Today, on day five of the Habit Challenge, Megan talks more about her mission trip story to Honduras which she went to with her father. Megan digs deeper about the things she learned during this very momentous experience and how this trip has impacted her and her life.
In this episode, Dr. Alex and Megan also talk about how important it is to have a dream in life. They also share how having dreams is very fundamental in one’s transformation process.
Are you ready to experience compassionate transformation? One person is going to win $500 for fully participating in the Habit Challenge so make sure you’ve signed up and joined the effortless brain-based habit challenge at https://www.zestyginger.com/habit/Â
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Megan Blacksmith 00:03
Hello, lovely friends.
Dr. Alex Golden 00:06
Hello.
Megan Blacksmith 00:07
Welcome back. You made it today five. Yeah. Just pat ourselves on the back. I’m having mine. Because we also made it today but
Dr. Alex Golden 00:18
clap track there.
Megan Blacksmith 00:19
Oh yeah, who knows, if I push these buttons, which thing will come up. So I won’t even try. You know, imagine a magic clapping. Alright, we are so happy to have you here, I want to remind you that if you did not opt in, or if you’re jumping in the middle, please go back to day one, which was on Monday, and go through the whole series in order there is a reason there is a purpose, it takes your brain through a certain process in a certain way. So please go do that. If you didn’t opt in, you can go to zesty ginger.com/habit So you can actually get the workbook. And please turn in the workbooks. By Sunday, I will make another plug at the end, there’s a really, really important part at the end of the workbook, very important part so important to your process important to your upper level important to your habits. So please make sure to check that out, I will come back around to it. And how important it is so awesome. Thank you for being here. Thank you to all of you who have invited your friends, we love seeing the people who are like I’m doing this with two other people. And also know that you can pull them in now it’s not too late, they have time to go ahead and just listen to all five in a row and do their workbook by Sunday. Awesome. All right. So do you all remember that mission trip story I told about Honduras? Well, I actually got to go with my dad, thanks to the fact that he had trusted his intuition and found a team of people around him right to support him so that he was not in a place with early onset Alzheimer’s. So he was able to go on a trip like this. And he was able to go be his highest health, self and life potential. He changed his future was changed my future. And we were able to go together. So off we went. And this community that Honduras hope was the organization we went with was focused on helping this community that was way, way, way up in the mountains, like hours from the airport. And in order to get to the actual community itself, it was a four hour hike. You heard it, there were no roads in and out of the community, just these paths that were wide enough for people, a donkey, a mule, that kind of thing. So we climbed, and we climbed and we climbed up and up. And unfortunately, I had eaten something that morning that my stomach was not happy with. And this hike was excruciating. I had to pause on the side of the road, I got sick out of many different ends, sorry for the graphic. And so much so that they actually put me on one of the meals, like I had to ride the rest of the way, I was so severely dehydrated, and just out of it. And in a place right with none of my normal comforts, because we when we get got to the top of the mountain where we were staying, we found that where I would be sleeping was outside on a just a concrete slab. It was a concrete slab with my sleeping bag. And there wasn’t no running water, there was no electricity, there was just nature in my slab and me. And holy cow was I like in my head going. What did I sign up for? Should I have done this? I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is going to be so hard to feel good in my body in this situation. So I had to just keep bringing my thoughts back and refocus and just focus on I am here to help people. Megan, you are here to help people. Megan, you are here for a purpose. You are here for connection. You are here for an experience. And so the people that were there to help it was really interesting things that we learned on this trip. It’s a life lesson that I’ve taken from this into every area of my life and in the future because what we thought would help the community here and what what they wanted and actually needed were very different. So this happens we’re coming in not fully understanding someone’s model of the world not understanding how they work and what’s best for them. We didn’t realize that there were unintended consequences of trying to help in our way. Right what these Americans thought was good for this community and that these people, we didn’t live in the community, for example. So it kind of seemed obvious to me, I’m like, well, there’s not any roads here, it would be nice to have a road, and not a donkey path, in my mind didn’t seem very efficient way for them to, you know, walk to town get there, the coffee beans had to go down to town to sell. And it just didn’t seem like that was the most efficient way. And also, there’s a bunch of kids running around, they’re so happy playing soccer in the fields. They’re just constantly running and playing, you could see the joy in their face. And none of them had, or very few of them had shoes, actually, I don’t think any that I saw. And so again, I’m thinking well, and the community is thinking the organization is thinking, well, these kids could really use shoes, like they’re, they want to play soccer, you know, choose shoes are an obvious thing to have, and not having electricity for hot water. You know, that also seemed like, seemed like a problem to me. Although, what we didn’t know is that if you were to come in, or we were to come in and build roads to this community, they would have become a really easy target for being exploited for their crops. So this had happened in many other