thank you for tuning your heart's in for another episode of the Hearts rise up podcast. I'm carol chapman, your host along with my co hosts, Ansari and Concetta antonelli. We share our own personal experiences, tips and strategies along with powerful stories and compelling insights from guest interviews. We're here to inspire and empower your conscious evolution, help you tap into your inner wisdom and rise to your heart centered higher self Together we can rise to a higher level of consciousness, an elevated state of being and experience more love, joy and freedom. Mm hmm. Hello again and welcome to the Hearts Rise Up podcast. I'm delighted to have on the show today. My featured guest Jacob Norby, this is carol chapman, your host and I am so looking forward to sharing some great conversation with Jacob briefly.

Let me introduce him. Jacob is the author of the Divine arsonist, a tale of awakening and blessed are the weird a manifesto for creatives. He leads the creative un boot camp course for students around the world and offers transformational group retreats and individual creative guidance sessions. His third book, the Creative Cure is set to release by higher Effect Publishing in 2020 Jacob, welcome to the show, thank you so much, I'm so happy to be here. You have such an interesting background, you've been a successful entrepreneur and I know you've had like several businesses in the course of your life and your career and now you're you're a writer and coach for others and you've got this creative course that you do I guess I have to say. Also I started reading your first book, The Divine Arsonists, the tale of awakening, because I was just so intrigued by the title and I knew that a sense that was something I needed to read, but also the fact that I think it's a fictional autobiography, is that correct?

Yeah. You know, it was the only way I knew how at the time to express or talk about what I had just what I was going through, and that was back in, You know, 2008, 9 and then the year or two that followed was when I started writing that book, and I just really didn't have another way to put it, it felt too raw and right then too able to just tell the story as you know, as this is the whole factual narrative. So, it felt I just felt inspired to tell it as a as a novel, but people have asked me a lot of times what in there was true and I'm like, symbolically everything in it is is real, but not not literally. Well, I want to find out more about what led you to write the book. So, but first I'd love you to just share a bit more about yourself and I mean, you can just find whatever jumping in point feels right for you and then we'll just go from there. Well, thank you and before I do, I just want to say thank you for doing this work, carol and you know, holding the light holding up a light for people right now.

It's interesting that in most times when things are going fine, you know, there's a certain percentage of the world who is interested in going within and finding out what's going on and right now it feels like the whole world has the pause button has been pushed and here we are. And so it's a really unique opportunity. So I just love what you're doing, thank you for that. Um That's so affirming, that was my clever way of not talking about myself, by the way. I know it's easy, it's easy to skirt the issue but I'm not going to let you off the hook. All right. So yeah, I'm I'm a single dad. I have three kids. Uh Gemini twins J and Megan and they're about 19 and my oldest son, Nathan just moved out a few months ago and that's kind of miraculous in itself. He went through a really rough patch but he's doing really well. He works at a hospital. I live here in Boise Idaho, which is, it seems like a place that's written in my soul.

I love this place. I've lived in Austin and michigan and Seattle and traveled all over. But I keep coming back here, I'm looking at right now on a March sky with some wind and clouds, but it's starting to turn spring and that feels good here. Yes it does, especially in the world that we're living in today right now with all the things that are happening. I think spring is is kind of a refreshing thing and if and if you can at least experience a little bit of the outdoors during springtime it is so divine to be able to do that God, you know? And some of these things are so simple just you know this morning I walked out my back door and just felt the grass and the cold dirt under my feet and I think sometimes it's easy to make grounding or getting centered really complicated. Sometimes it's two minutes outside feeling the grass, you know and so critical right now, you know. Well I think there's so many people right now that don't take the time to do that just simply because but they're being forced to do it now because that were just so externally driven, so externally focused.

You know go, go, go, go, go and when we do take the time to quiet the mind and you know, get in touch with nature. I mean I mean just something simple as you know, walking barefoot outside and just feeling the earth on your feet, whether it's grass or whether it's the dirt and feeling the wind in your face and the the sun on your body just has a it just gives you a sense of peace. But also a sense of wonder that um that we take for granted about our world because we're it's such a frenzy of just activity basically. So the whole world right now is really calming down there having to calm down. So I think it would be really interesting to understand a little bit more about some of the experiences that you've had in your life, that because I know there's been some turning points and I know that the book that you wrote, the divine arsonist, you know, is a reflection in some sense of your own personal experience.

