Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back together with the words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when you write your story. You got the words and said, don't you think it's down to let them out and write them down and cold it's all about and write your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, And on today's episode, I want to talk about a pretty big topic that I brought up in last week's episode, and I want to continue to unpack it today because I think it's just that important. I want to talk about this idea of the true self versus the false self, or that's probably the language I think that I'll use today on the episode to talk about it. There are a thousand different ways to talk about this, and there is no one right way. If you would have asked me, I don't know, ten or fifteen years ago, I probably would have said that the true self versus false self was God versus me. I would have been in a morning quiet time and I would have been journaling or reading my Bible, and I would have said, God spoke to me or God said, or God shared this wisdom with me, and I would have felt like that wisdom was coming from God. That's not exactly the way that I see it now, doesn't always feel aligned for me like that, But I think if that does feel aligned for you, that's one hundred percent appropriate way to talk about it, and there are lots of other ways to talk about it too. I've also shared before in a previous episode about an author named Esther Hicks who also sometimes goes by Abraham Hicks, who's written a ton of books. But the delineation that she shares the way she talks about it is that there's Esther the person, the human person, and then the wisdom comes from this collective group of beings, is how she describes it. That she calls Abraham, and these beings are spirit beings who don't live on planet Earth. They live I don't know how you want to talk about that, on the other side and the beyond, in heaven, whatever. And she's connecting with this group of spirit beings and she's channeling their information into her books. And she's written a dozen books at least. I've listened to several of them on audio. I've talked about them on a previous episode. I think that's a whole ra habit trail that we could go down. I have a lot of thoughts about Esther and Abraham Hicks, but there's so much in what she shares that really is wisdom and that is helpful and that is supportive to people. And that's just the way she talks about it. That there's Esther the human, and then there's the group of beings named Abraham that she's connecting to. That's where the wisdom comes from. There's also Richard Rhr, who's an author that I've talked about a few times before. I think I shared his book Breathing Underwater. I love Richard Rhr because he has this way of helping me stay connected to my heritage and my roots in Christianity. I evolved past that container a few years ago in my life, and there were just a lot of reasons for which I couldn't totally align myself with that worldview or that way of thinking anymore. And Richard Rhorr has helped me to stay connected to many aspects of Christianity and many aspects of the person of Jesus and the Hebrews scriptures and the New Testament and so many different parts of my faith that helps me, you know, feel like I'm not severing off my left arm in order to move forward. I'm able to kind of like keep the parts of this faith that still align for me and still makes sense to me. And Richard Rhr wrote a book called The Immortal Diamond that talks about the difference between the false self and the true self. So that's how he talks about it, that there's this false self that is the character that we created that's moving through our life as a way to please other people. Please our parents, please our schoolmates, you know, please our spouses, please our kids. However, like we have created this version of ourselves that moves through the world trying to make other people happy, and that's our false self. And then there's the true self. The true self actually is connected to the wisdom. The true self knows the way for the true self feels deep in their soul that this story is going to resolve in a beautiful way and that all things work together for the good of those who come together in God. And that's how Richard war talks about it. So, however you talk about it, however you feel about it, whether you feel that there's the human you and you're connecting to this being or group of beings from the other side. You know, I know that sounds kind of kooky, but think about it for just a second. Like, if you've lost a loved one, do you feel that you can connect with them, you can connect with their energy from the other side. I just want to bring this down to earth for a second so that you don't feel like this is such an impossible concept to wrap your brain around. If this feels new to you or even feels triggering to you, the idea that we can connect to someone's essence, to their soul, that their soul is eternal, that their soul doesn't just die when they leave here on earth, and that we could connect to that soul from here on earth while they are on the other side is not that crazy. So I want you to just keep that in mind as you think about like and sort of wrestle with this idea of someone channeling the energy of another being. It does sound a little crazy and it can be hard to take in, but for the sake of today's episode, I want you to just consider that this is one way of seeing this. This is one way of looking at it, and another way of looking at it is the true self versus the false self. Richard Rhor's way of talking about it is the one that resonates for me the most and aligns with me the most when I hear him talk about it, it's just like, Oh, it's so easy to think about that, it's so easy to use that language. And whatever it is for you. And maybe it's something else that I haven't even mentioned, but whatever it is for you that makes it feel easy for you to talk about this. Every time that I say true self versus false self, or higher self versus lower self, or whatever words I use, I want you to almost in your mind just replace it with whatever makes sense for you, because there's no point in struggling to understand a concept inside of a concept, you know, I want to what I want to talk about today, The most important thing I want to say is how how can we connect more deeply with this part of ourself that has the wisdom, this part of ourselves that sees the whole picture, this part of ourselves that knows that this story is coming to a meaningful resolution. How can we connect more deeply with that part of ourselves, and I don't want the obstacle of channeling or whatever to get in your way. I'm going to use that as an example, but I don't want it to be an obstacle for you. So if it begins to feel like an obstacle for you, just start to replace it in your head with whatever language feels aligned and makes sense for you and makes it feel super easy to engage with this process. Because one of the things that I'm going to show you today, I want to teach you an activity that I've been doing myself for a really long time that I've been teaching in writing to heal workshops, and that is really similar to something that I learned from another creator that i'll talk about in just a second. The alignment was so cool for me to see because when I saw him teach this, I was like, wait a second, I've been doing this forever, and the activity is so simple that you almost could overlook it, and yet it's super, super powerful, and it's an amazing way to connect more deeply to yourself, to your true self, not the you that's people pleasing everyone, but the you that's like the deep, true you that came here with a mission and a purpose and knows exactly what that is, and is totally willing to face any obstacle and is totally willing