FABx Stories Worth Telling

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You Are Not Your Company

Three-point-two billion dollars. That is the amount my friend's company was just acquired for. Now I, having worked there for a couple of years, stood to make a little fortune from it. Excitedly I took out my phone. I was gonna text him, but I paused. I hesitated. What would I even say? "Congratulations?" That's so cliché. "What happened? I thought we were gonna go public? Wink." Ugh. Who says that? It's gonna so backfire. You know what? You have to just schedule an email to send later. Come on. I mean, he's getting plenty of messages anyway. Doesn't need another one from me, but this is pretty big news. I mean, a couple of billion dollars is worth a text message. I don't even text him that often but wait a second. Only friends text each other. Are we still friends anymore? I mean, after all, we started at the same place eight years ago. I used to sleep on their couches, and now they're practically at the top of the start of Mount Everest. And here I am, three failed companies later, still struggling in obscurity in the big game of entrepreneurship. It was 11.00 p.m. I was standing alone in my room in a 7,000 square foot place with five bathrooms all to myself. Dripping wet from the shower, I had no towel. Where the fuck was the towel? So angry beyond anything I realized. "God damn it, it's in the other room." You see, this normally wouldn't be a problem. Except on that day, my left foot was swollen up like a basketball, and I could hardly move. That very morning I just beat my personal best record at the gym. But by evening, for reasons I didn't understand, every step felt like I was going to trip and crack my head open on the concrete floor. I sat down on the toilet seat, burying my head in my hands. I wished my girlfriend was there. She took care of me the last time I was sick. But we broke up. We were together for three years. I haven't cried about that yet. She used to tell me I was always working. I remembered my mom. She used to help me. She told me I don't call her. And when she calls me, I'm either in a meeting or just about to leave the house. For some reason, I remember this kind lady who gave me a quarter to take the bus home when I ran away from home at ten years old. My grandparents—whose house I was running to on foot along the railroad track, a thousand miles away—they all passed away while I was in college. I didn't get to say goodbye to any of them. I was too busy. Too busy studying. Too busy to go back for their funerals. Is this my life? Just before I turned sixteen, I moved to Vancouver, Canada from China with my parents. First day of school, I desperately wanted to fit in, but I couldn't understand a thing. Luckily, there was this Chinese kid. He was telling me how he'd been there for six years and how the school worked. Then the teacher called him to speak in front of the room. Even I could tell he was stumbling, not at all colloquial. In fact, in his mumbling words and heavy accent, he kind of sounded like a buffoon. He's been here for six years, I thought to myself. What a failure. I am never going to be like him. In that moment, I made the decision to not speak Chinese, only speak English, and disconnect myself from everything that I thought was a failure. I'm going to master the English language by the time I graduate high school, I thought to myself. It served me well. I spent that entire summer reading To Kill a Mockingbird page to page, looking up the dictionary twenty times for every page. Within two years, I became the school's debate captain. People told me that I had no accent. Oh my God. That was my ... boy, was I proud. There's just one problem. It didn't really help me with girls. I still didn't know how to talk to them. You see, my way of confessing my crush—she played the trumpet—was to tell the band teacher to move me from trombone, which was on the opposite side of the school band, let me remind you, to playing trumpet just so I could sit next to her and tell her ... exactly nothing. She didn't notice me. Yeah, she didn't notice me. So I thought I just gotta be more successful. You see, college mission was right around the corner. So I made it to Princeton. And in case you don't know what Princeton is, we beat out Harvard eighteen out of the last twenty years as the number one ranked school in America, which means the number one ranked school in the world, right? That didn't work either. So what's next? Well, how about entrepreneurship? Oh, that's where I got really hooked. As a freshman, I won the entrepreneurship competition taking home a big check, beating out all the seniors. And before I graduated college, I was worth eight million dollars funded by the best investor in Silicon Valley Y Combinator behind legendary companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. "I'm gonna get you a Ferrari for your twenty-fifth birthday," I told my first girlfriend, bless her heart. And that is until I started failing company after company while everyone around me seemed to be having these multi-billion-dollar successes. "You are not your company." I found myself at my first session in the Founders Support Group. The truth in their words echoed deep inside me. You see, on the days that the company was doing well, I was on top of the world. I could walk into any bar and to any sexy woman and say, "How you doing?" Until she turned me down anyway, and then I would kick myself in the foot, "I just gotta be more successful, right?" And on days the company wasn't doing well, I didn't wanna get outta bed. The truth is, no matter how it looked on the outside, I was living a permanent baseline experience of failure. What I hate to admit is that being brought to my knees in the game of entrepreneurship is perhaps the greatest gift for me early in life. You see, life seems to have a habit of teaching me the same lesson over and over and over again until I really, really get it. In the moments that I felt like an utter and complete failure, I gathered just enough humility to discover what else is out there. I went to the Founders Support Group. I read the books, did the workshops and yoga, meditating on death, you know, spirituality, coaching, everything that people do when they're finding themselves unfulfilled and unhappy. I wish I could tell you it was an overnight transformation, but the truth is it took years and years and continues to be an ongoing process. But when I finally got it in my heart and my body, not just at the top of my head, that I am not my company, things started to shift. I was able to move out of living with coworkers into my own place. I could tell my mom. I'd call her and tell her I love her. I gave myself the permission to be nurtured by Mother Bali just during this global pandemic rather than rush home to San Francisco cos that's where the successful people live! You know, a dear friend and teammate asked me, "Does this mean you're going to quit your company now and become a new musician acrobat?" 'Cause he saw me finding time for myself to learn to play the guitar and dangle women off my bare feet in the amazing practice of acro-yoga, of course. I chuckled at that. I hoped he was not worried about his job. You see, I'm incredibly fortunate to have a genuine passion in entrepreneurship, that I'd discovered, and in moments that I'm not my company, the natural state of being is to create from a place of love and authenticity rather than strive from a place of fear of unacceptance. When I'm not my company, I get to come to work each day, being inspired by our mission of transforming people's relationship with money rather than burnt out by the anxiety that we may never succeed no matter how hard we try. You see, when I'm not my company, success changes from something that is always in the future permanently doomed to be out of reach to something that is available in the present. Every moment I live my values of love, growth, authenticity, discipline, and contribution, I get to experience success. And when I'm not my company, I get to have the distinct pleasure of picking up the phone and telling my friends, my dear friends, "Congratulations. I'm so proud of you. I'm so grateful to be on your path." Thank you very much.

