Breaking Unconscious Patterns in Love and Relationships- Riana Malia

Why Thoughts Repeat And Spiral

Every day we think between 65,000 and 85,000 thoughts, which is insane. And 90% of those thoughts are recycled. Yeah. So the same things we taught yesterday and last week and last month.

Yeah.

And most of them are negative. And I get a lot of pushback there because my clients are like, oh no, I've done every mindset seminar. I've read every my mindset is so good. Because the declaration of I'm never going to be in another relationship where I don't feel safe. I'm never going to be in another relationship where I don't feel cherished. I'm never going to be in another relationship where I can't trust, where I don't want to, I'm never going to be in this financial. I don't want to be in this death. I don't want this menopause deli. I don't want this job that I hate, fill in the blank. But the unconscious mind can't hear the qualifying don'ts. It just knows what we're focused on.

Yeah.

It's why those things keep coming up. So over the course of this 72 hours in this little process, it's wild. And I will tell you, I countless people have said to me after the fact, I have to tell you, Rihanna, I thought this was the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And it was the thing that changed everything.

Neurosomatic Work And Clearing Charge

So I would love to start off just by knowing a little bit more about what an integrative neurosomatic practitioner is and um also an identity architect. These are two roles that you describe yourself as. I mean, I've heard a lot about somatic practitioners, but not neurosomatic. So should we start there?

Sure. Thank you. Yes, I always say being a board-certified integrative neurosomatic practitioner is a lot of words to basically say I work with uh high-capacity, heart-led, high-treating women that have built a really incredible life, except for the thing they want most, which is extraordinary love. And neurosomatic means we're blending the neuroscience and the brain with the body because they're very connected. So when people talk about somatics and they talk about the button, I mean that's really the body and the release of certain things. So, for instance, in part of the clearing work, because we clear, we create, we claim, uh, we actually have the ability to, without going back into the story or back into the thing that caused the pain and trauma in the first place, we're not going to unpack the story 50 times of the thing that happened when you were seven or in your divorce or whatever it is, we can actually clear all of that negative charge that we hold at a cellular level. And so if you think about negative emotion, anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, and all limiting beliefs and limiting decisions that pop up in the voice in our head from our experiences, if you imagine that each one of them has their own ribbon, and every time we have an experience with one of those negative emotions, a marble goes on the ribbon. So today, when something happens and it brings up anger or shame or fear or whatever it is, it's not the today thing. It's the 40, 50, 60 years of marbles.

It's the charge. Okay.

And then there's room for what's meant for you, for the life and love that's really meant for you. Because it's like a it's like a pantry. So I turned 50 this year. So, you know, throw some perimenopause with some ADD. And I love organization and also shit just piles up around me. And I walk away. Like if you saw my office right now, I could cry. But I took everything out of my pantry and put it all in the kitchen and cleaned the pantry. And then I went through it all, right? And it was like there was expired pasta and open orzo and crackers and all oil I bought in Italy that I never opened and all the things that I threw away. And then what was good, I put it back. It was, you know, organized and looked fabulous. And there's all this room in the pantry. It's the same here. All the old the neurology, the strategy, the behavior, the patterns running underneath, all that old stuff. We have to, we get to clear that. And then we actually, and this is where I think the the neuro and the somatics piece come together really beautifully. Is um, I'm sure you have experienced this, or friends that have, they somebody's been in therapy for years. Like they've done all the things. So when clients come to me, they've already done all the things. That's what I really call this the last piece. But so you've done the therapy, you can tell me your patterns inside out and upside down. But this something happens where all of a sudden somebody's done a lot of work, they're super self-aware. And, you know, they've been doing the work for 10 years, let's say, and something happens and it's like bam, they go right back to the person they were 10 years ago. Because if we're gonna blow out strategy, neurology, behavior, old patterns, if we don't replace it with something else, the unconscious mind can't fill in the blank, it will always go back to what it knows. So it's really important that when you're doing that work and having the ahas and getting the awareness and clarity, that you get the skills and the replaced behavior, strategy, and neurology, you know, to fill in that blank, to go with that knowledge and that aha and that awareness.

Oh, well, that's that's quite a lot to kick us off with.

High Achievers Who Feel Unloved

I'd love to go right back to what you said at the beginning and just I'm really curious about uh like so many conversations that I have talk about high achieving women. And it it just seems to be like, what it what what is it about high achieving women? Is it that we are the ones that come that we want to do the work because we are high achievers? Um is it I think I spoke to someone last week and she was sort of saying that um I can't remember what she said. It will come to me. But um, yeah, I'm just really curious about this. This is like so much of the uh these uh processes, these you know, new um practices seem to be targeted at high achieving women. And I'm just really curious about what it is that's going on for them that makes them the ones that need it the most, I guess. That was a long convoluted way of asking the question.