to sit through discomfort and isn't at all worried about the problem that's in front of you right now, and isn't it all concerned that you know, the smaller you feel, stuck or whatever, that higher you exists. And I want you to be able to leverage this activity to connect more deeply to that part of you. So quick story, I want to tell you how this happened. I was scrolling on Instagram one day, as one does, and into my feed popped this guy who Sometimes I don't understand the Instagram algorithm. I'm like, I'm like, how did you think that this would be interesting to me? And yet it did end up being interesting to me. But sometimes Instagram shows me things in my feed that I'm like, even somebody that knew me very well would not have been like, oh, Ali is gonna love this, and yet I did end up loving it, So thank you Instagram. So the algorithm puts this guy in my feed. His name is Lee Harris. Lee Harris very similar to Esther Hicks. Abraham Hicks is a channeler. So he is a content creator, an author, a writer, a person on Instagram who shares his wisdom. He says he's channeling it from a group of beings who he calls the z's that are on the other side. So this is very similar to Esther Hicks, who's written all these books and taught all these workshops and done all these conferences channeling the wisdom that she says doesn't come from Esther, it comes from Abraham. Lee is very similar. So maybe this is why Lee got in my feed is because I was listening to Esther Hicks books on Audible. Perhaps, so Lee comes in my feed and he does this thing that I find really interesting called the Energy Update. Every single month, at the beginning of the month, he shares the energy update for that month. And the energy Update is just like, Hey, here's what's happening in the app sphere, here's what to be thinking about. Here are the themes for this month. Here's kind of the zeitgeist for the time that we're living in the next thirty days. This is what's sort of going on. And this information is not coming from Lee. According to Lee, It's coming from disease. This group of beings that he's channeling from the other side. So I'm like so fascinated by this. I'm just like very curious. One of the things that has been so fun for me in stepping back from the container of the faith of my childhood and seeing it from a broader lens has been the ability to do this with almost everything, like every set of beliefs, whether it's astrology, which you know, in my upbringing, astrology would have been like evil, don't touch that with a ten foot pole. That's a slippery slope and you'll get sucked down the hill. And now even just in the broader conversation and the cultural conversation, astrology has come into a different light, and I feel like we have a little bit more spaciousness to think about it differently. And this has happened for me with a lot of different ideas or topics or ways of seeing the world, where I'm like, I can look at this with an open mind and an open heart. It doesn't mean that I have to say that's true, but it means that I can come into contact with it, I can read it, I can I can see it with open eyes, I can see it with an open heart and I can just go interesting, fascinating, tell me more about how you see the world, And I feel a lot of freedom in that. It has really opened me to be able to see things from lots of different vantage points that I never would have gotten to see if I wasn't willing. So this was one of those moments for me. I'm watching Lee Harris, I'm like, you know, do I really believe that there's a group of people called the Z's that you're channeling their wisdom from. I don't know, like big fat question work. I don't know how the world works. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, But I'm just gonna check this out because it seems like the things that you're sharing are coming from a wise place and they're supportive and they're helpful for not just me, but first seems like a lot of people. And so I'm just watching as he's sharing these energy updates. This was kind of all last year twenty twenty four. Late last year, shortly after my dad passed, Lee shared a free workshop on his page that was about connecting with your guides. So he was like, if you've always wanted to connect with your guides, you know I can teach you how to do that. My guides are disease and I've learned how to connect with them, and I can teach you how to connect with your guides from the other side. Well, I was really fascinated by this because my dad had just passed and I was thinking, like, I mean, death will do this too, where you start to think about like what is life? You know, like this human body that we're in is just a shell of a thing. Our soul is eternal, It exists forever. So what happens when we die? Like can I connect to my dad? Can I connect to the essence and the energy of who he was? Is he there guiding me? Can he talk to me? Can he give me wisdom? Are there other people in my heritage who can do that? Like, you know, my mom's mom, her biological mom, I never met because she died before or well I guess she died shortly after I was born, and I may have met her as a baby actually, now that I'm thinking about it, but my mother and her were estranged and so we just never had a relationship. I never really got to meet her, and I think about her a lot. I'm like my biological grandmother. Her name is phyllis, and I'm like, what is that? Like? Am I connected to her? Like we share DNA, we share blood, and yet I never knew her. Can I connect to her? Essence? Does she see me from where she is? Can she talk to me? Can she share things with me? So I'm asking myself all these questions already, and I was just very curious about it, and so I thought, like, I'll sign up for this free workshop and see what Lee has to say about connecting with our guides. So I sign up for the free workshop. There's a whole lead up to the main meat of the message where he teaches you the activity, the exercise that he does to connect to guides. And the leadup is like, here's why it matters to connect to your guides, Here's what I think about guides, Here's who my guides are, Here's how it's helped me over the years. And then and here's the exercise that I do. And he teaches the exercise, and I'll teach it to you in just a second. I'm gonna teach it to you exactly as he taught it to me. And then I'm going to tell you why this mattered so much to me. But essentially what I noticed was, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this in one form or another since I was very young. This is always how I've been connecting to what I would call my true self or my higher self. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, and I've been teaching this in healing workshops for as long as I can remember. And what a bizarre thing that I think of him as so different than me. It's like, Oh, you're channeling like this group of beings from beyond. That seems kind of wild, and yet what we're doing to connect is the same. And here's what he taught. I'm going to teach it to you just exactly as he taught it to me, and then I'm going to give you a few variations of it in case it feels easier for you to connect with the activity through my variations. But what Lee taught is to open your iPhone. Let's say, if you don't have an iPhone, that's fine. You can open whatever phone you have, or you can use a piece of pape pen It's also fine you need a blank sheet of paper. So if you're going to open your iPhone, open to your notes app. Let's say and open a brand new note. You want a blank sheet of paper, and I want you to write the date at the top of the sheet of paper. The date I'm recording this is two ten twenty five, so two ten twenty five at the top of the page. But your date's going to be different because this will not publish until a couple of weeks from now, so your date's different. You write the date