Memoirs to Millions

Today's guest is Jen Fontanilla, back for another conversation. This time, about a project we're working on: the Ontology Project.

Jen has been a graphic designer for over two decades. We talked about what she's stubborn about, and today we're unpacking what ontology actually means.

Ontology is the study of a thing, deeply. And that turns into an anthology: a book built by more than one person telling the truth about who they are and what they stand for.

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Jen and Asher talk about the eleventh-hour pattern she's carried for over two decades, why regret scares her more than failure ever could, and a concept her mentor taught her called keeping your word to yourself. Then Asher reads a piece he's been working on called The 160 Million, before landing on seven things that happen on the other side of finally finishing the book you keep meaning to write.

Welcome back Jen Fontanilla to the Memoirs to Millions Podcast.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

00:00 Back for another conversation, and introducing the Ontology Project

00:28 How Jen's feeling today

01:24 The signature question: age ten to twelve, junior high, and the girl clique

04:55 Front stabbing versus backstabbing

08:21 The kindest thing: a friend who Zelled her money with no strings attached

13:23 The stubborn question: two decades of waiting until the last minute

16:09 Digging into the pattern: "I think forever"

17:36 Asher plays doctor: the deadline-adrenaline diagnosis

19:34 The design school story, and the eleventh-hour idea that always shows up

22:57 Whiskers and cheese: what actually motivates her

23:51 Her whiskers: letting people down, and regret

26:23 Transitioning into the Ontology Project

26:46 Reading The 160 Million

39:14 What ontology and anthology actually mean, explained live

46:00 The seven benefits of finishing your book

01:02:22 Integrity: keeping your word to yourself, and the neural grooves we train

01:06:05 How to get involved with the project

01:06:35 Alignment and abundance

01:09:51 Closing takeaways: the cheese, the whiskers, and giving your suffering a job

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH JEN FONTANILLA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenfontanilla

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/18nN7GrfLF

The Positioning Bundle: https://jenmoneycoach.thrivecart.com/positioning-bundle/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

(As an Amazon Associate, Memoirs to Millions earns from qualifying purchases.)

The Creative Code: A Creative Professional's Way to Happiness, Wealth and Joy — Jen Fontanilla — https://amzn.to/3SyVtIM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MUSIC CREDIT

'Ascension' by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Between the ages of ten and twelve, Joshua Fields' whole week revolved around church. Sunday school, night service, Monday prayer, Tuesday Bible study, choir rehearsal on Saturday. He didn't know it yet, but he was training, learning how to hold a room and move a crowd with nothing but his voice, watching his father, a minister, do the same thing from the pulpit.

Years later, that instinct became something else entirely. A room where a stranger who barely spoke English turned his phone off and said his mind started traveling somewhere beyond the screen. A twenty-year-old who felt anxious the moment he was asked to put his phone away, and stayed with it anyway, because something on the other side of that discomfort was worth reaching.

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Joshua Fields sits down with Asher for the maxim game. They talk about what it costs to keep a friendship you've quietly outgrown, why faith in God is easy and faith in yourself is hard, and what it actually takes to build a room where people remember how to hear themselves think.

If you've ever known exactly what you were avoiding by staying busy, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

00:00 Opening and the theme: what you refuse to interrupt

01:28 Listening versus watching, and the science of attention

04:39 The signature question: age ten to twelve, church every night of the week

07:25 The kindest thing: his wife, listening without an agenda

12:22 Into the maxim game

13:04 Maxim 1: you can tell what someone loves by what they refuse to interrupt

16:51 The spare tire theory of friendship

21:36 Faith in God is easy, faith in yourself is hard

32:16 What the listening room is actually teaching him

39:14 Testimonials: a hug for the nervous system, a stranger from Brazil

42:08 Maxim: the conversation that kept going past the point of checking out

46:38 Maxim: the thing you walked away from early

50:00 Whiskers or cheese: what actually motivates you

54:29 Closing rapid fire: film, books, tools, community, Mount Rushmore

1:03:07 Closing thoughts and biggest takeaway

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH JOSHUA FIELDS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuaafields

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-a-fields

Listening Room Collective: https://www.listeningroomcollective.com

Music by J. Fields: https://www.musicbyjfields.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/192dG4sm1z

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Sex at Dawn — Christopher Ryan — https://amzn.to/4hANQMB

Civilized to Death — Christopher Ryan — https://amzn.to/4xJxmGu

Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holliday — https://amzn.to/4bTE2JQ

Stolen Focus — Johann Hari — https://amzn.to/4iemoEy

Ocean's Eleven series (film)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MUSIC CREDIT

'Echo Sax' by Caleb Arredondo 

He burned his own work uniforms in a bonfire so the business couldn't own him again.

