How are you dealing with the Coronavirus Pandemic? This unplanned (i.e., emergency) episode was prompted by the sudden fear and uncertainty created by the Coronavirus Pandemic. Peter McGraw and his guest, Isabella Imani, rushed to meet and discuss the situation. As you may know, Warren Buffet is famous for saying, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Peter and Isabella would modify that idea to say that when others are reacting negatively, ask how you can react positively. They discuss the importance of asking for help and offering help. That is, physical isolation does not need to equal emotional isolation. They also talk about how to adjust your environment, given the circumstances, the coping strategies you can use to help with anxiety, and how the current situation may spur important personal and professional changes as you pursue your remarkable life.
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Listen to Episode #12 here
Living Remarkably During a Pandemic – The Corona Virus Edition
This unplanned episode was prompted by the sudden fear and uncertainty created by the Coronavirus pandemic. My guest and I rushed to meet and discuss the situation. Warren Buffett is famous for saying, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” We would modify that idea to say that when others are reacting negatively, ask how you can react positively. We discussed the importance of asking for help and offering help. That is physical isolation does not need to equal emotional isolation. We talk about how to adjust your environment given the circumstance, the coping strategies you can use to help with anxiety, and how the situation may spur important personal and professional changes as you pursue your remarkable life. I hope you find the episode helpful. Let’s get started.
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My guest is Isabella Imani. Isabella is an LA-based Relationship and Behavioral Coach specializing in helping clients through inner alignment and goal setting. She has more than seven years of experience in personal development and partnering with leadership of Fortune 500 companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Live Nation, Viacom and Paramount Studios. She’s also a professional speaker and previously worked in HR and operations. Welcome, Isabella.
Thanks, Peter.
Let me tell the readers why we’re doing a special emergency episode and it’s because of the Coronavirus pandemic. I decided to do this spur of the moment and I have a good friend who had said to me, “I found the perfect person for your podcast. She would be a great guest. She’d be a great guest cohost.” I said, “Who is it?” He gave me your name and I did some Google stalking. I said, “You might be right,” and then we set up a call and we got chatting. I was like, “She’s going to be perfect.” In part because of your own personal and professional experiences, where you are in your life, solo living and beyond living a remarkable life. I said, “Do you want to do a special show?” Here we are. Thank you so much, Isabella. Before we get into talking about a remarkable life during a pandemic, let’s get to know you a little bit if we can. Let’s start personal and we’ll cover the solo portion of your life. You are single.
I’m single and I’m dating around. There is someone that I am seeing consistently and we have been the best of friends. I’m so grateful for our friendship and what we share. It’s been a known thing that we are not in a relationship and that we are free to see other people as well.
You’re not doing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ You have talked about that.
I’ve never experienced anything like that. I told you before that prior to 2019, I’d always been a serial monogamist. That was a part of my paradigm. I thought that that’s the way it was and that’s the way that I will always be. I got out of a very serious relationship with someone that I thought I was going to marry. That jump-started this whole 2019 of doing an insane deep dive into personal development and my own journey of who is Isabella without the presence of someone else? I had never known that part of me. Coming from my background of always being a naturally independent person, I found that I was no longer independent when I was in the presence of a significant other. Largely in part because I didn’t love myself enough or know myself enough to be independent. In 2019, I’ve experimented with different types of relationships and the way that I show up in them. It’s been a great journey. This is my first time experiencing, we’re going to call it an ethically non-monogamous relationship with someone that I care about so deeply and have grown to love and in such a deep romantic way. Saying that you are your own person as am I and let’s just meet in the middle, unattached to the outcome and being present in our space together.
One of the things that’s nice too is the honesty that goes along with that decision. Being free to explore your independence, perhaps seeing other people, but also having this foundational connection with someone who you’re close with.
You learn a lot about yourself and another person, especially how to interact and love another person and how you want to be loved when you ask the hard questions and you are forced to remove your ego or fear in this situation. There have been moments when I know my ego has been hurt for one reason or another because I thought things should be a certain kind of way. I realized that that’s my own paradigm that needs to be shifted and the way that I respond to situations is no longer the same.
Do you have an example of that that you can share?
When we were exploring this portion, we started out as friends.
Who started it?
I think it was a mutual thing. When we met, we were attracted to one another. It was interesting because he wasn’t actively pursuing me in a way that was definitive. I’m used to guys pursuing me and saying, “Isabella, you’re what I want.” It’s very direct. I’ve never had a six-month chase that I was like, “We’re going to be pen pals for the rest of our lives.” It’s like, “Fuck it, no.” That’s ultimately what it was. He lives in Santa Monica and for the readers that don’t live in LA, I live in Hollywood. We’ve got this thing here where if you’re more than five miles away from your other person, it’s technically a long-distance relationship.
Not all five miles are created equal. Those five miles are very difficult because you have to cross the 405.
Technically, we’re in different countries.
[bctt tweet=”It’s no one else’s responsibility to help us heal but ourselves.” via=”no”]
I know people who would rather date someone in another city than in Santa Monica.
We went along time being pen pals and seeing each other at mutual events, but never actively pursuing it until one day we finally made it happen. Instantly, we did the thing and it was great. Ever since we’ve been on the reg. There have been instances where we’ve had conversations of, “Are you seeing anyone else?” or, “What do we want this to be?” Every now and then, he would bring someone up and it wasn’t in a way of hurting. It was in a way of direct honesty. Whether I expressed it to him or not, I probably didn’t because I was hurt and I was trying to wrap my head around this. Even though we agreed that we were being great friends and that were casually seeing each other, I still felt an emotion where I was like, “I’m not the only one. Maybe I’m not so special.”
That gave me an opportunity to learn so much about myself because the goalposts didn’t change. We what we said we wanted is what we wanted. It was my feelings around that changed because I’d never entered this territory before. With that, I had to do a deep dive within myself because it wasn’t up to him to alleviate my personal ego or my anxiety around that. I had to say, “Isabella, where is this stemming from for you? Are these emotional wounds that hadn’t healed yet from past relationships or is this a growing pain that you’re experiencing because you’ve never been in this ethically non-monogamous relationship before?” I had to do the inner work and I had to say, “This is an emotional trigger. What meaning am I giving to this event?” This is an actual exercise that I give to my clients.
What’s great about this is she’s using her own techniques on herself as she’s going through this experimenting.
The other thing that I talk with my clients through as well is incremental trial and error. We can’t be led by fear. One of my big things is if it scares me, I probably should do it.