So, I would love to for you to share any particular challenges or things that you've had to go through in your life where you've really learned a tremendous amount about yourself and shifted your perspective on your view of the world. Yeah, thank you. You know, it's so funny to be talking about divine arsonist again right now and because it's so, it feels like a different lifetime when I wrote the book what I was going through and the other day I opened it um somebody asked about it. So I opened it just to look at something and I looked at the inscription just before the first chapter and it says there are times on Earth when extraordinary consciousness invades everyday life. There are times on Earth when unseen forces make a calamity of the status quo. There are times on Earth when it seems as though a divine arsonist has set fire to the world as we know it. We live in such times. That was what I experienced. And so many of us did back in The financial meltdown in 2008 and nine, but fast forward 11 or 12 years and here we are.

And I really, you know, my life continues on as far as all of ours do. And, and so I find myself in a much different place than I was back then. And so I haven't really looked back at what I wrote or shared. But it's interesting to be in another time when it feels like unseen forces have made a calamity of this world and here we are like, here we are right now. Absolutely. I actually started reading your book last night. That was the first thing that I that I saw. And I thought to myself, well, this is how the world feels right now. And you know, it's interesting carol, this is the first time I think in probably any of our lifetimes that the entire world has agreed about a single problem, that it's just that, that this one thing is a problem for everybody, no matter what your politics are. You know, no matter your religion or where you live what you do for a living your economic status, Everybody in the world has to turn together all is one and say we're humans and we have to deal with this and we don't just get to pretend that life goes on as as it was.

And I think that's the first time in our lifetimes that we've ever had. Something like that. Exactly. I think it gives us it brings opportunities to us to to do things differently simply because we really have no choice. And when you don't really have a choice, when you know that the choices you do or you die basically, and we need to we need to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of of this situation and we need to come together and work together. Any problem can be solved if we if we bring the right energy, the right intent, the right compassion and love to the table as well as our intelligence and our knowledge, we can we can accomplish anything, particularly if we work together. We're in a spot, we're in a what I would call it, an inflection point in history and I hope that none of us or our Children or grandchildren see a time like this particular one again, but it is a turning point for sure.

And those of us who are paying attention to it can really find the medicine, can find the treasure in it and actually turn and you know, that's what I found. You, you asked me about myself and I keep sort of sidestepping that. But let me just go back there to 2008 and before and carol I had built a life that outwardly looked very successful. I had a large office and my nearly my entire siblings, siblings group was working, so there were five of us working together there and we, I had a big house and people really thought from the outside that I was one of those sharp young professionals who was just on track to make really large things happen, what they couldn't see was that I knew inside and had known for a couple or three years that something was wrong and I couldn't put my finger on it because I was working hard, I was reading all the books, I was doing business plans, I was, you know, trying to be kind and honest, all these things, but something something in there was wrong, it was off and I didn't know then what to call it now, I would say I was out of alignment with my true self.

All I knew was that I wasn't sleeping past three am hardly any day, so I was living on, you know, three or four hours of sleep and thought that was normal. I actually felt kind of virtuous about it, like I just worked really hard and I'm at the office by 6 30 in the morning and I worked harder than anyone around me. So to me it was, it felt as though I was doing the right things, but there was this vague sense of, well, tremendous sense of anxiety, but it was nameless, I didn't know what I was anxious about. There was a sense of a call, an inner call. Two change directions, but I didn't know what direction that might be and didn't have any idea how to reframe or restructure my life because it was, I had built this structure, you know, this business, this family, this house, all of these debts and you had so many people depending on you to as well. Absolutely, yes. I mean I was the oldest of six kids and you know, five of us work together and then we had a lot of employees.

So yes, I mean there was all of this obligation and I had made choices to do that to build that and again from the outside looking in and even rationally speaking, I couldn't have looked at that and said, I'm doing the wrong thing. I wasn't, I was trying to live and do business with integrity and all of that, but there was something off and I'm telling that part of the story because we do have this opportunity right now and there's this great pause and most of the time we run and run and run in our lives as you were talking about earlier carol and we don't have the time generally speaking to ask ourselves the question, who am I, why am I here? How shall I live? And I feel like the world is getting asked those three questions right now in very deep ways. Exactly. And I think that there's a lot of parallels here with the, the journey that you went through and the awakening is happening here on the planet across the globe with what we're dealing with.

Do you have an inkling or prediction of or thought of how things might, once we get on the other side of this, what things might look like or will things be different in some way? Yeah, hang on here, I have my crystal ball right under the table here. No, that's actually my big Lebowski bowling ball with the movie inside it. No, but seriously, I feel like there will be many, many people whose lives are changed and have to go through a reinvention during this time, economically, you know, careers are going to change, some businesses are going to go away altogether. I'm not painting doom and gloom, but that's just the economic reality when you, you know, stop everything like this for a while. So I feel like it's going to be a time when there are a lot of people who begin asking themselves maybe for the first time in their lives again, who am I? Why am I here? What is my right work in the world? Am I am I on track?