Richard Walsh built water features and steel sculptures for twenty years, internationally recognized, award-winning, until November 5, 2008, the day after the election, when his phone started ringing and he lost half a million dollars in a single day. A mentor did the math for him afterward: file bankruptcy now, you're at zero. Pay it back over a year, you're also at zero. Richard paid it back anyway, out of pride. Then he lost it all again.

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Richard sits down with Asher for the maxim game. They talk about the difference between identity in the driver's seat and identity in the passenger seat, the day he watched his four-year-old chase his truck down the driveway crying, and the moment he walked into his office and told his crew, "we're done today."

They also get into the second mouse gets the cheese, why more is caught than taught, and what it actually means to steward something instead of owning it.

If you've ever let the thing you built start giving you the orders, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

00:00 Opening banter and the interrogation begins

00:20 The signature question: age ten to twelve, thirty-plus moves before high school

02:45 The kindest thing: an anonymous Santa on Christmas Eve

04:36 The thousand-dollar shovel job that started the entrepreneurial drive

09:53 Into the maxim game: defining identity-driven

12:06 Driver's seat versus passenger seat

15:08 Maxim 1: You built it to prove yourself. It started giving the orders.

17:45 Maxim 2: You paid a debt out of pride when peace would have paid it for less

24:13 Maxim 3: You lost something, and the story about it hurts worse than the loss

27:20 The morning he watched his four-year-old chase the truck down the driveway

29:09 "We're done today," and the bonfire of the uniforms

30:08 Writing Escape the Owner Prison

34:18 Maxim 4: You built an identity long enough, you stopped knowing who was building whom

38:43 The military, low self-esteem, and the blank canvas philosophy

41:14 Maxim 5: You believe what you watch as a kid, not what you were told

44:29 "You put culture into people, and people into a system"

45:52 Maxim 6: Follow the step once and forget the reason it mattered

46:05 Take care of your gear, your gear takes care of you

47:57 Stewardship, and the fish tank story

49:23 Whiskers versus cheese, and always being the second mouse

52:53 Closing rapid fire: film, books, tools, community, Mount Rushmore

1:01:00 The Invisible Layer, command infrastructure, and Sharpened Impact

1:02:30 Don't kill another man's fish

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH RICHARD WALSH

Sharpened Impact (current company): https://www.sharpenedimpact.com

Sharpen the Spear Coaching: https://www.sharpenthespearcoaching.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-walsh-866ab237

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1C7dFBeZhn

Phone: (608) 314-6152

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The Bible

The Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing — https://amzn.to/3SDBEQW

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance — Angela Duckworth — https://amzn.to/4x8r2sy

Escape the Owner Prison — Richard Walsh's first book — https://amzn.to/4hxKppX

The Invisible Layer — Richard Walsh's new book on command infrastructure and frontline leadership

Warrior Poet Society — John Lovell

The Andy Griffith Show

Claude — mentioned as his go-to AI business tool

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MUSIC CREDIT

'Home Was You' by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya is the founder of African Women in STEM. In her TEDx talk, she made the case that cultural identity is the key to unlocking success in STEM. This time, the conversation goes somewhere she's never taken it publicly before.

At three years old, growing up in Nigeria, she picked up a book and read it out loud to a stranger, just to be seen. That instinct stuck with her. By ten, she was leaving her house at five fifteen in the morning, walking thirty minutes to make six a.m. mass, already certain she'd build a school that took a child from infancy through college.

Then she got to corporate America. A boss told her he didn't want to babysit her. People told her she couldn't, she wouldn't, she shouldn't. So she did something she hadn't done before. She went quiet.