at the top of the sheet of paper, and then below the date, I want you to write this question. This is the question that Lee gave to me, what do you want to show me today? And then you free write, So the question at the top of the page is what do you want to show me today? I've done this several dozen times since I learned it from Lee late last year. I did it really consistently for I don't know a month ish and then fell out of the practice and then came back to it at the beginning of the year. And one thing that will sometimes happen for me is I respond to the question through like a free write. If you've done Julia Cameron's before, if you've done like the Artist's way, it's very similar to the brain dump that she teaches to those morning pages where you just stream of consciousness, you write whatever comes to your mind and start to notice the different sensations when something comes through that you think of putting on the page that feels like, yes, that's important, that's it, that's a piece of wisdom for me versus kind of all the rubbish. Because there is a difference, there's a different energy around it. Sometimes you write stuff that you're like, this is just the kind of rat race that my brain is on. It's like the you know, negative thoughts, like the hamster wheel that my brain does, just like life is over, this is horrible, You're too tired, it's never gonna get better, you know whatever, that stuff versus Like, one thing that came through for me this morning was connect with your confidence. Connect with your confidence, use your voice, And that wisdom came through for me in this practice. So I want you to begin to notice the difference in the tenor, Like use that word tenor and think about that metaphor, think about the difference in the tenor of one note versus a different note. So connect with the different vibration of one sentence versus another sentence. You know, life is terrible. It's all falling apart. It's just chaos. You know, our democracy is being systematically dismantled. That kind of tenor of like lah, just the hamster wheel, the rat race that your brain does versus connect with your confidence. It's different. They have a different vibration to them. And one kind of cuts through the noise of the other. One is just noise, and one like has like a slicing like it cuts through the noise. It has a clarity to it, It has a supportive nature to it, It has like a yeah, I don't even know how to describe it beyond that, but to see if you can start to tell the difference between one and the other, and you could. Even as I've gotten more practiced with this, one of the things that I've done is begun to leave out the noisy parts, like just leave him out, Just don't even put them on the page. Julia Carmon would say, I think you put it all on the page, which is also fine. You know the purpose of morning pages is to kind of dump out what's going on in your brain so that you can get to the good stuff. And I think that's one practice in one way of doing it too, that also can be quite effective. This practice is a little bit different. It's about connecting to that true part of yourself that why is part of yourself, that narrator voice that knows where the story is going. And see if you can feel the difference between the two. And maybe only what you put on the page is the narrator voice. Maybe the only thing you put on the page is the clarity. But you know, even as I'm saying that, I'm thinking about how one of the things that I teach writers when they're putting together memoirs is to learn to fluctuate back and forth between hero voice and narrator voice. The reader actually needs both. The reader needs to know that the hero feels like all is lost. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't know what the hell to do next. The reader needs to know that the hero is deeply flawed. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't see a way forward. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't believe in themselves. The reader needs to know that hero feels like total despair. Everything's falling apart, nothing's going to work, it's impossible. And the reader also needs to know, just like a taste of narrative voice is all that it takes to float the reader through the darkest part of the story to get them to the resolution. They just need a tiny little nudge that a happier time is coming, that the hero doesn't see everything that's around the corner. They just need like a slight little inkling that maybe something better is on its way. And I wonder if the same is true for us as we're living through our stories. I wonder if we also just need like the slightest nudge that everything's going to be okay. It can feel really provocative to say to someone who's in the midst of a crisis, actually, everything is going to be okay. It can feel almost like there's part of you you'll feel if someone says that to you. You're like, no, it's not there's no way that everything is going to be okay, and yet it is, And yet it is. Everything is going to be okay. I love the Chryl strad quote. You know, this feels like the most honest and sometimes helpful way to hold these two tensions at once. She says most things will be okay eventually, but not everything. Acceptance is a small quiet room I may have even shared that quote here on the show before because it's such a meaningful quote to me, and it floated me through a really difficult time in my life when I was going through my divorce. Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything. Acceptance is a small quiet room, and so there's acceptance for the parts that are going to fall apart, that are going to die, that are going to fall off, that are not going to be okay on the one hand, and yet from that higher vantage point, even the things that are not okay eventually are actually okay in the broader scope inside of that wider perspective. And again, like I talked to on last week's episode, this is not a cheap, easy, toxic positivity. This takes such incredible courage to get to this point where you can hold both at the same time that this thing in my life that I love and care about was falling apart completely and it is not going to be okay, and also I'm okay, and also it's okay. That deep, deep sense of acceptance and surrender to what is is not an easy place to come to. This is not just like yeah, things are fine, everything's fine, We're fine, I'm good. Yes, oh yes, life is good. This is not that, this is not that. This is like I'm deeply, deeply not okay, and I'm also okay at the same time. So I learned this technique from Lee and I start doing this, And one of the things that I thought about immediately as soon as he taught it to me was how I've been doing something very similar since I was really young. One of the things that I used to do was write the day at the top of the page and write the statement A few things that are true for me today, or ten things that are true for me today, or five things that are true for me today are and I would just list them out bullet points. And I've taught this in my writing to heel workshops over and over again too. There's something about simply stating what is true for you today that tends to unlock that deeper wisdom. Let's just say, as I was sharing this exercise with you, you were thinking like, ugh, no, I can't get there. Either the idea of channeling feels too out of alignment with you, or the whole thing just You're just like, I can't get myself to a place where I feel like things are okay because they are so so deeply not okay. If that's the case, it might be easier for you to start with a prompt like five things that are true for me today, Because one of the things that is so miraculous that I've watched happen over and over and over again is that when you admit what is true, it doesn't stay true forever. And I think we're so afraid that if we admit what