areas in the poor areas where the roads now had access. So it made it easy for trucks to drive right up, offer them like extremely low, low, low, low amount to take everything they have. And when they’re in such a rough position, they were often taking it and they weren’t getting exploited. So the other thing is, what actually happened when someone brought in shoes is that there were not enough for everyone you are and or they grew out of them, or got holes in them. So what was happening is now there was actually a lot of unhappiness in a place where they had been happy, because now they have friends and neighbors who have shoes that comparison, and they don’t. So there were some things that could be improved in the community that everyone agreed on. And when we found that one thing that improved, all the other things had a huge impact. And that was their health. Because we believe without your health, you really don’t have anything, do you. So the key to improving their health was improving air quality. So in the huts, they were cooking over these small fires inside a hut with there was no ventilation, it was just going right into the hut. So they’re breathing the smoke every day. And they were their lungs had taken a huge hit. And there was a lot of illness in the area because of this. So raising money for and and physically installing hundreds of chimney chimneys, this organization. And this allowed their community to get their health back their their everyone’s health was improving once this was done. And so we realized that that was what they actually needed. It wasn’t things that they needed, like it wasn’t the shoes, or the cell phones or the roads, it became really clear living with them that the happiness didn’t come from the things. The happiest, funniest, most amazing, connected community, it was so cool to see. And I’m really, you know, in my bones can feel this, that happiness was coming from the connection. And from the fresh air, right from the small things that we take for granted. And they taught me and us to be present, I learned more from anyone there than anything I offered was a small small token of what I could actually do. But I learned so much, it was just such an amazing experience. So anytime we’re forcing someone else to use our framework, instead of really asking questions and having the courage to dig into what what is it that they need? What is it that you need? Right? We’re all so different. There’s a million different ways and techniques and methods to get to something. And sometimes when you get to something, you’ll look around, you’ll go well, this is different than how anybody else does it. This shouldn’t I’m, you know, shouldn’t be working. But it’s not always a straight line. The way other people think is most efficient doesn’t always work for you. So I want to just tell you a little story about the gizmo does anybody anybody kids have the gizmo it’s like most watch, like two people you can call and anyway, I got it for my daughter because she really needed a cell phone and I was like, we’re not doing the cell phone thing. So we had come to an agreement on the gizmo. And so it’s a watch and it was one of those things where I had to add a line to my cell phone plan so my paying what I don’t know 1019 Nine or something a month for the years that I had it and she got the gizmo used it for like two months and then just really never used it. So I had on my to do list for a couple years cancel the gizmo subscription. Anybody else horrible like canceling things? Well, so the funny thing about this is that you would think if you were to ever get financial advice for someone, you would never think that not cancelling a subscription for that long would benefit you in any way. Right? There’s there’s things that we believe there’s a certain way to do them, there’s always a more efficient way to do it. And this is the process. So if I were to listen to that, I would have canceled and I would, that would have been how it went. And what happened instead was I didn’t cancel. And it went on for a while. And eventually, I actually even tried to cancel like a few months before when I was in person. And they’re like, oh, no, you have to do that through phone call me I’m going I’m like off phone calls. So I still hadn’t done it. And in the mail, I got an offer. Anybody who had the gizmo they because it’s no longer supported by 3g or whatever the service is, they were giving out free phones, because they wanted to keep us as a customer. So I was laughing really, really hard. Because my daughter had been like doing saving all of her money all summer, she had come up with a plan, she was manifesting this new cell phone situation. So when I got this in the mail, and realize that I had even tried to cancel it a couple of months before and they hadn’t let me. And if I had cancelled, I wouldn’t have gotten this notice. And because we had it and because we had been, I’d been, you know, the $10 a month, I ended up getting this think it was like a $700 phone and she got it and we got it. And I just was laughing so hard, because there is no conventional advice that would have told me that this was actually going to be the best financial decision to pay a bunch of stuff over a period of time, and then magically get a cell phone. So I you know, I ended up coming out like $500 up from this process. And I as I’m watching it, I was like, wow, this is so, so so so what happens with health, there isn’t just a way to do it, there isn’t just like, it won’t always look and feel the way you think it will. And sometimes we look around and we’re like other people are doing it differently, this must not be right. And then we shift. But when we learn to really tap into our own intuition of the best way to do something, and know that it may look totally different, and may not be a straight down, straight line. Because often right when you get to a point where you think like, Okay, I’ve got all the steps, that’s where there’s a couple steps backwards. And it can be easy to think, Oh, this is time to pull out, this is time to do something different, this must be the wrong way I should really follow what those other people are doing. And we’re just here to tell you, this might be the best way. So dreaming.
