. I love your book. Everyone go purchase Soul Shift. You can preorder it and I recommend you do. It's so good. And it's coming on March 28th. It will be right there in your mailbox. So preorder that. Rachel, Where else can people connect with you?

Rachel: [00:40:32] So everything you need to know is pretty much on my website. It's handsfreemama.com. And there you can find my social media handles and you can find I still write long-form articles because I like to write stories. And so you can find some of my deeper reflections on the website and that's where you can find a link to buy Soul Shift. And I also have a great preorder gift right now that you can find there, which is it's called a self-compassion starter kit. So anyone who preorders gets that for free.

Jen: [00:41:08] And you showed me something cool. This self-compassion starter kit is 20 audio messages, plus they get a digital printout. Show us that.

Rachel: [00:41:18] Yes. So I use one of the practices in the book -it's called The Practice of Being Kind to Yourself. And I walk people through how to switch a self-sabotaging statement to a message of self-compassion. So I walk people through 20 different scenarios, like some of the self-sabotaging statements are, I'm a bad mom. I hate my body. I'll never get past this. I'm not capable. So when you are saying those things to yourself, I can teach you how to make the shift to a more self-compassionate response. And then this is like a visual to go with it.

Jen: [00:42:06] Oh, so that's all the self-compassion toolkit.

Rachel: [00:42:10] Yep.

Jen: [00:42:11] And they get that when they preorder.

Rachel: [00:42:14] Yep, they sure do.

Jen: [00:42:15] So let's say they preorder on Amazon. How do you know to send it to them?

Rachel: [00:42:20] So when they go to my website and they click, there's a, there's a picture of the Soul Shift book and there's a “preorder now” button.

Jen: [00:42:29] Okay, order, click that. Okay. Yeah, you click that.

Rachel: [00:42:32] No, no, no, no. Actually, they can order it anywhere they want. All they have to have is a receipt number. They just enter that in the form and then they automatically get the audio soundtracks and the poster. So that's if you go to the preorder now button, you'll see the form. You just put your receipt number in there.

Jen: [00:42:53] Okay.

 

Rachel: [00:42:54] It's very easy. 

Jen: [00:42:56] OK, Yes, very, very good.

Jen: [00:42:58] Well, Rachel, this was amazing. Everyone listening, I can't wait to hear stories of how you become your authentic self and do that work by – and our question again? Was what feels true to me, Rachel? 

Rachel: [00:43:12] So the, yeah, the question is, “but what do I want to do?” Yes.

Jen: [00:43:18] Okay.

Rachel: [00:43:19] You pause and you ask yourself, “but what do I want to do?” Okay.

Jen: [00:43:23] That's a great challenge.

Rachel: [00:43:25] Working on saying like first identifying it and then saying it out loud. It's a game changer.

Jen: [00:43:33] And allowing our kids to ask that question.

Rachel: [00:43:37] Yeah.

Jen: [00:43:38] I'm making my husband listen to this episode. Thank you, Rachel. You have me armed with power.

Rachel: [00:43:43] You're so welcome. Yes, you can highlight that, some of the sections in the book.

Jen: [00:43:49] Well, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

Rachel: [00:43:52] I appreciate it, too.

Outro: [00:43:55] If you enjoy this podcast, you'd love Vibrant Soul The Place to heal, transform and Expand your Soul with like-minded friends. Join us at jenriday.com/vibrantsoul.