is true for us today, if it's a deeply painful truth, we're terrified that it will stay true forever. So you write something on your list like you know, I want a divorce, or you write something on your list like I don't want to be here, or you write something on your list like I'm devastated, I'm horrified, you know, I'm so hurt, I feel like I'll never heal whatever it is. Like, you could write something really heavy and difficult on your list, and I'm telling you there is something about owning your truth that makes it transform, that makes it morph into something new. It just is true for today, but it doesn't stay true forever. In fact, sometimes it stays true for about ten minutes sometimes, And this is why, you know, venting sometimes works. It doesn't always work, but sometimes venting can be a really effective tool for sort of like letting the steam out of the instapot, like just like letting the press sure out, because sometimes all it takes is for you to be like I hate him, you know, to be like, actually, the truth is, I don't hate him, but I'm feeling so much anger right now and i don't know how to fix it, and I'm really stuck and I'm lost, and that's a different truth. And even I'm stuck and I'm lost will be true for now, but maybe ten minutes from now it's not quite so true. And so telling the truth has this way of allowing a transformation. Another thing I love about this activity is the question what do you want to show me today? Can be a question to whomever you want it to be. This can be a question you're asking God. It can be a question you're asking your loved one from the other side. It can be a question you're asking your guides. It can be a question you're asking your true self, your higher self, your narrative voice. However you want to frame this, it is open to interpretation, and so I don't think it needs to be about connecting to, you know, a group of beings, a consciousness on the other side. If that feels like too wacko and woo oo for you, then just drop it, like no need to carry that. If it feels heavy, if that feels like expansive to you and you're like, yeah, that is exactly how I've experienced this, then by all means, take it and run with it. And you could even go find Lee Harris and follow him. And I'm sure you've probably already read Esther Hicks because she's probably the most well known and like mainstreamed channel that we have, I would imagine. But however, you want to frame this for you, frame it the way that makes most sense to you. If you want to say, God, what do you want to show me today? Or guides, what do you want to show me today? Or Mom from the other side, what do you want to show me today whatever it is? Or true self, what do you want to show me today? You can frame it however it makes sense for you. And so I want to challenge you to take this writing assignment and do it every day for a couple of days in a row. You know, James Pennabaker's famous research around the healing power of writing says that if you write for four days in a row, for twenty minutes at a time, you experience a measurable improvement in your immune system, a measurable improvement in yourmune. So some literally the control groups got sick fifty percent less often than those who didn't write, which is insane. So even if you could just set a goal for yourself to do this for four days in a row, for twenty minutes at a time. One of the things that I'm doing because I have felt really guided recently to take a break from Instagram. I'm not sure if I'm off of Instagram forever for good, but i do know that for this period of time that Instagram. Being on Instagram, even if I'm just scrolling, if I'm not posting, if I'm on Instagram, I'm being so heavily influenced by the input that's coming in. And it's not all bad influences. Obviously. I shared the story about connecting with Lee Harris, and I could share one hundred others like that that have been really supportive and helpful for me. So Instagram is not a bad place, but I'm so easily influenced by like the negativity, the political stuff that I get so easily sucked in that I don't stay connected to this higher, wiser part of myself. And so maybe for you it's Instagram, or maybe for you it's something different that you can feel pulls you away from your own wisdom. If there is something in your life that pulls you away from your own wisdom, you don't have to villainize that thing. Maybe it's TV, maybe it's hanging out with a certain group of people. Maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's foods, I don't know. Whatever it is, for you, you don't have to villainize that thing. It doesn't make that thing bad. It's just like, yes, this thing is pulling me away from my wisdom, and I want to come back to my wisdom. So one challenge that I gave myself is to take a break from Instagram for right now. I don't know how long this will be. To be off of Instagram completely, like it's it's not on my phone at all. And when I have the impulse to go to Instagram to sort of check and see what's going on in the world, instead I tune into my wisdom. Instead, I do this exercise and I will keep the note open on my phone all day with the date at the top of the page, and different wisdom comes in at different points of the day. You know, if I do it first thing in the morning, there's wisdom that comes through then. But also, I'm sitting at a coffee shop after I ordered my coffee, and I'm waiting for five minutes for my chi or whatever, and normally I'd be scrolling Instagram just to kill the time, and instead I'm connecting with my wisdom. And I want to challenge you to do something similar to this, because I think we will witness absolute miracles take place when more and more of us choose to disconnect from the things that are pulling us away from our wisdom and to connect in to the wisdom, to connect into the higher self, to connect into the true self, to connect in to God, to connect in to love, to connect into whatever you want to call it. When we do that, we're going to begin to see such radical clarity come through about next steps. That this time period that we're in that does feel heavy and dense and dark and chaotic and confusing, and it does feel in many ways like, oh, all is lost. I have no idea how we're going to get through this, both individually and collectively, and yet such radical clarity is going to come through that we're going to know exactly what to do next. We are going to feel planted and ground. We are going to feel so alive and so free and so clear about who we are and how we're meant to show up in the world. And that clarity comes from simple, simple, simple things like this. So I just want to challenge you four days in a row, twenty minutes at a time. I think what will happen is you will experience such a surge of clarity and motivation and momentum from those four days that you're probably going to want to go beyond the four days. But just shoot for four days, twenty minutes four days. It's easy. Shoot for those four days. Do this writing assignment for four days in a row. Report back to me, Let me know how it goes, let me know how you feel, Let me know what you learn, because I maybe at some point I'll read to you some of the things that have come through for me. But I'm like, WHOA Many writers have had this experience too, and artists where you write something or you make something like a song or a piece of art, and you just like, where did that come from? Because I, my false self, my small self, did not do that. That is wild, that that came through me. So I want to dare you to practice connecting with your wisdom this week, four days, twenty minutes a day. Just start there, See what happens, See how it goes, See how much momentum you create, see what kind of wisdom you gain, and make sure that you let me know how it goes. I will see you back here next week on the Write Your Story podcast

Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back together with the words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when you write your story. You got the words and said, don't you think it's down to let them out and write them down and cold it's all about and write your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, And on today's episode, I want to talk about a pretty big topic that I brought up in last week's episode, and I want to continue to unpack it today because I think it's just that important. I want to talk about this idea of the true self versus the false self, or that's probably the language I think that I'll use today on the episode to talk about it. There are a thousand different ways to talk about this, and there is no one right way. If you would have asked me, I don't know, ten or fifteen years ago, I probably would have said that the true self versus false self was God versus me. I would have been in a morning quiet time and I would have been journaling or reading my Bible, and I would have said, God spoke to me or God said, or God shared this wisdom with me, and I would have felt like that wisdom was coming from God. That's not exactly the way that I see it now, doesn't always feel aligned for me like that, But I think if that does feel aligned for you, that's one hundred percent appropriate way to talk about it, and there are lots of other ways to talk about it too. I've also shared before in a previous episode about an author named Esther Hicks who also sometimes goes by Abraham Hicks, who's written a ton of books. But the delineation that she shares the way she talks about it is that there's Esther the person, the human person, and then the wisdom comes from this collective group of beings, is how she describes it. That she calls Abraham, and these beings are spirit beings who don't live on planet Earth. They live I don't know how you want to talk about that, on the other side and the beyond, in heaven, whatever. And she's connecting with this group of spirit beings and she's channeling their information into her books. And she's written a dozen books at least. I've listened to several of them on audio. I've talked about them on a previous episode. I think that's a whole ra habit trail that we could go down. I have a lot of thoughts about Esther and Abraham Hicks, but there's so much in what she shares that really is wisdom and that is helpful and that is supportive to people. And that's just the way she talks about it. That there's Esther the human, and then there's the group of beings named Abraham that she's connecting to. That's where the wisdom comes from. There's also Richard Rhr, who's an author that I've talked about a few times before. I think I shared his book Breathing Underwater. I love Richard Rhr because he has this way of helping me stay connected to my heritage and my roots in Christianity. I evolved past that container a few years ago in my life, and there were just a lot of reasons for which I couldn't totally align myself with that worldview or that way of thinking anymore. And Richard Rhorr has helped me to stay connected to many aspects of Christianity and many aspects of the person of Jesus and the Hebrews scriptures and the New Testament and so many different parts of my faith that helps me, you know, feel like I'm not severing off my left arm in order to move forward. I'm able to kind of like keep the parts of this faith that still align for me and still makes sense to me. And Richard Rhr wrote a book called The Immortal Diamond that talks about the difference between the false self and the true self. So that's how he talks about it, that there's this false self that is the character that we created that's moving through our life as a way to please other people. Please our parents, please our schoolmates, you know, please our spouses, please our kids. However, like we have created this version of ourselves that moves through the world trying to make other people happy, and that's our false self. And then there's the true self. The true self actually is connected to the wisdom. The true self knows the way for the true self feels deep in their soul that this story is going to resolve in a beautiful way and that all things work together for the good of those who come together in God. And that's how Richard war talks about it. So, however you talk about it, however you feel about it, whether you feel that there's the human you and you're connecting to this being or group of beings from the other side. You know, I know that sounds kind of kooky, but think about it for just a second. Like, if you've lost a loved one, do you feel that you can connect with them, you can connect with their energy from the other side. I just want to bring this down to earth for a second so that you don't feel like this is such an impossible concept to wrap your brain around. If this feels new to you or even feels triggering to you, the idea that we can connect to someone's essence, to their soul, that their soul is eternal, that their soul doesn't just die when they leave here on earth, and that we could connect to that soul from here on earth while they are on the other side is not that crazy. So I want you to just keep that in mind as you think about like and sort of wrestle with this idea of someone channeling the energy of another being. It does sound a little crazy and it can be hard to take in, but for the sake of today's episode, I want you to just consider that this is one way of seeing this. This is one way of looking at it, and another way of looking at it is the true self versus the false self. Richard Rhor's way of talking about it is the one that resonates for me the most and aligns with me the most when I hear him talk about it, it's just like, Oh, it's so easy to think about that, it's so easy to use that language. And whatever it is for you. And maybe it's something else that I haven't even mentioned, but whatever it is for you that makes it feel easy for you to talk about this. Every time that I say true self versus false self, or higher self versus lower self, or whatever words I use, I want you to almost in your mind just replace it with whatever makes sense for you, because there's no point in struggling to understand a concept inside of a concept, you know, I want to what I want to talk about today, The most important thing I want to say is how how can we connect more deeply with this part of ourself that has the wisdom, this part of ourselves that sees the whole picture, this part of ourselves that knows that this story is coming to a meaningful resolution. How can we connect more deeply with that part of ourselves, and I don't want the obstacle of channeling or whatever to get in your way. I'm going to use that as an example, but I don't want it to be an obstacle for you. So if it begins to feel like an obstacle for you, just start to replace it in your head with whatever language feels aligned and makes sense for you and makes it feel super easy to engage with this process. Because one of the things that I'm going to show you today, I want to teach you an activity that I've been doing myself for a really long time that I've been teaching in writing to heal workshops, and that is really similar to something that I learned from another creator that i'll talk about in just a second. The alignment was so cool for me to see because when I saw him teach this, I was like, wait a second, I've been doing this forever, and the activity is so simple that you almost could overlook it, and yet it's super, super powerful, and it's an amazing way to connect more deeply to yourself, to your true self, not the you that's people pleasing everyone, but the you that's like the deep, true you that came here with a mission and a purpose and knows exactly what that is, and is totally willing to face any obstacle and is totally