Awakening the Power Between My Legs

I'm in an open-aired villa in Bali, standing in the garden with my feet on the grass, looking up at the full moon. My left ear is being penetrated by the sound of someone moaning. Almost like someone is about to orgasm. In my right ear, I hear this screaming, slapping sound. Someone is being spanked and REALLY enjoying it. Basically, around me is this sound of laughter, joy, and pleasure. In that moment, I put my hands on my ears, and I'm thinking, Just please make it stop—the sound. Just make it stop. What am I even doing here? And so this moment marks the end of a two and a half, three-week phase in my life a few years ago back here in Bali that changed my life completely. A year prior to that, I finished my master in innovation management and left traveling because I was inspiring to become this tough-ass businesswoman and career lady. So I thought it was time for an adventure first. At the time, I was doing yin yoga teacher training with Tina Nance, and she kept asking this annoying question, "How much can you feel? How much can you feel? How much can you feel?" In those classes, I was thinking, Seriously, lady, shut up. I can't feel anymore. Meanwhile, I kept on being invited to all these places I didn't know about. And so I ended up at my very first ecstatic dance where you dance barefoot, no alcohol, no talking. And within five minutes, I was going crazy. I was having the best time of my life. And I felt something just unlocking. And that led me to my very first contact dance, where I ended up rolling around on the floor with a bunch of strangers sweating all over them. And that led me to my very first sacred sexuality temple party. In other words, a sex party. And so, in that moment, under the full moon, I found myself being triggered by the sound of other people's pleasure. It was in that moment that I realized Tina made an impact. "How much can you feel?" Well, in that moment, I was feeling a lot. I was feeling how deeply blocked I'd been. I didn't voice myself. I didn't moan during sex. I didn't communicate my desires. I was taught to stay quiet and to stay silent. And so that's why during my five-year relationship, I never had an orgasm with him, and he never knew. That's why I thought I was broken. Because I didn't speak up for myself, not only in the bedroom but basically also not anywhere else in my life. And so, in that moment, I realized that could be different. There was a different world out there, but I was scared shitless because that meant that I had to feel. I had to feel how I've been lying to myself. How I've been pressing away and disregarding this part of me that had been screaming for attention for years. And so, in that moment, under the full moon, tears started rolling down my face in a seemingly endless stream. Now, the next morning I woke up with what seemed like the biggest hangover I've ever had in my entire life, and not from alcohol but from all the lies I'd been telling myself. But stuff started shifting after that moment, after those few weeks. And I suddenly felt the pull to stop with the birth control pill I had been on for over a decade. And then I ended up going to all these workshops, trainings, online courses around my menstruation cycle, my body, my intuition, contrast, sexuality. And during that time, I got the idea to teach and host naked yoga workshops. Yes, you heard that right. People without any clothes, bending forwards touching their toes. So how did I end up from studying innovation management to now suddenly wanting to teach naked yoga? What are people going to think? What are my parents going to say? And am I seriously gonna throw away everything that I worked for over the past years? And so, I found myself back in the Netherlands talking to my mom about this decision that I was about to make. Am I just forgetting about these past three weeks and this past year and just go down the corporate career path? Or am I letting those three weeks in Bali take me onto a whole different path? And in that moment, my mom asked me a question, and it's probably a question you've heard before. "What would you do if money wasn't the issue?" And so that night, I booked my ticket back to Bali. Two months later, I packed up all the courage I had into a suitcase with no plan, no certainty, no savings. I was feeling scared. I was feeling confused. My friends and family were confused, but I knew I had to go back. And so I got on that plane, and I moved to the other side of the world. I ended up starting my own business. And from there, step by step, I got onto the path and doing the work and the mission that I'm on today. In those three weeks, what happened is that I got really curious on what made me ME, and it made me realize that I was taught to hide, to blame, and to shame basically everything that was at the core of who I was, that was at the core of being a woman—my menstruation cycle, my body's wisdom, my intuition, and my sexuality. And so me going off traveling and exploring the world was actually me looking for an initiation into womanhood, for an initiation into being human. And so those three weeks basically blew apart every single structure and belief system that I was taught. Those weeks showed me that there is nothing wrong with me. Like there's nothing wrong with me! It's amazing. And they showed me that freedom exists. And so ever since that moment, I've been following my intuition, picking up breadcrumb after breadcrumb. Ended up from teaching naked yoga to guiding women closer to their bodies, into their intuition, helping them connect to their cycle, and now helping them unlock their sexuality, their core feminine, creative power—the power of their pussy. So did everything suddenly become easy? Hell no. I still crumble. I've been falling down and getting back up more times than I can count. And still, sometimes I wonder, Wouldn't it just be so much easier to get a normal job? And in those moments, when that happens, I come back to my body, and I ask her, "What is it that you desire?" And every single time, she guides me back on the path that I'm meant to walk. So world, watch out because I'm on a mission to help every woman ignite the power of her pussy. Because when I did that, I started to radiate and shine and follow my desires. I started to follow that which makes my soul go wild from excitement. I became my most juicy, sexy, authentic self. And I take actions from that place instead of a place of shame and blame. And so now I have the absolute honor to gift that to other women. So women remember this, the core of your power lies in between your legs. So will you meet me there?