I have that same saying, “I’m scared to do this. I have to do this.”
Even being on this podcast, I was like, “If this scares me, I probably should do it. If I tank, so be it.” Let’s lean into this. Let’s acknowledge the fear because as we know when you repress your emotions, it will manifest itself in so many different ways. Another exercise is saying, “This scares me.” Acknowledge the fear, label it for what it is and then lean into it. There were a series of things there that I had to do in my personal life that I still do. It’s funny because he’ll probably read this because he doesn’t know the half of it. I was like, “I was starting to catch feelings and I caught myself. I had to just readjust.” I’ve never told him that before. What I realized too is that it’s not up for other people. It’s no one else’s responsibility to help us heal but ourselves. Oftentimes we think that if we’re experiencing pain, that our significant other is responsible for fixing it. I fundamentally do not believe that’s true. I believe that we can heal in our relationships, but ultimately it is our responsibility to heal from that.
There are different ways to practice ethical non-monogamy. One is full disclosure where you tell maybe a primary partner, “I’m seeing this person. I’m doing this and that.” The other form is lighter, “I’m doing things out there under these criteria like protection-wise, this and that.” You may or may not go into detail with that. It sounds like you have a hybrid of this where some things get discussed and some things don’t. It was when you were discussing some of those things where some of these pangs started to arise. When you didn’t know and it was abstract, it was easier to deal with.
Trial and error is the best way to learn. My two favorite words are safety and boundaries, practicing both of that. By safety, I mean emotional safety. That’s important. By boundaries, I mean the same thing. That was a great lesson that I learned because had I not known that I didn’t like hearing this information, I wouldn’t have been able to express a boundary that mattered to me, which is, “I just assume you’re doing these things. I don’t need to know the details.” That has helped significantly because we can still live the same life. The same outcome is the same where we get to be present with one another, love each other for the time that we have and when we’re apart, I don’t think twice about it. I know it for what it is. What’s cool about that approach, because it works for me but it may not work for other people. Maybe they want to know who it is you’re seeing. I realize that the more detail I know, the more heightened anxiety that it gives me. I would rather know that you’re doing it. I just don’t need to know that you’re doing it.
The flip side of that is a person who’s like, “Who are these people? What’s your relationship?” Wanting to know much more as a way that would have the opposite effect, which is that’s the swaging to have that worked out. I always use this term, “For now or forever,” for single people but you’re not necessarily interested in a solo life forever. You may at some point want a couple up in a more monogamous way.
It’s funny that you asked that because I’ve been asking myself this question. The more that I experiment with this relationship or others, the more I learned so much about myself. An example is I went to a play party, and that’s the way that I do want to frame it. It was very well done and it was out of love and respect where there were couples there. We’d laid down ground rules and it was a very loving community. I hadn’t been to a play party that was this well done. Everyone there was about giving. It was almost off of Burning Man principles. If you know what those mean, what I’m trying to say is that it is about giving to the community versus what you can take away. It came from a very warm and authentic place. While I was at this play party, I learned a lot about myself. There wasn’t a ton of playing than I was doing because I was in a learning space where it’s like, “How am I going to react in this play party? Do I want to be in this environment? Will I feel uncomfortable and end up leaving?” This was my first time ever experimenting and seeing what Isabella was like in that context.
There’s a probably useful lesson to learn from this. If you’re interested in trying something out like that, going to a sex club or a sex party or play party, whatever it might be, it probably works best if you approach it from, “I’m going to observe first and then see how it all feels,” versus jumping full-on in.
I always bring it back, and this is an exercise that I do with myself and one that I do with my clients, going for the intention here. Before I even agreed to go into this play party, I thought about it and I was like, “Isabella, are you going for the ego or are you going for the soul? What is your intention here?” I think in traditional society, people think of play parties as, “Who knows?”
They have particular images of it from eyes wide shut or pornography, whatever it is. That might not match reality very closely.
There’s a way to do it where you can be a part of this environment where it nurtures the soul. I had never been a part of this where it was soul-driven. It was a community and it was about, “Are you feeling safe, are you feeling comfortable and how do I serve?” There were a lot of people there that weren’t playing. We were having drinks and we were having the best time. It was no pressure. It was the safest environment. I say this because this goes back to your original question, is this now or is this forever? What I learned about myself in that environment was, I am okay with being in a monogamous relationship and inviting play into my relationship where I couldn’t have told you that as long as it’s in a safe context.
I have a friend who’s a reader of this and he uses this term, “I’m 90% monogamous,” which I think is an interesting way to think about it. We have this idea that it’s either all or nothing thing, but he’s like, “No, 90% of the time I want this partner.” Whatever those other times and what other that thing may be like, and it might be with the partner going to a party or whatnot. I don’t need to know or want to know whether it’s for now or forever. I think that that’s a tough question to answer because the moment someone says, “I definitely want this thing.” Most people would be better off like, “I would like that thing but I don’t know what the future holds.”
That but though is important because without understanding yourself, how can you know? You and I first started our conversation when we first met up talking about concepts like human domestication and fitting into these boxes that society says we have to fit into. A concept like a play party is nontraditional. I’m not saying everyone needs to go to one, but without having gone to one and gone to one that makes you feel safe, how would you know this is something that you don’t want to invite? I’d been to play parties before that never made me feel emotionally safe with a significant other that almost objectified the experience and in many ways ruined it for me. As Isabella being solo experimenting and learning more about herself, I was able to make a well-informed decision about what I like without the influence of someone else. I was able to derive from that experience that I could be open to this. That’s powerful for readers, opening your horizons a little bit more.
I want to transition into some of your professional stuff and then I want to spend the rest of the time talking about what’s going on in the world because a lot of people are thirsting for perspective and information. There are readers going, “Ew,” when hearing the terms ethical non-monogamy, story about going to a play party. What I like and I want to repeat what you essentially said is if you haven’t done it or you haven’t tried it, at the very least, even if you just haven’t considered that it might work for some people, even if it might not work for you, be careful about using your fear or your disgust response or whatever it is to make a judgment. Because everybody who’s reading this, who’s single and wants to be comfortable being single, knows what it’s like to be judged in that same way.
What I love about the readers of this blog is they’re the person at Thanksgiving dinner who’s single and people are asking them, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do what we’re doing?” Where the assumption is what they’re doing is right and what you’re doing is wrong. You’re not doing what they’re doing, you’re somehow lacking and whatnot. If there’s someone like that at every Thanksgiving dinner across the country or whatever meaningful religious dinner across the world, that’s a lot of people who are not being celebrated for walking a different path. If you’re not being celebrated for walking a different path and you want to be, all my thing is just be careful about doing it to others who are walking a slightly different path.