willing to sit through discomfort and isn't at all worried about the problem that's in front of you right now, and isn't it all concerned that you know, the smaller you feel, stuck or whatever, that higher you exists. And I want you to be able to leverage this activity to connect more deeply to that part of you. So quick story, I want to tell you how this happened. I was scrolling on Instagram one day, as one does, and into my feed popped this guy who Sometimes I don't understand the Instagram algorithm. I'm like, I'm like, how did you think that this would be interesting to me? And yet it did end up being interesting to me. But sometimes Instagram shows me things in my feed that I'm like, even somebody that knew me very well would not have been like, oh, Ali is gonna love this, and yet I did end up loving it, So thank you Instagram. So the algorithm puts this guy in my feed. His name is Lee Harris. Lee Harris very similar to Esther Hicks. Abraham Hicks is a channeler. So he is a content creator, an author, a writer, a person on Instagram who shares his wisdom. He says he's channeling it from a group of beings who he calls the z's that are on the other side. So this is very similar to Esther Hicks, who's written all these books and taught all these workshops and done all these conferences channeling the wisdom that she says doesn't come from Esther, it comes from Abraham. Lee is very similar. So maybe this is why Lee got in my feed is because I was listening to Esther Hicks books on Audible. Perhaps, so Lee comes in my feed and he does this thing that I find really interesting called the Energy Update. Every single month, at the beginning of the month, he shares the energy update for that month. And the energy Update is just like, Hey, here's what's happening in the app sphere, here's what to be thinking about. Here are the themes for this month. Here's kind of the zeitgeist for the time that we're living in the next thirty days. This is what's sort of going on. And this information is not coming from Lee. According to Lee, It's coming from disease. This group of beings that he's channeling from the other side. So I'm like so fascinated by this. I'm just like very curious. One of the things that has been so fun for me in stepping back from the container of the faith of my childhood and seeing it from a broader lens has been the ability to do this with almost everything, like every set of beliefs, whether it's astrology, which you know, in my upbringing, astrology would have been like evil, don't touch that with a ten foot pole. That's a slippery slope and you'll get sucked down the hill. And now even just in the broader conversation and the cultural conversation, astrology has come into a different light, and I feel like we have a little bit more spaciousness to think about it differently. And this has happened for me with a lot of different ideas or topics or ways of seeing the world, where I'm like, I can look at this with an open mind and an open heart. It doesn't mean that I have to say that's true, but it means that I can come into contact with it, I can read it, I can I can see it with open eyes, I can see it with an open heart and I can just go interesting, fascinating, tell me more about how you see the world, And I feel a lot of freedom in that. It has really opened me to be able to see things from lots of different vantage points that I never would have gotten to see if I wasn't willing. So this was one of those moments for me. I'm watching Lee Harris, I'm like, you know, do I really believe that there's a group of people called the Z's that you're channeling their wisdom from. I don't know, like big fat question work. I don't know how the world works. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, But I'm just gonna check this out because it seems like the things that you're sharing are coming from a wise place and they're supportive and they're helpful for not just me, but first seems like a lot of people. And so I'm just watching as he's sharing these energy updates. This was kind of all last year twenty twenty four. Late last year, shortly after my dad passed, Lee shared a free workshop on his page that was about connecting with your guides. So he was like, if you've always wanted to connect with your guides, you know I can teach you how to do that. My guides are disease and I've learned how to connect with them, and I can teach you how to connect with your guides from the other side. Well, I was really fascinated by this because my dad had just passed and I was thinking, like, I mean, death will do this too, where you start to think about like what is life? You know, like this human body that we're in is just a shell of a thing. Our soul is eternal, It exists forever. So what happens when we die? Like can I connect to my dad? Can I connect to the essence and the energy of who he was? Is he there guiding me? Can he talk to me? Can he give me wisdom? Are there other people in my heritage who can do that? Like, you know, my mom's mom, her biological mom, I never met because she died before or well I guess she died shortly after I was born, and I may have met her as a baby actually, now that I'm thinking about it, but my mother and her were estranged and so we just never had a relationship. I never really got to meet her, and I think about her a lot. I'm like my biological grandmother. Her name is phyllis, and I'm like, what is that? Like? Am I connected to her? Like we share DNA, we share blood, and yet I never knew her. Can I connect to her? Essence? Does she see me from where she is? Can she talk to me? Can she share things with me? So I'm asking myself all these questions already, and I was just very curious about it, and so I thought, like, I'll sign up for this free workshop and see what Lee has to say about connecting with our guides. So I sign up for the free workshop. There's a whole lead up to the main meat of the message where he teaches you the activity, the exercise that he does to connect to guides. And the leadup is like, here's why it matters to connect to your guides, Here's what I think about guides, Here's who my guides are, Here's how it's helped me over the years. And then and here's the exercise that I do. And he teaches the exercise, and I'll teach it to you in just a second. I'm gonna teach it to you exactly as he taught it to me. And then I'm going to tell you why this mattered so much to me. But essentially what I noticed was, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this in one form or another since I was very young. This is always how I've been connecting to what I would call my true self or my higher self. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, and I've been teaching this in healing workshops for as long as I can remember. And what a bizarre thing that I think of him as so different than me. It's like, Oh, you're channeling like this group of beings from beyond. That seems kind of wild, and yet what we're doing to connect is the same. And here's what he taught. I'm going to teach it to you just exactly as he taught it to me, and then I'm going to give you a few variations of it in case it feels easier for you to connect with the activity through my variations. But what Lee taught is to open your iPhone. Let's say, if you don't have an iPhone, that's fine. You can open whatever phone you have, or you can use a piece of pape pen It's also fine you need a blank sheet of paper. So if you're going to open your iPhone, open to your notes app. Let's say and open a brand new note. You want a blank sheet of paper, and I want you to write the date at the top of the sheet of paper. The date I'm recording this is two ten twenty five, so two ten twenty five at the top of the page. But your date's going to be different because this will not publish until a couple of weeks from now, so your date's different. You write the