Yeah, but I think a lot of it uh maybe comes down to the fact that when like we're we're you we are doers, we are fixers, we are solvers, we see something and we take care of it. We were probably only children or eldest daughters for those of us that are women. There were something happened, you know, 90% of who we are, we pick up between zero and seven. So maybe there was a um your six-year-old self brought home spelling test and you got a V plus, and somebody says, Good job, honey, but I know you can do better. And your six-year-old decides that you have to be the best, you have to like to be perfect to get praise or love or whatever the six-year-old little brain processes, right? And then that gets tucked away. And and then, you know, the things that make us really successful are often the things that keep women from having a relationship that they really feel seen and loved and they get to be fully them and fully loved because they're so used to doing all the things, whether they're, you know, an executive or they're in corporate or they run a business or whatever they do, they are they take care of stuff and they can they can figure it out and they can think their way to solution. And there's, you know, they're they're executors. And then you you are in a relationship. And depending on where you are in your life, uh, if you're in midlife like us, you've probably had some relationships, and you by now you probably have some evidence that sometimes you're too big and too much. And then sometimes in the same breath, you're not enough. But your bigness around your success uh sometimes causes problems. So maybe you're starting, you're meeting somebody and you're like, okay, I'm just gonna tone it down a little bit. And so you make yourself a little smaller, a little quieter, not so much of the normal, and things are going along, and you're like, okay, this is working great. But then things continue along and you're not truly you, right? So you're making yourself smaller to be loved. And then what happens is you we start resenting that other person because maybe you know there's this idea that people have that you can you can be really successful or you can be taken care of, right? You get to have both. You can go be a badass and run the world during the day and come home and put your hair in a messy bun and want someone to take care of you. You can be ambitious and be soft, and so oftentimes there's this longing. So people will ask me all the time, okay, Miss Extraordinary Love, define it. And I'm like, it's different for everyone. For me, it showed up in the form of a yellow cake with chocolate butter cream frosting, which is a great story. But there's something that we that you want, like how you love to be loved. I wanted, I longed my whole life to be thought about, like in a like in advance, not like the last minute thing at the CVS grabbing a card and of you know dead, dead flowers. Like just it doesn't have to be big, but just someone that would think about me. And so maybe there's a there's left for you, or maybe you just really wish that you know, you just you're so tired of making decisions that you know he would just surprise you once in a while with something. So he can't read your mind, and you go along, and now you're not even fully being yourself, and you're starting to resent that a little bit. And and then there's this these things that you would really love to feel loved. So eventually you bring it up and you mention it, and then they say, Oh, okay, okay, okay. And then you're waiting, and because we're, you know, doers, we might get a little impatient, and so then we might bring it up again, either in that way where we say, you know, I would really love this. And then usually the typical response is, Well, I'm not gonna do it if you're ta asking me about it or telling me about it, or it's oh, oh my gosh, it was so sweet at the office today. Sally's husband came in and surprised her and like took her out and you know, like the I'm gonna tell you about the other person's thing because I really want, and then the other person doesn't get it. And then the other person says the next time, listen, you don't like how I do it anyway. Just do it yourself. It's so much easier. And now you have another thing to manage. Oh, you don't get to be fully you and fully loved, you don't get to be taken care of, and it's this whole breakdown that happens all the time. And there's this whole independence thing. So, I mean, everybody's slightly different, but you know, that's an example of how it plays out a lot.

Okay. So the people the women that you work with, are they women that have come out of relationships or are they women that are still in relationships?

All of the above. I work with women who are in a relationship where they're very lonely and

Setting A Real Love Standard

they don't get they don't get their emotional needs met. It's not extraordinary love. It's okay, right? I always say fine relationships cost you decades. There's nothing you could point at, right? He's not abusive, he's not, you know, stealing money, he's not out tramping around. Like he's fine. It's fine. Um, a lot of the women that I work with are divorced or single or and they end up, you know, I keep marrying the same person over and over again in a different face. I keep dating the same person over and over again. I keep finding myself in the same circumstances, and it's super common and I hear it all the time, and it's thankfully quite easy to fix. But without that, that's what continues to happen. And then people get this idea that was just not gonna happen for me. Or everyone in my area, they're all narcissists, they're all this, they're all that, or there's nobody here, and it's so wild because in a very short amount of time, they're like, Oh, they're real, they were here all the time. You just couldn't see them. But back to that, um I don't know what I was gonna say. I lost that train of thought.

That's okay. We're both doing a bit of that already. And they'll come back if they're if you know we're humans. Um so I mean, it would be quite a different experience to be working with a woman who's in a relationship because she's then there's another person that's got like gotta change potentially. Um you're kind of raising your eyebrows there, like maybe not. And um, the other one was like the repetitive um, like I would say that someone who's single, it might be a bit easier to make the changes compared to someone who's in a repetitive cycle or in a relationship already.

But maybe it has nothing to do with anyone else, and it's not even about a relationship. That's the beautiful thing. We are literally acquiring the things in you that are keeping you from the life and love that's meant for you. So, what's interesting when there's another person involved though, is this. So, um, you know, I talk again, clearing, creating, claiming. Before we can clear anything, we have to get clear on a on a level that most people never have. And we do that in a process that I call your extraordinary love standard, but we're going deep on values, non-negotiables, and desires in a very different way than you've ever been asked. And so I like to to give people the example, um, like this. So are you are you in a relationship, maybe?

Yes. Yeah, okay. I'm married.

So um, and on the other side of this work, I'm next week celebrating three years married.

Congratulations. I want to, yeah, you can tell us about that cake story in a minute.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So if I were to say to you, you know, just a few words, like, do you know? Okay, what do you want in a person? Pretend that you know you're not married to your husband. Just if I were to say to you, do you know, do you know what you want? And you would probably say, Yeah, I want somebody who is fill in the blank.

Oh, you know what? I don't know if I do know. Probably some probably someone who I can be completely myself with would be would be very important. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I feel like my husband and I have kind of grown together as uh so it's hard to yeah, yeah, it's hard to determine.