Layers of Forgiveness

What moves faster than the speed of a flying bullet? New Delhi, India. It was the end of January 1948. Gandhi saw his assassin. He saw the gun and, as the bullet veered straight towards his chest, he threw out his arms in a sign of sweet surrender and murmured the words, "I forgive you." Gandhi epitomizes the power of the human spirit to forgive instantly faster than a moving bullet. I did not tell my story during the Me Too movement because my story is not about my abuse. My story is that of forgiveness. Forgiveness came to me in such an unlikely time and place. It was last July, and I was in my kitchen after a long day of work. And I was scrolling on my phone. I got a message, an anonymous message, but I knew who it was from. He said, "I'm sorry for what happened. And I think about you often and pray that you have a good life." And for the first time in eight years, I've realized that it wasn't me who was suffering. It wasn't me who was the victim. I understood the meaning of compassion. And I had this visceral feeling in my body like all my pain just welled up and burped out of me. And I let go. I forgave. And I understood what they mean when they say, "A miracle is a shift in perception." So I went about telling my story on forgiveness on stages. And I could see in the audience people who were yearning to forgive. One time, I shared my story quite spontaneously in a public speaking group. And it wasn't rehearsed. And I ended up sharing more of what happened. And as the time ran out, I had to rush through about forgiveness. It felt so raw. And I felt so embarrassed. That wasn't really what I wanted to share. But that night, a woman in the audience tracked me down in the parking lot. And she looked me deeply into my eyes. And she said, "I have a story too. I can't even imagine sharing it, but how, how did you forgive?" And I told her, "Don't be so hard on yourself. More than anything, it's a willingness. It'll come to you." For me, it's like that quote. They say, "Falling in love is like falling asleep." You resist it. Then it happens very slowly and then all at once. But that's the funny, ironic thing about life. Here I am, this champion of forgiveness. I had no idea what was around the corner. The truth is, very recently in my life, I found out that someone very close to me betrayed me and that our connection was built on a mountain of lies and deception. This is not one of those surface level betrayals. This is not, you know, taking a steak knife in a dark alley, threatening to steal my Kate bed purse. This is one of those professional greed, Japanese butcher knife stabbing me in the back, almost showing up in my life with a perfect smile. But by the time that I finally turned around and saw the truth what was happening, I was stunned. You? It can't be you of all people. I trusted you. You know all my stories, all of my pain. I don't even know who I am without you, which made me realize that's the problem. It was really ME who betrayed ME because it was ME who was looking for validation from another person and for permission and for guidance. It was me who was hurting me all along. And as I looked at my life and how to pick up the pieces and how to move on after such a betrayal, I would like to say that I went and asked my spiritual teacher or looked at the bava hu kita, but like many of us, I found my New Age advice on Instagram. Someone who I admire, who is wealthy and successful and competent, shared someone very close to her betrayed her. And she shared about how she could carry on with elegance and with dignity, with her life. And she said to not hide, to hold your head up high, which I knew was a message for me because that's the name of one of my brands, Hold Your Head Up High, which is my neck choker brand. And maybe there is a reason why I named it that. Maybe it was time for me to find out. This time I don't have eight years to hide, and I might not be Gandhi, but I will do my best. What if this knife is one of the greatest gifts of my life? Because this pain cut me to my core and cut through all the illusions and my codependency. And you know, I could take this knife, and I could throw it back to that person, and I could share what happened, but in the end, I'm only hurting me. So I'm gonna take this knife and this pain, I'm gonna put it down, and I'm gonna let that go. Because this time I learned, that forgiveness means nothing outside of me can hurt me. And that it's my time to hold my head up high. And be me. Thank you.

