Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Category: Wellness

  • Ep 229: Being an Embodied Money Magnet with Jolie Dawn

    Ep 229: Being an Embodied Money Magnet with Jolie Dawn

    We’ve all got skeletons in our closets, monsters under our beds. For so many people this particular boogeyman haunts our minds, worries and wallets.

     

    Scarcity mentality.

    Oh yeah baby, we’re going there. This is that boogeyman that, for so many, haunts us, guides the decisions we make and shapes the way we care for ourselves and loved ones.

    “Scarcity really, long-term, takes a huge toll on the body, contributes to massive amounts of stress and so for me, prosperity is living life in such deep trust with life. To know that you will always have your needs met and to know yourself as the creator as your source to prosperity.”

    This week’s Unconventional Life guest, Jolie Dawn, isn’t afraid of people’s scarcity skeletons. In fact, she approaches them with a level of compassion that acknowledges the scarcity, allowing each person to move beyond the place of lack.

    Jolie is a spiritual money-magnet teacher who knows fear is a part of the equation of being a human. Rather than chuck it under the carpet, she believes, “…it’s about understanding how to be in healthy relationship with it instead of being completely swallowed by fear.”

    It’s about breaking through the ceiling of what you think is possible. Take a moment to take a mental inventory of how you feel about money.

     

    When you close your eyes and think about money in your life, what emotions arise?

    “Being aware of the way that you want it to feel and claiming that as something that is non-negotiable. I would want people to know that they are the creators of their experience with money, no matter the circumstances and to take that power back, because so many of us feel disempowered with money.”

    She believes that people have immense power over their financial situation. In fact, she wants people to know how much control they actually have.

    “Wealth is a mindset, affluence is a mindset. It’s a way that you think, it’s a way that you run your energy, it’s a way that you vision your future and there’s no story, there’s no money history that can’t be turned around.”

     

    More of Jolie:

     

  • Ep 228: You’ll Be Prescribed Music, Not Pills with Tim Ringgold

    Ep 228: You’ll Be Prescribed Music, Not Pills with Tim Ringgold

    There are countless ways to make sense of life’s challenges. There are equally innumerable strategies for tackling anxiety and depression, each with their own theories and studies to validate their existence. But there is one strategy that has stood the test of time, that no one questions and nearly every human on earth has employed at some point in their life to change their state of mind.

     

    Music

    Have you ever caught yourself tapping your toe feverishly and wondered how long it’s had a life of its own? Have you ever woken up on a Saturday morning and thrown on your favorite playlist to set the tone for your day? In its own mysterious way, music weaves itself into our lives and influences our experience of the world. This week’s guest, Tim Ringgold, knows this well and has been using it to cultivate a sense of presence and connection with his music therapy clients.

    There is a magical quality to music, we’ve all felt it. It’s that feeling you get when you see your favorite band of all-time playing live and you’re right there with it, or when you watch an African drumming group and a part of your spirit seems to live inside the rhythm. Tim Ringgold describes this as connection. He states that it’s not actually the music that’s doing it to you, it’s the connection you feel to the sound, the people making it, the instruments, and yourself.

    Tim started off as a musician and found his way to becoming a board-certified music therapist, an author, and a columnist for “Recovery Today” magazine. His life’s work has formed around using music as a way to heal addictions.

     

    Music is Medicine

    “Music is inherently therapeutic because it helps you move from point A to point B all by itself.” Let’s go back to that playlist you listen to on Saturday morning, the one you used to lift your spirits.  Imagine using music instead of pills.

    Music is an incredibly effective tool in helping to minimize the perception of pain in the brain. Not only that, but it also helps to regulate your emotions by regulating your nervous system. When you hear a song you like or find relaxing, your body releases oxytocin and dopamine, essentially, the “feel-good hormones”. Your mind state shifts, your nervous system shifts and you are no longer where you were five minutes ago.

    And if you tap your toe, well, the medicine of music goes even further.

    “If you engage with music, not just listen, but actually engage your body in some way, so snap, tap, clap, hum, rap, sing, strum, you know to engage with the music your attention has to be in the present to keep up with it. With mindfulness you have to think about it, with music you don’t have to think about staying present, you’re just thinking about the music.”

     

    Covid, Connection & Community

    Mandatory self-isolation. Social isolation. Social distancing. Physical distancing. The terminology seems to be changing as fast as the weather but the effect is the same.