Celebration is a beautiful, powerful word too, so I love that. In terms of a reframe, celebration is important, but also acknowledging too when we’re able to take off the emotional mask, it allows other people to show up authentically as well.
What do you mean by the emotional mask?
When we’re able to show up authentically within ourselves for better or for worse, even saying play party, I know there are going to be readers out here and my mom will read this and my mom does not know about this, it doesn’t matter. If this is a part of my experience and my journey, showing up authentically takes bravery and that takes bravery for everybody. When we’re able to take off that mask and express it from an authentically true place that allows everyone else to take off their emotional mask as well. If nothing else, that’s the big thing that I want readers to take away from this. In sharing this experience, that was one of growth for me. I hope that takes bravery to express out loud. I hope it allows other people to say, “I’ve been curious about communicating X, Y and Z sexual desire to my current partner, but I’ve been too afraid to say it because what if they judge me?” Come out of that a little bit and see what happens.
I always say anything worth doing is going to be difficult, whether that be difficult in terms of effort or difficult because it’s scary. What did I say to you right before we started? I said, “There are two things I need from you. I need you to be yourself and to have fun.” I applaud you for that idea and I do agree with you that being brave, which is asking for what you want and doing what you want to do is important in life. Asking for what you want is brave because you risk being told no or not getting what you want, but you’re certainly not going to get it if you don’t ask.
It also allows for, which is the intention here, greater authentic human connection. In this day and age where we put on this facade of who we should be, when you can say, “This is who I am,” authentically. There’s so much power in being you. It’s not without fear of judgment, because that’s not the case. We all fear it, but it’s leaning into that fear and then doing something with it.
There’s no avoiding judgment. You’re either going to be judged for being an actor bad or good, or you’re going to be judged for being the person you are. You’re either going to get judged for this front stage persona that you put forth or your backstage persona. I liked the idea of you should try to live like your backstage persona because that’s truly who you are.
That’s the inner alignment portion of it.
Let me say this because you talked about this idea about being connected and social connections. That’s one of the things that prompted me. The readers have already a good view of who you are and why you “qualify” to join the show as a guest. These had been scary times for a lot of people. I don’t need to recap what’s been happening, but I will highlight the speed in which the Coronavirus has gone from, “It’s nothing to worry about,” to travel bans, quarantines and run on toilet paper. That’s what’s been happening. One of the things that I want to say, call it a PSA, a caveat or whatever you want is, let’s be smart. Practice good hygiene and wash your hands. See your healthcare provider if you’re showing symptoms. All of those things are common sense things. Also, important in terms of trying to stop the spread of this as well as the spread of influenza, which is also a problem and has been a problem for years.
That said, one of the things that I think is interesting is with a lot of social events, business events, classes, places being closed down, shutdown, any places bringing lots of people together has an unintended consequence. People have even used this term social distancing. One “solution” to Corona has been to socially distance yourself from people. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to talk to anyone about this idea. When I heard social distancing, immediately I sat up straight. I like to say solo, but not alone. There’s a lot of mythology about being single. One is single people are lonely and single people are socially isolated. Oftentimes it’s the opposite that single people are more connected than married people because it helps to be connected when you don’t have one person who needs to be everything to you.
It’s rather freeing and there would be a lot more utility in having a wide diverse group of people to rely on as you need to, to live your remarkable life. When it’s only one person, that person goes down with the Coronavirus, there goes your rock. I wanted to bring this up because you’re being told to socially distance yourself and yet we need people. Even if you are comfortable being alone and so on, what if you get sick? What I want to start to do is invite readers who are puzzling over what to do to try to start thinking maybe a little bit differently about this. What is your reaction to that motivation?
I do love that when you called me and you told me your idea behind this and the importance of it, I agree. It’s all in the language. I think there is a gentle reframe that we’re not seeing in the media. What we’re seeing is a lot of heightened anxiety. “Don’t go outside. Don’t do these things. Don’t connect with others physically. To the best that you can, stay in your home. Quarantine. Work from home.”
[bctt tweet=”We can heal in our relationships, but ultimately it is our responsibility to heal from that.” via=”no”]
There’s a lot of competition. The media images are two people doing a tug of war over the last roll of Charmin. That’s the newsworthy stuff.
With that, it’s clickbait. We’re almost addicted to seeing that sensational drama. As a society, whether it’s Corona or anything else, those headliners get the attention. Let’s acknowledge that for what it is and then take a step back and say, “We get it.” From that perspective, there is a responsibility that the media has that they’re not leveraging to say, “Here’s the clickbait stuff, but we’re all in this together.”
That’s the problem. I don’t feel like we’re all there yet.
Less of social isolation. A good reframe for that would be more or less physically you can isolate yourself for logical health reasons, but emotionally that isolation doesn’t need to persist. I think that that’s on the media to convey the difference there while we physically isolate, we don’t need to emotionally isolate and then giving suggestions to readers on how to do that. Whether that means calling up your loved ones and expressing, “Are you doing okay?” There is a support system here. Connecting with your loved ones that live in different countries, making sure that they’re okay. That’s the emotional isolation that doesn’t need to exist. If anything, it brings us closer together. That’s where when we’re in this area, this heightened stage of anxiety where we are physically distancing ourselves, let’s not forget that we can still pick up the phone, send a thoughtful text message to bring down that anxiety and say that, “We’re all in it. I’m here for you.”
I’ll give you three examples of this. One of them is ridiculous. I got a text message from a colleague and friend asking me, “What do you think of what’s going on?” I immediately called him. To me, that’s a conversation we want to have. We don’t want to do this via text. Let’s get on the phone. What was nice about it was we ended up having a lot of laughs. It ended up being a nice connection and it made my day better. The next one is I’m in this box in the sky, high rise one-bedroom apartment.
I’d say it’s like a cordial building but not a friendly building and it’s a building that always seems half full because there are a lot of people. It’s their second residence. I had this young couple who lives across the hall from me and they’re very LA. He is a party promoter type. If you want bottle service, he’s the guy who can get you into the hot club in LA and all that stuff. His girlfriend, I don’t know exactly what she does, but she could be an Instagram model for all I know. They are incredibly friendly to me. It’s refreshing and nice, especially her because this is a town where if you’re a beautiful woman, you might learn to put some walls up just because there are creeps.