I'll I'll play the part. So if I often I often get the answer of, of course I know what I want. I want someone who's kind, yeah, of course, yeah, and trustworthy and likes to travel and likes loves my dog, and that you know, I feel safe with. Those are all really beautiful things. But now I want you to imagine you and I are going out to dinner together this evening, and we go to a restaurant, we sit down, the server comes by, says, All right, ladies, what can I bring you? And we say, Well, we're thirsty, and we're gonna start with salad, and then we're gonna have a protein and a veggie. Great. So he comes back and he brings us an iced tea and a Caesar salad and a lovely roasted chicken with some beautiful root vegetables and fresh rosemary, and that's exactly what we ordered. It's fine, it's what we asked for. But what we wanted was a glass of champagne and an arugla salad with figs and goat cheese and a nice little balsamic drizzle, and a perfectly done piece of palalibut with a Burlanc sauce and some roasted asparagus and some really good crusty bread. So kind and loving and and safe and too general, they're categories. Yeah. So it's ordering a beverage, a salad, a protein, and a side. So we get super, super clear and super specific. And the part that's hard about when there's another person or harder is because you're thinking about that other person. So I'll give you an example. There was a woman, um, I do live some live events here in the Bay Area for women called the Brilliance Brunch. And I bring together a table of 12 and it's fabulous, and we, you know, have connected, deep, fabulous conversations. So a woman came and she was, you know, she was just kind of coming to check it out. And in the in those spaces, everybody has their version of everybody else has their shit together except for me.

Yeah.

And the beautiful thing is everybody sits down and you realize, oh, nobody does. It's not just me. But she came and she was a little quiet. And then we had a conversation uh uh the next week, and she shared like she was and she's married, but she was in this relationship where it's like she had moved out. It was she was so unhappy, and then she had been in a relationship with this other man, and that was crazy toxic. So we did this work, and there were things for her that in her heart were non-negotiable. She couldn't say them out loud and she couldn't write them down. Because if she did, it would mean that she couldn't be with either of those men, or she'd be out of integrity with herself. So it gives you clarity of like, oh, because the non-negotiables are not the things we talk ourselves out of in three weeks or three months when everything else seems okay because we're whatever age we are, and I can't expect everything and all the things that we say. But see, that's the beauty of desires. So the desires are like, you know, magic wand fairy dust, forehead kisses in the kitchen, like whatever it is for you. But non-negotiables are non-negotiables. And now here's what happens now. You have your venue. Now that feeling of, I don't know if I can trust myself. I thought I knew. Look how that turned out, which is such a driving factor, especially at this time in life when we're talking about relationships, it no longer matters because in a single conversation, you will know if someone even gets the possibility of being in your life, whether that's a romantic relationship, a friendship, you know, it it it you can use it for just about anything. And it takes away the drama and the friction and the decision fatigue in the I don't know if this is right. Is it okay? And you spend weeks and months and years battling yourself. And then ultimately it's not okay. And then you feel like a failure again. And then do I leave again because this is the third time, and now I'm never gonna find anyone anyway. This whole thing, we we just eliminate all the spiraling about the whole thing because you now have what is kind of your North Star. And it is the beginning of how we start in this transformation. Because when then when we have that clarity, then we can talk about the clearing, because we have to clear five main things. We have to clear the story to create the life. You know, everybody says, I want a different story. Amazing, quit telling

Clearing Patterns And Building Identity

the old one first and foremost. And we have to clear the patterns to create the partnerships, right? We want those fulfilling, amazing partnerships romantically, professionally, personally. But when we don't clear the patterns that's running underneath all the old stuff, we don't get those partnerships. We get more of the same, which is more of what we don't want, which is why we keep marrying the same person in different clothes. And we have to clear these cycles to create the confidence. That's where that piece where we don't really trust ourselves because of all of these things. And we have to clear the resentment to get the results. And I think this piece really, really resonates with those of us that are, you know, high capacity women because we we start feeling like we're resisting something, and then we say, Well, I'm procrastinating or I'm self-sabotaging or I'm doing what fill in the blank. But the real question is, is what are you resenting? So we can clear that. So you can actually have the life that you're meant to have. And then lastly, we have to clear the loss to create the love. Because even if it's a relationship that you know you you wouldn't choose to stay in, it wasn't when you got into that relationship, it wasn't with the intention of, oh, we'll do this for a while and then we'll blow up our lives and you know be done with it, right? So you there's some loss around what you wanted for that relationship or your family or whatever. So once we have that clarity and then we get to do that clearing that we talked about earlier, that dysfunction detox, where we get rid of the strategy and the neurology and the behavior and all that charge of all the negative emotion, then we get to start playing with identity because now we get to ask the question outside of mama, ex-wife, business owner, sister, pet, whatever, all the labels. Who are you now? And between now and dead, what do you actually want? And that's a hard question, but that's where we get to start, and then we create from there, and then we get to actually figure that out, and then we get to replace all that stuff that we got rid of. And then we get to look at your life, not just your romantic life and your relationships, everything and reverse engineer it and install that in your timeline. So your your reticular activating system and your brain gets ignited. And now you start to see the people, the experiences, the opportunities, the resources that you want in your life, so that you can have that life. And then we we claim it and we own it, and that's where you fall in love with yourself again and you trust yourself and you confidently hold boundaries and you expertly communicate your needs and you get to deepen the richness in every relationship you choose to have. And then you integrate that into your relationships, your energy, your work, and then you embody that and you live and love and lead from that. New identity from that new frequency.

