Taking a Daily Vacation

I've only been in Bali five days and I already feel blissed out.
I've had four massages, two meditation sessions, one surf lesson, two yoga lessons and a 4.5 hour pampering session!
And I TOTALLY needed this, because the last month or two has been pretty cray-cray.
As you may remember in my previous episode called Changing Plans, there's been quite a few plans that have been changed, including now owning a lifestyle property and getting a puppy for my birthday.
Yes! My lovely man Josh has gone ahead and put a deposit on a white German Shepherd. So when I get back to New Zealand on April 5th, it's going to be all go - moving into the house, getting it furnished, setting up our new base and waiting on the puppy.
I was content to go hard out on the organizing, planning, doing and making shit happen on all fronts, because I knew I'd be having this relax time in Bali, and of course my upcoming business sabbatical starting April 1st.
If you've never been to Bali, let me just tell you this island has a very special energy to it. It's renowned for being a vortex of feminine energy.
So for females in particular, when you're here you have this sense of being grounded, feeling strong, sensual and in your feminine power.
Everywhere you look there are lush trees, green rice fields, beautiful flowers, street dogs, friendly Balinese people smiling, scooters whizzing by, yoga studios, cute cafes, healthy juices galore and many relaxed looking foreigners who are whiling their days away doing not a lot of anything much.
Which is why Bali is the perfect island to come and unwind, de stress and lose yourself, or find yourself depending on what you're here to do.
But obviously we don't all have the opportunity to buggar off to Bali when we feel like it do we?
So it got me thinking: Why can't we have a mini vacation each and every day to get some of the same affects of a longer vacation?
Why do we have to book in holidays months, and for some people, years in advance? Why all this waiting when we have the power and ability to take a break right now?
In a Huffington Post article by Jill Ferguson she lists the benefits of vacations as:
Reduces stress - as I can attest to, vacations help shrink stress and anxiety while boosting the mental and physical health of you and the entire family, if you happen to be vacationing with them.
Helps your heart stay healthy - no really. In a 20-year study, researchers found that women who took a vacation once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than women who took at least two vacations per year.
Improves your mental health (especially if it's longer than 2 weeks) because you're less tense, have higher energy levels and more positive emotions, fewer negative feelings and less depression.
Improves your relationships because families or couples who vacation together undergo shared experiences, communication and togetherness, escape and relaxation and experiential learning, all of which contribute positively to well-being and to relationships.
You may have heard me talk about taking a mid week weekend. I mean why wait for the weekend to experience one, but what about a daily vacation? That's a novel thought right?
I dug into this idea with my dear friend Jaime Masters, of Eventual Millionaire fame, who's with me here in Bali.
We planned this holiday in late 2016 when she found out she got asked to speak in the Philippines, just before my Freedom Mastermind Retreat I hold in Bali each year.
So this was our window of time to fly into Bali at the same time and enjoy 9 days together. And we are doing that extremely well.
Jaime is a single mother of two with an extremely successful and busy coaching and mastermind business.
She's also a self prescribed geek when it comes to maximizing time efficiency and more recently bio hacking - do it yourself biology optimization, so to speak.
Or as Jaime puts it - how to be a badass.
So here's our jam session on how to optimize your day and also how to take mini vacations through a variety of suggested activities we do, and that we also think should be on your list.
Natalie: So this is exciting! We are recording this in our lovely little room in Ketut's Place in Bali in Ubud and there's thunder and lightning happening and rain. This is cool.
I am sitting on the bed as you do, with my girl, Jaime Masters and we've been talking a lot over the last couple of days about treating yourself because yesterday we had a four and a half hour pamper session!
Thanks to Jaime, an early birthday present and it was amazing.
And I was like, "Why don't we do this all the time?" and then I think actually if you did that all the time you'd just be in bliss zone and you wouldn't get anything done.
Jaime: I think it can get boring after a little while.