I remember running into him one day and I said, “I ran into your girlfriend in the elevator and she was kind to me.” I ran into him and he said, “I went to Trader Joe’s. It was crazy in there. Pete, I am totally stocked up. If you need anything, just knock on the door. I got you covered.” No one’s talking about that thing. The last one is there’s this cafe across the street from me. I was up super early and I was working. I had brought some fruit with me. I had a banana and apple. It was next to my computer. There was a woman there who’s drinking her coffee and she said, “Did you get that banana downstairs?” I said, “No. I brought it from home.” She goes, “I think they’re out.” I said, “Do you want it?” I have to admit, I never would have offered it to her if we weren’t going through what we’re going through.
Did she take it?
She did not take it but she was clearly moved by it. We had this very nice conversation. She’s visiting from Boston. She has a daughter who’s in a local college. The daughter is clearly upset that her internship is getting canceled, classes are getting canceled and so on. The mom was like, “I’m just glad I’m here.” What I want to say is I think that you’re right. A lot of these things are happening out in the world. They’re not getting noticed because they’re not clickbait-y. The idea of if you walk away from this show and you go, “Who could I connect with who might be struggling?” or, “I’m struggling, who might I connect with who might help me with this?”
I’m grateful that you shared those stories because that hopefully the readers, I know certainly myself, I’ll internalize that and think about who else can I reach out to? Am I doing enough in my social circle or in my community to make sure that my inner circle feels loved, appreciated and supported? During times like this, that is the most important thing that matters.
You’re doing it here, not for your inner circle, but your outer circle.
If you think about it, the Coronavirus is contagious. Something not everyone wants to get, but so is kindness, compassion and generosity. Someone in my social media feed posted a very frightening photo. The caption was, “Early bird doesn’t always get the worm.” In this photo, it was one of our local grocery stores with at least 50 people waiting for it to open. They looked distraught and they weren’t necessarily ahead of the game if that’s even a possibility. The energy from that photo then broadcast it on this feed were hundreds of other people are going to see that, my thought was, “Is this content helpful or is this hurtful? What was his intention? Let’s stop there.” Myself as someone, a consumer of this information, it is then up to my discretion to say, “Is this content helpful or is this hurtful?” To either opt-out or then to think twice as well about the shit that I’m posting. Am I going to post things that are helpful for people or things that hurt?
One of the things that I also came to was what are you supposed to do? We’ve already covered one thing, which I think is good in terms of trying to stay connected, even if you have to be maybe physically disconnected. I’m going to offer a general idea and then let you riff on it because we’ve got a long sheet of explanation. One thing that I would say this is a fundamental principle of the behavioral sciences and that is that negative things spur change more than positive things. When life is good, when you’re healthy, when things are happy, when things are rolling, there is no incentive to make a change. When you’re not happy, when you’re not healthy, when things aren’t rolling along, that’s often a good motivator of change. This is one of those moments and then the question becomes, it’s worth it to ask the question, what change might benefit me? What’s your reaction to that idea?
I have a high-level approach to things that you can do while you’re more or less physically isolated in your home, but on a larger scale, things that we should maybe all reflect on in terms of our life. Because the reality is, is that people are worst-case scenario dying from this. If you look at it from that perspective, if I were to die, I want you to think about did I live my life fully?
Let’s hold that second one because that’s so big. Let’s get into some tactics. Let’s build up to what is the meaning of life. Let’s talk about a little bit about this idea of what to do. You’re working at home. Your normal day-to-day has been disrupted. What are some of the ideas you have?
While physical isolation for the logical reason is important, that doesn’t mean emotional isolation. Make sure that we’re feeling connected in that sense because heightened state of anxiety on a global scale, everyone needs to feel loved and supported. Reach out to people that you love. Also, be mindful of your environment to the extent that you can while we are in our homes and it’s a gloomy day in Los Angeles. Think about to the extent that you can use natural light. Can you crack open a window? I forgot the actual statistics for the study, but we know that people that are going through major recovery periods from a health concern, if they are in environments where they have natural light, they are X percent more likely to heal than those that are not in natural light and environment. To the extent that you can, get that natural light. Crack open that window, get air flotation through your home, sage your house. I love sage and I’ve got the best candles in my house. Essential oils, make your home feel like home because you’re going to be there for quite some time.
I have a former assistant whose dad had a saying, “Doing cures the feeling.” It’s focused on these two forms of coping. One is called emotional coping and the other one is called problem-focused coping. They both work and useful. They should be part of a repertoire of coping strategies that people have. The problem focus ones are often more action-oriented or often more behavioral oriented. I think there’s this idea of like making the most of this time. Instead of seeing it as a punishment, seeing it as an opportunity.
It’s like an adult snow day.
Who knows, you might end up having a bunch of them. This hearkens back to some episodes I have. I talk about this Bradley Cooper movie, Limitless. In it, he gets a hold of this pill that turns him into a genius for short periods. It’s a fun movie. The first time he takes this pill, it’s called NZT, a genius drug, he tidies these up his apartment. I would offer open the shades, get some light, get a little bit of fresh air in. It’s not a bad time to take control of your space. Whether you use the Marie Kondo method of, “This brings me joy,” or whatever method that works best for you. When I feel anxious adults about things, one of the things that I start with is I tidy up my space. I clean up my space, throw things away, donate, recycle, get rid of things where it allows me to get a little bit of semblance of control and I’ve accomplished something. I haven’t checked Twitter. I haven’t watched the news. I’ve taken a little bit of a break from that scary, uncertain world that’s out there.
It’s an exercise that I take my clients through. This is on a much greater scale, but it’s about alleviating anxiety. You said clean up, tidy up your space. When your external world is feeling so chaotic, the only thing you can do is to control your internal world. That means your emotions and your mindset. In this case, we are talking about your physical environment like your home. Encompassing all of those things, a helpful exercise that we can think about here is understanding what the trigger is. In this case, the emotional trigger is the Coronavirus and what does that having us feel? A plethora of different emotions. At a high level, let’s talk about it in terms of anxiety. What we can do is we’ve got a couple of options here. We can either run towards it, leverage that fear and that anxiety or we can run away from it.
The best approach, if I were talking to my clients, is let’s run towards it. With that option there, if we’re running towards it, think to yourself, “Is this helping me? Positive or negative, are these thoughts helping me or hurting me?” If they’re hurting you, internalize them, dive into them, reflect as much as you can and then let them go. If they’re helping you, do something with that, leverage that information to run forward, to not be paralyzed in fear. Also, ask yourself, “Is there anything that I can do about the situation, yes or no?” If the answer is yes, then do it. Write down a list of all the different things you can do to alleviate this pain point, this anxiety, this fear. If not, then to the best that you can, reflect and then let it go. Because holding onto that weight isn’t helping you. Add to the solution, not the problem. That’s essentially it. Going through that mental exercise helps.