Okay. Um thank you for sharing all of that. Let's um how did you've obviously

A Personal Story Of Betrayal

well I'm guessing um it's not obvious. I'm guessing that you've been through this kind of uh reprogramming yourself. Like you've mentioned that you had a husband and you've mentioned the cake, which I hope you're gonna tell us about. Um yeah, did you is this how you came to the to the work yourself? Is it like because you had such an amazing experience you decided this is what I want to do?

I actually created this work. So you created it.

Okay. This is my work.

Now there's a piece of it, that piece I talked to you about, the clearing piece, which is a multidimensional technique that's been used for like thousands of years.

Okay. I'd love to hear more about that.

Hundreds of people in the world that that we that are practitioners.

Okay.

But I actually literally created so the framework, the IP, the method, it's all did you create the integrative neurosomatic pro like no that's a board certified. That's board certificate. Okay.

Yeah.

So the my board certification is that. And I I got certified in all the things, but this particular like my You've kind of brought them together.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so um were you practicing on yourself with your thing? Is that what happened to bringing love into your life?

All right, let's back up and I'll tell you how we got here. And then remind you about the cake story because it's how I knew I was gonna marry my husband. And by the way, at that point, he said he was never getting married again.

So hold that thought.

Uh my parents divorced when I was two. My mom and I, I was born in Maui. Then my mom and I moved back to Minnesota where she was from. My father went to California, he got remarried, had another family. Never helped my mom. I had the most amazing grandparents in the entire world. So, like those were my my touch, those were my touchstones. I spent every summer and every break with them in a tiny town in southern Minnesota. And I grew up in a horse barn, which was just the best experiences. But I was going off to college and my father said, Hey, listen, I never helped you, I never helped your mom. I will take, I'll pay your room and board your freshman year. And I'm like, oh my God, that's so great. Thank you. That's fabulous. So I get to college, I'm 18. Simultaneously, my mom was moving to another country, and I think I was like a month in or five weeks in, and the housing people called and said, Hey, your bill was never paid, and you're fully maxed on loans and grants. Like there's there's nothing more that the financial aid office can do. And so I wasn't able to articulate it at 18, but it was probably one of those evidence builders that obviously I don't matter, right?

Okay.

And I don't matter enough, or I'm not loved enough, whatever it is that that you know you don't really say to yourself, but you feel it. So I had to make a decision, like, okay, well, if I leave school, well, what the what am I gonna do? So I went and got three jobs and I rented a five-bedroom house and I filled the other four bedrooms. And I think, you know, when we go through things in life that feel hard and we're like, I don't actually know how to get to the other side of this or what the thing is to do, we often lean on the fact that we don't have the resources to do what we need to do, meaning we don't have the money, the support, the time, or the energy. But really, it's about tapping into that part of us, the resourcefulness because it's there, right? It's not the end of you. So then I went off and got married at 23 because I was certain no one was gonna love me and I was gonna be alone forever.

And is this all self-reflection as well? Like obviously at the time you were thinking that.

But I also was very like making it happen. So I I mean, I literally made it happen. We got engaged, he called it off. I'm very persuasive, called it back on, got married. It was a very lonely marriage. I spent six years basically, like wondering what was wrong with me. And you know, at one point I'm like, are you in love with someone else? Are you gay? Are you gay and you don't want to tell anyone? I'll keep your secret. But like, I don't understand this, and this is so painful. We had our miracle child, and then at six, we said, Okay, this is enough. Um, and it felt really calm, like we went to mediation, and the next day it just went to hell and it turned really volatile and horrible, horrible. I could tell you stories that would just make you cry. Um, so again, in those in those times where we are in crisis, we do the things we're told to do. We talk about it in therapy, we talk to our girlfriends, we read books, we journal, we do a Brene Brown thing on a Saturday, like all the things. And it's all necessary and it's all beneficial until it's not, because then you just stay in the story. And every time somebody asks you about it or says, I can't believe he did that, and then it's the drama, and your body relives it over and over and over again. Um, three years after that, Maddie was nine, and um, we were living in Minnesota, and we lived in this little farm cottage in Afton on the St. Croix River, and we had horses and chickens, and it was April. My father came to visit, and you know, his mean in my adult life, everything was this is the next big thing. This is the thing that's gonna make gazillions of dollars and take care of everybody, uh-huh. And uh it was 40 below zero in April. Like, let's spring. And it was so cold that the metal snapped off the pump. So to water horses, I hose through a window, hook it up to the washing machine, water horses, snake. I was over it. Like, I'm an island baby, I'm not built for winter. So he comes and says, Hey, gosh, I think it's a great time. You should come to California and take over this like family business, this sweet little boutique family business. You could take it over and do with it what you want, and it'd be so amazing. And Maddie can grow up in this little town and the base of Mount Tam in Marin County, California. Blah, blah, blah. And I said, Well, number one, I'm not moving across the country for your next big deal. Number two, I'm only gonna disrupt Maddie's life once. She's little. I moved around a lot when I was little, and it was hard. It's hard to feel like a little girl. Like, you know, it was that unsettled feeling. And I said, and oh, by the way, I'm not leaving the horses. And oh, by the way, again, my mom, uh, who did nails for a living, had a surgery on her neck and they nicked a nerve. And at that point, she couldn't use the right arm. So she had a medical problem and an income problem. And so he's like, Bring them, bring the horses, bring your mom. It's gonna be amazing. So, against everything that I knew was a good idea, right? Because knowing and choosing our live on two different planes, right? We know a lot of things and we choose things, and it wasn't like a little red flag, it was like standing in the middle of Times Square, and every single freaking billboard was like, No. So I did. I talked up my mom, my daughter, horses, cats, moved across the country. And the first few months, honestly, was a fairy tale. Family dinners, and I was loving all the ideas that I was gonna do with the business and you know, weekends with the horses and Maddie like taking little mini surf lessons. And I'm like, huh, okay, maybe, maybe this is good. Like my parents were friends hanging out. And then um, the day after her 10th birthday, so her birthday is November 30, so it's December 1st. Uh, I was in the studio and I heard some noise, and I look around the corner to where the like people would come in the retail park, and