Natalie: Yeah, but it was pretty amazing. Like we had several massages, we had a facial; we had pedicures, manicures, head massage, hair treatment, body scrub. And I was in and out of states of bliss, in an out of state of sleeping, dreaming, imagining, ideating. It's beautiful.
But what I want to just chat to you about, because I think you are really good at this with your full-time roster of amazing clients that you coach over at Eventual Millionaire and your business and your full time podcast where you are interviewing millionaires all the time. I mean you have one of the busiest schedules I know off plus you are a mom, full-time mom.
So do you want to just share a couple of the ways you treat yourself throughout the day because I think you do this really well.
Jaime: So first of all anybody that says that they don't have time, means that they don't want to. There is a great quote about that by Lao Tzu.
"Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to."
? Lao Tzu
So out of everybody I know, I am extremely busy. We need that time because we go crazy and nutso and when you get on that roll you are not efficient or effective in anything you do.
So lessons learned from me sort of going a little insane, to children, and to my business and everything else has led me to actually taking the time in between.
Even 15 minutes of going, "Ah! This is just for me and I don't have to do anything else."
So we talked about meditation before and I definitely do meditate a lot. Sometimes in small spurts.
Like I literally was just meditating for fifteen minutes while you were on the phone just now, because I feel like it gives me a deeper state of relaxation. I do that throughout the day quite often even at home in-between calls.
But just trying to take that time where you can actually shut off whatever you're crazy entrepreneur brain is saying and go, "Okay this is time that I don't actually have to think about that", because otherwise we will.
Our brain will just keep going forever and ever and ever. And so trying to pull those pieces out as best as you can, you know what I mean?
Natalie: And I think we started discussing this from the minute I landed in Bali and I think you did too.
We've both come off some pretty hectic schedules, me with house buying and packing up and book writing and helping my mom move and you with speaking in the Philippines, and having to do all the work around that as well.
I think we both got to Bali and we are just like, 'ahhhhhhh' and I just noticed instantly how my mind just quietened and I've done more yoga and massage in the last two days than I had probably in the last months.
So why don't we roll through, like kind of spit-fire out some of our favorite at home mini vacations we take during a pretty busy working day?
Jaime: Okay so for me, I have a routine at the beginning. I literally wake up before my kids wake up now, 5:30am in the morning. I am not a morning person as much as Hal Elrod told me to wake up in the morning.
I was like, "No I don't think so." It's literally only been the last four months or so.
Beforehand I would meditate right after I brought them to school, but I realized that it wasn't quite enough for me and I kept feeling like I had too much to do throughout the day when the kids are at school so I moved it.
And so far so good. I'm going strong but I am not a morning person!
Natalie: Thunder. If you have any of this, this is real Bali in the background. Just making it real.
Jaime: That was number one, so that was an evolution in my process. I have been meditating for a very long time and I was never like, "I have to meditate every day."
It's just I wanted to, I wanted to. It is something that I pull out.
I also do probably five to fifteen minutes in between whenever I am feeling overwhelmed or brain dead.
So when I do a lot, I batch everything and so whenever I do client calls, sometimes I'm like, "How can my brain stop functioning like it should?" and being in states of flow are way more productive in general, so I try and figure out ways.
There's a good book called Stealing Fire, it talks about hacking into the flow state that I was telling you a little bit about.
What can we do that makes us feel so much better that we can come back and hit the ground running instead of just feeling horrid and crazy?
Just what we were talking about this before too, like all day long nutso.
And so I'll do that, I have a pool in the back sometimes when it's nice out, I'll go jump in the pool and reassess things, especially during the day when I'm actually working on stuff.
At night time I'll definitely go, "This is my time! I am going to have a bubble bath.
I am going to do whatever I can possibly do to turn that piece off".
Because we don't make a conscious effort in general to turn it off.
Natalie: A bubble bath is so good. I am looking forward to potentially buying a spa and having a spa pool for night time relaxation.