date at the top of the sheet of paper, and then below the date, I want you to write this question. This is the question that Lee gave to me, what do you want to show me today? And then you free write, So the question at the top of the page is what do you want to show me today? I've done this several dozen times since I learned it from Lee late last year. I did it really consistently for I don't know a month ish and then fell out of the practice and then came back to it at the beginning of the year. And one thing that will sometimes happen for me is I respond to the question through like a free write. If you've done Julia Cameron's before, if you've done like the Artist's way, it's very similar to the brain dump that she teaches to those morning pages where you just stream of consciousness, you write whatever comes to your mind and start to notice the different sensations when something comes through that you think of putting on the page that feels like, yes, that's important, that's it, that's a piece of wisdom for me versus kind of all the rubbish. Because there is a difference, there's a different energy around it. Sometimes you write stuff that you're like, this is just the kind of rat race that my brain is on. It's like the you know, negative thoughts, like the hamster wheel that my brain does, just like life is over, this is horrible, You're too tired, it's never gonna get better, you know whatever, that stuff versus Like, one thing that came through for me this morning was connect with your confidence. Connect with your confidence, use your voice, And that wisdom came through for me in this practice. So I want you to begin to notice the difference in the tenor, Like use that word tenor and think about that metaphor, think about the difference in the tenor of one note versus a different note. So connect with the different vibration of one sentence versus another sentence. You know, life is terrible. It's all falling apart. It's just chaos. You know, our democracy is being systematically dismantled. That kind of tenor of like lah, just the hamster wheel, the rat race that your brain does versus connect with your confidence. It's different. They have a different vibration to them. And one kind of cuts through the noise of the other. One is just noise, and one like has like a slicing like it cuts through the noise. It has a clarity to it, It has a supportive nature to it, It has like a yeah, I don't even know how to describe it beyond that, but to see if you can start to tell the difference between one and the other, and you could. Even as I've gotten more practiced with this, one of the things that I've done is begun to leave out the noisy parts, like just leave him out, Just don't even put them on the page. Julia Carmon would say, I think you put it all on the page, which is also fine. You know the purpose of morning pages is to kind of dump out what's going on in your brain so that you can get to the good stuff. And I think that's one practice in one way of doing it too, that also can be quite effective. This practice is a little bit different. It's about connecting to that true part of yourself that why is part of yourself, that narrator voice that knows where the story is going. And see if you can feel the difference between the two. And maybe only what you put on the page is the narrator voice. Maybe the only thing you put on the page is the clarity. But you know, even as I'm saying that, I'm thinking about how one of the things that I teach writers when they're putting together memoirs is to learn to fluctuate back and forth between hero voice and narrator voice. The reader actually needs both. The reader needs to know that the hero feels like all is lost. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't know what the hell to do next. The reader needs to know that the hero is deeply flawed. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't see a way forward. The reader needs to know that the hero doesn't believe in themselves. The reader needs to know that hero feels like total despair. Everything's falling apart, nothing's going to work, it's impossible. And the reader also needs to know, just like a taste of narrative voice is all that it takes to float the reader through the darkest part of the story to get them to the resolution. They just need a tiny little nudge that a happier time is coming, that the hero doesn't see everything that's around the corner. They just need like a slight little inkling that maybe something better is on its way. And I wonder if the same is true for us as we're living through our stories. I wonder if we also just need like the slightest nudge that everything's going to be okay. It can feel really provocative to say to someone who's in the midst of a crisis, actually, everything is going to be okay. It can feel almost like there's part of you you'll feel if someone says that to you. You're like, no, it's not there's no way that everything is going to be okay, and yet it is, And yet it is. Everything is going to be okay. I love the Chryl strad quote. You know, this feels like the most honest and sometimes helpful way to hold these two tensions at once. She says most things will be okay eventually, but not everything. Acceptance is a small quiet room I may have even shared that quote here on the show before because it's such a meaningful quote to me, and it floated me through a really difficult time in my life when I was going through my divorce. Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything. Acceptance is a small quiet room, and so there's acceptance for the parts that are going to fall apart, that are going to die, that are going to fall off, that are not going to be okay on the one hand, and yet from that higher vantage point, even the things that are not okay eventually are actually okay in the broader scope inside of that wider perspective. And again, like I talked to on last week's episode, this is not a cheap, easy, toxic positivity. This takes such incredible courage to get to this point where you can hold both at the same time that this thing in my life that I love and care about was falling apart completely and it is not going to be okay, and also I'm okay, and also it's okay. That deep, deep sense of acceptance and surrender to what is is not an easy place to come to. This is not just like yeah, things are fine, everything's fine, We're fine, I'm good. Yes, oh yes, life is good. This is not that, this is not that. This is like I'm deeply, deeply not okay, and I'm also okay at the same time. So I learned this technique from Lee and I start doing this, And one of the things that I thought about immediately as soon as he taught it to me was how I've been doing something very similar since I was really young. One of the things that I used to do was write the day at the top of the page and write the statement A few things that are true for me today, or ten things that are true for me today, or five things that are true for me today are and I would just list them out bullet points. And I've taught this in my writing to heel workshops over and over again too. There's something about simply stating what is true for you today that tends to unlock that deeper wisdom. Let's just say, as I was sharing this exercise with you, you were thinking like, ugh, no, I can't get there. Either the idea of channeling feels too out of alignment with you, or the whole thing just You're just like, I can't get myself to a place where I feel like things are okay because they are so so deeply not okay. If that's the case, it might be easier for you to start with a prompt like five things that are true for me today, Because one of the things that is so miraculous that I've watched happen over and over and over again is that when you admit what is true, it doesn't stay true forever. And I think we're so afraid that if we admit what is