Atarah Valentine: Overcoming Conditioning, Disrupting Patterns, and Conscious Transformation

Jessica: 0:00

If you enjoy this episode, we would love it if you would leave us a review, give us a follow or a like and share it with your friends. Thanks, rebels.

Jessica: 0:59

Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, I'm excited.

Atarah Valentine: 1:03

I have not recorded a podcast in so long, so I'm excited.

Jessica: 1:07

This is actually a really powerful manifestation for me, awesome.

Atarah Valentine: 1:11

Thank you.

Jessica: 1:12

And there are many reasons why I've grown to admire you so much and I know that might seem strange because we've never met before but you've been really open and transparent about your own journey, so I feel like I've been invited in to witness your growth, and while I know that you talk about growth taking in sweet time which it does I think you have actually had a pretty rapid acceleration from the place or the mindset that you once lived in, which I think speaks volumes to the commitment you made to yourself. I've watched you, in a really short time, grow to be powerful and embodied in yourself and also become really successful in helping other people do the same. And so, given that this podcast explores how the fuck do we do that, like what is going on behind the scenes in the lives of the people that we admire, how did they get to be where they are, and how do we actually decondition ourselves and become the conscious creators of our own lives, so I honestly couldn't think of anyone better to have this conversation with than Attara Valentine.

Atarah Valentine: 2:13

Thank you Honestly. Thank you because everything you said it's not even that I set out to do any of this. To be honest, all of it kind of happened by accident, as far as me doing this for a career, but to me it's such a gift because we share, sometimes especially through social media, and you don't really know if it's landing where it's going, and even my most engaged people sometimes don't like, don't comment, but then I'll randomly be in New York and I'll be stopped by like six people who are like, oh my God, this thing really helped me. So it's such a blessing for me to actually get the feedback.

Atarah Valentine: 2:52

So thank you, because not that it's what motivates me in doing this, but it definitely is always affirming in the process. I unfortunately haven't really ever been afraid to share, even though I've faced so much rejection, and I just love when people can also share how they're feeling in response to something so candidly, because a lot of people are good at sharing their vulnerability, but very few people are good at sharing compliments or positivity because they think it's cheesy or they think someone's going to judge them.

Atarah Valentine: 3:21

And actually if we all did that, we'd all be a lot happier and feel safer, sharing the vulnerability right.

Jessica: 3:27

Yeah, I think we also assume that you must know somehow right Because of the position that you're in. Like I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable just telling you how great you are. Thank you Well, it's been very meaningful to me.

Atarah Valentine: 3:39

Yeah, and could I say something quickly off the back of that? Because I really like to live and practice what I preach. I don't want to let that piece that you just said go by, because even taking a compliment can be really difficult and they see so many people push the compliment back like, oh, I didn't try that harder, oh, I didn't do this, and they kind of take credit away from themselves. So I want to say from a place of zero arrogance but a total place of knowing that I do know right. But just because I know, it doesn't mean that it's not valuable to hear that so many people I work with are like oh, I can't say that, or I can't say that I'm great or I can't. But why? If anybody should think that you're great, certainly it should be yourself. I mean, how do we expect other people, right? How do we expect other people to sign up if we don't agree ourselves, right?

Melissa Bauknight: 4:28

Yeah, so too. The first guest that we had on our podcast is a somatic movement coach that I have worked with for the last couple of years and we do this movement practice in an intimate group and when we're doing our check-ins, anytime someone says something that is good about their lives, she always calls it a hot brag, and I always love that. She's like, oh, hot brag. We're like, yes, way to brag about yourself and it's totally. It was a great experience to be witnessed in your celebration of yourself and have it be celebrated also. Instead of being like, calm down, be more humble, you know? Stop being so arrogant 100%.

Jessica: 5:01

So let's keep bragging about Attara and let you know a little bit about him. Attara Valentine is a certified hypnotherapist and mindset coach with specialized training in inner child healing, trauma recovery, mental and emotional release therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, ptsd, cancer, law of attraction, immune disorders and weight loss. I have to say that I generally feel pretty skeptical of people in the wellness space. I think a lot of what is taught is a form of spiritual bypass, and you are one of the few people who resonate with me on such a deep level for a number of reasons, and I think you're really generous in sharing the work. You have this full roster of clients, but you're also very active on social media and you're doing podcasts. You're building programs so that all of us can understand ourselves better and feel more empowered in ourselves and our decision making. So welcome, attara. I'm so grateful that you're here with us.

Atarah Valentine: 5:55

Me too.

Jessica: 5:57

So there's a question that we ask all of our guests, so we're going to start there. It's one thing to hear your list of credentials and another thing to hear from you how you experience being yourself. So we ask who are you and how is that different from who you thought or were told you were supposed to be?

Atarah Valentine: 6:14

Yeah. So what I would love about this is this is exactly what I teach, and I think most people I work with, most people I meet, don't know who they are or, if they do, they're completely ignoring who they are. Most people I meet are how they are right, and there's a big differentiation between who you are and how you are. Most of us are chasing the how, because that's where we get rewarded. We get rewarded by pushing certain aspects forward and hiding certain aspects. There are conditions around what we have to do to receive. There are conditions around what we have to do to be accepted. There are conditions around what we have to do or how we have to show up to be loved.

Atarah Valentine: 6:54

Who I am is someone who does not care about any of that anymore. I lived so much of my life in that space and I could never figure out what was wrong with me quote unquote Because I was doing everything that I was taught to do to be a good friend, to be a good son, to be a good student, to make other people comfortable, to always show up, to push through, to be resilient. Even when I was a manifestation coach, I was manifesting all the time, but I wasn't happy I was still doing what someone told me I was supposed to do and mastering it, because that's the small piece of who I am that would come forward right. I am someone who will sit and really try to understand. I love learning. If I describe myself in one word, curious, that is who I am. I'm someone who's incredibly curious and not from a judgmental space. I love experience. I love people. I love seeing how people see themselves within the world. I love just trying new things. I love learning. I love growing, and so much of who I thought I was which is really how I was had absolutely nothing to do with my well-being. It had to do with the well-being of everybody around me, which I thought was supposed to give me some kind of purpose and satisfaction.

Atarah Valentine: 8:16

Right, and I want to be really clear that this doesn't mean be selfish and only care about yourself, because I think people misconstrue that, which is why a lot of people think, when we start looking at ourselves and getting curious with ourselves, that it feels selfish because we're not used to it. Right? I'm still a great friend, I'm still a great son. I still fully apply myself in all of the situations that involve other people, but not at the cost of my health, not at the cost of my mental health, my emotional health, not at the cost of my time, not at the cost of the things that give me a good quality of life. So I would say who I am is someone who really knows who they are, who is really tapped into what is important to them and who lives every moment of their life trying to maintain that and make it better. That's who I am.

Jessica: 9:02

Hmm, you spoke to your resiliency and we now know you as someone who is deeply resourced with tools to be able to meet yourself, to uncover those belief systems and sit with them and have practical tools to work through them. What did life look like when you didn't? Who were you before? Like teenage Attara.