    “Humans, we are pack animals, we are meant to live in community. We live in groups from birth to death and so, to shut us in is not normal for the human nervous system, for the social being that we are. We need connection and so music is one of the tools right now that is lockdown-proof.”

    Tim urges everyone to now, more than ever, turn to music. Find ways to actively engage with it in your life.

     

    SOBER

    • Stay present
    • Open up
    • Be creative
    • Escape stress
    • Reconnect

    “We are social animals, we’re pack animals so the way it works is this: I lean on you, you lean on me and we don’t keep score. That’s community”

     

    More of Tim:

  • Ep:227 Free Yourself From the Money Trap with Ali Katz

    Ep:227 Free Yourself From the Money Trap with Ali Katz

    Money, money, money! Money plays a massive role in each and every one of our lives. It can subconsciously drive our thoughts and decisions and shape our lifestyle. Having money at the forefront of the mind, we can end up carried away by wants and contorted in our understanding of needs.

    This week’s Unconventional Life guests, Ali Katz made her millions, felt the empty sting of accomplishing “success” without happiness and went on a journey of a lifetime to heal her relationship to money. With a healthy and balanced approach to how much money she really needs, she now feeds her soul in a way that’s placed her in a better position to be of service to the world.

    Examine your relationship to money and free yourself from the money trap.

     

    Money Dysmorphia

    Money dysmorphia is a distorted view of one’s financial reality that can cause people to make poor decisions.  In this state, time and energy can easily be spent in the wrong place and leave people subject to the insatiable, never-ending need for“more”.

    This type of dysmorphia is often sculpted during our early years and shapes the way we think, act and earn. For some it can look like insecurity about never having enough, for others, shame or guilt.

    Ali Katz built 2 million dollar companies, wrote a best-selling book, lived in a beautiful home by the beach and sent her children to private school. Amidst all of that, she found herself unhappy and wondering what had driven her to chase a dream that left her feeling completely unsatisfied.

    “What I discovered was actually wrong is that almost all of my decisions were being made through a lens of money.”

    For her, all of her time, energy and attention was on money. So now what?

    When people get into right relationship with money, one that’s not distorted, it becomes possible to examine what the true driving force is.

     

    What is Your Relationship to Money?

    Do you worry about money monthly? Daily? Weekly? Hourly?

    Do you make decisions based on how it will affect your income? Do you feel trapped, limited or constantly a few steps behind financially?

    Ali Katz built up her world and then watched it crumble around her. She now offers guidance to others through her work with “Eyes Wide Open”, praying that they can learn from her mistakes.

     

    Needs vs. Wants

    Get exceedingly clear: What do I need as a minimum to thrive?

    “It’s incredibly important to understand, what do you really need? We have a messed up view of need in our world. We either don’t want to be needy and so we pretend that we don’t have any needs, which obviously isn’t true. Or we have an overinflated view of what we need. When we have an over-inflated view of what we need, we’re often striving for more, more, more and attempting to fill a need that can never be filled because it’s not a need, it’s a want.”

    Once you’ve established a financial figure for how much money you need as a minimum to thrive, ask yourself: What is my minimum to be of service?

    Now that you’ve got these two figures in front of you, use them as your compass.

    If you find yourself in a spiral of fear and freak out about not having enough money- STOP. Look at your minimum “thrive” amount and “of service” amount. If you have this money and you’re still freaking out, you have now identified that you are experiencing a different fear that resides under the surface.

     

    T.E.A.M.

    How do you spend your time?

    What is it you spend your energy on?

    Where do you focus your attention?

    We exchange each of these for money daily. Where are you in relation to these metrics?

    We Create the Economy

    Money has a place in our current economy, after all, it’s how we exchange and store value.

    How you value your T.E.A.M., well that’s for you to decide.

    “we create the economy. The economy is not something imposed on us from the outside. We are not at the whim of the stock market or the government or any of these outside or big corporations. That is power and control that we don’t have to be subject to that anymore when we realize we create the economy.”

     

    More of Ali:

     

  • Ep 226: Are you in the Driver’s Seat or the Backseat? with Scott Shay

    Ep 226: Are you in the Driver’s Seat or the Backseat? with Scott Shay

    Scott Shay is the co-founder of a bank, a two-time published religious author, and the descendant of an Auschwitz survivor. His life story is anything but conventional. Unassuming, driven to try things differently, and completely aware of the great blessing that is his life, Shay sees and takes the path less traveled.