And so I feel like just that experience of questioning and learning how to, to tune into an inner direction, an inner compass is going to really change a lot of things around us. I feel like we're likely to begin becoming more aware of what we're consuming, where we're getting it. So I feel like there will be a lot more local cooperation in the world. Just yesterday I was driving down my street carroll and in my neighborhood somebody had put a folding table out beside the road and it was stacked with canned goods and there were boxes of rice and there was a box of books underneath it. And it was just clearly it was there for anyone who needed those things to stop and take it for free, no exchange needed. And that really touched my heart, like seeing that, seeing that the the true goodness and the connection and the desire to help each other is beginning to, even though we're early on in this whole situation, it's beginning to surface in people after the first wave of panic rolls through and you know, there's some selfishness and there's some hoarding and there's these different things that happen when we get into our limbic systems and anxiety is really high.

But I feel like one thing we're going to really notice as this continues. And then on the other side of it, I think there'll be a really strong percentage of people who say, you know what the way that I operated, then I don't want to lose that. So how can I how can I serve, how can I stay connected to the people who matter the most, how can I take better care of myself? And you know, Carl Young was asked, One of his clients came and was all worried and again, this is 100 years ago or something. The client came in and said, Doctor Doctor Young, can the world avoid an apocalypse? And carl Young sat there for a while and he stroked his beard and he looked up and said yes, if enough people do their inner work and I feel like that's the challenge or the opportunity were being handed is it's not so much about trying to stop the world from falling apart. It's the question of can we live together here in a better way, Can we take the step across the line? See that's what I've always wondered carol like when I wrote divine arsonist, I had been right in the middle of the financial world and so I had a front row seat to what happened and so after as it was going on and then afterwards I really dug into how our money system works and you know, who was controlling things on the planet.

And I got really afraid because you know, when you look below the surface a little bit, it looked really feels like a house of cards and it really feels like a lot of the people who are at the helm of some of these really large institutions, government and otherwise are do not have the public best interests at heart. And I felt really overwhelmed by that and it began this quest, this question of can we do this, and you haven't read the whole book toward the end, There's there's some scenes in which, you know, the main character is observing this panic and this meltdown and the question of every time humanity has reached a really high peak, like a renaissance period. Generally speaking, there's it's like a wave pattern. We've always crashed back down into some form of dark ages. So we climbed Maslow's hierarchy, the ladder up towards self actualization. We get really close and something comes along and then we revert back to the lowest rung on the ladder certain, you know, pure survival. And by the way, that is, it's interesting that when we are in real survival situations, the question of what's my purpose is very, very simple.

It's to stay alive today to help my Children and my close people stay alive, can I get enough food, can I get enough water? So purposes really like there's in times of tremendous survival question, there's, there's very little question of purpose as we get more prosperous and more secure and begin to climb up towards, you know, the higher rungs on that ladder, then the question of who am I, why am I here? And most of the time we're able to answer that, you know, as we move up, we're able to answer that with more accomplishment, more money, bigger houses, you know, more of these things, but I feel like as we bump our heads on the floorboards of the sort of the pinnacle self actualization, That's when, and if you look at the attributes of a self actualized person or self actualized society, there's compassion, there is creativity, there is collaboration, there's all these wonderful things. So I feel like that's right where we are, carol is the question of, can we step across that chasm and continue on into a different way of being together or do we need another reset and have to really as a whole world, do we need to go back into survival for a while and sort of slowly climb back up and I'm still very curious about that.

Yeah, I would have to agree that, you know, we've got an opportunity here to see what happens. And I think those of us who are aware and are truly aware can put the time or we'll put the time and energy into it because we know that it's important for our own well being, it could be very, very interesting to see what happens. And when I even think back myself that time, you know, right around 2000 and eight, when that point in time, I was eight years, four years, four years into my first entrepreneurial venture that was going really, really well, of course sort of the rug just kind of was pulled out from from under me and that really triggered a true awakening for myself. Just an awareness, not really awakening from the standpoint of hey awakening, but a standpoint of what am I doing, why am I doing this? This is really what I want to be doing. And I was, you know, looking at ways to how can I reinvent myself.