The Deep Sadness of the Stoic Man

So I felt empty as I looked into my wife's eyes as we sat on the couch at our therapist's office, trying one last time to make this marriage work. And I asked myself, "Why? Why could I not accept her unconditional love?" I loved her. She unconditionally loved me. Isn't that what this whole life thing's about? Isn't this how the happily ever after story works? Why did I feel so empty? Why could I not go all in? What was this empty hollow feeling? It was shame. It was a shame that was fixed deep in me the moment I told her. The moment I looked into her eyes and told her that not only did I have an affair but that I had fallen in love with another woman. I watched her drop, collapse to the floor, crying and screaming. And all I could think about is how could I betray anybody, let alone this woman like this, someone who loved me, who I committed to being for the rest of our lives? How could I do that? It was not the shame that makes you feel like you did a bad thing. It was the shame that makes you feel like you're a bad person, that you're no longer worthy of being loved. And that hollow feeling in this moment, like how could I feel nothing? Nothing at all, completely empty. I was five, and I fell, and I banged my knee one time. And I remember my dad coming as I started to cry. He's like, "Chris, just relax. It's gonna be okay. Kathy, don't coddle him." Kathy's my mom. And I breathe. And I was like, you know, the tears went away, and I relaxed, and I was okay. And then I can remember the next time that I fell. And I remember falling. And I remember that pain started to come, and I squeezed, and I flexed so hard that I didn't feel any pain, and I didn't cry. And that was the birth of the stoic boy cos I was an emotional little kid. But if I flexed and squeezed hard enough, I knew I could protect myself from ever being called a pussy again—a wuss, a little girl. And that stoic boy turned into a stoic man. That stoic man entered the corporate world with no emotions cos emotion was weakness. Emotion was stress. If you were emotional or stressed, you didn't get the big account. They couldn't trust you to close the big deal. You couldn't get the big promotion. You couldn't be a success. Cos, of course, as a man, we all need to be a success. So I sat in this meeting one time. My boss tells me, "We're cutting your territory in half." I sit there, of course, just listening like, Oh. Half the territory, half the accounts, half the forecast, half the revenue, and my little chance at winning the little top performer's trophy was like fading away. But, of course, I'm sitting in this meeting cool, collective. I leave that meeting, and I feel something like in my heart. It just doesn't really feel great. So I walk to my car. I get in my car, and I start driving, and it goes like tick, tick, tick. And then boom. My tears are running down my face. I'm screaming in my car. I think I'm having a fucking heart attack. I literally be like, Get me to the hospital. I pull into the hospital. My wife comes and the doctor to tell me, "You're okay. You just had a panic attack." So I was okay. And only my wife, mom, therapist, and doctor knew that that had happened. So the next day, you go right back to the office like nothing happened. That stoic man in the corporate world made his way right into my relationship with my wife because I had to be strong. I had to be the pillar. I couldn't do something that might make her emotional because I had to be strong for the two of us. And it didn't allow me to connect to her at all. Cos I was scared if, all of a sudden, like I wanted to have a simple conversation, like "Can we just maybe do these things? Cos I think it'd be fun." Did she think I'm gonna shame her by that? Is that gonna cause a reaction? Might as well ... nope, can't say that. Her job was killing her, and I just wanted to be like, "Can we talk about your job cos it's impacting me too, and I just feel like it's getting in between us?" But I couldn't do that cos I didn't want to create hysterics. I had to be strong for her. I felt like I was playing second fiddle to her family, but I couldn't say anything. And then one night the phone rings at three o'clock in the morning. It's her mom hysterical, crying. And I can feel that she's about to have a breakdown. And in that moment, I'm like, Geez, I've done all this to avoid the breakdown. And here it comes. And then I felt the tick tick. And instead of the boom, it's that moment like in movies where they throw the bad guy on top of the grenade, except that was my heart. So it went like this . . . and I held the panic attack in, and it just like imploded me. This stoic man was killing me across the board. And in a moment when I was about to go into standard Chris Walker Fix it Mode, shift the knobs, change the job, change the location, do whatever it is—it'll be fine for another six months, a year—I realized that I had no idea who I was. I didn't know who I was. And like how could I fix what I didn't know? So I decided to move to Bali to become a yoga teacher. Yep. And backpacked a yoga mat, six books with me and why six books is important is cos I am not a reader. But if I was gonna prove to myself that I was gonna change, I was gonna start reading books. So I get to Bali. Yoga, eat, sleep, repeat. Yoga, eat, sleep, repeat. A little cacao dessert, a little ecstatic dance on the weekends, but leaving so much bullshit behind me. I actually began to really feel. I began to focus. I began to feel what I could only describe in that moment—it was just like this little glimmer of what felt like somebody wrote in a book about this thing inner peace. Like it just kind of felt like a little peaceful. I began to feel. And dare I say it just a little bit of may I call it self-love? Just a little bit. Just like a little salt on top of the dish kind of amount of self-love. But like I was feeling, and this shit was fucking awesome. But then I get a phone call. I get a phone call from my wife. She's been deported. She's in a holding cell in Gatwick Airport about to be forced to go back to France with absolutely nothing. And all I could think about is I need to be there for her. At the drop of a hat, I buy a ticket to Paris because I love her. I want to show her that I love her. I also wanna show her that like I've changed. I'm like a new fucking person right now. Like this is really, really real. I'm on the way to the airport. And I've got a book in hand. I call it 'The book.' Brené Brown's Daring Greatly. Now this book is the book for me for a specific reason. It's maybe six years before my mom gave me this book. That book moved to three flats in San Francisco, moved to London, came to Bali, had never been cracked once. So I'm going. And I can even remember through the difficult times in life and only now looking back on it, I could call it depressed states that I was going through, that my mom would say, "You know, Chris, I think it'd be a good idea right now if you read that Daring Greatly book I got you." I can remember hearing my wife being like, "You know, this might be a really good time for you to read that book your mom got you." Of course, I don't listen to them at all, but I lay a gauntlet out for myself. I lay a gauntlet that says I'm gonna read this book cover to cover in one day because that'll really prove to me and to her that I've changed. Cos the old Chris Walker could not read a book in one day. I had read about twelve books in my entire life up to this point. So I got this pink highlighter, and I'm sitting on the plane. Two hundred pages. All right, twenty pages tick. I get to ten tick marks the book is done. Twenty pages tick. Fading into, okay, take a nap. Back. Tick, tick, tick. I get the 10th tick. I finish the book, mission accomplished. I sit there, tears running down my face, and I'm like, "You mean vulnerability is not weakness. It's a superpower. What?" Ahh. I can laugh about it now, but in that moment, and I don't do anything half-ass, I knew there was only one thing to do from here. I was to repropose to my wife. So with vulnerability as my little superpower—on that, her Airbnb in Paris, I'm standing crying butt naked reading the vows that I had rewritten. This new commitment, this new love, this new me was there. And at the end, I asked her to be my wife, and she sat there crying and smiling at me. And she said, "I can't." It destroyed me. Like the feeling leading into it was so beautiful. It was so pure. It felt so good. It felt so amazing. I felt, I felt this whole time. I felt like I had never felt before. I was experiencing what it was like to go in, and regardless if she said yes or no, I knew that I had changed. I knew that I had feelings and a connection to this thing called vulnerability that I had never had before. But there was this deep sadness, like why couldn't this have happened two months ago? Like why couldn't I have found the whole sense of self two months ago, and I would've fixed everything. Right? How did I get dug into this hole? How did I believe vulnerability was a weakness for so long? Seven-year-old Chris knew vulnerability was weakness. I played basketball. This kid, David Baird, couldn't dribble with his left hand. And I terrorized him. I stole the ball from him over and over and over again. I was an asshole. It's okay, though. I was just thinking, ding, ding, ding, I didn't need to score a single point. Every steal was a win. I was winning, and I lived the rest of my life with two things moving forward from that point; a belief that everybody else was me. They were gonna take advantage of my vulnerabilities just like I took advantage of David Baird's vulnerabilities. And so, I began to live life strategizing on how to win. Cos why wouldn't you want to be a winner? Why would you wanna be a loser if you could be a winner? But obviously, with this story, it caught up to me. So now I stand committed to no longer seeing life as a game that's all about winning. I choose to see life as a game that's about experiencing. For life is not all about winning. Winning is this future-dated idea outcome. Focusing on winning kept me from fully feeling, from fully expressing, from fully connecting to who I was because I might put in jeopardy the win. It took me completely out of the present moment. And isn't life about this present moment? For when all we're doing is focusing on the outcome, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We set ourselves up for upset, suffering, depression. What if you create the company and the only reason is to make a bunch of money, and it goes bankrupt? If the only reason that you get into the relationship is so that it'll last forever, and it ends. If you build all the money so that you can be accepted as a success, and then you're still not. You focus so much on the result that you just let life go by, and you just miss experiencing all of it. So we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity right now to drop the stories. To drop the stories that told you what you were supposed to look like, what you were supposed to do, what you were supposed to feel. You can drop all of that bullshit and connect to the present moment. You can connect to the most authentic truest version of yourselves. And maybe you can even share the present moment with somebody you love. But you can begin to feel and share along this beautiful yet not always easy journey that's life because if you don't, life will pass you by one moment at a time until you either die or you tell yourself that you have had enough. Thank you all for your time.