Atarah Valentine: 9:24

Um, I would say I always found some kind of tools. I was always looking for greater purpose and I knew at a very early age that I was more curious than most people, which is a gift and a curse. I would stick with things longer than most people would, because I would see so many people give up. Somehow I was always able to tap into my self-esteem, even though at face value it looked non-existent because I was hunched over and trying to hide so people wouldn't see me. But when I was in my own space, when I would really get that reset moment, I was like okay, I'm going back out there. I would sit and like, oh, I'm going to dress like this, I love Madonna, I'm going to do this transition into this style right, and I thought it was so cool. But my environment, let me know that it wasn't true To them at least my environment, let me know, because I grew up in New Jersey that I was not wanted there Period. So what I started to do, to kind of put the power back into my own hands, was okay, I'm getting a lot of criticism. Regardless of how I show up, whether I have a shaved head and I'm dressing like everybody else, I'm still getting picked on. I'm getting this attention that I don't know what to do with and I don't want it. It's making me uncomfortable, so I'm going to make you uncomfortable.

Atarah Valentine: 10:36

What'd that look like? So I would shave off my eyebrows, I would get extensions. I had a lot of girlfriends who like did really good box braids and stuff. So I'd like box braids that were like to my hips. My sneakers had platforms that were this high.

Atarah Valentine: 10:51

I just did everything I could to let people know I know I'm not supposed to be here, which felt good at the time, but it brought obviously so much unhealthy negative feedback as well. So it was a weird balancing act for me. It felt empowering in a weird way, but the negative was that being a character became protection for me. I never again felt comfortable being myself. So even with my music career what do I have to do? Who do I have to be? Who do I have to impress? It kind of sparked all of that initial programming again of what do I have to do outside of me in order to be what they want me to be. There was a positive end of that because I was a 12 year old who was doing yoga in New Jersey in the 90s Like no one even knew what that was.

Atarah Valentine: 11:33

Progressive, Progressive. I was reading books on Kabbalah. I was reading books on Buddhism and Catholicism and Judaism.

Melissa Bauknight: 11:40

Yeah, I think it's so important to make that distinction of when you were showing up and you're like I'm going to make you uncomfortable, I'm going to be this way, and it could have seemed more like an embodiment of self, but in fact, the way in which you were playing that out was not at all. It was I just want to be anything that you don't want me to be 100%. We end up putting ourselves back in a different box, even though we're trying to get out of one by being different.

Atarah Valentine: 12:05

Because it gives us a sense of control, right? You don't think I'm normal? Well, guess what? I don't want to be normal. Quote unquote.

Jessica: 12:13

You were talking about the way that we're taught to live for others, that there's conditions around who we have to be in order to be accepted. I'm wondering if you could speak to some of the other primary beliefs that you have uncovered in doing this work with yourself in order to come back to your authenticity.

Atarah Valentine: 12:31

Yeah, I mean, how long is this episode? As long as you are available for it.

Melissa Bauknight: 12:38

I don't know. I have to be a mom again at some point. I'll stay on.

Atarah Valentine: 12:44

I would say, the biggest thing, which was really the basis of everything. It took me years. Honestly, this last year I really uncovered this, which is why my relationship to my body changed, which is why I even physically changed. So much is I learned everything is a fight, nothing can come easy. Nothing can be easy. If it came easy, that means I didn't earn it, and if I fought for it, it means I earned it.

Atarah Valentine: 13:07

But the problem is, when you're used to fighting for everything, you don't really learn how to receive. There's always something else to fight for, something bigger. So everything kind of loses meaning, everything loses value. When you live like that, you kind of feel like your life is pointless and in turn you're pointless and you have nothing to offer because you're just someone who does all the time You're not feeling anything, you're not being, you're not plugged into your life and that gives you a real sense of loneliness. No one is hyper vigilant and no one plugs into every single thing possible because they feel secure. They do that because they're looking for security and for me, I realized I had this really deep seated loneliness whenever it came to me being me, because I learned I don't have value. My value comes from doing my siblings chores for keeping the house safe. My mom and my stepdad are in a fight. She's probably going to get hurt, but if I kick the door open I can stop it. That's my value. I have to do something.

Atarah Valentine: 14:08

So when I would be left on my own I would get really sad. I was an antidepressants for years. I didn't know how to be in my own space. I would just start overthinking because I needed people around me to have purpose.

Atarah Valentine: 14:19

If there's nothing for me to do, if there's no one for me to make feel good, if there's no task for me to see and result that I accomplished something, then my life has no meaning. That's a really hard road and so many people are walking down it and are afraid to be quiet with themselves. There's always TV while we're eating, plus, we're scrolling through our phone because we're avoiding that emptiness we don't want to feel, which is why we always overextend ourselves, right, which is why we feel bad saying no, because we need something from these people. I'd say that was the programming I had to work through the most is like being afraid to be by myself, because every single time I was alone there would be suicidal ideation I would devalue or discredit anything that I did any progress until I knocked myself back into a stress response where I had to fight because I was afraid to look at that one thing, which is myself.

Melissa Bauknight: 15:12

Yeah.

Jessica: 15:14

What was the breaking point for you? Was there a moment or a realization that was incentive for you to actually start making shifts and doing the work?

Atarah Valentine: 15:22

I mean, I was really unhappy. I had a couple moments where I just didn't think I was going to pull through. Do you mind if I talk about this really candidly? Yeah, of course, because I think people get ashamed of stuff like this and it's so incredibly normal. But suicidal ideation is something a lot of people that I work with, a lot of people that I've met, have. They think there's something wrong with them for thinking a certain way Like why am I like this and why can't I just be happy For me? That voice in moments of my life where I felt like I was going to lose everything and I had no options, that voice somehow comforted me because it let me know like oh no, I still have control over something.

Atarah Valentine: 16:05

As sick as that sounds, Like you have choice, I still have choice here, like I'm here and I can choose to be here or I can choose to not be here. And I was living in Brooklyn at the time. I was just so down and I felt the construct of what I was taught wasn't true. I'm doing everything. I'm working 60 hours a week at a job, plus I have two design clients on top of that. Plus I have a band that I'm writing all the songs for, filming the videos, editing everything like doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, networking on top of that, just totally burning myself out and nothing was happening. Things were just getting worse and worse and worse and worse, really losing the will to live because I didn't understand how to do it anymore. It's like the matrix right, like you pull it and you're like everything's a fucking lie, like this isn't life. But I have no idea what life is. This isn't me and I have no idea who I am. And if I don't know who I am and if I don't know what life is, how am I going to figure this out? I don't have any options left.

Atarah Valentine: 17:09

So that's what happened and I was laying on the floor. I was having marriage problems at the time, obviously as well, my husband started doing really well in his career and mine was going nowhere. And because I was so codependent for such a long time, I spent all of my energy like do this and do this and be this and put myself aside to help him build. But then I was almost like a reflection of what our life used to be, because my story wasn't changing. So it caused this huge divide in our relationship. It felt like everything that I did for him wasn't being acknowledged and that's where years of my life went and I was laying on my floor on my bedroom crying, like crying. I cry all the time now and I love it, love crying. But I used to be the person I'd bottle, put it anywhere else. Everything's always fine, you need help. No, I'm fine, I've got this, I can do it, I can do that, I can do this.

Atarah Valentine: 18:04

Nobody would know I had a problem until I was shaking on the ground and that's what I was doing, but there was no one to pick me up. I was laying there, shaking, crying, and I opened my eyes and at the time my hair was lavender. And laying next to me, face to face, was a precious moments doll that my grandmother got for me when I got my tonsils out. That was a clown with lavender hair and I felt in that moment like I was looking back at myself, this clown who had so much pain.