And so that started me on a course of really just taking a good deep look at what I was doing with my life. And I had already made some changes anyway. Six years, six years earlier, I had left corporate after being in corporate for 25 years or so and you needed a needed to change. But I still hadn't quite found what, you know what I was looking for. But over the course of probably the last decade, I have myself just shifted in my whole thinking around even purpose, who am I, what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And been on a path of really helping to helping others to, to do the same because we're all in this together. And I do think that with this current crisis that there's no doubt there's going to be some major shifts and challenges along the way. Going through, there will be significant positives on the other side of this.

But it's also it's also possible that it will knock us back down and we'll have to do a full reset. But either way it is what needs to happen either way and we will be better off for it. And I think there will be a lot of people who will really be thinking about what they're doing with their lives, bigger house or the bigger car is not really what what life is really all about. That's not what's really important because it takes us away from really thinking about being more kind and good and loving and taking care of one another when we're just you know, focused on more and more and more for ourselves. We need to really take a good hard look at we're in this world together and we have to really work together and love one another and help each other, lift each other up and move forward for us all to really make a major shift in how we are living our lives.

No, I agree. And you know I think something is important here carol because sometimes we talk about waking up where we talk about spirituality and I feel like there are a lot of people who look on at that from the outside of it or what they feel like is the outside of it. Mm hmm And it seems mystical or mysterious. Or just for those types of people over there. And I feel like one of the missions of my life is to open that door in a different way. Because I don't feel like there are spiritual people and non spiritual people or people who are so awake and others who are so asleep. I feel like there are people who are lined up with their true self and some who don't know how to do that yet. And to me that's as simple as it needs to be and as complex as it needs to be. And of course simple and easy or not the same thing. So going through the process and sometimes a really hard process of asking, Okay, so here's how I see it. There's the true self. And if you imagine there's a legend in Hawaii of, it's an ancient one where every child is born as a bowl full of light and that's that essence, that light is their true self.

And if they stay in that they can really accomplish anything. They're creative. They can, you know, and in the legend they can swim with the sharks and fly with the birds and climb the mountains. But over time rocks begin to get dropped into that bowl and those are painful experiences. We might call them traumatic experiences or times when the true self begins to feel demand over time that bowl can become full of rocks and the child then begins to identify more with the stone than with the light. And if if the child can learn to tip the bowl over and let those rocks fall out. They can actually then recover their true essence. They can go back to the true essence of who they really are and that to me is that's the definition of living a spiritual life of living an awakened life is beginning to acknowledge the true self and the other self because the identification with the stones, so we were all born that way, you know, as light, but then through the course of becoming awake um to who we are as a, you know, as a social creature.

So the process of being socialized and traumatic experiences, you know, we actually create another self. And a lot of times we invest a tremendous amount of energy in this other self and we don't even remember that there is a true self. So this other self has learned how to survive. And a lot of times those are reactions to The things that happened and those patterns follow down to our lives. And so by the time a person reaches 35 or 40, a lot of times the self that they think they are the self who goes to work and raises Children and does all these things and has these interests, if you ask them, what do you really want? The answer you're getting is from this other self. And so it takes a long time sometimes, or at least a lot of determination to tune into the true self again and say, what do I really want? And then once I find out what that is, how do I bring my life back into alignment with that, what would you say to someone who, you know, kind of went through that kind of realization and wanted to get back to their true self, what would you recommend to them in terms of how to do it?

Well, there's a lot. But the simplest way I found is something I actually shared in a free e book the other day about creative self, journaling, learning how to listen to myself, learning how to listen to themselves and go back and ask the question. And so this free book has a very simple three question process. And again, I love it because it Can be done in 10 minutes a day or so, it doesn't it doesn't have to be this long process every day. But these three questions, how am I feeling right now? What do I need? And then what would I love? That becomes this sort of compass back to start to hear from the impulses of the true self, from our intuition, from our actual instincts from things that were pre things that came before we created another self to survive out in the world. And what I found is that beginning to ask those questions every single day. And that's by the way, that's the journal process that I use every single day along with meditation to return my mind and body and nervous system back to the green zone out of any heightened anxiety states.

And I find that that's really it's so simple that sometimes people go, I don't, you know, I mean, I want, I wanted a really complex answer. The truth is if we learn to listen to ourselves, your true self has the answers, it has all of the answers. It can tell you how to proceed, it can tell you how to, of course correct it can tell you one step at a time, that's the other thing is the rational mind wants to map out and see the path For the next 100 miles ahead of ourselves, and go, okay that's exactly where, I'm going. okay, I'm gonna stop doing this now, I'm going to go all that way, but carol the last 12 years for me after I had to let go of my whole identity as a, you know, Ceo and entrepreneur and all these things. The last 12 years there were many times during that space where I asked, am I still even moving sort of in the right direction, is this ever going to come together in a way that is coherent, that I can serve that. It feels solid or is it always just going to feel like nailing jell o to the wall And I've talked with a lot of people who have gone through pretty major crisis is like that and that's a pretty common experience of not knowing I really am I going the right direction and that's where tuning in every day, making it a practice simple short practice.