The DEA Raid And Its Fallout

these people are all coming in, which was very odd. And um, all of a sudden it I it registered to me that they all had guns and they were all pointed at me, and they put me in handcuffs, and that's how I learned that I was in the middle of a massive DEA investigation.

What's DEA?

Drug enforcement agency.

Oh my god, really?

Really?

So was the business a cover-up?

Yes, the business was a legit business, but what they were doing in the shipping of these gorgeous huge tower candles was a whole nother story. Oh, they were importing drugs. Yeah, they were shipping them via FedEx.

Oh my god.

So the aftermath of that.

So did anyone else get arrested?

Well, I never got arrested. Uh but uh they held me and I was like, my daughter's coming home with a new friend for the first time. My mom's, I'm like, I need to call them and tell them to go get frozen yogurt because she's gonna be scared. And the house was on the same lot of the studio. Um, and they're like, you're not calling anyone. And then they're like, when she gets here, you know, and I made up this whole story that something had happened in the lot next to us, and they were trying to figure out who broke it. Maddie didn't know this until she went off to college. So you didn't know. I mean, I kept it all from her because I'm like, I don't want her to carry this, I don't want her to be afraid, but it left me with no business, no assets, no money, uh, half a million dollars in debt. The relationship that I had kind of longed for my entire life with my father over. Did anyone else in the business get like get uh there was well they had been watching and for quite some time, and so like they had been like coming and on garbage day and taking my garbage, and they had been following me. So they were pretty clear I had zero involvement as far as being aware, but they also, you know, what's the worst thing you could say to a mama? You know, you could use you could lose Maddie because you could be indicted. Worst thing you could ever. I mean, I that was probably the worst.

Oh, yeah.

You yeah, so ultimately, uh no one ever went to jail. And the charges they weren't able to file for the things that were really happening. They took some other things, but I had to make a decision because now I had no business. They froze all the assets, I didn't even have a dollar. And uh, what do I do? Do I take us back to Minnesota, which I could have, back to our friends and our chosen family, or do I keep my promise to Maddie and break generations of parent-child lack of integrity? And at the end of the day, I decided that that was the most important, and we stayed back in therapy, dealing with the heartbreak and the rage and the not to mention the trauma of having guns pointed at you. Every time I heard a noise in the night, I was sure someone was coming to like I mean, it was just it was talk about a nervous system that was right and acting like nothing was wrong. So my little girl did not have to take any of that on. Um, and then you know, it's been like a couple years since that day of the raid. I decided it was a Monday night. I poured myself a glass of wine and I'm like, I'm gonna go on to dating apps for the first time ever. It's probably a great time to start dating. Because now I had even more evidence that there was something very inherently wrong with me, right? Who does that to their daughter, to their granddaughter? Like the whole thing was just mind-blowing.

Yeah, that's pretty messy.

I had so much shame. I had so much shame and so much embarrassment. And so I went on some dates, awful, went on a couple of date, and I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting. The second date I knew, like in my stomach, this person is not my person. But again, I was like, but maybe this, maybe this is it. Like maybe my expectations are so unrealistic. So I got into a very abusive relationship, a lot of cruelty wrapped in humor. The you're too much and not enough in every sentence. And once I finally untangled from that and got out of it, took a couple of years. That was my like, I'm that's I'm gone. Like, I'm never feeling like that again. I just can be Maddie's mama, do my thing, have great friends, like back in therapy. But uh I was like, this is there has to be a different way. I'm so fucking sick of the story. Like, I don't want to tell it anymore, any of it. I don't want to talk about my divorce, I don't want to talk about my dad, I don't want to talk about any of this stuff. This

Forgiveness Without Letting Them In

ridiculous relationship choice that I made. And I'm like, there has to be, there has to be something else. So it was around there that I found something that then became that basis for me for the and what became my life's work, because in a matter of weeks, there were parts of me that I didn't recognize in all the best way. All that that heavy sadness and rage was gone. What was it? It was the work that I do now for the clearing work. And I fully, fully, fully, fully forgave my father, but he doesn't get a seat at the table, he doesn't get access to it. I haven't talked to him in 10, 11 years. But I don't carry that around.

You're not triggered by him.