Atarah Valentine: 18:34

Do you know, precious moments look like? They look like they're literally about to kill themselves, but they're adorable, which is where I was the clown who makes everyone feel good and does all of these things and is so empty inside. And I saw myself looking back at me in this doll and my grandmother was the most important person in my life, died when I was 16. I was like maybe 30 something at this point and I looked at it and I thought, if I'm going to cry like this, I'm going to make it productive, I'm going to do something with this, and it's the first time that I decided to do something for myself, and that was the change for me.

Jessica: 19:15

You know, you said something in an Instagram post where you talked about victim mentality and it really touched me. You said that victim mentality is I have tried everything I know how to do and it still isn't working. And it meant so much to me to hear somebody say that you have a lot of reframes in the work that you do. That, I think, just brings so much more compassion to our humanity and to me, that is what that moment is. That moment is I've done everything, I've been taught over and over again and I don't know what to do next.

Atarah Valentine: 19:48

First of all, thank you. That means a lot. I love talking about victim mentality because I think we judge people so harshly when they're honest and when they're vulnerable. And even on that post, people would must be. No, this is bullshit. Everyone thinks that they have a problem once people feel sorry for them. They think, ooh, if this is what you think of other people, how harsh are you to yourself if you can't accept that someone is having an issue that they're overwhelmed by and you think people just want attention? There's a whole set of rules, right, I can't do this and I can't do that, and I can't share and I can't be weak and I can't be vulnerable and I can't be messy, because that means I'm a victim. So we resist it, right? Those become essentially shadow aspects, which is why people are so angry, because they're seeing that peace that they're denying in themselves, all around them and other people, and yet they keep hardening and denying it, thinking that they're going to rise above it.

Jessica: 20:39

Yeah, I guess my question that moment of I've done everything. I've been taught over and over again. Maybe we can segue then into how we're taught. You are an expert in conditioning and deconditioning, so I feel like you understand more than most the ways that we become who we are, and I am a human design reader as well as an actress. This is sort of the realm that I work in too, and I find it kind of surprising. I think it's because of how much we identify with our thoughts and we identify with our belief systems that it's hard for people to actually wrap their head around how much of who we think we are is coming from something outside of ourselves. So I'm wondering if you could help our listeners understand this in depth, if we could break down how it is that we're taught, what is conditioning and how are our belief systems formed?

Atarah Valentine: 21:30

100%. So there's a model called neurological levels that I teach, and I like to look at a few different models of development so that people can get a really well-rounded picture, because a lot of people will say, oh yeah, my childhood, it doesn't matter, like, get over it, I don't remember that. That's what I hear the most from people who obviously sign up for a session. They're wanting to change, but there's some kind of resistance because they haven't learned to take responsibility for themselves. So we've read all the books, we've done all of the things, and yet nothing seems to change. And it's because, regardless of what we intellectually understand from moment to moment, that's conscious information. We're just reading and gathering information. If we're not living it, if we're not dealing with any resistance that's coming up from our body, then we're not really dealing with the subconscious.

Atarah Valentine: 22:18

Very rarely does someone read a self-help book and go now my life has changed forever and never have the same issues again. Yeah, that'd be nice, though. And it's not really even about what's happening. It's about the fact that there's something happening unconsciously, under the surface, that you're not even aware of. That's motivating everything that you see, because what is reality? What is actually real? There are three of us on this call. It's somewhat of a controlled environment. We're all sitting in front of computers. Two of us are hot.

Melissa Bauknight: 22:48

I'm hot too, really hot.

Jessica: 22:52

I didn't bring it up, but we're all hot, everyone's sweating, that is real Three of us are sweating right?

Atarah Valentine: 22:59

Yeah, it's not highlighter, but we could be having three completely different experiences based on past experiences, past information. So when people say, oh yeah, I have a hard time trusting people because my mommy didn't hold me when I was a baby, I don't remember that, you don't have to. Your body remembers that If we're building trust from zero to two years old and we're crying and nobody comes, your body starts going oh my god, what do we do? This is bad. Now you learned unconsciously at that age that if you are in distress, somebody might not come. And this is how we build our reality.

Atarah Valentine: 23:36

I'm 42 years old. My mom did the cry it out method. She closed the door, she put on a fan. I can still not sleep in silence. I need a fan, I need noise. I have all these rules right Because I've been sleeping that way for 42 years. If I'm in an environment that feels very quiet and unnatural to me, my body doesn't know how to go to sleep within it. I can work on changing that, but it's been this way for 42 years. I'm not consciously making these decisions. So why is this important? Because our environment tells us a lot.

Atarah Valentine: 24:10

From zero to two years old, a baby is in delta brain waves, even when its eyes are open. That is deep sleep. As an adult. They're so suggestible, so spongy. Two to six years old children are in theta. That's literally hypnosis. No differentiation between fantasy and reality. That's why playtime is so important. Right, we can build entire worlds. We put on a costume and we become She-Ra. In that moment I'm not a Tara anymore. We're playing in the backyard, we're swinging a stick, but in our brain we see a sword Five to nine alpha brain waves, which is like daydreaming. We're watching a horror movie. Something jumps out, we jump, we scream, we're safe, but we're more suggestible. We can take everything at face value throughout our childhood and a stick can be a sword and we can fly and we can become somebody else. And that's real. And we're producing real adrenaline when we're fighting off an invisible army in the backyard, even though there's nothing there. It's a projection which FYI, spoiler alert is what we still do with reality. We're projecting our ideas. That exists around us at all times, so our brain knows how to keep us alive.

Atarah Valentine: 25:13

And what about the information that is coming in consistently from the primary caretaker, from the family, from the religious beliefs, from the socioeconomic status of the town that we grow up in. So we're going to learn a lot through observation, through what we're directly told. So our environment essentially dictates our, informs our behavior, what's acceptable, what isn't, what we find valuable to do. We learn all of the skills and the capabilities of how to be really helpful in order to connect with people, because we learn that's what our value is. So we're not really spending a lot of time focusing on how do I say no instead of healthy boundary, like there's no value in doing that If we've already learned that our value comes from how we show up for other people, which, let's face it, that's what religion teaches us, that's what school teaches us, that's what every single educational program teaches us is how to be good for other people.

Atarah Valentine: 26:01

We don't learn how to really eat properly. We don't learn how to take care of our bodies. We don't learn what to do with our emotions, like it's not about us at all. So we go through our life doing these things and we build belief systems around them. Yes, when I help people, I'm good. When I don't, I'm selfish. So then, what do we value off the back of that? Are we valuing independence and autonomy? No, we're going to value community and friendship and family and things that connect us, then that shapes our identity, all of that stuff.

Atarah Valentine: 26:25

So now we are people who need the environment to dictate or inform whether or not we're doing a good job, whether we're successful, whether we're making it in life.

Atarah Valentine: 26:34

People, please, are codependent, whatever you want to call it. So even our vision, what we think is possible for ourselves, what we think our potential is, is dictated or informed by all of that information. We learn to keep putting conditions around our feelings to motivate us. What if we can understand what success actually means to us? So we're not just blindly chasing the version of it that we've been taught, because it's a lie. The story that we've been told that if you do A, b and C, you'll receive this is a lie, because that feeling is very rarely there and the reality is that feeling is not the reward for doing. That feeling is actually the fuel that motivates us to get that thing that we want, because the person who's going to feel successful is the person who's success has driven them to that end point. They're in alignment with success. They understand who they are, how they got there, what they've done to do that, so they can fully receive it. They don't think the opportunity is going to make them feel something it never will.