But tuning in and sometimes during times of real confusion or stress tuning in several times a day on purpose, taking five minutes and saying, okay, how do I feel right now, what do I need right now, what would I love or how would I love to feel? I find that that's very simple process, can help navigate through an entire day, even when there's a lot of chaos going on. Exactly, and I think that people would just take the time to do that, you have to form the habit of it and most people just don't take the time to really do some self reflection, whether it's journaling, whether it's quieting the mind and meditating, you know, I've meditated for years and there were, you know there's a time where especially when I was in corporate, it was hit or miss, but since I got out of corporate, I have been, you know meditating much more frequently and regularly and it has a tremendous, not only just a calming effect, but just uh really that face of just place of getting in tune with what's important to me, what has meaning and heart for me and it's really kind of my guidance system as my go to practice to really get in touch with my own feelings and my own intuition and what is right for me and you know, and sometimes I still struggle with the ego mind because you know it's it's it's always got a grip and I think just in this human experience that the darn ego mind is just always there, it's like I'm I'm hanging on, I'm not letting go.

Um but you gotta, like, I just sort of push it, I try to push it to the back seat, but you know, sometimes it's it's hard. Do you struggle with that at all? No, no, I've erased my ego, I float around on a cloud, it's really awesome. You should try to know the other day, I was funny, my brother, my brother Nate, who was was one of my business partners back in the day, um you know, he's he's gone through just this amazing transformation over the last six months or a year, and now he's digging into dr joe dispenser is work, it's a very intellectual guy, and so dr joe's processes really speak to him really help him kind of a cross that bridge into experience and understanding how the brain works and the neuropsychology of patterns and how traumas have shaped what we call an ego and not just traumas, but other socialization and experiences. And he was sitting with me the other day and it's, I can't believe we're having these conversations because it was impossible back then, but I was telling him because he was talking about the spikes of anxiety at times and you know, feeling kind of beating himself up over, well I, you know, I meditated 40 minutes that day and that felt good.

But then I went out and was, you know, shitty to somebody after that. And, and, and I said, I laughed and said, you know, and he, and he was basically had people like, you know, Eckhart Tolle or a couple of others, you know, these wonderful teachers kind of on a pedestal and, and I said Nate, you know, it's funny. I had a similar experience the other day I was, I sat and meditated and was so good and my body was in real peace and then I got in the car and somebody came around a corner and didn't even look and almost ran me over and you know, I honked and then, you know, and then I felt anger and then I said, but you know what's interesting is like 20 seconds later I was laughing at myself because there was this moment of, of spiked anxiety and this reaction and in the past I would have felt like, oh well I slipped down a several notches, you know, I'll never get back on my, on my horse here spiritually speaking or whatever. But what's interesting is to understand that the reactions are going to happen and the ability to notice what's happening and return, return back to the center more quickly and and laugh about it.

I think people a lot of times feel like living some kind of a spiritual or balance or awakened life is very somber and you know, really, really structured and I just feel like it's really learning how to surf? Yeah, and I think that's a good point. It's learning how to also take care of yourself, notice when it's happening and then, you know, like you said, bringing yourself back to center and when we focus on that aspect of it and when we, that's when we can truly get into better alignment and stay in alignment and because, you know, we can we can get out of alignment, but we can shift it quickly if we recognize it. And we've got those habits of doing it. And one thing I find is the meditation really gives me, but the frequency of it, it really helps me tremendously. Well, it absolutely does. And let me jump back and ask you a question because you used the term and I feel like asking what the benefit is of things can really help, especially because we start using code language or jargon, you know, like centered or aligned or whatever and people go, ok, that's wonderful, but what, but why?

So I'm curious carol, just asking you, if you were to describe what happens when you are in center in your center, how do you notice yourself living and responding in different situations? I feel like I'm in flow, it means, I feel like everything feels easy. I'm it's like I'm I'm surrendering. I'm just I'm not resisting, I feel like I'm in flow, I'm not not resisting basically when I feel like I'm in alignment, I feel like what's the benefit of it? What does that mean? Um for lack of a better term, I don't want to use the term bliss because that's not really it, I just, I feel like my my senses are more heightened. It's not just the physical senses, it's it's a, you know, it's an intuitive sense, it's a knowing and trusting when I'm in alignment. Just trusting and not not necessarily thinking that I have, I have to know everything or I have to figure everything out.