I like the idea of a sauna, whether you go to one or have one at your place. Often gyms have a sauna so just even ten minutes sweating it out and just being present with your body is pretty amazing.
Other things are just dropping into fifteen, twenty, or a thirty minute yoga session during the day, and I love starting with five minutes of downward dog because it ultimately ends up being a lot more, and just giving yourself that space.
Also, when I have a dog which I am getting soon! I would just have cuddle time with my dog. I'd literally have a play time, go outside, throw the Frisbee, throw the ball, play.
You've got kids around you, you'd grab them, play.
Jaime: That's a funny thing. So sometimes I'm so back-to-back I like walking into the mailbox it's like my time. I literally go, "Okay I need some sun. I am going to go walk outside", because I literally only have like five minutes, like literally I am so scheduled.
No matter what the time is, it doesn't matter I think it's the intention behind it that makes a huge difference.
Because sometimes you can play with your dog and be like, "Oh that still didn't really help." But if you are really intentional about it, it makes--
Natalie: Throw the phone away for a minute.
Jaime: As hard as it is.
Natalie: Get back to nature. Sometimes just actually being outside and getting sun on your face is a really beautiful thing and just tune into the sounds around you.
Jaime: I go and I lay in my backyard. I have the pool and I will go and lay on the bed and feel like, because we have an outdoor bed, just sit there for five minutes and not even have to do a meditation or anything like that, but just sort of soak in the sun.
Natalie: The Vitamin D.
Jaime: Sometimes I need that big time. And then being able to sort of go; "Now I reset. Now I can go back in". Very helpful.
Natalie: We should caveat this with the fact that you are very efficient with your time. So it's not like you ever say, "I am really busy."
You are fulfilled. You are busy but I as you said you batch things.
Do you want to maybe talk people through kind of your working week so that... they do hear that you have time off, and time out and you are really good at, oh we didn't even mention it, you get regular massages? So do I but you get them every single week, yeah?
Jaime: Oh yeah.
Natalie: I think if you can you should even if it's half an hour.
Jaime: Well this is the thing I kept going, "Oh I don't have the time because I have kids and I can't... when can I get a massage when I don't have them. We'll I have to work during the school hours". All that craziness goes on in your head.
Let me just say, everybody can solve every problem pretty much.
So my massage person comes in at their bed time, my kids go to bed, massage person comes in and I literally go to sleep right afterwards.
Natalie: They come to your house?
Jaime: They come to my house. It's not anymore expensive either. And they will do it like nine o'clock at night which is insane.
Natalie: And then you just go to sleep?
Jaime: I just go to sleep. It's like the best ever. It's amazing but it's because I am so scheduled and so intentional with my time.
Because this is the thing too, it's not like I don't take a time off with the kids, it's that I have to be super effective whenever I am doing whatever I am doing.
I have a lot of things going on so a typical schedule for me ,and I make my clients do all this too.
I call it the master's schedule:
Mondays are meeting days, back to back meetings like literally, with my masterminds, with my personal scrum from my team.
Tuesdays are coaching days.
Wednesdays, every other Wednesday is an interview so either back to back millionaire interviews or back to back me doing interviews on other people's podcast and then the rest of the week is free.
So it's 'working free' so within the time my kids are in school which they get out at three thirty. Then I have open space that I can actually fill in advance because I am one of those people.
But usually when I have the kiddos I'm done at three and then I don't work again unless it's like a crazy launch and I have to make an exception.
It's me like going for a walk with the kids or I try and get some of the more special, relaxing kind of time with them. Not that I don't have to do homework, not that I don't have to do all the other stuff, but it's just trying to have that space within the confinement.
How to take a quick daily vacation
Alright hopefully you have some firm ideas on how to take a daily mini vacation. To recap:
Short bursts of exercise - dance, walk to the mailbox, dip in the pool, play with your dog, drop down and do yoga.
Treat yourself - have a massage or a sauna, at home or book it in at your local.