Melissa Bauknight: 27:31

Yeah, we're fucked. Well, I have a six-year-old son and I'm just thinking so much of what you're saying. I see in him and I am consciously raising this boy, but I see him do things like his new phase is well, what do you want me to do? What would you like me to do? What would you prefer? And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like I really like I see him doing that. Please stop doing that. Please stop doing that, like I don't want you to be living your life just so it can be what I want. And I see him doing that so naturally, at the age of six. And so I was just present to that, as you were talking of how early it starts in life, of course, because who?

Atarah Valentine: 28:10

does he need the most? You Right Me, so he wants to do good for you. That's a natural thing, right? Right? We should want ultimately to do good for the people who are around us. That would be lovely if everybody thought that way. But within that, it's also understanding what do you want, and it's really interesting.

Atarah Valentine: 28:30

So when I work with people who have young kids, a lot of times they're like oh my God, I'm so afraid I'm going to fuck up my kid. And no one really knows what they're doing, even some of the top experts in the world. They have the most distorted relationships with their kids. And I always just tell people the best way to raise your kid and again, this is just an opinion is to understand that your kid is learning about you while you're learning about them, and you're going to learn about you because of this relationship and they're going to learn about them because of this relationship. There's an exchange. It's not you doing to your kid. That kid's going to do a lot to you and for you as well, and it's about letting them have a space to feel that they have a voice, to feel that they have independence, but to always know that there's support there for them, to let them make a mistake, to be able to walk them and help pick them up and tell them why it was good what they did and what they can do next time to improve upon it.

Atarah Valentine: 29:27

Right, there's not one hard, steadfast way to raise a child to make this like perfect kid. Everything is so unique. We lose our patience, we get overloaded, we yell for no reason. It's okay. You're allowed to tell your kid that you're stressed out and it had nothing to do with them and that you're sorry. That's the way we fuck up our kid. When we don't think accountability because we think we're the adult and our kid has to think we're perfect, the worst thing you can do as a parent is try to create a world where your kid thinks you're perfect, because that means they believe that they're going to have to be perfect. Then that's a lot of pressure because I mean, I haven't met anyone who's perfect of you.

Melissa Bauknight: 30:03

No, I've met a lot of people really trying to be Real hard.

Atarah Valentine: 30:08

Including myself, for many, many, many many, many, many, many years Same yeah, and it's exhausting and it's boring, it's so exhausting.

Jessica: 30:15

So what do we do? We have these conscious thoughts and then we have all of this subconscious programming that's driving the show. But because it's subconscious, how do we even start to identify what that belief system is in order to bring it to the surface and start to rewrite it or begin to work with it?

Atarah Valentine: 30:33

Yeah, I think that's what I would say to my clients, especially when we're coming from this really flattened place. First off, nothing's going to change unless we can commit to it. That's the truth and we're not always in that place and that is okay. And I want to reinforce that for people because it's really easy to also make self-discovery or personal growth or whatever you want to call it. Another job, another thing that's punishing. This is no different from working out and lifting weights. Like, we have work days and we have rest days. Not every day can be a work day and not every day can be a rest day and expect results. And we have periods where we have to be a little more simple and periods where we can go in. But things cannot change if we're not aware of them, if we aren't curious. There's no way that we can change things because we don't even know.

Atarah Valentine: 31:22

If you have a thought, you're going to believe that thought, because you've believed that thought for 42 years, exactly If you have a feeling attached to it that you learned. If I have a feeling like this, I have to do X, y and Z to get rid of it, so you're going to do that. So I have a little structure that I teach to my clients for embodiment and it's really for proactive change, and I created a little acronym that goes identification, awareness and movement, and that's the order it has to happen in. That's proactive change, reactive changes. I don't like this feeling move, we skip the learning, we haven't identified it, we haven't raised awareness around it, we don't know why it's bothering us, where it came from, what we actually want, how we want to show up instead.

Atarah Valentine: 32:06

And if we can figure that stuff out, your body will tell you what's uncomfortable. It will tell you all the stories that are attached to it, and then that's where your work is Looking for evidence to disprove it, learning new habits, learning new behaviors, learning new ways of being that align with the thing that you want, especially if that story that you've been living is beginning to feel untrue. So curiosity is really important. However, for some of us, it's really scary doing this. I was hiking yesterday with my husband at Runyon and there was a group of girls and I guess one of their boyfriends started working out and she's like oh my God, he's putting protein in everything, even his Greek yogurt. Can you believe that? And they're laughing and my husband goes wow, people get so harshly criticized as soon as they change. Why is that and this?

Jessica: 32:54

is a positive thing.

Atarah Valentine: 32:54

This is triggering for other people. Because it's triggering for other people Because it has nothing to do with him. It has to do with the fact that he's actually trying to learn to change his habits. And she's at Runyon Canyon sitting on a bench instead of hiking, and they're sitting and drinking and eating and making fun of her boyfriend who's trying to take care of his body, and that's just eating protein and working out.

Atarah Valentine: 33:15

So imagine when you look at childhood patterns, imagine when you start looking at behaviors, people get so threatened by it, which is why you really have to know why you're doing it for yourself. And the best motivation I say to my clients all the time is frustration, because as soon as you start identifying and raising awareness of what the issue is, I want you to be irritated by it. I had a client who was dealing with something really major that she hadn't dealt with since she was a teenager and it triggered a response and she's like what if I just don't want to do anything about this? And this is just how it is and I said, but that's okay, that's totally okay. You get to choose that.

Atarah Valentine: 33:50

If you can't handle change, if you can't handle looking at this stuff right now. You don't have to. I'm not going to tell you why you should or criticize you. You know better than I do. I don't know how you feel, right, well, am I disappointing you? I didn't do my homework. Are you going to yell at me? No, no, no. Let's talk about why you didn't do your homework. I don't care if you did your homework or not. People almost want to be like parented. This is not something anybody wants to deal with. We finished the session. We talked about how she was feeling frustrated and it was activating her and she's like well, what should I do? And I'm like keep doing what you're doing. Next time, I hope you're even more frustrated, because when you hit that space, then we can take all of that energy and we can start moving and we can start doing something about this. The time will come. We don't have to force it.

Melissa Bauknight: 34:32

One of the things that I would love for you to unpack is about commitment, which is something you said in the beginning of that, and one of the things I see so often is this all or nothing mentality. How do you address that with your clients? Because, obviously, with growth work and with what you're teaching and with what Jessica and I support, nothing is all or nothing. It can't be it just can't be.

Melissa Bauknight: 34:54

It's. The expectation is that if I don't go all in and do this every single day and do it this very specific way, then it's wrong and bad and I might as well not even try to begin with.

Atarah Valentine: 35:03

Right, and then who is so? How do you?

Melissa Bauknight: 35:04

address that.

Atarah Valentine: 35:05

Yeah, so I do a session with my clients and it's my favorite session because people have really big aha moments and it's interesting. Some of them are hypnotherapists, but I very rarely use hypnosis in sessions because I find the value of learning so much more valuable. One of the sessions I do is we go through thinking distortions. We go through 10 different kinds of thinking distortions and all or nothing thinking is one of them, and so I'll have the client write all of the ways all or nothing thinking shows up and then we'll go into what is the secondary gain from this. Because obviously, anytime we go to change, anytime we go to learn, it creates stress, it creates anxiety in our brain. So if we can understand what that benefit is for a lot of people it's control, comfort, time, space, safety or motivation right, if we can get clear on what the secondary gain is, then we can ask ourselves okay, I'm needing control here. What's a way that I can have a sense of control that feels more aligned and to go against all or nothing thinking? The thing is, big things don't stick. That's just the truth. When I work with people, we don't even spring into action. If someone's not regulated, if someone's not emotionally grounded, they're going to have a really hard time if they're walking around in a stress response. So what I like to do is really get an understanding of why we don't want to do it.