Trusting Desire into the Unlived Life

November 2018. I'm sitting in couples therapy with my boyfriend, and the therapist says, "Megan, look, he is afraid of you." And I get defensive. I'm like, "Why is HE afraid of ME? He's the one that won't be loyal. He's the one that's not committing. He's the one that's sleeping around." And she says, "Stop, Megan, you're punishing him." And I pause, and I look in his eyes, and I can see it's true. He is afraid of me cos I've been mean. And you know why I've been mean? Because I've been denying my desire in order to please him. In all these little spots, he said, "I want an open relationship." I said, "Okay, I'll try it." He wanted to live and work at the retreat center. And I said, "Okay, I'll leave LA." In all these little spots, I went with what he wanted to try to please him, keep our relationship. But meanwhile, I was punishing him under the radar. Has anyone ever done that? Okay. I'm glad I'm not alone. In that moment, though, I realized it was a wake-up call for me. I was like, "Where else in my life am I doing this?" I started to see all these little places where I wasn't being honest with myself or others. For example, my job was to sell corporate training at the retreat center. I hadn't sold any because I didn't think that they were ready for it. My other job: I was there to give insights at the retreat center, but I just judged people cos I didn't want to risk my reputation by saying what I actually thought. I felt stagnant and stuck cos I didn't want to admit that I really wanted to travel. Seeing the fear in my boyfriend's eyes was a wake-up call. I didn't like the woman I was becoming. I was being mean, so every day I sat, and I meditated, and I asked, "What do I really want? And what do I need to admit to myself?" For days nothing happened, and then a very clear vision began to form. A few weeks later, I was talking to my friend, Rev. Jo, who is probably the wisest woman I have ever met. She is a native American medicine woman, a shaman, a preacher to Agape, where thousands come to see her every week. Basically, there's no bs-ing in front of this woman. She's been a desire doula for thousands of people, and I was pregnant with a very big, very secret desire. I sat down with her, and I started going into my story as we do. I was saying, "Ugh, I just keep fighting with my partner, and I feel ineffective at the retreat center. Everything feels stuck. Oh, and every time I think about Bali, I cry. And as I said that, tears streamed down my face - my whole body covered in goosebumps. She turned and looked at me, and in her Southern drawl, she said, "Baby, ain't nothing gonna feel right until you follow that. Bali is a calling on your life." It hit me with that thud of incontrovertible truth, something that was undeniable and really uncomfortable. Has anyone had a moment like that? Yeah. I knew she was right, but my mind had a lot of things to say about it. I said, "But Rev. Jo, what about my job and my partner and my community, and what are they gonna do without me?" And da da da. "Megan, do you teach about desire, or do you teach about obligation?" Fair enough. Right? But still I was scared. I was really scared because if I left and went to Bali, it would mean giving up everything I had created - my friends, my spiritual community, my job, my relationship, my financial security, my family - for some vague vision I had seen in meditation. It felt insane. But with Rev. Jo next to me, I realized maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe this is not insane. So, that night with the little bit of courage I had, I went home, I opened my laptop, and I quickly bought a ticket to Bali. I knew if I sat and thought about it, I wouldn't do it. The fear voices would get far too loud, and I would lose all my courage, and I wouldn't do it. So I bought my ticket and then over the next few weeks, I sat with people as I told them my decision. My boss was angry because I was leaving my new job. I broke up with my boyfriend, and I held him as he cried. I said goodbye to my friends and my family who questioned my decision, cos no one understood. "Why are you going to Bali? You don't know anyone there." And I didn't have a good reason. It was really hard to say goodbye. This is why people don't follow their desire because we can feel intuitively in the short term, people will be hurt. People will be upset. They will be ashamed. They will be angry at you. You'll feel disappointed. And so, it is far easier in the short term to pretend. But what's the alternative? I had seen in myself when I was pushing down my desire and denying it, I was eroding into a lesser version of myself. And then I was blaming people for my unhappiness. So I said my goodbyes over the next few weeks. And then I found myself in Bali, and I felt this little tingling sense of aliveness all over my body. I felt hopeful. I didn't know what was coming. All I saw was 'Do Women's Retreats in Bali.' That was what I saw in my head. It's been magic since. I've had two amazing women's retreats exactly as I had seen in my meditation. I met my husband-to-be at an exotic dance - very Bali! I adopted two dogs. I grew my coaching business past six figures. It has been so beautiful. But beyond any of this external is how I feel inside. I feel more connected to myself, more aligned, more centered than I ever have. But it's not like a one-and-done decision. Following my desire is something I have to practice every single day because the fear voices are there. And the fear voices are really tempting, and the desire is quiet. And it's still. Just this week, for example, we were buying our first home - it's a big desire of mine - and all of a sudden, my fear voices were so loud. It's like, "What are you doing? You're insane to commit to staying in Bali, and everything is uncertain, and there's coronavirus. Why would you do that?" So I called up one of the other wisest people I know, my mom, and she said, "Megan, I have never seen you so happy. You're thriving. You look like you." And in that moment I realized, that's why I cried when I thought about Bali those two years ago. Cos I thought I was just going halfway around the world, but I was really just coming home to myself. There's a few things I know about desire that I wanna leave you with. The first one is there are a million reasons not to follow it. And there's a million voices. Your shoulds, your pros, your cons, your fears, other people's opinions, external influences. And there's only one quiet voice, and it's inside your body. The second thing is I have to admit that I heard it. This is actually the most important. When I'm working with women, I often hear, "I don't know what I want. I just don't know." But when we get down to it, most of the time, they really know what they want. They just know it has consequences. The third one ask for help. I would not be here if it was not for that coach, for Rev. Jo, for my mom, for Colleen. It's like none of us can do this alone, nor are we meant to. We need each other to live into our desires. The fourth one is I have to be willing to feel all of the feelings because when I follow desire, like when I came to Bali, it didn't necessarily feel good. It felt scary and uncertain and nerve-racking, and oh my gosh. And like heartbreaking and difficult, but it felt honest. So my willingness to be with all of the feelings is important. And then the last one I know is my desire is my blueprint to living my soul. And your desire is a hundred percent unique to you. It's how you know what you're here to be and how you know what you're here to do. So, your desire will take you on a totally unique journey. I don't know where your desire is taking you, but I do know that she's a persistent mistress, and she will be knocking on that door asking, "Are you ready to wake up and trust me and in doing so trust yourself?" The question is, will you answer it? Thank you so much.