Read a book - jump in a hammock, laze on your bed, lie on the floor, curl up in the couch, throw your phone away and disconnect the internet for 30 mins...then enjoy your fave book.
Pleasure yourself - did I really just say that? Heck yeah I did. Have a quickie, grab your fave sex toy and take a moment to...you know...have some fun. Or grab your partner and kiss them passionately. It releases endorphins which are feel good hormones and everyone needs those - plus you do that stuff on vacation right? So this IS a mini vacation.
Meditation - refer to episode 2 - Mind Your Mindfulness for a 1 minute one! They say meditation can be better than sleep and sometimes sex. So I think it's time to really take this one seriously.
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Ok, let's dive into meditation.
So on a couple of the previous episodes I've been talking about meditation. And I have to say that I think we've only just scratched the surface on this and I am going to be doing a lot more work around this.
But having chatted to Jaime over the last couple of days intensely around her her meditation practice, I've seen this different side to it so I think I've always sat on the surface going, "What if I could just get five or ten or fifteen minutes a day?".
I know the benefits of meditation but I wanted to bring Jaime back because she's just sort of open my mind and blown my mind with the routine and the practice and the intention behind her meditation and how much is that impacting everything else.
So I haven't seen Jaime for a year and a half and this time around seeing her I turned up and I was like, "Oh my gosh! You are just more like grounded."
So here's a conversation we had about her meditation.
Natalie: So who is this Joe Dispenza guy that you keep going on about?
Jaime: Okay so I've been meditating for a really really long time and then I became a disciple. The reason why I found Joe is because I'd injured my foot and he wrote a book called "You Are the Placebo" and I didn't want to have foot surgery.
That's the thing it was for the problem-solution piece of it. I'd always meditated. I didn't even know his whole thing was about meditation.
Natalie: How did you find him?
Jaime: My best friend gave me the book. Because she had been following him for awhile. But I was just trying to solve whatever the heck that thing was. I didn't know how deep he goes into meditation about how your body can change itself. And so it makes sense with, You Are the Placebo, but I never linked meditation and that before which was really awesome.
Because before I thought it was, "I am a crazy, business entrepreneur that needs to get everything out of her head and feel okay" because otherwise I might have anxiety or whatever the pieces are. That's why I'd meditated before.
And then I found this thing and I was like, "Oh there's so much more to it than that!"
Natalie: And they are self-guided aren't they? Which I like because It's quite hard to just sit and not have thoughts. In fact, it's near impossible.
Even the monks after many decades of practice don't' do it super well but they are far better than us. And I think I'd like to be like walking down the beach listening to meditation and then there you were, I was having a surf lesson and you were walking down the beach listening to a self-guided meditation.
One where Joe got you to like ground your feet into the sand at one point, stop and just be. So I love the sound of that. Because I love walking and I like being active while meditating.
What happens in that meditation?
Jaime: So that one's really interesting. Joe has a bazillion different types of meditation. Some were shorter. This one's an hour and fifteen minutes. Some of our friends are like, "Oh surfing is so like that".
It was funny when I was walking, thankfully eyes open for quite a bit, I was looking at some of the surfers and just thinking about how amazing that is too.
There's a quite a few different pieces to his types of meditation. And so one is a big breathing aspect and then walking, where he doesn't have you do that because you look weird.
But what he does as you start walking, he has you start envisioning your future and then walking as your future self.
And imagining whatever happened that you want to have happened in the future as if it was a memory of the past.
So you are walking and he is like talking about how to think of this and think of that, and as you are walking you feel amazing, on top of the world type of person.
And then he has you stop and just close your eyes and imagine the feelings that you would feel: gratitude, joy - whatever those things are or affirmations are.
And literally, because your body's been walking and energized, already like to me it goes like crazy. It makes you really feel the emotions. And then you walk again.
And it levels up the emotional side of it. Levels up the feeling of, "Oh my gosh! This is what I'll feel like in the future."