Atarah Valentine: 36:18

How do you know it's time to procrastinate? Not why do you procrastinate, but how do you know it's time to procrastinate? What happens in your body? What is your strategy for procrastination? I'm very forensic in the way I go about things, because if we can understand the process, then we can change it and we can actually use the same process to install a different process. But I always say start small, because big things are really hard to sustain. That's why people's New Year's resolutions fall off. If you can say I'm going to focus on getting one thing off of this list on a day, but then you look at your list and it's like paint my house, sort it through all of my clothing and bring it, how can you break that down into very micro tasks so you can actually succeed? We don't learn to value small things. That's why no one pays attention anymore when they're eating dinner.

Atarah Valentine: 37:03

It's why everyone's on their phone, why friends are talking, because they're looking for this big exciting thing that's going to make them feel something. But your life is happening all around you and you're not even a piece of it, so we don't do a big thing. I like to call them micro-discomforts. We actually look for really small uncomfortable situations that we can move through, so that we can begin to build that trust in ourselves, so that we can begin to see, to believe. Oh okay, even though I wanted to shut down in this situation, because I'm able to identify and I have awareness that I disconnect one with my friends. But what I'm really wanting is connection and to show up authentically. I'm not going to be like, hey guys, let me tell you the biggest secret of my life, but when I notice myself disconnecting, I can speak and ask a question during that time that I think it's more valuable to shut down to stay safe. Does that make sense? And then we keep building on it. We kind of keep stretching it and raising the stakes.

Atarah Valentine: 38:00

Before you even take a step, I'll use something like mental rehearsal. We use visualization to see ourselves moving through. We know people in the Olympics use mental rehearsal to see themselves going through. I use all the times in my workouts to try and get to a new personal record so we can begin to teach the nervous system and the subconscious that we can do this If resistance comes up. Oh, I tried to, but this came up, okay, cool, let's see if it's connected to something deeper. You just have to be very curious in the process. So if we can break things into small tasks, learn to value the small tasks, we can also learn to value the things that are already in existence around us, which makes our foundation so much stronger for any of the changes that we're kind of moving toward.

Jessica: 38:37

I think I'm still a little stuck on the awareness piece of how we can actually identify a limiting belief if it's not in our conscious mind. How does somebody who might be tuning into this going? I don't know how to even approach this work. They can recognize that things aren't working in their lives. How would they recognize what isn't working? What would be their clue into what is at the root?

Atarah Valentine: 38:59

Yeah, so I have a real issue with people thinking that they have to uncover a root in order to live their lives, and it's a big part of the reason that I started my own company, because I find that very punishing. If you want this, you have to go and heal that root in order to do this, which means your life is in the future or your life is in the past and what you're doing right now has no importance. So fuck the root, for lack of a better word. Right, because that's actually the problem. The identification is, I feel, stuck period. Identification doesn't mean we have to have any more information than that. It's simply putting a title to a feeling, and when we do that, what we're doing is we're taking it from an unconscious on knowing to a conscious on knowing. We're consciously becoming aware that there's something that we don't know.

Atarah Valentine: 39:44

I don't know how to move through this, so we ask very simple questions. I learned these in second grade who, what, where, why, when and how? Who am I having this issue with? Is it everybody in the industry? Am I having this feeling of stuck and being left behind in friendships as well? Is it a feeling that's also in my family? Is it isolated and specific. Right, what is it that I'm feeling? Or what is it that I'm afraid of? Have I felt like this before? Or where did I learn that this was true? Why am I in this space again? Or why am I afraid to move through this? When in my life did I not feel like this? Or when did I feel like this in the past?

Atarah Valentine: 40:23

Just those simple questions uncover so much information that's unique to you. You need the context, because if you don't understand how we got here, you're not going to understand what's in the way of why you're not doing the thing. So once you have that, the most important question to ask is how, now that I have all of this information, how do I want to feel? How do I want to be able to show up? What would that look like? Why is that important? How could that potentially move things forward? Once we can set an intention like that, your brain has a job. It can start looking for those things. Really, what happens is your brain will start telling you all the reasons you can. That's why we don't have to go looking for a route. Be like well, it's because you're not skinny enough, or you're not this enough, or you're not that enough. Track those limiting beliefs, keep it in your phone. Limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, core beliefs that come up Because all of the thoughts are shaping our reality.

Jessica: 41:17

How is that different from root?

Atarah Valentine: 41:19

Because you're not searching for the root.

Jessica: 41:22

Okay, so it's not that there isn't a root. It's the searching for the root that you take. Yeah, it's not that there isn't a root. If you work with a root right.

Atarah Valentine: 41:28

Ultimately, all of these things will lead to some kind of root. That's why we don't have to obsess about it. As soon as you get clear on what you actually want, your brain, your body, your nervous system is going to give you all the reasons it can't happen. You will get to your root through there. People, just using their voice, are saying no, you can't, why. Oh, they're not going to like me. Okay, cool, where did you learn that? If you say no, people don't like you.

Atarah Valentine: 41:49

If this was easy, everybody would be doing it. That's why I do what I do. Right, because we can literally take one thought and see how many distortions are involved in it, what the distortions are doing, what the benefit is, how it's holding us back. When we get that information, people go like fuck this. We think just because we're living inside of our body that we know ourselves. Very few of us have spent time actually getting to know ourselves. We're actually denying who we are more than being who we are, so thinking we're just going to go in and do all of this self-work and find all these answers on our own. That's really hard.

Atarah Valentine: 42:25

People do need assistance, however. If you can be curious and you can ask those questions. It takes a little bravery in moving through the insecurity of not knowing for any of this to work. If we can just all admit maybe I don't know who I am, but I really want to figure it out, you're already ahead of 90% of people.

Atarah Valentine: 42:46

Awareness is curiosity. Awareness is really asking yourself questions, being honest, taking feedback from people. Friends will be oh no, you're great, you're so this and you're so that? No, no, no. What do you think my issue is? I'm not going to yell if you say something I don't like. I want to know. How do you think I'm holding myself back as someone who really knows me? That's how we raise awareness by not being afraid of what's going to come back at us, by not being afraid of being vulnerable, by not being afraid of finding out the truth, because we can keep distorting and making up some fake truth that makes us feel like we're further along than we are. Or we can actually admit that I'm scared and I don't know and I might need help here.

Melissa Bauknight: 43:26

Just the simple thing of asking that question. When I first started my personal growth journey about eight years ago, they had us do interviews. That was one of the first things I remember doing. That really changed my life and I remember being so fucking scared so scared of that answer to your point. It was like I don't want to. What if I hear something that I don't want to hear? What am I going to do with this information? What if they don't like me? And getting the feedback is so important but it's so terrifying? And what if?