No, I can talk to you about this with a smile on my face. I'm not sobbing, I'm not going back into it. You know, like people get very triggered by forgiveness if they've been hurt. Why would I forgive that person? Why would I let them off the hook? Because it has nothing to do with them. It doesn't matter if they're dead, if they're alive, if they live next door, if they live in Africa, it makes no difference. It is you saying what you did was not okay. This is not justifying it, not letting you off the hook, but that thing is no longer gonna control and consume my thoughts, which then create my feelings, which create my behavior and my choices, which creates my life. And you get to stop drinking the poison wishing someone else would die. And it's just incredibly freeing and pro. I mean, alchemical forgiveness is like one of the most empowered or powerful transformation agents in the world. Um and then I went deep diving and and like really started doing this and then started figuring things out and started, you know, from my own experiences and and kind of created the work that's now the work for me. And and it wasn't because uh somebody new moved into the county or I learned how to pick better. I did this work and I all that other stuff, all the story and all the it's gone. And I then was able to receive this incredible man and be the person that I am and that identity of a woman that gets to be loved in the way that she always dreamed about. Which brings me back to chocolate yellow. Um, we met, we had our very first date, December 2019,

The Yellow Cake That Proved Love

on the 21st. We met in at Piati just for a drink. Um, it was lovely. We had a great conversation. It was evident to both of us how much we loved our kids because that was our focus, right? Maddie was mine and he had three, and we just loved our kids. Neither one of us had been, you know, 10 million dates and 50 relationships. Um, so then he left and I I called Maddie. She had gotten her driver's license like three days before, and I said, Do you want to come meet me for dinner? And she's like, Yeah. So he left, and then I moved tables and waiting for her, and I took a bite of bread and it was soft bread, and my front tooth crumbled into a million pieces.

Oh no.

Which I genetically I have known enamel. So all these are now. But I was like, Thank you, God, that we didn't order an appetizer. I would have been so embarrassed. So it was a Saturday night. I called my dentist, who I love. Um, we've spent a lot of time together, and he and his wife and baby were up in Napa, and he's like, We'll be home tomorrow. I'll meet you at the office and get you a temporary because I was taking my mom and my little girl to Maui for Christmas in two days. So, anyway, that's when we first met. My birthday was a month later, January 21st. Got home from back from Maui. I was kind of sick, we didn't really see each other much. But you know, you talk when you meet somebody, like, oh, what do you like to do? What do you like to eat? And something came up about dessert. And I'm like, I'm not really a sweets person. Like, give me wine and cheese and bread, and I'm a happy girl. But like once a year, I love a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. And like nobody makes it, right? So you have to make it yourself, usually. End of story. Uh, he picks me up for my birthday. We go to lovely dinner, and at the end of the dinner, out comes the server with a cake. And it was a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. So the week before he went to three uh grocery store bakeries to finally find someone to make him a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. Then he picked it up and he drove it to the restaurant before he picked me up for dinner. This was my person. Right? That's like that thinking of me in that way. And that means he's he's still that way. But so you know, it's a different, um, everyone's a little bit different of what extraordinary love looks like, but it's it's there and it's possible. And I don't care how old you are, how young you are, I don't care if you've been divorced 10 times. Um it's not about doing more. This work is is is where more insight and knowledge can't go, but that's kind of the magic because you know, 10% of our mind is conscious and it's our critical faculties and it's everything we know we know, and we use it all day long. It's our goal setter, which means the other 90% of the body is the unconscious mind. So if the if the conscious is the goal setter, the unconscious is the goal getter. It's the operating system, and it's that literal library of everything we've ever experienced in our entire life. So I think that kind of like ties it all together back to the question of like the brain and the body and why this work is so painless and peaceful and fast because we're not going back into the story. We don't, I mean, I won't even allow it.

So yeah. So I've that it sounds like like from the description that you've given us, it sounds like there's

Magnet For Miracles Rubber Band Tool

there is quite a lot of well, maybe there's not. There's a you know, I've I've got my notes here about the process you've clarity, detox, dysfunction, discover, activation, habits, goals, own, integrate, and embody. And you've talked about, you know, knowing what your desires are, um, or you know, knowing what you want and don't want, your values, and that sort of thing. It sounds like there's a relatively deep process that needs to happen. But then there's this other side of it where it sounds like there's it there's some kind of like quick part of it.

Yeah, so and you're totally right. Um, there is a framework, yeah, and there is a process, and there are there's parts of it that no matter who you are, we're gonna do. But it's also every single person is different and it's spoken away. The framework never changes, but um, so that part that we talked about, you know, that clarity piece, so important, right? Everybody we do that. And then there's the part where when people say that they keep finding themselves in the same situations over and over again, whether it's marrying the same person or ending up in the same thing in every office they work in, the boss hates them, or a money or a money story, or a health, whatever there's no parking spots when it's raining. Like whatever the stories are that keep showing up. Um, there's something that I do. I call it my magnet for miracles process because it's that's the core of my values. So I love impact, belief in what's possible, generosity, and uh being a magnet for miracles are kind of the values that I live by. And it's really it's kind of a fun thing, it's very technical. You need a rubber band and two pieces of paper.

Oh, I heard you talking about this on another podcast, and I was gonna ask you if you'd talk about the elastic band trick.

Yeah. So in 72 hours, we rewire the neurology in your brain and it changes everything in your physical environment.

Yeah.

Because here's what people don't realize. Every day we think between 65,000 and 85,000 thoughts, which is insane. And 90% of those thoughts are recycled. Yeah. So they're the same things we taught yesterday and last week and last month.

Yeah.

And most of them are negative. And I get a lot of pushback there because my clients are like, oh no, I've done every mindset seminar, I've read every my mindset, it is so good because the declaration of I'm never gonna be in another relationship where I don't feel safe. I'm never gonna be in another relationship where I don't feel cherished. I'm never gonna be in another relationship where I can't trust, where I don't want to, I'm never gonna be in this financial pit. I don't want to be in this depth. I don't want this menopause deli. I don't want this job that I hate, fill in the blank. But the unconscious mind can't hear the qualifying don'ts, it just knows what we're focused on.