Right, that confidence, whatever those pieces are. And so you are sort of stepping into what that is and it makes a lot more believable.
So as an entrepreneur I feel like, "Oh I want to speak on a stage at TEDx in front of a thousand people."
I was chatting with somebody when I spoke in the Philippines, she's like, "I love crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 people." And I was like, "Hmmmm. I haven't done that before. 10,000 people that's a lot of people. Wow, Okay great!"
She said, "The energy is just insane."
And so then I started going, "Let's imagine what that would look like. I'm sure I can do it".
And so in the walking meditation, I started bringing in some of those pieces. So when you start bringing in the pieces as if it already happened, especially the science behind meditation, it actually does.
Have you heard the piano player thing? They had a study where:
Some people actually play the piano in a certain number of hours per day for a specific song.
Another one just did the finger exercises with no piano.
And then the other ones meditated on it.
So the people would actually meditate on it. They never touched the piano, and they actually were just as good as the other people.
Natalie: When they finally went to play the piano?
Jaime: Yes which is insane.
Natalie: I've heard a few studies around stuff just re-visioning exercise on that.
Jaime: Yes. It gets your body in certain state. It's really interesting to see the studies because we are placebos by the way, right?
So we affect our thoughts and everything affects everything.
And I think entrepreneurs need to get this better and better and better.
It's not just clearing your brain it's all those thoughts that we think, that determine what we actually take action on, what we actually do.
All those beliefs or whatever you want to say whether they are subconscious or not.
When you start flushing those out, and you start imagining yourself.....
I've had a friend who hated speaking and then he did like a hundred different speaking gigs all in a row just to get over the fear and to get really good at it.
Well, you do a 100 of them and you'll get really good at it!
Imagine meditating on it a hundred days in a row instead of actually having to go do it. And again there might be a little bit of twinge when you do the first one but it's going to feel so much more natural even just the visualization of it.
And I've interviewed a ton of millionaires, 400 and something millionaires, so many of them bring up visioning, it's insane.
I was not woo-woo at all and I started going down this road and interviewing millionaires and I'm like, "How come everybody keeps talking about this?".
Because I really wanted to know and so then I started looking at the science behind it all. And then I'm like, "There's something to this", because I am a sciency kind of gal and then I've started implementing and doing it.
It has literally changed so many things and what I can see is possible moving forward.
Natalie: You mentioned that it's helped you, one being all grounded and not even noticed that visibly in you. You said your skin is glowing. You think you looked younger like not aging. What are some of the other benefits?
Jaime: There's a whole thing on epigenetics which if you read any of Joe's books. Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson talks about epigenetics - our bodies and what we feel basically.
Because this is the thing, I don't think people really understand, and again the science is very very new behind all this. It hasn't really come out to the general population. If I say epigenetics, people are more like, "I don't have a clue what that is".
But your DNA actually can turn on and off based on your environment. And so it's not all like you were born like this and now we are like that forever, it's what you ingest, what you are doing, what you are thinking that all affects your body, which makes logical sense when you think about it.
We are not emotionless robots. All the pieces and parts really make a difference.
You've seen the president go from looking really really young beforehand and how the heck did he age so much in such a short period of time? Like the stress and everything.
And so it really affects your body. So you can do it in the opposite direction also. How can we change that?
Natalie: I was telling you about Josh's friend Rohan, his father from England who's been doing transcendental meditation for something like forty five years or more.
I haven't met him and I really want to meet him. I told you that right?
Because he is late 70s and he looks like he is in his 40s. He gets up at five a.m every morning. He does one to two hours of transcendental meditation with the music and all the vibrations and everything.
And he is apparently just super focused and onto it. He doesn't need much sleep. Just incredibly aware and has energy all day and that youth, that vitality and that absolute solidness around what he does and who he is.
He's absolutely precise and clear on who he is and what energy he gives off. So that fascinates me.