What we’ve got a chance to do, which we have overlooked, is what you do professionally. This is the kind of exercise you would do with one of your clients.
It’s all about the reframe of the mindset because what I realized is the inner alignment piece is understanding what your purpose is. On the front end, I understand what it is that my clients want to achieve. What are they in alignment with in terms of their life holistically, not just at the moment? It’s not just about the shit job that they’re in and, “How do I overcome this conflict with Susie who sucks?” It’s much bigger than that. Is this even an organization you want to be in this profession? We do the inner alignment portion through several different psychological and coaching frameworks and then we set goals to create a reality that is yours. Maybe that means quitting your job and your career entirely and doing something entirely different.
That’s essentially what I do. What I found was we all know how to set goals. That’s easy. We all know how to fucking lose weight. It’s a simple exercise of consuming less calories than you burn but why is that donut so enticing? I don’t know. It’s an emotional thing. I’m drawn to that donut because maybe it gives me pleasure because it tastes so good. Maybe it’s alleviating pain because I’m stressed out subconsciously. Whatever that is, the inner work that I work on with my clients is to reframe your mindset, to understand what’s coming up for you subconsciously and then through a bunch of mental and emotional exercises, we help you to overcome that to reach your goals.
I liked this idea of are you moving toward or away from your anxiety? One of my least popular episodes has been one that I called Boxing. The average person thinks, “He’s boxing,” and they don’t see how boxing has anything to do with helping them live a remarkable life. What was my thinking behind it? One, it was an experiment. Some of the reasons was that what I like about boxing is it’s this interesting metaphor for life. This is with the benefit of hindsight. At first boxing seems like this very solo sport, much like our lives, but a boxer needs others. A boxer needs an opponent, a coach, a sparring partner. All of those people contribute to something that can be both scary yet beautiful.
I have two guests on. The second guest talked about as a boxer, you can either be moving backward or moving forward, but you’re never going to win if you’re moving backward. It’s counter-intuitive for the average person and for the average boxer. When someone’s trying to punch you to move closer rather than further away. I explored this saying that I’ve had that I picked up from reading when I was a young man, which is that the best punch is closest to the worst punch. If you want to put yourself into a place where you’re going to succeed, you also have to put yourself in a place where you’re going to fail. Our tendency is often to flee into backup. You may survive backing up, but you’re not going to win.
That’s powerful. That can be said with our emotions as well.
Can we talk through a little bit of an example about this idea of having some anxiety? Why don’t we do it with me if we can? I’m going to give you some of my anxiety about this and maybe you can help me reframe this. I’m going to be honest, I’m not that scared about Corona. I’m not scared about getting it. The base rates are very low. I’m not scared of it hurting me. If I do get it, I’m healthy. I’m robust. I got a flu for the last couple of years and it sucked. I bounced back from it. I’m not living in fear in that way. I’ll tell you where my anxieties are. It’s two-fold.
The first is I’m launching a book that I’ve been working on for 2.5 years. I put a lot into this book. I’m proud of this book. I think it’s a book that can help people believe that to be the case. It’s a fun book, but it has actionable, useful lessons in it. I want as many people to read it for that reason. I’m concerned that the launch and the success of the book are going to get crowded out by whatever happens. It could be worse than we expect. It could be less bad but I’m like, “It doesn’t seem to be a great time to be launching this.” The second anxiety, fear or concern is if you’ve seen the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s a scene where Jordan Belfort gets his brokerage license. It’s his chance to be a trader and to start making his millions. The day that he gets his brokerage license is the big stock crash of the ‘86. It’s the worst luck ever. The worst day of the pandemic, it might be worse, might be better. Who knows? I launched my website.
On the site, I am prominently featured in a role that I’ve been aspiring to, that I’ve been cultivating and developing and that is my professional speaking. I’ve gotten super serious about becoming not just a good professional speaker, but a great professional speaker. I have the content. I already have a great keynote and the book was designed as a catalyst for this new endeavor. Conferences being canceled, events being canceled, I feel a little bit like Jordan Belfort, getting his brokerage license and then having the stock market crash. Those are two areas of anxiety that I’ve been noticing. I realize that those might be completely different than what the average person is going through, which is they’re concerned they have enough toilet paper or they’re concerned about the health and well-being of their children or their parents or whatever. That’s what I got for you. Isabella, help my inner alignment.
[bctt tweet=”While we physically isolate, we don’t need to emotionally isolate.” via=”no”]
First off, I do want to honor you for expressing your fear. You did say something along the lines of, “I realize that this isn’t a common fear that the average person is experiencing.” The reality is, even in a statement like that, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this fear exists for you. I do want to acknowledge that because I think sometimes people think that because other people aren’t experiencing this, it’s almost like apologizing for even having feelings in the first place. It’s something that I coach my clients to get out of because they’re like, “Belle, maybe this isn’t like that big of fear or whatever.” That’s minimizing your fear, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it still exists. Let’s dive into it. There are a couple of different things that I’m hearing. The first one is the book launch and the success of the book launch. Let me ask you, how do you define the success of the book in particular?
It’s interesting because I don’t know what that looks like. It’s this view that it might be less successful in some way.
I guess what I would ask you is to understand how you define success. Because is that a number of book sales? Is that a gross annual income from this as a book? I’m just giving out ideas here. Typically, I don’t ask guiding questions, but in this case the guiding question then it would be a success to you that even if ten people read it, and I know that’s a small number, that’s not what I mean. Even if 500 people read it and that’s all you get. In the short-term, would that be successful for you? I ask in the short-term because the reality is Corona will not exist forever, at least to this heightened state of anxiety. In the short-term, are you okay launching this book only making X amount of sales, but knowing that X amount of people receive this content and can benefit from it in the short-term? Because once this Corona stuff goes away and you can then refocus, double down on your marketing, reposition yourself, are you going to be satisfied with that outcome?
I don’t care about making money off the book. If I do, that’d be nice. I want as many people to read it as possible. Your question is a good one and knowing you ask it already helps. There is a little bit of me that goes, “I think things are going to be fine. We’ve dealt with this stuff on a global scale before and we made it through. It’s not always pretty.” If this is the exception, my lack of book sales is the least of my worries.