Dancing with Mandela

In 1969 I was a little girl in South Sumatra in Palembang, and my father was CEO of a big company. But at the time, parents would spend time to have lunch with the children. So my dad would go home at twelve and have lunch with us, all the children. And then he would go back to the office. And in my surrounding neighborhood, there were still forests, there were still rivers, and there was still a lot of poor people. There was a beggar who would come from house to house, bringing ragged white sacks, and each house would give him a cup of rice. Not money, only a cup of rice, so maybe he would not be starving. Of course, he would come to our house too. And my mom would prepare a special plate, with a special glass, and special food for my father. That's how we respected our father—special food for him. I saw the tukang minta-minta—the beggar—come and the cook would go with a cup of rice. But then I saw the food on the table, and I thought, Oh, he might be hungry. Why don't I just give it to him? So I put it in a big tin can. I put my father's food there with the rice, with the fish, with everything for him, and gave it to him. And I can still remember his eyes like disbelief and sparkling. That old man, now I still can imagine his face. So he ate there, but when my mom found out, she was confused and furious because there was no food for my father. There was no restaurant. There was no café. She had to cook and said, "You don't do that again because we can give a cup of rice, but not your father's food." I did the same thing the second day. And I did the same thing the third day. On the fourth day, maybe my mom thought this little girl cannot be told. So she told the cook to hide all the food on top of the kitchen cabinet. I was so small. I couldn't reach it, so that food was safe. I had my own lunch. What did I do with that? I gave it to him. And my mom said, "Maybe you don't understand Bahasa Indonesia. Which part is it that you don't understand? Do not give food because we give rice." And I was not sad. I was not angry. I was just feeling like I felt him, and my mom said, "No lunch. It's okay. You can give yours, but no lunch for you." I was not crying. I just walked to the neighbor and, you know, went into the kitchen talking. I had a very, very, a very loving neighbor, Basri. And they fed me. "Have you had your lunch? Come, come, come eat with us." So I had lunch at my neighbor's, and the big sister was a dancing teacher. So after lunch, I got a free lesson in dancing, and I danced. I danced and danced. My mom didn't know about it because she's like, "Oh, she finished her lunch." And that I had then gone to my neighbor. And I still remember that feeling. And I'm happy that I could keep that feeling because then I became an activist. I was the chairwoman of the Legal Aid Foundation for Women and Children. And I also established Kapika, the independent commission against corruption—like the Indonesia Corruption Watch. With the feeling of that little girl, I knew that in my heart, I'm an activist and I had a long career. I was in investment banking. I was in the biggest advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson. I was in first class on planes, in hotels and everything. But I knew deep in my heart I've never stopped wanting to become an activist. That was my story in 1969. And 1999. This is what I want to share with you. I went to Durban, South Africa, for the OECD conference on anti-corruption, so delegates from all over the world were there. I went with Professor Emil Salim, the former Minister of Environment. He became an activist after retirement. And I helped him to prepare the presentation. 1999. We did the presentation with slides so he could do it with his handwriting. And I was the one who suggested him to use slides with his handwriting. And he would talk in the plenary session. The plenary session was the biggest session. There were like 2,500 delegates there. There was James Wolfensohn, at that time the director of IMF. And the president of Transparency International. There was also the CEO of OECD and, of course, Nelson Mandela because it was in South Africa. And Prof. Emil said, "There will be the plenary session. And after that, there will be questions and answers." I said, "Oh, I really wanna ask a question. How do I do that?" "Sit next to me," he said. There would be hundreds of hands. So after the plenary session finished, there would be questions and answers. And "Okay. Who wants to ask a question?" I raised my hand like hundreds of hands also, but Prof. Emil was right. And somebody said, "That girl." "Me from Indonesia?" I was so happy but also shocked. Oh, I better have a good question because maybe they chose me because first I'm a woman. Second I'm from Asia, from Indonesia—very famous at that time because we were the champions of corruption. That was 1999, just one year after Suharto stepped down. I think, Well, this is my chance. So I raised my hand, and they asked, "Okay, who do you want to question?" I said, of course, "Nelson Mandela." I said, "Mr. Mandela, would you share with us what were the biggest obstacles when you became president? What do you think was the most difficult thing?" Because we know he won awards for housing when he put all the people from the slums into housing—he won so many awards. He then said, "That's a good question, Miss Irma Hutabarat." I was so happy. My name was mentioned! And he answered, "I have built schools. I have built housing. I have built infrastructure, but the most difficult thing, and the most important thing to me, is to heal my people. They have a lot of wounds, anger, insults, disappointment, you name it, from apartheid. And it's not easy to overcome that. I can't build this nation if they are not healed because they're not ready. So that's what I did. I sent a psychiatrist, a psychologist, public figures, and the people in each and every village would pay special attention to the wounded person that was allowed at that time." And I realized that he's not only a big name, but he has a big heart. And the evening after that, there was the closing party, the farewell party. And everybody was there. I was there too. And somebody came to me and said, "Miss Irma, what about you? You were the one who asked the question. Would you like to dance with Nelson Mandela?" "Do you want me to answer? Is the Pope a Catholic? Of course I want to dance with Nelson Mandela," and he escorted me and I was dancing. I was dancing. If you asked me how I felt, I saw a very compassionate person—peaceful and very gentle. And I was dancing with him. I felt honored. And I remembered my childhood. I remembered my mom before she died. She told me, "Now I understand you. I shouldn't have punished you because you were a kid. You've got a golden heart. We had lots of food on the table. Why would I punish you?" And that was the nicest thing that I heard from my mom. "And yet you learned how to dance?" She didn't know about it. And I told her that the punishment was like a blessing in disguise. So when I was dancing with Nelson Mandela, it felt like I was dancing with life. And this is the message that I want to give to you all—keep dancing, keep dancing with life.