It does make me feel, yes you could change your state and you can change your entire DNA makeup.
By the way, did you know that when you get sunburnt you are changing the DNA? There's a whole science behind it which you'd love.
When you get sunburnt, your cells are exploding and we have billions of cells right, but they are exploding and each little explosion is shifting and changing your DNA. So overtime you can actually change your DNA of your body.
Jaime: Good way or bad way?
Natalie: I don't think sunburn is obviously good for you at all, but it's just more the point that scientists have seen that you are actually changing your DNA through that. So there must be other ways of changing your DNA.
Jaime: When you look up epigenetics and you'll see some of those pieces because it's insane to read some of the studies on this. I didn't realize this. I'm like, "Man!".
It is one of those things where it's such a new science so it seems a little woo-woo to people. It is with any sort of newer science.
Natalie: I know scientists needs the data and the facts but also I just want to see it's working.
Jaime: This is what I do, I'm like, "Well I'll test it and If I like it, I'll keep doing it and if I don't like it, then I won't."
But there's a lot of Charletons that are like, "Oh you do this thing and it's amazing!".
So that's what we have to be careful of, but to me I'll test anything and if I like it and I see results then I'll continue.
I care about the smarts and logic. And so meditation has allowed me to tap in way more and not just be a 'running around like trying to do everything head wise', but actually tapping into all parts of your body.
I never thought that your gut or intuition was a big deal until, again I heard so many millionaires going, "I went with my gut" and I'm like, "Wait! There's no real science behind that."
I'll put a spreadsheet together so I can look at all the facts, this is why I am so science based because I need something to make a decision. I would almost never go with my gut.
Natalie: Gut every time.
Jaime: See... but to me I didn't get the point of gut. I thought that that wasn't logic.
When you read like the book, Blank and we realize how amazing we are as human beings.
We can make an assessment on something without even necessarily knowing the facts and data.
Like that book was very eye opening to me because I was like, "Oh, maybe I do know more than logic will tell me and research and data."
And so realizing that, along with everything else tapping into that. You can shut yourself off big time. Most people do. Most of the clients that I talk to I ask "What's your gut saying?"
They are like "I don't know."
Natalie: Oh really? I do it all the time. The only time that I haven't sometimes is travelling, because I listen to my gut and instinct all the time in travelling. "Don't go down there" or actually "Don't take that bus".
Jaime: What does that feel like? Where? How do you do that?
Natalie: Literally like a strong sensation to not go ahead and buy that ticket. Where? It's a good point. You do actually feel it in your stomach and then I feel like it just triggers straight away to your brain with a no. I have voice in my head going, "That's not a wise idea." It's really crazy and I just listen to it all the time.
Jaime: I had heard this one place, and I have not verified sources but, what's interesting is they were saying that it's actually your heart that is making a lot of these decisions, and then going to either your stomach and then your brain and so it triggers all of them right? We sometimes think it's our brain first.
Natalie: It's literally like a decision and sometimes your body will stop. Sometimes your body will stop walking like 'you are not going to go down there, Natalie'. It's the fight-or-flight response that I feel kicks in and that is triggered by your immune system and/or your nervous system, so I guess your heart is the thing that's beating.
Jaime: We just don't know very much about our bodies though. Like it's kind of sad.
I am trying to teach my children like, "Okay. Where do you feel that in your body?" so that they can become more in tune because I never was.
I was like, what is that feeling? I would never go with my gut in general.
So knowing and being able to say, "This actually works."
I needed all the data from all the millionaires like, "Wait, you've went with your gut and that worked? Wow! Interesting."
It would be really interesting to ask which ones typically go with their gut and which ones don't.
Natalie: And where do you feel that in your body - that's an interesting question to ask anybody. Going on a bit of tangent here but asking 'how do you feel' and see what people's responses are, because if you ask a very pragmatic logic based person, they will go, "I am blah blah blah."