Megan Blacksmith 13:24
What we found is the women we work with who allow themselves to dream are the ones that go through this process the fastest.
Megan Blacksmith 13:35
So much more as possible. And I want this is where I said I want you to pull back and go back and really do the part of the workbook at the end of this challenge. Because when you write down things that you want, and the things that you want to pull in the things that you’re going to make happen, even when you don’t know how that’s going to happen. I’m telling you, I have done this at many different programs, and the things I write down, just happen every time every time. So please write write down. If it’s scary to dream, if you’re getting feelings about dreaming, know that this is common. You’re not alone. This is how I felt because my brain was wanting to say Yeah, but how would I do all that? And if I write it down and it doesn’t happen, then what does that mean about me? And once I got over that, alright, huge dreams down. I write all sorts of stuff down. I’m like, I don’t care how it happens. I’m going to put it on here. Is anybody having a little feeling coming up in their belly or their chest right now? Does happen? It does.
Dr. Alex Golden 14:45
Because here’s the thing that has happened in this process. Over the last five days we’ve been taking you through the seven steps of transformation. The seven steps that rinse and repeat every single thing that we have ever wanted all the results that the women we work with have gotten everything that will happen for you, comes down to the seven steps, seven steps of transformation. And when we get really intentional and clear about how that moves, we can much more powerfully impacted. And so here we are last day, and we’re asking you to dream, you’re, you’re at the point where now you’ve changed, you’re no longer the person that started listening to the series, right? There’s your perspective, you’ve moved up the level of levels inside the Empire State Building, and now you’re looking from a different place saying, Wow, now that I’ve changed now that I’ve level of level now that I’m integrating all these concepts. Now, what’s the dream? Where am I going? What’s happening? And like Megan saying, we have built into our brain, the desire to feel safe, to feel comfy, to feel supported. And that means that throughout this transformational process, these seven steps go in a cycle. Because as you uplevel sometimes what happens is that it feels scary. To dream, it feels scary to step into this, because sometimes you get there and look around and you know, you’ve changed, you know, you’re no longer that same person. And now, and now you have to look around your life and make decisions. That’s where the courage starts to come in, where we started to say now from this new identity, who am I? And what is she need? What support and is this stuff working? That old her had, right? And there can be a lot of things that come up that really get people to whoop right off that path, right? When they’re just so close to being there. This is where we’re going to pull out one of the steps and teach you, right, the second, because we want to have you understand very clearly, and body inside your physical vessel, that when you apply these steps, when you take the actions when you go inside and feel that feeling and say that anxiety, that nervousness or dream is telling me that I need resources, we go and find them. And that feeling of confidence and having our own back just grows and our dreams get bigger because we get more expansive because we grow and get bigger and more is available for us and we are capable of more. So what is this thing that you can do right now? What is it that you can do today? Right? How can you take one of the seven steps and transform today and every day moving forward. And that for us is helping the body feel safe within your care within the leadership you provide the identity that you have is that you have a physical body. And it requires love. It requires support, it requires attention. But this isn’t a laundry list of checklists of whether you’re eating the right food or whether you’re doing the right morning routine and all of that stuff that we get so looped in, right? This is saying, I love my physical body. And I will take care of it moment by moment by moment by moment. And that is what we’re talking about. Right? Cultivating the feeling of safety is not just something that happens to us. It’s something that we build within ourselves. And there are so many resources to do that. One of them is parasympathetic activation of the nervous system. We have a supercomputer hardwired within this physical vessel that transmits information. And they’re