Yeah.

It's why those things keep coming up. So over the course of the 72 hours in this little process, it's wild. And I will tell you, I countless people have said to me after the fact, I have to tell you, Rihanna, I thought this was the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And it was the thing that changed everything the most so fast. So, like it's it's as simple and complex as that. The point of it that you're not gonna ever not have those thoughts again. It's to get you out of it in seconds, not hours and days, because you don't even notice that you're doing it. You didn't have you don't even notice. And so it's um it's a very fun uh process and experience because everyone's blown away. They're like, I have no idea. And mostly at the beginning, they're like, No, I don't think you're right about this one. I'm like, all right, cool. Well, let's see. And they're like, damn, you were really right.

Are you gonna tell us what it is?

Okay, do we have time?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right. Okay. So um you need two pieces of paper and a rubber band. And we're going to talk about this in in reference to imagine you're in a room with four walls, right? And so one of those walls is going to be your away wall. And that's the wall that's everything you don't want in life. Ever again, more of, ever, all the things. Messy car, messy pantry, dirty dog. Um everything.

Not just the big things, just like all the things.

Your toward wall is going to be everything you do want. Magic wand, fairy dust, wishes, goals, dreams. No filtering. No saying, well, I'm 50. I can't, you know, that's not that's not gonna happen. No, no. No filtering. All of the things. And then you're gonna, once you write those lists, and if you're a really visual person, so I would ask, all right, Nadine, for you in a room where there's a wall left, right in front of you and behind you, where would your away wall be?

It would be there to my left.

Okay, and where would your tour wall be?

Straight in front of me.

Okay, beautiful. So if you're a really if you're listening and you're really visual, put your lists on the wall in a room that you spend time in, your office, your closet, your bathroom, whatever. But regardless if you do that part or not, make your lists, whether it's one page or 10. And then I need you to take photos of them and either pin them in your notes app if you have an iPhone or put them in an album so you can access it really, really easily. Okay. And put when you're ready to begin, you put the rubber band on. But it has to be the office kind that stings, not like our soft smooshy stuff. Around your wrist? Yes, around your wrist. And you're not gonna take it off for three days.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now, the reason this is important is we have to then talk about frequency. So we don't get what we want in life, we get who we are. And it's important to understand that consciously we often think and would say that we hang out in these high frequency emotions. Joy, love, gratitude, joy, you know, happiness, all the wonderful things. And there's truth to that. But unconsciously, we spend a lot of time in fear, doubt, victim, resentment, anger, rage, jealousy, like, you know, and then all the things in between. And it's important because of this. So I'm gonna I'm gonna demonstrate this and then we'll finish the experience. What is your favorite music? Would you say, Nadine?

Oh god. Uh I like sort of 90s dance music, I think.

Okay, awesome. And then what is a genre of music you really can't stand?

Death metal.

I had someone the other day for the very first time ever say that their favorite music was heavy metal. I'm like, we cannot speak.

I don't mind heavy metal, but death metal. No.

All right.

So, and here's this is critical for you guys listening. You have to put your own favorite music and your own least favorite music. Otherwise, it just doesn't, it doesn't okay.

Yeah.

So imagine, Nadine, that everything you want for your life, all of it. It's right here. It's hanging out at Sirius XM 111 and it's all 90s dance all day. It's freaking baby.

Okay.

And it so like it's there, everything you want. But then, like, you're kind of stuck on channel 50 and it's death metal, and you can't turn it on, you can't even turn it down. It's just glaring. And you have these moments where you're like, Well, maybe, maybe the death metal station will play a 90s dance song. Can you hear 90s dance songs on the death metal station? Not a chance in hell. How do you hear the 90s music? You change the channel, you change the frequency. So that's what this does. Okay. So that's the that's the why we're doing this. All right, here we are. Day one. Put the rubber band on. Anytime that you recognize that you're thinking about something in the something that you don't want, and and maybe it's because you have a pit in your stomach or you're feeling anxious or you're irritated. Um, you know, you just can feel it in your body. I want you to snap the rubber bands. I want you to think about what you were thinking about. Try to recall it. I promise you it'll be something on the away wall list. And I want you to keep note in whatever way is easy for you. If I were me, I'd be voice noting myself, like one o'clock Friday, snaps, you know, debt, whatever the thing is. Okay. Okay. Then I want you to replace it with a better feeling thought, the high frequency thought. Three great ways easy to do it. Number one, literally just flip it to the other thing. So if you're thinking about, you know, the debt, flip it to you. Oh, it's amazing to not, you know, to just have more than than we could ever need, and to be able to, you know, do what we want and give what we want. And it's just, it's such an incredible feeling. But you gotta feel it as though it is, right? Because it only takes 17 seconds for the brain to create new neural pathways or reinforce the old ones when you're holding a thought with all the senses. What do you see, what do you hear, what do you feel, what you taste? The other way is just look at your toward wall list and pick something and do that same thing. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you feel? As though you're living in the moment that it's already happened, that it's this it's currently part of your existence. Um, you can uh think about something that you're actually grateful for. If, like, if you're just like, I can't do any of that right now, but not the Pollyanna, I'm so grateful for my life. Like literally, I'm so grateful to have 10 minutes and sit in my car by myself and have this cup of coffee before I have to walk into work. Like something that's like legit real in the moment. And if you're still in it, and I want you to ask yourself, what who can I serve in this moment? And it does not have to be a big deal. You can say a prayer for a friend, send a text to a friend, the neighbor's um plant tipped over on the front porch. Go pick it up. Just get out of your head in service of someone else. Now, I'm gonna warn you the first day, you probably won't snap it hardly at all. You don't recognize it, right? You don't realize how often. And then day two, there's a very different level of awareness, and you're starting like, oh, huh, that's super interesting. Keeping track, keeping track. Day three, you're gonna be going to snap all the time, and then sometimes before you can snap, you're doing the thing, and that's the point, right? It again, not that you're never gonna have negative thoughts. I'm not giving you a lobotomy. The first thought isn't ours to be responsible for, every thought thereafter is it's about pulling you out of it, pulling yourself out of it as fast as you can and putting yourself back into a higher frequency um vibration. And you will start to see different things and different people. And my daughter, since she was could drive, we've paid played the parking spot game. There's always a parking spot wherever we go. And in college, she just graduated a few months ago. And her friends were like, Maddie, do the parking parking spot. They're like, What do you do? It was so funny. But all of those things, especially when you say, like, it's I'm the same people, they're all the same. There's no one, there's no men in my zip code, area code, fill in the blank. Um, you know, every time I go somewhere, the server gets my dinner wrong, my haircut wrong. Like all of that crap that just runs in the background, it's it will be gone. You'll it'll happen and it'll be gone. And all of a sudden, there's always a parking spot, and you're meeting these incredibly nice human beings. People aren't running you off the road and looking you off in traffic. And you know, you were on a date, and this person like asked you all these questions and was like, where did you come from? Your physical world starts to change because you think about it like a cake. If we bake a cake, we take it out of the oven, and it doesn't taste good, what are we gonna do to bake a better cake?