Jaime: Okay so this is my best friend, she had to ask me every single day. She goes, "How do you feel?" and I'd say, "Good" and she'd go, "Good is not a feeling."
"Great! I feel great!", she said, "That's not a feeling."
I didn't have the words to express it. I literally had one of those little cards that said all the emotions on it. But I couldn't find the nuances between the emotions because I didn't think it was a big deal. Like what does it matter?
Natalie: And it does matter.
Jaime: It totally does now I know. I am teaching my children this.
So tapping into intuition or tapping into your gut is an example.
I don't know what that felt like. I was like, "Huh! Nope. I got nothing."
The little nuances in anxiety or the little nuances in joy, the little nuances in things that I just never paid attention to. And yet we can be so much more expressive as human beings if you actually know that.
I had beforehand thought, "If I just negate all the bad emotions and only felt the good ones, I'll be happy in my world". I mean you know in entrepreneurship too, it doesn't work that way. Shit happens.
Natalie: It's a rollercoaster.
Jaime: Exactly. You have to mitigate all of it and sometimes the crappy stuff is teaching you the most and you have to be okay with those emotions because if you try and negate that you won't take the risks, even calculated risks.
You just won't make the steps towards that because you are so scared of negative emotions. It's an interesting thing.
Natalie: I think a lot of people live in the state of, "I'm okay. I'm okay. So I am not going to show any emotions."
And you asking me the other day, "Do you feel that you tapped into that? Are you emotional?"
I have my moments around my Dad because I was quite surprised that I wasn't more upset or just really in that state, but I do think it's because I focused on celebrating his life.
It doesn't mean I think I shut down my feelings. Like I will have my moments where I'll just cry.
As I told you I am big soak in movies. I'll just have waterworks in movies. I feel like a lot around animals and nature. I don't worry so much or sweat the small stuff but I often think about global issues or environment or inhumane treatment of animals or people. And that stuff gets me really emotional but I think there are so many people who are walking through life they are taking the drugs and numbing them.
Jaime: But that's the point right?
The placebo, the book is all about, you don't need to rely on what we think.
One of the reasons why we take a placebo and think it will work is because people have told us that it will work.
If a doctor someone of high authority goes, "This will work for you." Even if it numbs you like crazy, you are like, "Oh then half of it's probably the placebo effect and the pills don't even work."
So it's one of those things where us knowing ourselves better. If you are the type, "I am emotional in these sort of ways and I don't need to like make myself be emotional in other ways either", but knowing yourself better makes a huge difference.
So if you do get sick or whatever, trying to pay attention to what those emotions were within it and then solving that instead of going after like, "I just need more alcohol" or "I need more drugs".
Like when I injured my neck they gave me Hydrocodone and I'm like, "That's a lot!".
It's a narcotic. They gave me a lot of pills. I was kind of surprised. They gave me like three sets of pills.
Natalie: The United States scares me with what they give out. It's such a pill based society.
Jaime: And I was like, "So how do I fix it though?". It's one thing to numb the pain and I am okay with pain I can handle a lot of pain but how do I fix it? Nobody really went down that path which sucks.
Natalie: It does. Western medicine is very much like immediate solution where as I love the Eastern philosophy around preventing it before it's even happened.
Jaime: Yes but the thing is I agree a thousand percent but because we've already gone past the point.
So again this is western world but we are sold that we can have everything right now and this is why meditation is so important too. Because we are moving at a constant pace especially entrepreneurs. We are problem solvers and we wanted the problem solved yesterday not today.
And so a pill, sure! Faster, easier, more efficient.
Natalie: The headache was just from the hours of pampering and all the detox.
And when I was in that yoga class, that restorative yoga which I loved and I was having trouble with the hamstring pose and it was really like sinking in. Sinking into that pose and feeling the pain and I wanted to come out of it because we had to hold it for five minutes. And that's when she said, "If you are challenged by this pose, you probably have issues with control, because the control that you put into your everyday life will manifest itself into your basically your hamstring."