Atarah Valentine: 43:53

people see something, or what if people see the thing in me that I try to hide most? That's the scariest one and it's the biggest issue that I had in music, because being a character was so important, because that meant protection. I'd almost get the record deal. I was signed to Atlantic years ago. Sony did my publishing, like big management, all these things and people are like, oh my God, this guy's a star, you have to meet him.

Atarah Valentine: 44:15

And the thing I would hear all the time from people was I didn't get you until I met you, but I don't feel you in your music. I don't feel who you are coming through. You're a great performer, you're this, you have a great look. Because I was afraid. I was afraid to share the vulnerability. I just wanted to do what I had to do, to get to the place where I felt secure and I would make things really big. Because if I have a big show and I have a nine piece band and a string section and I have this really glossy video, then that means this. But I got lost in the production when, in reality, all I had to do was be really vulnerable and perform from that place, because your vulnerability makes you bulletproof. We have nothing to protect. No one can take anything from us that we're not willing to give. Can we be disappointed in people? Yeah, that doesn't mean that every person needs to be looked at that way. That means that person's just not right for us. That's okay.

Jessica: 45:07

Yeah. So let's say we bring in the awareness, we're getting curious, we're asking the questions, we're starting to uncover things, we're getting feedback. How do we start to disrupt the pattern? What is it that we can do, especially if we have done everything we've been taught? It means we don't know something. Where do we go for that learning?

Atarah Valentine: 45:28

Yeah, what I do with clients a few sessions in is we write a vision. Not I want a house with A, b and C. What do you think that house is going to make you feel? That's what I'm interested in. I want a job with this. What do you think that job's going to give you or make you feel? That's what I want people to pay attention to, because that's what we're all after actually and it's what we're chasing. So if we set that intention and we get really clear on what that blueprint is, that's what we follow.

Atarah Valentine: 45:52

I have people really familiarize themselves with it. I have them read it in the morning, I have them read it before they go to sleep and they have them use it as a tool to disrupt, even in the process, while you're never going to be able to stop. Let me go to this. Am I showing up like this? What's getting in the way? What am I feeling? Obviously, my clients.

Atarah Valentine: 46:09

We do a lot of unconscious work around this too, whether it's NLP or tapping or MER therapy, hypnosis, right to really get in there as well. But for someone who's not working with me, where you put your mind is what becomes real. That does not mean avoiding problems. That means learning how to reframe problems. That means learning how to reframe to move through discomfort. So I have a couple of techniques that I use. I'll tell you guys a few. Actually, this first technique I love because that voice that talks to us. Sometimes we're not even aware it's happening. Oh, everyone's going to hate you and you're this or that, and then all of a sudden we go into a certain state and that thing kind of happens. It's a self-actualized prophecy. So I do this exercise. It's one of the tools in my trigger workshop. It's called Mickey Mouse and Butt and I do this with my clients because what we call this in NLP is changing the submodalities. So someone want to do this. Or do you want me to just give you an example?

Jessica: 47:04

I'll do it.

Atarah Valentine: 47:06

Okay, so, okay. So I want you to think of something, something that comes up in your head that feels really unmotivating or depressing or sad, something that really puts you in a place where you don't feel like doing anything, like you're going to fail or no one likes you. That kind of stuff, whatever naturally comes up for you. You got something. Can we share it? If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love that.

Jessica: 47:31

Dating.

Atarah Valentine: 47:32

Yeah, and what is it? What's the belief that?

Jessica: 47:36

comes up. I think the belief that comes up is that I can't find somebody online. I need to be in the real world and feel someone's energy, to know if I feel attracted. So I really struggle with doing it online and that seems to be what everyone tells you you need to do in this thing.

Atarah Valentine: 47:56

Yeah, you can't find someone online. First of all, let's look at that belief, right, because we're obviously going to do everything we can to reinforce this. And I would say, maybe, on top of you can't find somebody online, because this is what we do, right, we can't find someone online. So we're going to look for all the disaster stories our friends say to be like oopsie, they tried and this happened and that happened and this. And then there's this pressure to meet people in person, right, and even talking about it, you see how your physiology changes, like your deep breath and your shoulders go upright, so it becomes more real every single time. So then, what do we do? We disconnect. We want to be in a relationship, but we're not doing the thing that's supposed to put us there. So I want you to hear that in your head, the way you hear it you can't find someone online or you're never going to find someone online. Hear it in your head again, in the same way you heard it, and how does that feel, just when it comes up for you.

Jessica: 48:50

I mean, the whole thing feels icky.

Atarah Valentine: 48:52

Feels icky, right? So if something feels icky, are you going to get off at this call and be like let me update my dating profile.

Jessica: 49:00

I mean I have done so. It's not like I'm not online, but it does feel icky.

Atarah Valentine: 49:06

It's not exciting, right.

Jessica: 49:08

No, it doesn't feel exciting.

Atarah Valentine: 49:09

No. So we're obviously not going to be motivated to really do something to change that, because it's like, ugh, yeah, I feel that I had this disaster, this happened. My friend said this, so I have enough confirmation enough to try that. So what we do is we change this modality because that voice is trying to help us and listen. There may be something else where not to project or make assumptions but maybe we had a situation in the past where we thought we could really trust someone who we did meet in person and then they changed rapidly so it made us fearful. So we don't trust ourselves and not being in a room with somebody right, I think you're going to be on this.

Melissa Bauknight: 49:48

Call for at least another hour.

Atarah Valentine: 49:54

So if I can't, what does that boil down to?

Melissa Bauknight: 49:57

So sorry, you thought you were sweaty before.

Atarah Valentine: 50:04

Right. So it comes down to, essentially if I couldn't trust myself when I was able to do all these things, how can I trust myself when I can't even experience a person? So this is so good. I mean, this is what I do for a living, right? So, obviously, what are we getting?

Atarah Valentine: 50:21

When we talked about the benefits, the secondary gain, of this Control, because now you don't have to do that Time and space right, because you're not going online, so you can only meet people in person, which isn't going to be as frequent, so you don't have to look at any of the stuff that comes up for you in relationships unless you're in that specific situation. Right, control, time, space, safety, because now you're protected those are pretty important things. Your brain's trying to help you. If we can approach everything with compassion and if we can understand whatever your brain is putting forward has a positive intention behind it. There's a positive intention behind every behavior, even negative self-talk. We know you've got time, space, comfort, control, safety actually five things.

Atarah Valentine: 51:04

From believing that thought, now we can say, okay, well, is this working for me? Is this the best way for me to have comfort and control? Right, what is it that I need to learn? That's how we begin to answer these questions. What would make me feel safe online? What would that look like? And this is where we do subconscious work. We take little micro actions. Oh well, you know, I've been sitting and waiting for people to reach out to me and it makes me feel really insecure, but I'm going to try and just message a few people randomly or swipe for people that don't even care about, just to break myself out of that cycle, right? The point is, you're never going to find someone online. We know that there's a deeper belief. Now Can we go to the deeper belief maybe? Like I can't trust myself when it comes to finding people or meeting people. What would you say? The belief is underneath that.

Jessica: 51:48

There's a few because you're on the money. There was a very significant trauma around self-trust. That's a component of it. Let's go with that.

Atarah Valentine: 51:57

Yeah, based on my past experience, I can't trust myself.

Jessica: 52:02

Right.

Atarah Valentine: 52:02

Period. It feels like a truth. Right, we have evidence, we've seen what happens. So your brain obviously doesn't want you to do that. So it's like definitely don't go online. That's where the red tape comes from, because now there are conditions.