quite frankly, just buttons to press. Right. And that is why we’re not going to get into the details of all of the seven steps. Oh, it’d be way too overwhelming and have far too much information. What we want to do is talk today about just some simple tools. And if you already have been hearing about us talk about parasympathetic, talking about some today that you can continue to apply. And if you’ve heard this, and you’re like yeah, parasympathetic is good and you’re not doing it, then this is your invitation to take care of the physical vessel so that you can function from a place of resourcefulness, from seeing options. And from truly identifying the identity that you want to embody that will get you to where you want to go the most. Right? That is how we’ll make those decisions. So parasympathetic, one of my favorite new ones that I’ve been using a lot is the ear scissors. So you might have heard me talk about this before but let’s do a reminder. So the ear scissors is where you take the you take your index and you your third finger and you apply pressure right below your earlobe. And then when you are ready, you are going to slide your fingers up, you’re going to split them as if they were a scissors and one fingers gonna go behind your ear and one finger is gonna go on the front of it. And you’re just going to gently apply pressure up to the top of here. And I’m going to slide back down with those fingers and take them all the way down to your collarbone, you’re going to repeat that move, activating that vagus nerve and how it travels. One of the new things that we haven’t talked about here is acupressure on the ears, acupressure and rubbing the ears all along, it feels so good. So if you’re somewhere that you can do that now, you can begin to do that coupled with the ear scissors and just feel that release, you’ll feel your physical body will feel good. I call it the whoosh. There’s almost like a little bit of a rain shower that goes all throughout your body and down into your legs. And you’ll feel that release. And we want to honor that allowing the breath to slow down allowing the heart rate to come down. And when we’ve been living from a ramped up high anxiety strategy place where we use guilt and shame and stress to motivate ourselves to accomplish things. This can feel really different. It can feel like Oh, I’m a mama’s fuzzy, but welcome to come for Welcome to calm Welcome to peace and joy in all of these things when we practice getting into the state, and we begin to allow our mind to function from the freedom of this freedom from threats, freedom from fear. And we begin to say, yes, these things exist, right? There’s threats in the world, I feel the fear of new and the unknown, and yet I am courageous and supported and unified enough to handle that. And we really move forward that dreaming isn’t just dreaming anymore, which is where it hurts the dreams become the reality. And the reality begins to parlay into more dreams. And when the doubt comes up, we say I’ve done this before I have evidence I have overcome this I have become more these things work for me, I have fought for my strategies, I have fought to have a toolkit that is just mine, not other voices that say who I should be or what I should do or what should feel good to me. But me, I decided, and I showed up for myself. And here’s what happened. And when we doubt when we are in fear when we are scared. We have our own body of evidence that says but no wait. Who am I as an identity. And if that’s a fighter, a warrior for good in the world for creation for helping people feel more love, there’s so much division and hate right now it takes each of us individually standing in the power of being loving being pure love in a world that’s not that. That’s how we change the game. Because going around arguing and, and fighting and playing the same game over and over. We know when we look around that that’s not working. What we can do, though, is turn that around and use all of these resources, all of these tools, and the power that we hold individually to say no more from me, this isn’t a force thing of anybody else. But who am I going to be? How can I function as that light as that common piece that says, When you come to me you’ll find love here, not the rest.
Dr. Alex Golden 23:54
And that comes down to moment by moment thoughts. We have the habitual thoughts, the motions that we allow ourselves to stay in and live in and cultivate for ourselves. And therefore the habits that we do how good they feel to us. What that’s modeling and role modeling for people in our life, the kids around us, maybe even our parents or friends or coworkers, right? Stepping into that love stepping into I am setting the tone.