    Opening a bank is not your usual life goal.  Managing to fulfill that and then survive and thrive throughout the economic downturn of 2008 is even more unusual.

    Shay’s life meets at a curious intersection. His bank was founded on a completely different model than the industry standard. He then chose to cultivate a side career as an author on the topics of Judaism and faith.

    Steer Off The Beaten Path

    The financial crisis of 2008 brought big business to its knees leaving wall street scrambling. Amidst the madness, this week’s guest, Scott Shay, and his co-founders at Signature Bank didn’t feel the tumult. In fact, they shone, catching the attention of a lot of people. The bank continued growing, eventually reaching a pace of 11 billion dollars in 5 years.

    His bank didn’t struggle like his counterparts. Why? Signature Bank was not founded on, nor relies on “big money” to stay afloat. Their business model from the very beginning was to side-step big-business and create a place for the middle market. They’ve been doing it very differently since the start.

    Driver’s Seat or Backseat?

    Shay doesn’t fit the mold of what you’d expect from a businessman. Yes, he is a businessman, but he also spends a great deal of his time touring, speaking on the topics of faith. His outlook on life puts him in the driver’s seat of his own experience. He speaks to the world’s reaction to coronavirus.

    “We can either feel this as victims ‘how did this happen to us?’ or we can have the mindset of ‘what are we going to do?’ I think the division between the mindset of how could this have happened to us versus ‘what am I going to do?’ makes all the difference in the world.”

    The difference, as I see it, is whether we are characters in our life story or the authors. Are we the product of our circumstance or are we deciding what we want our future to look like?

    More of Scott:

  • Ep 225: Dark Consciousness for Dummies w/ Lorna Johnson

    Ep 225: Dark Consciousness for Dummies w/ Lorna Johnson

    This week’s guest has an unbelievable story. Truly hard to believe. Don’t let your inner critic run wild just yet. For now, just listen. Her story is unusual. It came unannounced and could have you questioning…well, everything.

     

    This podcast is called the Unconventional Life and unconventional she certainly is. This week’s guest Lorna J. brings a twist to the usual line-up of podcast guests in a way that may very well leave you wondering what just happened. I know I did.

     

    Lorna began in corporate America where she built and ran multi-million dollar businesses. She reached the pinnacle of “success” until things came to a screaming halt. When Lorna turned 43 her life, as she knew it, crashed and burned. Her life dismantled starting first with her marriage, then career, motivation, and eventually her mental health. She describes it as a spiritual awakening that took the form of a psychotic break ending with a humbling bipolar diagnosis alongside multiple forms of ADD, suicidal depression, severe mood and anxiety disorder, and PTSD. You name it, she was experiencing it.

     

    Despite being told repeatedly by doctors to take her medication, Lorna, tuned in to an inner voice that told her she could stay present with the experience. And so she did. Amidst a mental health crisis, Lorna started a new business. From this point, she did what could only be described in the past as career suicide–she went live on Facebook to tell the world about her new diagnosis, her choice to remain unmedicated and to notify the world that she was starting a coaching business that was looking for clients.

     

    Unorthodox? Yes. Successful? Definitely. Call her crazy if you may, but it worked. 

    If history has taught us one thing, it’s that the people whom society calls “crazy” are presenting a new way of thinking that seems threatening.

     

    Galileo. Einstein. Van Gogh.

    “There’s no way that anyone can make me betray myself…and when you get to that point where there is nothing that anyone can say or do that will cause me to turn on me, then, you’re free.” 

    Lorna launched her new coaching business in the midst of a climb out of depression and built a one million dollar business in 10 months. She is now CEO and founder of Luxe Godhead, a transformation firm and dark mystery school that recognizes her as a spiritual pioneer. 

     

    “There is a new consciousness landing on the planet and it is a radically, radically different kind of operating system.”

    Lorna Johnson. and her fellow Master Code Holders proclaim that “the genius frequency has landed”. 

     

    To break it down, Lorna explains that a new energy or frequency has arrived on planet earth, that is not of this planet, to shift things-drastically. What they call “The end times. The end of the end and the beginning of the beginning”. She is one of a number of people who can learn and communicate with this frequency and subsequently share what she has learned.

     

    More of Lorna J:

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