The Temple Inside

I was a boy during the 1995 Galungan ceremony. I think it's the biggest ceremony in Bali. It's an exciting moment for a boy because he knows a lot of food will be there! Sometimes your father will give you new clothes. I was just excited. But before that, I had a responsibility. I needed to dress up my temple. So I walk to my temple. I prepared my temple. Just a sad moment coming. In Bali, our temple is the one thing to be proud of. Without coming into your house, everyone can see it from outside. When I put the last touch to my temple, all the time, it's falling down because all the wood is broken. I looked down at the middle of my temple. I was like just a young boy at that time. "One day, when I have a good job, I will fix you. I promise." My father actually is a builder. When I was a kid, I still remember because my body was not like a Balinese - big enough to help him to work. I didn't have my Sundays free. Every Sunday morning, my mom packed food for us. I was like, "No, Mom, I wanna stay home. I wanna play with my friend. "No, son, go help your dad." So every Sunday, I go to help, but the question keeps coming. I help my father build everyone's house. Why doesn't he rebuild my house? What's wrong with him? And I have an uncle. He joined the army, and he's the youngest in the family, and he's supposed to have the responsibility to fix the temple because, in Bali, the youngest one has the responsibility to continue helping the family. As he is in the army, he has duty in Jakarta. Every time he comes home, he promises, "Next Galungan, we will have a new temple." I'm excited again. We have hope. "Galungan coming, Galungan coming, Galungan coming." We never had a new temple. So sad. And then one day I finish college in 2003. I have an interview in one of the resorts in Ushawada. The question they ask me is, "What is your goal?" "I want to fix my temple." Everyone was laughing at me. "It's not about that. What is your career plan? What do you want to be? Do you want to be a chef? You want to be a . . ." "No, no, no, no. I want to fix my temple." "Okay. It's up to you." In 2005, I got the opportunity to go to the US, thank God. To find a job. I needed to borrow money - about US$4,000. The first three months I worked in the US, I worked so hard. I did everything. I told my manager, "Give me a job. If you put me in the dormitory, I will cry every day. I miss my home. Give me a job." Three months later, I repaid all the money I borrowed to go to the US. One day, I called my dad. "Dad, be ready to fix the temple. I will send you the money." "Okay, we will do it." Why did he answer so fast on that day? On that day, I realized why my dad didn't fix the house, didn't fix the temple before. He wanted to build me first. He wanted to build me, to become the man of the house. Phew. In 2006 I was about one year in the US. Every single month I sent all my money home. Finally, in August 2006, they sent me a picture of the new temple. I was so proud of myself. And I realized again everyone is waiting. So I needed to jump in to lead the action. To be the leader, there's no need to be the oldest one, no need to be the youngest one, but anyone can jump in and start to do it. And, finally, my uncle's coming to help. My grandpa is coming to help. Everyone's coming together, and they built the temple together. And from that spirit, it brings us to today in our village and becoming the leaders of the village. And the spirit of togetherness is coming to us again. We are together. We can do more, but without somebody starting, everyone will wait, and the time will never come. So don't worry. You need to start. When you start, even if it's wrong, even if it fails, don't care. The results will come in the end. I never dreamed to be standing here today to speak about my story and stand with all the experts that live in Bali. And again, COVID-19 teaches us Balinese a lot now. Being together in the fields, helping each other. Just as we do now. As you know, stories are important in Bali. And we have, in fact, the most stories in Indonesia. I think because we place our lives too much on tourism, we forget what was sustainable before. Today everything is coming back to bring us a new hope, new spirit. As a leader as well, the question's coming "What do you think is sustainable?" One day it's stories coming back, and everyone goes back to their jobs. Don't worry about it. At least what has been asleep for twenty-five years is awake now. Someone who has never experienced this before knows it now. The new generation understands about the spirit that's been built in our village for a very long time, and they had forgotten about it. So, together we can bring the spirit up. Togetherness happens in Bali. Thank you. Thank you for listening to me. I'm Made Astawa. Goodnight.

Sounds of Wisdom

There I was, sitting in my new apartment, and I start shouting out loud. "I am free. I am free. I am free." Rewind. I'm twenty-one years old. And I wanna find the man of my dreams. And my friend at the spa that I'm working at, she looks at me, and she says, "I have the perfect man for you." I get really excited. My heart just starts to beat fast. We go out on this boat trip that weekend, and five margaritas later, we fall madly in love. You know how that goes. As the relationship progressed, I realized this wasn't a typical relationship. This was toxic. There were many ups and downs, lots of fights. There was abuse, manipulation, control—the whole thing. I was losing myself. And one night, we get in a raging fight, and I'm shaking. I've got mascara drawing down my face. I'm feeling broken. And he looks at me and screams at me, "Don't come home until you bring another woman home for both of us." I'm devastated. I still go out that night cos I didn't think I had another choice even though I knew I was so disrespected. So dishonored. So I'm sitting at the bar, and I'm getting drunk. And I look and feel into, Is this really my life? Is this really what I came here to do? Is this happening? Am I gonna end up just like my mom, living on the streets, choosing alcohol and drugs, and being a prostitute? Am I gonna end up just like her? No, no, no. It's not supposed to go like that. No, no. Until one day, I woke up drunk for the last time. I woke up, and I'm sitting on my bed, and I reek of alcohol. I'm shook up. I'm dying awake. And with God's grace, I was shown two paths. One path; if I was to continue that path and go down that route of self-destruction, what my life would look like. And guess what? It was just like my mom's. And then I was shown this other path; if I was to awaken and choose myself and sobriety, and it was heaven on earth. That day I called every single family member and told them I had a problem. I told them I needed help. And so, as I climbed my way in sobriety, the lights started coming on. I started to awaken who I truly was. I started taking empowering steps. I went into yoga teacher training. I almost changed my name - Anandi. (Yeah. That's where it comes from.) I wanted to change myself. I started running, I started yoga. I started all the things that I loved. It was a full month—my first month of sobriety—and I felt joy for the first time. And I go, Can I feel this good? Can I feel this free? Yes, yes, yes. But I still couldn't leave him. I was hooked. I was hooked. So he agreed to go to therapy with me. And that's when it shifted. That's when things really shifted. His name was Greg—the therapist. He was an expert in his field, amazing with addiction. And he started to give us tools. He gave me tools. As I started to peel back the layers of what I thought was me madly in love with this man was just my compensation for the love I didn't have for self. And Greg started telling me it was my inner child trauma that was keeping me going back and back and back to this man. And so he asked me to create a boundary, a boundary that I knew I was gonna keep. And that boundary? I'll never forget. I was sitting with our therapist, and I say to the therapist as a witness, "If he does this one more time, I'm out that door." And he did. We were driving to the airport. We're in another raging fight. We get to his gate as he was leaving. And he says those words, and there was the boundary being crossed. There was it. I got home, packed my stuff, and left him. And I never went back. The gift that Greg gave me from that boundary was the gift of fatherly love. Because at the time, I didn't have my father in my life. I didn't have my mother in my life. So I had to start to father myself and mother myself. See, when we have trauma from our childhood, we typically have these stories that are wrapping us into attracting partners and things that keep us locked in prison. And we need to start to heal these inner traumas, to allow us to awaken our own inner sovereign power, to bring us back into our inner parent and our inner union. Especially if you're dealing with a narcissist. See, if you're an empath like me, we have a lot of motherly love. And the narcissist and the empath, they go hand in hand. They're a perfect recipe for disaster. But you know what? That man—my partner—was my guru. He was my teacher. So remember the mirror and the blessing in the lessons. They're showing you what is still unhealed. Let it be a reverence to continue your path to awaken to who you truly are. See, this is why I show up every day, supporting men and women all around the world, helping them heal these inner traumas from the physical, mental, and emotional body to bring them back into their sovereign divinity, their sovereign power. It is such a blessing that I get to support women and men. Watching them blossom, awaken, and remember who they truly are. From that boundary, I've been able to achieve quantum leaps. And I continue to surprise myself like here I am surprising myself showing up. I would never have been able to do this years ago. Let me be an embodiment of how liberation can be. Let me be an example that you don't have to live in that pain. Let me show you that going from that much density brings you into this much light. See, women, I'm talking to you. We need to shift this. See, when a woman follows her intuition, she is free, and they are free. When a woman walks away from a relationship that's dimming her light, that's causing her pain, she is free, and they are free. When a woman says no, that sacred no, even if it's hard, she is free, and they are free. See, when I started to awaken myself, he started to awaken, and that's how it works. Here we are awakening ourself to awaken others. From that time period, I've been able to connect to my dad. After ten years estranged, he sends me text messages, "I love you." It's amazing. It's a miracle. And that's what happens. You become the miracle. So let me leave you with this. Remember, you are the medicine. You are the one that you've been waiting for. Remember, freedom is your birthright. Thank you.