Atarah Valentine: 52:16

The only way you can trust yourself is if you have this specific vetting process of meeting people in person. It has to look like this and this is acceptable, unconsciously, right, based on past experiences, I can't trust myself. Period. When we think about that, that makes us spin. We go down the rabbit hole, we go into the cycle. We try and talk to our friends and like, yeah, well, you know that was this and maybe you should have. We tend to get the information that confirms whatever the negative bias is. But I want you to hear in your head now exactly that one more time, not to torture you with this. I'm sorry, but based on past experience, I can't trust myself. Doesn't feel great, I'm assuming. No, I want you to hear that same exact sentence. Based on my past experience, I can't trust myself in the same way. You heard it in your head, but this time I want you to hear it in Mickey Mouse's voice.

Melissa Bauknight: 53:07

If only I could bring my son Jack on, he can do a real thing in Donald Duck yeah.

Atarah Valentine: 53:12

Donald Duck, words too right. What happened? What happened?

Jessica: 53:18

It sounds ridiculous.

Atarah Valentine: 53:21

But and people can't see this but even your physiology's changed, right, you know, lighter, your whole face is lit up. It wasn't doing that literally three seconds ago, why? Yeah, it changed the submodality. That voice is no longer the voice that you just accept is truth. It creates psychological distance. So that's step one here, because we have to be present in order to change you. Believing this is still true is not you being present, it's you taking your past and putting it into the present. We know how that ends Once we have this kind of equilibrium here. Now we can look for resources, because now we have to disprove this. And this is where the butt comes in, because when it's just a period, it feels like a fact, right? So we have Mickey Mouse based on your past experiences.

Atarah Valentine: 54:10

You can't trust ever again. So now we're going to disassemble it Based on my past experiences. I can't trust myself, but and I want you to say that whole line and I want you to finish it Look for a resource, Ask the creative part of your brain to fill in the gap with a resource.

Jessica: 54:32

Should I do this out loud yeah? Or in my head.

Atarah Valentine: 54:35

Out loud.

Jessica: 54:36

So this is my past experience. I'm not the same person that I was.

Atarah Valentine: 54:44

Great, do it again. New resource, whole line.

Jessica: 54:49

Based on my past experience, I can't trust myself, but I've proven to myself in so many areas of my life that I can.

Atarah Valentine: 55:01

Amazing Another one.

Jessica: 55:03

Based on my past experience, I can't trust myself, but I am the most trustworthy person I know. That's true, right.

Atarah Valentine: 55:14

Question, and for Melissa, because she's watching you as well do you notice how that last one was fully received? Do you notice the lightness, the change in physiology? That's one thing. Right, you accepted that. That's what I was waiting for. Sometimes people do it 10 times and they get so frustrated and then they laugh or they cry or they yawn, and I see that it's been accepted by their body. Now Something happens in the process of doing this. When we say the thing out loud. This is like kind of real-time shadow work. This seems really simple, but a lot of thought went into this. Just simply saying the line through repetition over and over again is desensitizing it. We're vocalizing something we hold on to. The more we hold on to it, the more true it feels. By the third time you said that you were saying that line like it didn't even matter. You were just trying to get through it so you can get to the resource.

Atarah Valentine: 56:03

You notice that, Right, Because we start even though in the past it starts really dramatic, and then we feel silly looking for the resource. In all of a sense, even though in the past I haven't been able to trust myself, I'm the most trustworthy right it becomes the real thing. But that's a really easy way to get to the truth. We cannot do what we want to do in an unresourceful state. The formula for a problem is when we attach an unresourceful state to an event. I want a relationship being the event, but I can't trust myself. Well, guess what? That's probably not going to work. So we have to open this up. We have to find resources. This is like actually I'm really trustworthy and actually, even though I did this, I've actually met a lot of people I liked and even though and then we get closer and closer that took what two minutes?

Melissa Bauknight: 56:49

Mm-hmm. She's going to go online after this.

Atarah Valentine: 56:52

Yeah.

Melissa Bauknight: 56:52

Tonight.

Jessica: 56:55

Well, first I am online, I just dread it, you know, and I haven't given myself a good relationship with it Totally. I really appreciate you sharing that and it's interesting. I do a lot of this work. You and I, I think, have a shared history of a lot of the kinds of work that we've done. I walk my clients through similar things and I feel so vulnerable. I mean, I know that I'm doing this publicly, but I have a lot of icky feelings coming up in my body and I just want to say that out loud because a lot of people who aren't familiar with this work, who this is really new to, I just want to say that so that if you take yourself through this process and it's deeply uncomfortable and feels terrible, I think that actually is how it's supposed to feel.

Atarah Valentine: 57:45

Of course, but again, we don't have to sit in it, right? So let's even take the idea of this, because this is about relationships, right? This is what you're looking for. You're looking for a relationship. There's no such thing as a relationship without vulnerability 100%. There's a lot protected by disconnecting. There's a lot protected by having conditions around how we meet people and how we show up. The other one I was going to teach. I call these leading statements because I hate affirmations, because I love affirmations in the context of hypnosis, where prefrontal cortex is shut down, we're not using conscious mind and it's just feeling right, we can receive it there, but we say I'm safe and I'm free and open to date online. Like no, probably you're someone who's going to be like sorry bitch, no, you're not right. Like that's what it does.

Jessica: 58:31

I just want to say that why I think I feel so icky is because it's challenging my program 100%.

Atarah Valentine: 58:37

And if we take a leading statement and again, this is the formula for this leading statements are acknowledging the problem, but they're also creating a resource.

Atarah Valentine: 58:46

That's so many of the tools that I developed do this, because so many of us are used to working for what it is that we're looking for. That's a very important word here and so it is saying like I'm just safe. No, you're not. And this is where I get irritated with, like trauma informed therapists and stuff too and a lot of them are my clients, to be honest, and I'll say well, what do you do with your clients when they're having a trauma response and they say I just tell them to put their hand on their heart and say that they're safe and they're protected, and I'm like but they don't feel that way. That's why they have anxiety, like there's already a feeling telling them they're not safe and protected. So just telling yourself isn't going to do anything. So I like leading statements because we can acknowledge what we're feeling.

Atarah Valentine: 59:20

Let's take dating, for example, and this is very public. It's awkward, right. This isn't like a private session. People are going to be listening to this, so there's a lot of vulnerability, if that's something that we always feel need to protect. There are going to be feelings of ooh, is that okay, or should I cut this out? Or what if this, or what if that? But let's run with it. The leading statement is this, and I want you to think about this in the context of wanting not just a romantic relationship, but better relationships, better relationship with yourself, better relationship with Melissa, better relationship with people that you meet, because that's authenticity, even though blank. I'm working on blank. First, blank is acknowledging the problem. Second is redirecting your brain to what you want it to do. Right, even though I'm feeling icky and uncomfortable right now because I shared so much, I'm working on trying to be more honest with myself so I can move through this. You see how that doesn't feel like a lie.

Jessica: 1:00:16

Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: 1:00:17

Yeah Right, it's honest, it's not judgmental, it's acknowledging the problem, and I could do 900 of them right. Even though I'm feeling icky and uncomfortable right now because I was so transparent, I'm working on learning to trust myself, and part of that is using my voice and expressing how I'm feeling. Imagine if that's what we were reinforcing every time we had that discomfort. Even though I have an uncomfortable feeling right now, I'm working on sharing openly with my users, because I know someone else is going through this and we're all going to lift each other up.