Also, an additional frame to that if that is the worst, your lack of book sales in the present moment. Because once this goes away and you double down crazy on marketing and you expand your reach, you’re going to be just fine.
I do appreciate that. The thing that’s fascinating about anxiety is the threats don’t have to be real. It’s just about these imaginary things that might happen and so on. Even talking about what would be less successful, I go, “I don’t even know what less successful would be.”
An exercise that I take my clients through is Tim Ferriss’ Fear Setting exercise. He has a great ten minute TED Talk on it. It’s beautiful. I take them through that because that helps with the inner alignment portion. You lean into your biggest fears. You address what they are head-on and you’re like, “Fuck it. For every fear that I have, there are a billion different solutions. While I feel stuck in this moment, it’s momentary.” You take action and you override that.
I’m like, “I’m the king of problem-solving.” The issue with anxiety is that it often will get you when you’re weak.
That’s very self-aware. I think a lot of people don’t realize, I had to learn this for myself too, is that when we feel negative emotions like anxiety, fear or whatever else, we’re not in a clear state of mind. That’s worth acknowledging.
5:00 AM is a terrible time to try to problem-solve. It’s where anxiety is at its strongest and you’re at your weakest. I think I can do the other one and save some time, which is speaking. You can guide me as needed. You say, “Can I do anything about this? Yes or no?” The answer is yes. In this book, Shtick to Business, I’ve talked about the reversal and how powerful reversals are. Thinking in reverse, producing an opposing perspective. One of the best reversals is when you are attempted to say something’s bad, you reverse it and you say it’s good. Missed opportunities for speaking is bad, but instead, I say it’s good.
Here’s why it’s good is it frees up time and energy to then turn these ideas into other things that don’t require me to get on a plane and fly all over the globe. I can turn them into an online course, webinars and so on. What might at first seem like a bad thing, one of my sayings is, “It’s difficult to judge the goodness or badness of something while it’s happening.” It’s difficult to know the goodness or badness of this pandemic while it’s happening. We won’t know the goodness or badness of it for months or years, whether it be on a personal level, professional level, national level, global level. My thing is yes, what I have to do is say, “Those lost opportunities are gained time, energy to make other things.”
I do almost exactly similar to what you said with my clients, but it’s funny because the little tweaks in our language, it’s amazing how powerful the use of language is. When you say something like the word bad. It might be difficult to do, but instantly that has a direct response on your physiology. If I’m yelling at you, you would feel it somewhere in your body. Maybe your heart, your chest would tense up or whatever. That’s your physiology changing to a response. If I said the word bad versus good, you might feel differently in your physiology. What we know too is that even the use of words as it pertains to our physiology, that ingrains a response in our subconscious where we store these different meanings.
Without getting too technical about it, what I do with my clients is instead of using words like bad, if that’s what comes up, what I would say is, “Is there a different word that we can use that means the same thing?” If they said bad, I would say challenging. That helps because when we leverage those words to not feel so intense on our physiology, then we can come out of our thinking to be less paralyzed with fear. The start would be to reframe that word. We would say challenging, “This was challenging.” We acknowledge that without suppressing our feelings, “How do I leverage this?” From there, what is the positive that we can see from this?
The reason why I wanted to point that out is because if you were to say that to me, I’d be like, “That’s cool. Yes, this is bad,” and then you want me to say it’s good, almost like dismissive positivity, which is not what you were doing. I know that’s not what you’re doing. Dismissive positivity is like, “Corona sucks, but the sun is shining and it’s great outside.” Corona doesn’t feel good. Corona is challenging, but/and there’s another perspective and we get to sit inside and catch up on that book that we didn’t get to catch up on or we get to write or look for that job that we were meaning to apply for to get out of our shit job that we’re currently in.” It’s encompassing that, but focusing on our language because sometimes if we say things like bad versus challenging, it almost amplifies a situation even a little bit more.
I study emotion, so I’m used to using a lot of negative emotional terms. That’s my attempt to use your assistance. To be able to admit it and then also talk it through has been useful. I already feel better.
I want to compliment you for expressing your feelings. I know that that sounds woo-woo and Willy-nilly, but I think that that’s such an underrated thing. There are three motivators of our emotions and I’m sure you know this. It’s a pull towards pleasure, a push towards pain. We want to avoid pain and then to protect us. There are many of us out there that are terrified to even admit that we’re scared. Instead, we cover it up and we’re like, “No, everything’s fine.” It takes so much bravery to lean into that and say, “This is what I’m feeling,” to practice stillness and then say, “Now that I felt that, what am I going to do about it?”
This entire show is an exercise in that for me. I talk about all the things that I never talk about in any of my other work. My bachelorhood was always something that was always private. Honestly, launching this podcast was scary to me. What’s been wonderful about it is the response has been positive. I do believe and agree with this idea that if I’m not showing up in my authentic self, how am I supposed to help people who are looking for help, inspiration, new ideas and wanting permission to be the person that they feel comfortable being?
Let’s get into the big stuff. I’m going to do a little recap. Recognizing that physical isolation does not have to equal emotional isolation. To use this time to ask for help if you need it and to offer help to people who might need it. The next one is knowing that your normal day-to-day has been disrupted and by virtue of that, you’re probably going to be a little bit more homebound than you would be otherwise. Lack of social events, working and so on. How can you make that environment better for yourself?
Whether it be tidying up, getting more fresh air or getting a little bit of sunlight. If you do go to the supermarket, I’m sure they have flowers. There hasn’t been a rush on flowers. The other one is how do you tidy up your emotions, that is recognizing what you’re feeling anxious about and then figuring out are your reactions helping you or hurting you? How do you lean into and move into those and trying to figure out what you can do about them if there’s something you can do about them? Trying to let them go if there’s nothing you can do about them.
It’s being mindful of your physical being. As we stock up on high sodium foods that will last us forever. I pinky promise you that there is a way to do this in a way that you can also be mindful of your health because as we know there is a mind-body connection. Your mind as it correlates to your gut. If you’re eating shit foods, you’re going to naturally feel like shit. To the extent that you can, and I say this because I know it’s challenging, but you can eat well during this. You can stock up on things as your emergency supply, but also be mindful that you’re still a living, breathing being that needs to be well-nourished. Even though we’re home-bound for the most part, there are little things that you can do physically like squats up and down. A little bit of movement every day, even in the comfort of your home, regardless of the size that will help you to stay mentally stimulated.