Put more sugar in it.

Put more sugar in it. Look at the right, and the ingredients are mental, spiritual, emotional, and it all starts here. So if our physical world doesn't isn't as we wish it could or should be, bad taste in cake, then because it and the cake's the last thing to come out of the oven, right? So you've got to fix the ingredients, and then you bake a better cake. So that's my invitation, everybody.

I love that. I'm definitely gonna try the elastic band. And do you only have to do it once? Like you said that there's like thousands and thousands of thoughts that we have every day, and often them are there are they literally like we've probably got, I don't know, 15 that are just on repeat or more than that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I have clients that will, you know, they'll do it. And then I mean, I have a client that still wears, I have these bracelets made and it's a rubber, like a rubber band, and it's thick and it says I'm a magnet for miracles, and I would send them to all my clients. But um, I have clients a year later that sometimes they'll they'll show up to a call and like they'll have it on, and they're like, I put the damn rubber band on because I'm really intent on screwing up this part of my life or like not getting this job. So it becomes a tool, it becomes something that you're like, and and sometimes they don't see it. And I'm like, when we get off this call, you're gonna go put the rubber band back on. And they're like, okay.

I love that. Thanks for that tip. I definitely am gonna try it. We have rubber band balls, um, you know, because you get rubber bands with everything, like groceries and stuff, all come in rubber bands. So I've got balls made of rubber bands, I've got loads of rubber bands, so I'll definitely be able to, I'm set. As we um sort of get close to the close of our conversation, you've got a

The Extraordinary Love Index And Closing

something called the Ellie.

Yeah.

Can you tell us about that?

I would love to. So the Extraordinary Love Index is the diagnostic that I've built on based on my work over the years.

Okay.

Ellie, we call her Ellie, the Ellie, we lovingly call her the Ellie. So Ellie got a glow up in June. So this is Ellie 2.0, which is really fun. Um, and Ellie is 30 questions, and I always say it takes about 12 minutes.

Okay.

And uh I had someone reach out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago and she asked me, she was, why does this take 12 minutes? And I said, honestly, because it sounds cooler than 10, because everybody's just saying 10 minutes. And she's like, I'm a numbers person, and that's what stuck out at me. And she's like, I was dying to know why it takes 12 minutes. It might take you 10, it might take you 15. Just 12 sounds better.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna send you back a 10-page portrait all about you, and it's an interception of what's standing between you and extraordinary love. And that starts here. So, for my my mission, outside of giving this work, like doing this work with with women, is I want every woman in the world to take the Ellie. Because you and I are married to our loves of our lives. You should still take the Ellie. It's not about him, not about the relationship. And it's gonna come back with a portrait and is of one of four different kinds of women. She carries, she guards, she holds. And the reflection back to you is amazing. I've had people text me and late at night saying, uh, this just did more than my entire last year of therapy. Like, I'm wow.

Wow.

So that is my mission. And if you're listening, please share the Ellie with every woman you know. Give it to your communities, send it to your girlfriends, to your sisters. Like everybody should take the Ellie. So yes.

Okay, I'm heading there. And um, I've think I heard you mention like this is not it, yes, it's about finding extraordinary love, but extraordinary love really does start with ourselves, doesn't it? Like we can only we can only attract in as much as we like we can only, yeah, sort of mirror or the mirror. I don't know, you know, you know what I'm trying to say.

I absolutely do.

We can only love to the limit that we love ourselves, and we can only be loved to the limit that we love ourselves as well.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Great. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been uh really great. Yeah, and thank you for sharing so much of your wisdom with us.

My pleasure.

Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast. Thanks for listening.