This episode is about what happens when a mind runs unsupervised, and what it costs to build a story about someone before they've finished saying hello.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

00:00 The theme is Unsupervised

00:27 The signature question: age ten to twelve

00:53 Nigeria, primary five, and skipping a grade

01:20 Waking at 5:15 AM to walk to six a.m. mass, alone, at ten

02:36 Opinionated, fearless, and certain she could conquer the world

03:24 The orphanage visit that planted a school she never built

04:31 Reading at three, and the day a stranger found out

05:56 "Somebody saw me"

06:42 Big dreams, the "why" her father always asked, and a life fully planned

07:57 Corporate America enters the story

09:08 The company newsletter, and "I don't want to have to babysit you"

09:56 Going quiet to protect herself, until she didn't recognize her own face

10:19 The oil and gas pipeline field, and the guys who didn't care about politics

12:08 The system-and-culture bridge: her TEDx talk on cultural identity in STEM

12:58 The existential crisis, and losing every plan she'd ever made

13:24 The Christmas cards, and "what's your angle?"

15:43 "This has to change. I have lost myself."

16:19 Into the maxim game

16:45 Maxim 1: An unsupervised mind decides what's true without asking permission

18:50 Maxim 2: A story doesn't need to be true, just someone willing to repeat it

22:46 Why STEM, and her father's quiet influence

23:26 Wanting to be an astronaut, then a botanist, then an engineer on purpose

25:43 Girls in STEM, the stereotypes that start at six, and building her own culture

28:05 Traveling to the future: total self-expression, systems built to hold the rest

29:45 Hiring people, paying people, and sharing in what they love

30:18 "Success comes in cans, not in cannots"

30:48 Maxim: you can build a verdict about someone before they finish saying hello

35:06 The tabling story: "are you African?"

38:22 Maxim: two people can watch the same ten seconds and each leave certain

38:51 Unconscious bias, culture as belief, and not understanding racism for 15 years

40:15 Seth Godin's definition of culture, and changing the system by changing the culture

47:04 Recommended reading and why

01:03:02 A tool that's been a game changer: Claude

01:04:47 The community she's found real value in: her own

01:06:49 Mount Rushmore: three to five people who shaped her, no family

01:11:10 Her biggest takeaway: letting the mind loose, unsupervised

01:12:12 A message for the people following her journey

01:13:54 Closing

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Original TEDx Talk: "Cultural Identity is Key to Unlock Success in STEM" | Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya | TEDxDilworthPark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYcVJJKBQrY

Seth Godin's definition of culture: "how we do things around here"

"Success comes in cans, not in cannots" — a saying from Asher's coach, Joe Weldon

An African proverb: "Until the lion learns to write, the hunter will always be the victor"

"Humans don't run on truth, we run on shared stories. Whoever controls the story controls the species." — read by Asher during the conversation, source not independently confirmed

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BOOKS MENTIONED

I Am My Brand — Kubi Springer — https://amzn.to/45MuDjE

We Should All Be Millionaires — Rachel Rodgers — https://amzn.to/4whqRd7

A Girl Is a Body of Water — Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi — https://amzn.to/3RWnVEs

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ADAEZE ILOEJE-UDEOGALANYA

Instagram (personal): https://www.instagram.com/theimpactsage

Instagram (African Women in STEM): https://www.instagram.com/africanwomenin_stem

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adaeze-iloeje-udeogalanya

Website: https://africanwomeninstem.com

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MUSIC CREDIT

'Life In Motion' by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Dr. Ankit Agarwal is the founder of Breaking Mental Models. In this conversation, he and Asher take apart the words we use without ever checking what they mean: system, culture, tradition, environment, performance.

It starts with a 4am wake-up call and ends with the quiet realization that success and failure were never opposites to begin with. Ankit tells the story of his grandfather waking at 3am to make tea, a family rhythm nobody wrote down and everybody followed anyway. They ask whether a culture can be created directly, or whether it only ever grows out of a system someone else built first. And they keep circling back to the same discomfort: the moment you think you've found the starting point, you notice another loop underneath it.