Good Girl, Rebel, Queen

I hear his footsteps going down, down, down the stairs. The front door opens and closes, and I'm alone. Holy crap. I can't do this, but I can't do that either. It was 2010, and I had just asked my husband for a divorce. I thought I'd feel free once I told him. In reality, I was freaking terrified because I had never been alone. Instead, I had spent my life building my cage and squeezing myself inside of it. I had hushed the whispers that said, "This isn't it. You don't fit. You're made for something more." And when I ignited the affair that burned down my marriage, I thought I'd burnt down the cage with it. I thought my time in the cage is done, but I couldn't have been more wrong. And I tumbled into the next relationship. And once again, the cage appeared, and that cycle repeated over and over because, I'm just gonna be real right now, I was not a fast learner. And with every relationship, that cage was getting smaller and tighter and more impossible to exist within until a pivotal relationship born out of a swipe right on Tinder. We fell instantly in love. I loved him. He loved me. We were each other's one. We declared our love to everybody that we knew. Got Facebook official. And six weeks later, it was me that was being asked to walk down those stairs and out that door. And that was the pain that saw me bawling my eyes out on a table after a chi energy release massage, where all the ghosts of my relationships past had revealed themselves to me in a vision. I realized, "It's me. I'm doing this to myself. I'm trying to play all these roles, and they're not working out for me. And I'm just the good girl. And I'm trying so hard to look good enough, to feel good enough, to be good enough." My healer friend, who essentially is my Yoda, was holding me in her arms, and the pain was so much. It was the lowest point of my life. And I was desperate to get out of that cage. I want to ask you something. Have you ever been presented with something that in the past, you just would've said "Absolutely hell no, no way" to, but right now feels like the perfect solution? Yeah. That's where I was at. So when my Yoda mentioned ayahuasca, I didn't ask too many questions. I just said yes. And what opened up for me in that moment was my rebel side. What if I did something that back in 2014 would be a radical action for a regular person to take? What if I took on that ayahuasca journey? What if I decided that all of that societal conditioning was just a bunch of BS and that trying to live an appropriate life is just the cage that we put ourselves in? Because really, I mean, who really wants to live an appropriate life, right? Like, ugh! And yet, we're all so busy trying to be appropriate. So I really only had the very vaguest of ideas of what I was getting myself into. I had heard that you needed to dress all in white. And as the taxi pulled up to the ceremonial space, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I'm gonna be with my people. Finally, I'm gonna feel like I belong. And I walked into that space in all my new whites, and everybody else was just dressed in normal clothes. And I realized in that moment, here I am again, just trying to fit in, just trying to be appropriate. Well, I just had that one outfit, and it was a weekend-long thing. So I really just had to style it out. And that was Rebel Initiation Round One. But the ayahuasca journey? That was pure love. I was a baby held in my mother's arms, and I felt so safe, and I felt so beautiful. And I felt so connected. And I cried for all the parts of myself that had forgotten how to love. And I knew what I had to do. Over the next eight months, I gave up my addiction to people-pleasing. I let go of being the good girl. I stopped laying myself out on the sacrificial altar of somebody else's desires. And I gathered all the fractured parts of myself back together and loved them into feeling worthy. And then, as Yoda's do, my Yoda reappeared to help me unlock the last door to the last cage. She showed me that I needed to stop being a servant to a corporate agenda. That I needed to become the queen and put on my freaking crown. And I needed to leave my old job and my old life behind. Through all of this, I have learned, or I have created, in fact, some personal truths. I am here to be a rebel. I am here to be a queen. I did not come here to live in a cage and be dulled down. I came here to command, and we have all been fed a lie that if we play by the rules, we'll be taken care of. But in my experience, it's when I don't play by the rules that love, passion, vibrancy, and luxury become available to me. Thank you.
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