true for us today, if it's a deeply painful truth, we're terrified that it will stay true forever. So you write something on your list like you know, I want a divorce, or you write something on your list like I don't want to be here, or you write something on your list like I'm devastated, I'm horrified, you know, I'm so hurt, I feel like I'll never heal whatever it is. Like, you could write something really heavy and difficult on your list, and I'm telling you there is something about owning your truth that makes it transform, that makes it morph into something new. It just is true for today, but it doesn't stay true forever. In fact, sometimes it stays true for about ten minutes sometimes, And this is why, you know, venting sometimes works. It doesn't always work, but sometimes venting can be a really effective tool for sort of like letting the steam out of the instapot, like just like letting the press sure out, because sometimes all it takes is for you to be like I hate him, you know, to be like, actually, the truth is, I don't hate him, but I'm feeling so much anger right now and i don't know how to fix it, and I'm really stuck and I'm lost, and that's a different truth. And even I'm stuck and I'm lost will be true for now, but maybe ten minutes from now it's not quite so true. And so telling the truth has this way of allowing a transformation. Another thing I love about this activity is the question what do you want to show me today? Can be a question to whomever you want it to be. This can be a question you're asking God. It can be a question you're asking your loved one from the other side. It can be a question you're asking your guides. It can be a question you're asking your true self, your higher self, your narrative voice. However you want to frame this, it is open to interpretation, and so I don't think it needs to be about connecting to, you know, a group of beings, a consciousness on the other side. If that feels like too wacko and woo oo for you, then just drop it, like no need to carry that. If it feels heavy, if that feels like expansive to you and you're like, yeah, that is exactly how I've experienced this, then by all means, take it and run with it. And you could even go find Lee Harris and follow him. And I'm sure you've probably already read Esther Hicks because she's probably the most well known and like mainstreamed channel that we have, I would imagine. But however, you want to frame this for you, frame it the way that makes most sense to you. If you want to say, God, what do you want to show me today? Or guides, what do you want to show me today? Or Mom from the other side, what do you want to show me today whatever it is? Or true self, what do you want to show me today? You can frame it however it makes sense for you. And so I want to challenge you to take this writing assignment and do it every day for a couple of days in a row. You know, James Pennabaker's famous research around the healing power of writing says that if you write for four days in a row, for twenty minutes at a time, you experience a measurable improvement in your immune system, a measurable improvement in yourmune. So some literally the control groups got sick fifty percent less often than those who didn't write, which is insane. So even if you could just set a goal for yourself to do this for four days in a row, for twenty minutes at a time. One of the things that I'm doing because I have felt really guided recently to take a break from Instagram. I'm not sure if I'm off of Instagram forever for good, but i do know that for this period of time that Instagram. Being on Instagram, even if I'm just scrolling, if I'm not posting, if I'm on Instagram, I'm being so heavily influenced by the input that's coming in. And it's not all bad influences. Obviously. I shared the story about connecting with Lee Harris, and I could share one hundred others like that that have been really supportive and helpful for me. So Instagram is not a bad place, but I'm so easily influenced by like the negativity, the political stuff that I get so easily sucked in that I don't stay connected to this higher, wiser part of myself. And so maybe for you it's Instagram, or maybe for you it's something different that you can feel pulls you away from your own wisdom. If there is something in your life that pulls you away from your own wisdom, you don't have to villainize that thing. Maybe it's TV, maybe it's hanging out with a certain group of people. Maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's foods, I don't know. Whatever it is, for you, you don't have to villainize that thing. It doesn't make that thing bad. It's just like, yes, this thing is pulling me away from my wisdom, and I want to come back to my wisdom. So one challenge that I gave myself is to take a break from Instagram for right now. I don't know how long this will be. To be off of Instagram completely, like it's it's not on my phone at all. And when I have the impulse to go to Instagram to sort of check and see what's going on in the world, instead I tune into my wisdom. Instead, I do this exercise and I will keep the note open on my phone all day with the date at the top of the page, and different wisdom comes in at different points of the day. You know, if I do it first thing in the morning, there's wisdom that comes through then. But also, I'm sitting at a coffee shop after I ordered my coffee, and I'm waiting for five minutes for my chi or whatever, and normally I'd be scrolling Instagram just to kill the time, and instead I'm connecting with my wisdom. And I want to challenge you to do something similar to this, because I think we will witness absolute miracles take place when more and more of us choose to disconnect from the things that are pulling us away from our wisdom and to connect in to the wisdom, to connect into the higher self, to connect into the true self, to connect in to God, to connect in to love, to connect into whatever you want to call it. When we do that, we're going to begin to see such radical clarity come through about next steps. That this time period that we're in that does feel heavy and dense and dark and chaotic and confusing, and it does feel in many ways like, oh, all is lost. I have no idea how we're going to get through this, both individually and collectively, and yet such radical clarity is going to come through that we're going to know exactly what to do next. We are going to feel planted and ground. We are going to feel so alive and so free and so clear about who we are and how we're meant to show up in the world. And that clarity comes from simple, simple, simple things like this. So I just want to challenge you four days in a row, twenty minutes at a time. I think what will happen is you will experience such a surge of clarity and motivation and momentum from those four days that you're probably going to want to go beyond the four days. But just shoot for four days, twenty minutes four days. It's easy. Shoot for those four days. Do this writing assignment for four days in a row. Report back to me, Let me know how it goes, let me know how you feel, Let me know what you learn, because I maybe at some point I'll read to you some of the things that have come through for me. But I'm like, WHOA Many writers have had this experience too, and artists where you write something or you make something like a song or a piece of art, and you just like, where did that come from? Because I, my false self, my small self, did not do that. That is wild, that that came through me. So I want to dare you to practice connecting with your wisdom this week, four days, twenty minutes a day. Just start there, See what happens, See how it goes, See how much momentum you create, see what kind of wisdom you gain, and make sure that you let me know how it goes. I will see you back here next week on the Write Your Story podcast