Dr. Alex Golden 24:26
And it takes one person in a community like the Steve Rand’s of the world, right. The Americans stand up and say, here’s who I am. The entire community shifts one connected is stronger than millions without right that and we’ve heard that from many different teachers over time, including teachers of today. And so it completely flips
Dr. Alex Golden 24:57
the script when that Fear kicks up. It says I’m not smaller than the fear. I am bigger than it because the fear is just one component of me. And by definition, that means it’s smaller than me. I don’t inhabit it, it inhabits me. And that means I’m greater than that. Everything changes, this is how we change the world. One at a time us, but then it snowballs. And that is what we’re really after. Right? The transformation isn’t just about us. It’s about what happens to this world, when you alone get brighter. And we tend to downplay that, but really consider what you believe. What Megan and I believe, is that one person does have that power. And we see it time and time again, because one person creates two more people and two more people make for more people or eight more people, or 60 more people, and off we go. So your ability to dream when you fill out that workbook. Remember that
Dr. Alex Golden 26:06
it’s not just your dreams. It is it is about your dreams, and you should have everything you want. And it’s not about sacrificing yourself. And that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about, you win, and everybody wins. And when everybody wins, we win. Right? It all goes full circle. And that is the story. That is what we’re all doing here. The question is, what are you going to do as part of that? What are we all individually willing and able to do as part of that? And it’s very, very exciting, right, man? Okay, yeah. Especially,
Megan Blacksmith 26:51
you know, we’re watching this, my husband and I are watching this with our two daughters is that he’s Native American, and there’s some strong generational trauma, and the fact that he has been willing to dig into his own, and I am always doing my best to dig into mine, we’re watching this new generation, not have a tie to that not having that same structure, not having those same ties, or just breaking that generational chain. And it’s cool, who knows what that’ll do in the world, right? If we have families practicing this, if we have people digging into this, and we really want you all to just be doing that thing that lights you up, be doing that thing that you can care for the world, I had this amazing session with a friend recently. This amazing, she’s amazing, you know, energy practitioner, and she, gosh, you know, her gift is so awesome. And unfortunately, she has not found these tools. For her own anxious thoughts, she hasn’t found a way to calm her body and her parasympathetic. And she hasn’t found a way to shift some of the beliefs. And because of that, is really only sharing this service with, you know, friends and family. And it’s something that is so powerful, don’t worry, I’m working on her. And I just see something like that I see people with gifts all the time. And in maybe that gift is being an amazing parent or amazing communicator or amazing co worker, and just hoping that you’ll take the habits, you’ll take the tips, you’ll take the physical brain chemistry shifts, the physical body shifts, the belief shifts, and all the things that we teach and share and integrate this into that thing you’re already doing or that thing that you want to share with everybody, because we know and we’ve seen just how much that changes, even extended family, they’ll feel the shift. And you know, it shifts the whole dynamic, the whole collective, it can shift your whole community. So we’re so excited for this.
Dr. Alex Golden 29:03
Yes. So with these with these tools, when we talk about these overarching the dreams and who are we coming, it’s important to know that we’re not talking about not doing the nitty gritty, right, because we have to still anchor it to day to day action. There’s strategies in place. There’s ways of understanding who you are, there is mastering what you came here to be and some limitations you may be set along the way. Going through these and values, understanding your masculine feminine principles, understanding how to bring wholeness to the fragmentation. All of these things have options. And that’s the whole key, rather than trying to fit you into all of these different strategies that anchor it into the physical world and what you do Who you are, and all of those steps, rather than anchoring back to a framework that gives you the freedom to find all of these different options and say, but what works for me now? What is going to really bring me the most cohesiveness, piece and structure, right, depending on how much structure someone needs. And so we are going to go into that into a little bonus part six right now. Yep, that we’re going to, because really from this place, it’s important that we toe that line between dreaming big, and then making it happen dreaming big and making it happen. There’s a whole flow to this that we’re going to talk you through. Okay. So definitely come back for that. In the meantime, we are opening our Health Transformation accelerator program coming up, that’s going to it’s not now, right. So right now, finish this, do the workbook. And then we invite you to go and read the transformations and listen to the people’s stories who have truly applied this and taken it down to the very foundational level of how they live their life, what they think, what they feel, what does that look like how to overcome guilt and shame and intrusive thoughts and bad habits that we think that we have, and all of these things, you’ll get to go here, the women who have really applied this, and who have lived this, and they will tell you exactly how that went. So check that out. But after you have completed the portions for this challenge,
Megan Blacksmith 31:52
absolutely. For those of you who want more framework and who know you’re ready to continue on with us, come on over and join our self transformation accelerator. You’ll have 12 weeks with us. And we open this and offer it twice a year. So I’m excited for anybody who feels called always reach out to us with questions and we’re so happy you’re here with us during this challenge. Where you know what happens with this we allowing things to percolate for a day or two and writing things in the workbook and all of a sudden you’ll realize, oh, wow, I’m having a shift. I’m having a shift in belief. I’m changing my habits and doing things differently. I’m thinking differently. I’m looking for resources differently. So we would love to hear that please email us men. Instagram’s always a great place to we’d love, love hearing your updates and your feedback. So thank you for being here. sending you lots of love you got this