It’s okay to go outside the house and go for a walk. Bundle up and get some fresh air. I’m glad you brought that up because I think what we’re starting to venture into these bigger issues in people’s lives. When things aren’t going well, when things are challenging, that’s the time to reassess and to think about little changes and bigger changes. The launch of this show is going to coincide or come very close to two other shows that I’ve already done. One about nutrition and one about exercise, movement and pain. I have a saying that I asked my students a lot of times. I asked myself a lot and I say, “Is your health number one?”
The reason behind that is connected to the safety briefing on an airplane, which is put on your oxygen mask before helping others. I feel like if you want to live a remarkable life, the foundation for a remarkable life is a remarkable body, not an Instagram body. That is a body that functions well, energized and healthy. The path to that is good sleep, good nutrition and good movement. If you want to also then be able to support others in your life, you need also that good foundation. Because if you can barely take care of yourself, how are you going to help take care of others and vice versa? What I like about the Coronavirus is it reminds us that our health does matter to us.
Sometimes it might take something this acute to remind us of that. You were talking about the temptation of donuts or whatever it is. Sugar is nice, but it doesn’t often serve our long-term goals. In terms of if you’re going to make some change and think about when you move out of this and life returns back to normal, what might be some of those things? I would offer that question of, if you’re scared of getting the virus, then I know that you care about your health. If you care about your health, you shouldn’t just care about it when there’s a virus. You should care about it generally and what might be some of the changes that you would want to think about doing? I put forth those three categories, improving your sleep, nutrition and movement.
I’m putting together a behavioral planner, which encompasses seven different stages of life mastery. At the simplest summary, number one is physical mastery. I’m sure you’ve heard about that too. It talks about movement, nutrition and sleep. All of this goes in this planner. It’s the inner alignment portion of it. It forces you to think about deeper questions. Your health from your perspective, is that ego-driven or is that spirit-driven? Going back to what you said about your body doesn’t have to be an Instagram body.
You’re right. Some people think that it does. I used to think that I had to be a double zero my whole life. I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but that was a mindset. For me, I realized that was ego-driven and I look at my health from a perspective of balance and being spirit driven of, “Am I well-nourished? Is this the nourishment that’s going in my body? Does that help to self-regulate my emotional state?” If that helps to self-regulate my emotional state, how is this nutrition that I’m inserting into my body, adding to my level of productivity? These are the questions I even ask my clients from a seven stage of mastery portion of it. That’s the inner alignment. While everyone here is taking that moment to reflect, think about it. Everything that you ingest, what is the domino effect of that holistic?
Not only on your gut but also on your emotion.
Your level of productivity, and even the way that you interact with people. We know that certain foods like salmon and stuff like that increases your serotonin and your dopamine levels. Those are all the feel-good hormones. Even while we’re stuck in our apartment and who knows what for how long, think about the stuff that you’re ingesting and how you can increase those dopamine levels, those endorphins, the serotonins so you feel better.
Going for a walk helps with that too. If people are looking at this as an opportunity to spur some change moving forward, I put forth health as a category that people might want to consider an important one. One that has compounding effects. Is there something in particular personally or you think that people might want to think about?
I think at the highest level, for the sake of time, and I only know this because I’m literally writing a book about this. If they go online and they Google search the Seven Stages of Life Mastery. Look at that and then ask yourself a question of where do I fall on a 1 to 10 scale of my level of satisfaction in these areas?
What are the seven levels?
[bctt tweet=”How you respond says everything you need to know.” via=”no”]
I want to give people a mini PhD in psychology in twenty pages or less, and that’s the planner. I help you to break overcoming limiting beliefs. The seven stages is physical, that is the baseline. The next one is emotional mastery, relationships, time, your career and mission, your finances, your contribution and spirituality.
I’m going to grab finances. The reason is I had Money Amy on. She’s one popular financial planner. Money Amy and I talked about steps to financial freedom. One of the things that we talked about and one of the nice things about Money Amy, she’s very good about steps. Number one, eliminate credit card debt. One of those early steps is to have an emergency fund. Six months cash or the equivalent, a HELOC or something like that. Ideally, cash unaffected by the stock market. That’s why it’s cash that you could, if you lost your job, if you got sick, if something happened, suppose you had to quit your job because you had to care for someone you could live for six months without worrying.
There are a lot of people out there who are uncertain about the world, might not want to put themselves in a situation that they might believe to be harmful. We can debate the harmfulness of being in public or whatever it is, but there are a bunch of people out there who cannot afford to make that decision or cannot afford to have the decision made for them. For example, you work as a server in a banquet hall, and a bunch of the events are being canceled and you work by the banquet. What would be a great outcome for this is for either for you to go, “I’m so happy I have this. This is why I made sacrifices to get here,” or “Moving forward, this is a place that I want to be for the next calamity that happens because life has calamities.” I like the idea that you might, as you look through these seven stages, that’s an example of one that someone might consider.
Going back to what you said in terms of people being well-positioned to or not, especially at the moment. When you’re in the moment and you’re trying to make big-time life adjustments, that’s very challenging because that’s reactionary versus being proactive. Going back to your example of the waitress who has at the surrender of the environment, it’s too late. What they can do and this is what I work through is, when I’m working with my clients, I don’t go through the, “Here are your seven stages to get out of debt.” That’s just not my forte. What I go through is the behavioral patterns and purchasing patterns of why you do what you do. What I would encourage people to do is look at the Seven Stages of Mastery and ask yourself hard questions. That’s why I do what I do and I’m good at what I do is because I ask you difficult questions.
For example, if you’re focused on your finances and you haven’t been proactive and you’re at a place of reactivity, pause, practice stillness and let’s reflect for a second. I want you to think about what your purchasing habits are and why you do what you do. Are you purchasing things in order to feel a certain kind of way, but what you’re doing is masking? You’re avoiding feeling something. Let me give you an example. Are you purchasing that $10,000 purse so that way you feel significant? You feel like you’re special or you have control over the environment when you don’t need that $10,000 purse because you’re trying to alleviate a pain point. You’re trying to alleviate your lack of significance. I ask these behavioral questions in terms of what are you getting out when you do this thing?
What people tend to realize or not realize is that we do one thing thinking we’re doing it to feel great, but ultimately we’re just masking the fact that we feel like shit inside. These are questions that people can ask themselves, why am I doing what I’m doing? Understanding your pleasure response and how that’s masking a pain response. That’s what people can do when they ask themselves these seven different stages of what’s going on. Understanding their behavioral patterns. That’s what I do at all these Seven Stages of Mastery. We talk about ego, shadow work, we talk about inner child attachment styles. It’s steep psychology.