If you've ever tried to fix a culture, a team, or yourself, and felt the ground shift the moment you thought you had it, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS

00:00 Vibe coding, building the platform, and working like an Egyptian slave

02:17 A rundown of the day: clients, Toastmasters, book projects

03:11 Waking at 4am, and two years of checking on aging parents

05:39 Morning person or night person, and the military wake-up call

08:39 Morning is thinking time, night is clerical time

09:59 Naming the framework: knowing yourself

11:03 Nana, the 3am tea, and a family system nobody wrote down

16:26 Are we creating the system, or is the system creating us

18:36 The solar system, Einstein, and what's actually invisible

22:20 Culture as "how we do things around here"

25:40 Hofstede, national culture, and the danger of generalizing a country

30:08 The person who fights the system to protect the system

32:03 Handshakes, greetings, and the universal system inside every culture

35:50 How a neighborhood gets built, and how culture follows

39:11 Environment dictates performance, and the fish that can't climb a tree

43:21 Frederick Taylor, the Hawthorne experiments, and the shift to people

47:37 Who orchestrates the harmony

48:47 Why "more chaos" and "less chaos" don't actually mean anything

59:54 Success and failure are not opposites, they live side by side

1:02:53 Closing: time zones, football, and enjoying the process

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH DR. ANKIT AGARWAL

Breaking Mental Models: https://breakingmentalmodels.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ankit-agarwal-phd-a9ba1344/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Seth Godin: culture as "how we do things around here"

Geert Hofstede's research on national culture and the individualism/collectivism scale

Frederick Taylor, scientific management, and the early Harvard MBA program

Mary Parker Follett and the shift from classical to humanistic management

A widely shared quote about judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree, commonly attributed to Einstein, though no evidence exists that he said it. It traces to a 2004 self-help book, decades after his death.

"Environment dictates performance" — a phrase used by several business speakers as their own mantra, no single confirmed original source

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MUSIC CREDIT

Music: "Discovery" by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au | CC-BY 4.0

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Joanna Sanchez sits down with Asher for a conversation on kindness. They talk about the armor she built around her heart, the cover she kept redesigning so nobody would open the book, and the seven years she spent building a fitness business before burning it down to rebuild around somatic healing instead.

They get into the difference between commitment and devotion, why she stopped performing okay and started learning what okay actually feels like, and the moment dancing became the thing that moved her from her head down into her heart.

If you've spent years being kind to everyone but yourself, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS

00:00 Opening theme and the kindest thing question

01:43 The signature age question: ten to twelve years old

07:33 Looking three to five years ahead

10:19 Into the maxims: the armor around the heart

14:14 Dancing as medicine, head to heart

15:08 The cover she kept redesigning

18:56 The user's manual

21:29 Seven miles wide, seven miles deep

24:14 Studying the teachers who taught the people you love

27:13 A life that worked on paper and burned her out

32:13 Compliments she couldn't hear until the story changed

35:27 Performing okay versus feeling okay

38:37 Defining kindness

41:23 Commitment versus devotion

44:15 A feeling she called the truth for years

48:17 Treated like a project instead of felt

51:27 Her new origin story

54:58 Storytelling versus teaching

58:42 The valley that taught more than the mountain

1:01:29 Closing rapid fire: film, books, tools, community, Mount Rushmore

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH JOANNA SANCHEZ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjoannasanchez

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

You Are a Badass — Jen Sincero — https://amzn.to/44Utczo

Healing Relational Trauma — Melissa Fulgieri — https://amzn.to/4fmIoeH

Dear Lover — David Deida — https://amzn.to/4waoL8B

FasciaBlaster — the tool Joanna uses daily, she's an affiliate: https://www.fasciablaster.com/?a_aid=joa

The Gap and the Gain — Dan Sullivan (recommended by Asher during the conversation) — https://amzn.to/44OXXpy

Avatar (2009 original film) — https://amzn.to/3TgIf3X

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asheralbertwright

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income. New conversations every Saturday.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MUSIC CREDIT

Music: 'Effervescence' by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

They talk about ending a twelve-year relationship and becoming a full-time nomad. About stepping into work the world still calls taboo. About heartbreak as a door instead of a wound, and why freedom of time outranks freedom of money on her list. And they keep circling back to the same idea: surrender was never the white flag. It was the doorway.