Jessica: 1:00:45

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Atarah Valentine: 1:00:47

Right. Imagine if that's the way you were speaking to yourself, internally, externally, to other people. What's the power of reframing, which is really what all of this is, instead of like, oh, this is true, that was bad, this is icky, I can't do this, I can't go online, great, well, we're going to keep reinforcing that story then. So if we want something bad enough, we can begin to look for those micro-discomforts, but then we have to be kind to ourselves after, because if we just do the movement and then judge it, we're reinforcing that that was bad. This is where we have to have self-compassion, right, even though this is uncomfortable and I feel all these walls want to go up, I'm working on allowing myself to tell the truth, because that's going to lead to healthy relationships. Want to take a stab at it?

Jessica: 1:01:32

Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: 1:01:33

For sure, even though blank, I'm working on blank.

Jessica: 1:01:36

Even though I feel icky and resistant to being called out on my shit, I am working on a allowing myself to be human.

Atarah Valentine: 1:01:53

You see what your body just did.

Jessica: 1:01:55

No, I wasn't looking at my body.

Atarah Valentine: 1:01:58

You relaxed literally. After saying that, you took a deep breath in shoulders raised, relaxed, and then you just decided to keep going. That's what I'm talking about here. It doesn't have to be hard and you can keep going if you want to but I just wanted to point that out.

Jessica: 1:02:11

I'll do one more. Even though I feel icky and resistant to you being right, I am working on sharing my vulnerability and outing my shadow.

Atarah Valentine: 1:02:31

It's beautiful and honest.

Jessica: 1:02:36

Yeah, yeah, thank you, you're welcome. I wasn't expecting this, but that was really meaningful. Thank you, that's the point right.

Atarah Valentine: 1:02:45

And just again, because I'm the perpetual reframer, why was that meaningful?

Jessica: 1:02:52

One. I found that very generous for you to not only take the time and share your tools and your resources with me and publicly. So I think that's very generous of you. It's meaningful because I think both of you are being very generous and creating a safe container for me to process something that's really deep and I feel, both seen in a way that's really beautiful, but also seen in a way that's uncomfortable, and I think that's meaningful. Actually, I think I actually how do I word this? We were speaking earlier to projection right, and people around me have witnessed what I've experienced over the last few years and really just want me to feel better and they're coming at it from a really loving place but projecting their solutions onto the situation. And to have someone coming in and you're very objective, you've never met me before. You also were able to pinpoint the situation in a way that was a little fury. But to have that kind of but it resonates in a kind of deeper way, I think, because it doesn't feel personal, I guess Does that make sense?

Atarah Valentine: 1:04:09

Yeah, I would also say, because you said something a lot of my clients say, which I love, is we'll finish the session and I always ask my clients what did you find the most valuable today and how can you integrate that? Because it's great feedback for me and it's great for them to just even think about and process in real time what we went over. And then I say questions, comments concerns my favorite thing and all of my clients will say I just feel like you really understand me and I've never felt so seen, which is nice to hear. But I respond, obviously, thank you, but you can't be seen if you don't allow yourself to show up. And you showed up today. And you showed up today. And that's the truth. Right, you shared.

Atarah Valentine: 1:04:55

You shared something that had deeper context that I wasn't aware of, because I do what I do, I pay attention to shifts in people's voices, changes in their physiology, right, just, I can tell there's something deeper. You still shared that. Even if you didn't, I would know that there was Right, but you decided to share and you decided to show up, and that's what makes things meaningful, like we were all here sharing a moment together, a very, very intimate moment, and your listeners are getting to share that. That's meaningful because you're literally living your life. We're all plugged into this conversation. We're not on our phones, we're not distracted, we're here.

Atarah Valentine: 1:05:35

That's what makes things meaningful, even if it's uncomfortable. You have to allow yourself to be here. You have to allow your problems to be here. You have to approach them with compassionate curiosity, cause we can get through this and we could be gentle with ourselves. And it can be fun and it can be silly. Everything doesn't have to be hard and painful all the time. That comes with avoidance, because things get bigger and bigger. But if we can use something silly like Mickey Mouse and Butt to really uncover something and disassemble it and use leading statements to make ourselves feel good and acknowledge what we're doing and also give ourselves some motivation, there's nothing that we can't work through right.

Melissa Bauknight: 1:06:12

Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: 1:06:12

But you showed up.

Melissa Bauknight: 1:06:14

And I want to say that I think you so often are the one helping everyone else see themselves. So it was really beautiful to witness you getting to receive Because even earlier today when we had a conversation, that was the biggest feedback was you helped me feel so seen and that's your gift that you give everybody else. So it was really beautiful to be a witness of you getting to see that and having him guide you through that.

Jessica: 1:06:39

Thank you. I'd love to add one more dimension of meaning for me and it's the reason that I invited you here is I've been listening to you be so vulnerable and so transparent in your process and your journey and how. Your journey to coming into your empowerment has been inspiring and expansive for me, and I've learned so much because of that, because you were willing to be that honest, and so I feel like this is an opportunity in my way to pay that forward.

Atarah Valentine: 1:07:16

Love that. I love that. Thank you that. I mean, that's really what it boils down to. It feels really scary, but that's never gonna be that scary again, and every time you approach it it's gonna get a little easier until it doesn't exist anymore. And then when you try to show up in that new way, that's gonna feel a little scary, but once you do it it's not gonna be as scary. It goes both ways right. We're just here and we may as well be ourselves, All of this stuff that we're afraid of. If I get rejected by people who don't wanna know me, as I am good, those aren't the people I need to have in my life. It's okay. We can't find our people, we can't find our aligned group, our aligned community, If we don't even allow ourselves to be aligned with ourselves, if we can't be truthful with ourselves, if we can't share life will show you who's for you and who isn't.

Atarah Valentine: 1:08:07

It's not your job to figure out how to be who you need to be for everybody. We need polarity. We need differences of opinion. That helps growth right. That helps keep things interesting. There's no reason for any of us to hide.

Jessica: 1:08:18

There's no reason for any of us to hide. I think that is the perfect note to wrap up on. Thank you so much, thank you.

Atarah Valentine: 1:08:25

Thank you, it was such a pleasure.

Jessica: 1:08:27

You're incredibly generous with your time and your wisdom and I know that our listeners are going to get so much out of this. I always get so much out of listening to you, thank you. I know that you have some programs or a subscription program coming out. Is there anything that you'd like to share as we wrap out?

Atarah Valentine: 1:08:46

I mean not really. I'm not such a sales pitchy person the subscription model will be coming out. It's incredible Like nothing that's out there right now If you're really looking for personal understanding. That's what it's focused on. There are two workshops that are out and you can link to them if you want to, if people are interested, just to really be plugged into your life. As it is right now, my real goal with people and working with them and workshops and the subscription model is to really have people allow themselves to be in their lives right now.

Atarah Valentine: 1:09:16

Because, this is your life. It's happening right now. It's not your past, it's not your future. It's this exact moment, and there's so much power that you have within this moment. There's so much choice that you have within this moment, but we have to be here in order to tap into that stuff. So I hope this inspired some people today to maybe pull the reins in and focus on what's immediately around them instead of constantly looking for some future situation that's gonna make things better. You can do that now, even in the smallest ways.

Jessica: 1:09:52

Thank you so much.

Atarah Valentine: 1:09:54

You're welcome. Thank you, guys.