We can’t solve everybody’s problems in this short period. What I like is to try and look at the positive aspects of this situation. One of the positive things is what it is going to do for the average person. First of all, one thing is it’s going to bring out the worst in some people. It’s going to bring out the best in some people. I think that if your goal is to live a remarkable life, a situation like this shines the spotlight on the parts of your life that are not remarkable, that is challenging.
How you respond says everything you need to know.
To me, career and especially for the average reader of this blog tends to be one of those places that either they’re thriving or they’re experiencing a challenge. You could imagine the following. This gives you some time to think and reflect and you go, “This is not exactly where I want to be.” Your job sends you home and you’re remote working and you go, “I never want to go back to that office park. As a young child, I never dreamed of working in an office park.” We have to acknowledge, and I’m sure you deal with this all the time with your clients is the following. It’s often easier to keep doing what you’re doing because it’s familiar, it’s safe and so on. You never feel like you have to go back to the beginning, yet sometimes going back to the beginning is going to be one step backward for two steps forward. Do you have any advice for that? When someone is in that place where they go, “I’m just good at doing this thing. It’s not terribly satisfying. It’s fine. It pays the bills,” and then you get to this crisis point where you’re like, “I don’t want to go back to that office part.”
I have quotes for days to any situation. One of my favorite quotes is in a situation like that, it’s something along the lines of, “When you’re starting again from scratch, you’re not starting from a beginner’s perspective. You’re starting from experience.” Being mindful of that and your starting place. That’s probably where I would jump that process off. I would go back to the inner alignment portion and that encompasses many different frameworks, whether it’s a psychological framework or a coaching framework. I blend the two in what I do. I would then say, “What are you good at?” Let’s find out what your purpose is and this is what you and I talked about, aligning back with your purpose.
I always reference Victor Frankl’s work who is a Holocaust survivor and also a famous psychologist. He talks about a man search for meaning. He gives you simply stated how you find or where you find it. In three bullets, you find it in doing great work or work that is meaningful. You also find it in experiences or people that you meet. The third one is saying that we find meaning and experiences. Even the hardest of experiences like the Holocaust or Corona, we can find meaning in that and turn it into a positive. I walked through my clients, where do you find meaning? I reference his framework and then how we find it, which is the hard part. This is all trial and error and you find that throughout your life. I ask you questions using ikigai, which is a Japanese framework.
I’m familiar with that. All the overlapping events.
That asks you questions like, “What are you good at? What do you love? What does the world need and what can you be paid for?” We go through a massive intense of that, and then from there, we do the goal-setting part. From the goal-setting part, we figure out what’s coming up for you subconsciously. What are all of these fears that you need to overcome to level up as the best possible person you can be? Everyone that’s locked away in their apartment, get a pen and paper because this could be your moment. This could be the turning point for you.
I know it’s trite to say, but you only live once. I also think that if you set forth a goal, I have my term for it, remarkable. Some other people have other terms for it. If you start to go, “That’s what I want to do,” then it’s very easy to go, “Is working in this office park accomplishing that?” Nothing against office parks if people are perfectly happy with that. You’ve got to be honest with yourself. That’s not acceptable for me. If it is for you, that’s fine, but it’s not, and you keep doing it. You’re not being authentic to yourself. I’d like to wrap with a particular idea. I’m not sure I can pull this off, but I’m going to do my best.
I was familiar with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning from a different perspective. I came across it when I was beginning my work on humor and when I was working on my first book, The Humor Code. In that book, we take a look at humor where you least expect it. My coauthor Joel Warner and I go to Palestine in search of comedy in a place that is struggling, a challenging place to be. We were optimistic that we were going to find comedy there. The reason why we were optimistic that we were going to find comedy there is because there was comedy in the concentration camps. Not stand-up comedy but moments of humor and laugher by way of coping. When there is a robust individual, when there is someone who is facing tragedy, but able to overcome that tragedy through their coping, resilience and perspective, there’s an opportunity for laughter.
I’m trying not to be too preachy with this, but what I would invite people to do is to pay attention to those moments of levity that you’re naturally having during these difficult times. To try to look for opportunities for levity with the people that you’re close with, with your friends. Even sometimes with a little bit of strangers, recognizing that if the people who went through the worst possible oppression were able to do it, then we ought to be able to do it in the face of this uncertainty.
Adding humor by way of coping. There’s science behind that. Joe Dispenza talks about the quantum field. He’s also a very famous psychologist as well. He also talks about the frequency of our thoughts. If we have a lower frequency thought, which is super negative. Not that brain waves, energetic waves that we attract to. If we’re able to elevate our thinking to a higher frequency using a coping mechanism such as humor, that also has contagious trickling effects as well.
Certainly, laughter is contagious. Readers, I know this is a deeply uncertain time and people hate uncertainty. I know that we’re getting a lot of images and messages that are often negative, at the best mixed. I wanted to try to put forth as meager as it may be some information, some perspective, a bit of encouragement, perhaps some inspiration that this might when you look back on it, be seen as something that is good and useful and will help you thrive living your solo life. Isabella, as predicted by my friend, you were a great fit. I appreciate you saying yes to this and providing some super interesting information. Also, a little bit of help as I deal with my own set of anxieties around all of these.
Thank you. Sending everyone so much love and light during this challenging time. Thank you, Peter.
I appreciate it.
Important Links
- Isabella Imani
- Boxing – previous episode
- Fear Setting
- TED Talk – Tim Ferriss’ Fear Setting
- Shtick to Business
- Money Amy – previous episode
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- The Humor Code
- Joe Dispenza
- https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=4TLppsfzQH8
- https://ImaniMVMT.com/
- https://www.Instagram.com/imani.mvmt/?hl=en
- https://www.TonyRobbins.com/leadership-impact/tie-it-all-together/
- https://petermcgraw.org/
- https://petermcgraw.org/financial-freedom-with-money-amy/
- https://petermcgraw.org/boxing/
- https://www.Amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X
- https://Tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/
- https://petermcgraw.org/what-is-ethical-non-monogamy/
About Isabella Imani
Isabella Imani is an LA-based Relationship & Behavioral coach, specializing in helping clients through inner alignment and goal setting. She has more than seven years of experience in personal development and partnering with Leadership of Fortune 500 companies-such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Live Nation, Viacom, Paramount Studios. She is also a professional speaker and previously worked in HR and Operations.
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