It's just going with the flow with what feels right, That's my best, my best answer. I'll throw it back to you house because I think that's a great question. Well, I loved to decode these things because again, I feel like sometimes those of us who get and some of these things are hard to describe in in usual world terms. And I feel like that becomes the barrier for a lot of people because they're like, you know what, I don't know, those people are always talking about alignment and flow and bliss and all I know is, you know, I need to get through the day and you know, I wish I could show you this, but I'll just describe it a little bit. There's a chart that somebody sent me the other day and it was developed in part from the work of Peter Levine who's this amazing trauma informed researcher, psychologist and so, you know, he has all of this information out there. But this one is the chart that shows the green zone. So if you can just imagine a green zone in the bottom of the chart and then right above it there's a layer of red and then above that there's a layer of blue and the green zone is what they call social engagement or centeredness.

Right? The red zone is anxiety. So that's when we get a spike of anxiety and go up into fight or flight and the attributes of the red zone. If you're in flight, its concern or worry and then it moves to anxiety, then it moves to fear and then it moves to panic and flight is a movement away from something some stimulus fight is movement towards. So I can do something about this and that goes from frustration to irritation to anger and then rage. What's interesting though is that when it really spikes, it moves up into the free zone and so that's up here in the blue zone and that's where we have helplessness, depression, numbness, disassociation, shame, shut down. And that is where we feel like I can't. So what's interesting carol is that many people, even before this crisis, many people are living constantly at some level of the red zone, out of out of the green into fight or flight into this what they call the sympathetic nervous system. And so well, right, because we're just moving so fast and we're making executive decisions.

You know, critical thinking decisions all day long. So here's what's interesting about the green zone. Listen to this and this is this is just a nervous system state. In this zone, there's joy. We're in the present. Were grounded, we're curious and open. We experience compassion and we were mindful, we're able to notice things more closely and we feel connection, there's safety and were oriented to our environment. So in this zone this is where we actually make the best decisions, The most rational decisions. And what's interesting is the mind, the rational mind wants to believe that in a heightened state. That's when its sharpest, that's when it's keen. So when you talked about centeredness and when we're talking about meditation and some of these things, everything we're talking about exists in this green zone. And so people ask, well why should I meditate? Well, first of all you, there's I don't feel like there's a should, it's a question of how do you want to feel? Do you want to feel anxious, frustrated and you know, angry, enraged, depressed, isolated.

Um, and if the answer was, well of course not, that's insane. Well it is insane. But the the ego mind that you talked about earlier believes when it's running the show actually wants to keep us in the higher elevated states of anxiety and other places because that's what it feels like. And this is all running subconsciously, people aren't ever thinking, oh, I'm going to, you know, go that direction. And so what I'm so excited about right now is sharing this material more and more with people because it's become the cure in my own life to develop a daily practice of returning to the center asking what do I need? How do I feel, What would I love and being really honest with those things? And and also sometimes what I love is hard because that feels like, okay, that's a big goal out there. No, how would I love to feel right this minute? Remember recently I was feeling a lot of anxiety. I was feeling rejected and that just really piqued. My heart rate was up. I was feeling really not safe, not safe. So when I sat down and began to go through that journal process, I answered the questions how do I feel?

I don't feel safe, I feel afraid, I feel rejected. What do I need? I need to feel safe. And then the next question, what would I love and to ask that a different way? How would I love to feel? I would love to feel safe, like I'm seeing and like I'm enough. Oh, and see that's a very granular, a very simple small thing. You don't have to look at the whole picture of life. How do I want to feel right now And asking those questions just by itself began to lower me back towards the green zone and spending just a few minutes of quiet Breathing with my eyes closed. You might call it a meditation that within 10 minutes I was able to walk back out into the world, I was able to behave more rationally. I was able to treat people with curiosity and compassion and I was able to actually make better decisions. This makes sense. Absolutely. And I think it's a process that it's a tool. It's a quick and easy tool. And by the way, I've used it, I did download your e book, your creative Self Journal and I've used it. It's you know, it's part of my journaling process now and it is it's like three easy questions.

And does that mean you can you can actually do it throughout the day? I mean, I mean three easy questions, you know, you can you can do it first thing in the morning and then if you're feeling any kind of anxiety or stress or something, you know, during the day, you can just pop those questions to yourself and make a note and that will bring you back to focused attention on where you are right now, being in the present moment. Because that's really what it's all about is most people are are either when they're so stressed out and they're dealing with all the anxiety there. Either worrying about the past or trying to anticipate what's going to happen with the future where they're not really living in the present moment and we get to live in the present moment. That's when all of our senses and that intuition is heightened. That's what those questions do. Those three questions, they get you right back front and center in the present moment and that's what we need to do more of.