So the tightening there is the constant control or tension. And I think in intrinsically you know that but whatever we are holding any source of tension or pain or even love manifests itself in your body.
Jaime: So that's the whole point of Joe Dispenza, the whole point completely.
He was a doctor and he actually cut his spinal cord. It was like crazy he couldn't walk and he didn't want to have surgery. And all the doctors are like, "So you kind to have surgery to fix this", and he was, "I am not going to do it."
He meditated. And people were like, "Okay, you meditated your spinal healing. That's a little insane."
Natalie: Have he done meditation before?
Jaime: I don't remember. I think he must have done something. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be like, "Oh I am going to try meditation and see if this works."
He was a chiropractor so he knew the body really really well but what is interesting like you were saying is being able to have whatever is existing in our body usually is for a reason.
And unfortunately because we are problem solvers and we want to fix this so fast we just take the pill and go, "That will be okay."
But more and more instances of cancer, more and more instances of crazy stuff and we are going, "What's wrong?". Well yeah it's probably food and stuff like that too but there's so many things that we don't understand that us taking care of ourselves, like you said the eastern side of things could have probably prevented but now we are at this tipping point where we can't see the force for the trees anymore.
And so that's why it's great that he wrote the book called, You Are the Placebo because there's literally everybody going, "I have a problem. I need a solution." And so being able to show people, "Oh by the way, this could help this."
Natalie: I was going to say it sounds of ironic but I am about to say we have to take control or more importantly, we have to take responsibility because things are not going to get better.
We are going to have more and more technology. We'd be more and more connected. We are going to have more and more devices. We are going to have more multi-tasking. We are going to have more and more things in our life that are causing us to live lives in totally different way where we don't have peace, quiet, nature, reflection, timeout, thinking time, quiet time.
And so we just have to and that's why I am so proud of you because you are making time because you love it every morning to do your meditation.
Jaime: One I didn't love it. I couldn't sit for five minutes. I used to lay down because I couldn't sit up. So I couldn't sit up for that long and I hated the five minutes every single time.
It's just very much an evolutionary process. That being said I learned my own process.
A lot of clients are resistant because they are entrepreneurs and logical and my brain is way too crazy, "I can't do it Jaime". I was like, "I have the same crazy brain you do. I have ADD literally".
And so when we are looking at, "Okay what can you do as a first step?" We talked about five minutes of headspace.
Headspace is great, Calm app is great, just to sort of slowly get into that and then I have people come back and they are like, "Oh that felt a little better."
And then what is that next step and what is that next step, I did this as part of the evolutionary process it to try to make meditation efficient.
I would get all the crap out of my head so that way I could feel like i could be more clear. David Allen's Getting Things Done, getting everything out of your head.
So I would do that piece along with having this inspired thoughts of, "Oh you know what I should do and this".
Natalie: You'd actually literally go sit down or lie down to meditate but then you'd have bing bing bing thoughts. So you'd actually then stop the meditation?
Jaime: I wouldn't actually stop the meditation. It's really kind of funny I had a eye pillow on and I'd literally have a journal right next to me and I'd scribble.
It's just like a twenty, thirty minute meditation, it wasn't a lot because I would only do the first piece like this. I would literally just go, "Oh!" and write those.
Changes of launch plans or the ideas that I have.
And then I would be able to clear and be a lot better.
So it's still guided meditation but this is what I have my clients do because in general they are like," I can't make it stop."
You know what makes it stop? Write all that crap down. And because David Allen talks about with getting things done, if it's still on your head it will keep reminding it. It will keep bringing it up.
So there you have it. This topic of Personal Freedom here on the Quest for Freedom Podcast continues to come back to freedom of the mind in so many respects.
I know I will continue to delve deeper into this. In the next episode I'll be discussing personal freedom from a place of less stuff weighing you down - as in decluttering.
Tune in for that one. And read the full show notes for this episode at nataliesisson.com/7
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