Because everything that we do in the present moment leads to what our future reality is or are our future experience. Oh, that's so, I'm so glad you brought that up and I also wanted to go back just a moment carol because what you said is so important for me that the act of sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen really all that's doing is training my mind to orient those questions. And so I love what you said about just asking the questions down through the day because they're so simple, doesn't require a lot of thought. And and so when it becomes reflexive and I've noticed now that I still sit down every day with a piece of paper and a pen. But I've noticed what you just said, it becomes reflexive when I start to feel anxiety in my body, then it becomes this, oh, I need to ask myself what's going on right now, how am I feeling self? How am I feeling? I'm feeling these ways, what do I need and what's interesting too. And I think we're in a time right now when asking these kinds of questions very simply a lot of times what we need is simpler than the mind wants to believe.

So I've noticed carol a lot of times when I go, okay, I'm feeling out of sorts, kind of vaguely out of sorts, what do I need? Oh well, first of all I need to pee. You know, I've been holding off on that, probably need a drink of water and oh I could use a nap sometimes. It's, you know, it's it's interesting that the inner self, a lot of times if we treat it with the kind of care and gentleness that we would treat one of our toddler Children or grandchildren. It's surprising how quickly we can reorient to that zone of being centered or connected again. Exactly. And I think this is a great tool, just those three questions to for anyone to use to get yourself back to that centeredness, that state of being in the present and then and focusing on what you need to do to to respond to those three questions, what do you need and what would you love? How would you love to feel? And I think that if we took the time to do that each and every day, then that would give us the opportunity to navigate the day better and be in a state maybe stay in that green zone or get get more into that green zone more often carol.

I'm gonna email you this chart after we're done here, just in case you want to look at it or if you can share it on the page or something, I think I'd love to, the visual is so powerful and here's what's interesting if you take this same exact circumstance, if I've been operating most of my day in high anxiety and my mind is telling me lots of stories about all these stupid people around me and look at them greedy, look at how, you know, I'm at the store right now and I look at the shelf, you know, and it's completely wiped out. There's no toilet paper and there's no soup on that, I'll and and my mind starts then looking with suspicion around me. All of a sudden I begin behaving in very unproductive ways. So somebody pushes her cart out in front of me and I have this flush of anger and why would she do that? So that's, that's the same circumstance. But if I've been orienting myself and I'm closer to the green zone in that same moment, there's curiosity looking around like, wow, what is going on right now and what do I need? Oh, I just, I don't really need super toilet paper today, I'm fine.

There's no, there's no crisis right now, there'll be, there'll be super toilet paper back, you know, in a few days, I need a gallon of milk and some eggs. So there's this curiosity oh and that person, you know accidentally push the cart out of the island almost hit me okay. You know, there's a sense of humor like oh wow, we're all dealing with this right now. So I'm, I'm trying to demonstrate that sometimes these things start to feel too lofty but this is how they affect us in everyday life when we can find a way to come back to our center and listen to the voice of the true self because the voice of the true self is joyful. It has a sense of humor, it is curious, it's interested, it pays attention to its surroundings. This is why the ancient masters, you know the, the dow and jesus christ and different ones, different teachings unless you become like a little child you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. That was you know, in my childhood I was christian and so that was there and that was always confusing, like what does that mean? But what's interesting is the childlike state before it's become this heavy, serious adult, critical and you know, angry and depressed and all these things, the childlike state, The bowl of light, we talked about earlier returning to the green zone more and more often is this powerful tool of then if you notice kids, you know maybe in a craft room or on the playground, they'll run around there.

You know, some kids over there like skipping rope and going crazy and you know these ones are making mud pies or whatever and maybe they crashing each other and they cry and they but everything happens very much in the moment and then they let it go and then pretty soon the kids who just wrestle on the ground and punch each other, they're dusted off and they're playing again, you know, so returning to that state of child likeness, curiosity, openness, we don't know the answers to everything. I feel like this, it's interesting how that bit of wisdom, it then returns us into the center of what I feel like is most important here and that is we take back our position as the creators of our lives and that especially in times when everything feels like chaos and out of control, each one of us can return to the center where the true self is curious, it wants to create from joy, it wants to feel in purpose, it wants to serve.

And so to me this is we can talk about all the lofty reasons for doing these things, but when it comes right down to it, if these things help us return to who we really are, we then begin to connect better with other people, We treat ourselves better, we treat others better and we begin to step into this role than of co creating the experience of this world in a different way in a way that we didn't think was possible before that is so true and it really if you think about it really starts with yourself, you know, each of us, it starts with ourselves and we've got to take the time and attention to focus on ourselves and that's going to have a ripple effect on others. That's definitely going to have a ripple effect because when we're calm, we're feeling joyful, we're feeling feeling centered, we're curious, we're interested, we're in that that true self zone and feeling of alignment that's going to have an effect on others because others are gonna wonder it also, it heightens our own senses to be there for others and be more compassionate and more loving and more kind when they're going through some difficulty and I just think it's going to have a ripple effect carol.

I can't, I can't agree more. Um you know, I was walking by the river the other day and we have this beautiful greenbelt, I feel so fortunate to live in this town, it's just like everywhere else, you know, restaurants are shut down, everything is pretty much done here, but you know you can still go outside and walk and so I was walking the other day and there were some blossoms on the trees along the river and its still chilly, but spring is coming and I noticed that people passing me on the path, there was a difference, you know, and we're keeping and we're keeping distant from each other as we're supposed to and all that, but people are making eye contact there were smiling at each other, we're saying hello and I was so heartened after that walk because you know the people who weren't in in this case and I'm not suggesting that the whole world should leave your houses and go for walks, but in this case those who could and we're taking care of themselves with some fresh air and just you know, a walk by the river. It was surprising to me to notice how what you just described the ripple effect.

So I got back in my car and went home, you know after an hour of walking around the water and I felt so peaceful and also inspired by seeing other people who were also getting centered getting grounded, you know, with something simple like that. So I'm with you and I also noticed then that that changed how I communicated with my kids, you know, I come home and it's time for us to figure out a dinner or something and rather than feeling impatient or noticing the counter still wasn't wiped. You know, we're laughing together, we're working together and there's more cooperation and so that to me these are real world effects of what you're describing. This has been a great conversation Jacob yes, I can't thank you enough for just the insights and the words of experience and introspection and deep reflection that you've gone through that you have just shared today as to how others can really tap into their true self and understand really what alignment is.

I would love to definitely have that graphic and we'll publish it in our show notes on the site. I wish we could continue this conversation. But you know all conversations have to eventually I guess come to an end, but I'd love to pick up at some point in the future down the road. I'd love for you to share where people can reach out to you, connect with you, find out more about you. Thank you carol. Well wow, I feel really inspired by talking with you and you ask great questions. Yeah, so if you just want to visit Jacob nord be dot com, N O R D B Y on there is the there's a link on there to the Creative Self Journal to download. I love to give that away. I get so many notes back from people who are using it and it just really fills me with so much joy that something I felt was so simple. I almost didn't put it together and share it. You know, thousands and thousands of people are using it now and it just, it makes me so happy. So that's something I would love to give all of your listeners if they want to visit the site and grab that, thank you for that. I've got linked to that.

So I'll make sure that we put that in the show notes so that everyone and will point everyone to that so that they can download that and I can attest to it because I've journal for years on and off. And I just, I love your process because it really is simple and easy. And also I, I know that you are on various social channels, so we'll make sure that we post those as well in the show notes so people can follow you, follow at your own risk. At your own risk. Exactly. But hey, I just can't thank you enough for taking the time and, and you know, best of luck with the new book that's coming out. When is, um, do you have an estimated timeline for the creative cure of this year? Yeah, thank you. Um, looks like middle or end of september at this point. So, so grateful. Oh, terrific. And I know there's like another whole avenue of things that we can dive into about what you're doing today and um, what this book is all about.

So we'll save that for a later date. But in the meantime, since we're all hunkered down here, let's make the best and the most of the time that we have to quiet ourselves and not have to deal with the frenzy of the world, but you know, take some time for some reflection and introspection during this time and come out on the other side of it. Maybe a little more in tune with ourselves. Oh, that's my that's my dream and my desire for what happens right now and going forward and carol. I just want to again say a big thank you for inviting me to be with you. And I just want to say to all of your listeners, I love you, you're enough. Trust yourself, trust who you really are. We're all going to get through this together. This is some great parting words. Thanks so much Jacob. Yeah, we hope today's show helped to bring a bit more joy and happiness into your heart. We hope it inspired you to unleash your inner power and rise up to your best and loving heart centered, highest self.

We'd be grateful if you'd leave us a review on itunes. Those reviews are important to spreading this valuable message. We'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast and share the show with others. Visit hearts rise up dot com for heart centered courses, guided meditations and are popular notes from your higher self until next time. Keep rising up and may all that You love thrive