If you've ever built a box and called it safety, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

00:00 Opening banter and the first maxim

00:42 Ending a twelve-year relationship and becoming a nomad

03:08 Life in Nosara, Costa Rica

06:11 Stepping into sacred sexuality and tantrika work

09:38 Bodybuilding, social media, and the fear of being too much

11:23 Shame, memory, and the parts of her story she almost didn't tell

14:40 Letting people meet the real her

17:20 The five people you actually need

18:22 The tarot card called The Box

21:17 Ranking freedom: time, purpose, relationship, money

23:00 Her purpose: healing the masculine and the feminine

24:27 The eighteen-inch journey from head to heart

29:27 Heartbreak as a door, not a wound

31:44 The kindest thing anyone did for her mid-heartbreak

32:54 Building the life people dream about

36:28 Jealousy versus envy

39:42 Why elders are the future

41:09 Being seen in work the world still calls taboo

44:55 Outgrowing a circle without abandoning it

45:51 Closing rapid fire: shows, books, tools, community, Mount Rushmore

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ALLISON VAETH

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyvaethfit

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1DMK6xVNVX

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allyvaethfit

Website: https://www.beingbecomes.com

Tag on social: @allyvaethfit

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

1. A Course in Miracles — https://amzn.to/4bOdLfM
2. The Sophia Codes: Yeshua transmissions through feminine embodiment — https://amzn.to/4gKJ5zC
3. The Chosen (TV series) — streaming on Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MCS11H3JYKS7MZXGJN7ZQCTVK (real Prime Video link — swap in your own Amazon affiliate version if you want the commission on this one)
4. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (TV series)
5. Internal Family Systems and parts integration work (the modality Ally referenced — likely source text is Richard Schwartz's "No Bad Parts," not independently confirmed, so no link included)
6. Somatic reprogramming and breathwork
7. The Archetype tarot deck
8. "The mind can live in fantasy. The body lives in reality."
9. A saying often credited to Lao Tzu, though the sourcing doesn't hold up: the longest journey is the eighteen inches from the head to the heart.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com

Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com

100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asheralbertwright

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227

Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income. New conversations every Saturday.

#MemoirsToMillions #AllisonVaeth #Surrender #Alignment #BehaviorChange

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MUSIC CREDIT

Music: "Ascension" by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au | CC-BY 4.0

The first person who doubted your story was you.

A friend leans across the table. "You should write your book." Before the sentence lands, you answer for them. Who would read about my life?

That is the first no. And you handed it to yourself.

So take no for vitamins. A no is not a wall. It is fuel. It goes down rough and builds something you use later. Every one you cross off puts you closer to the yes.

You do not have to make it big first to earn the right to tell your story. You write from the floor, not the summit.

You cannot fall from the floor.

I read this week's brief on camera. Watch it, then sit with the question my editor asked me: what about your story?

Read the full brief:
https://m2mweeklyintel.com/brief/2026/25

Apply as a vendor (250 author spots open):
https://lifechangingwisdom.com/register-vendor/

Asher's Top 100 Book Challenge:
https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

---
ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS
Asher Wright is a 22-year Army veteran, memoir coach, and book publisher
helping immigrants, veterans, and entrepreneurs transform their hardest
chapters into published books. Mission: 10,000 memoirs by 2030.

CONNECT WITH ASHER
Podcast: Search "Memoirs to Millions" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227/
Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Music: "Signal to Noise" by Scott Buckley. scottbuckley.com.au. CC BY 4.0

She kept her curls tied back for years. Not straightened, just tucked away, in a place that didn't ask her to take up space.

Alana Robinson is a life coach trained through the Hendricks Institute. She spent years reading a room before she said a word in it, matching the temperature so she could stay safe inside it.

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Asher reads Alana a list of prompts about hiding, alignment, and being seen. Each one opens with what it looks like to speak your truth, and each one flips to what it costs when you don't.

They talk about the years she spent shape-shifting to keep the peace, and the body signals she learned to finally trust: a tight throat, a stomach drop, legs that won't sit still. They sit with the year she left Vail for Los Angeles, and the weight that still meets her the moment she drives back in.

And they keep circling back to one idea: hiding feels safer, until it isn't.

If you have kept part of yourself tied back to stay safe, this one is for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 CHAPTERS

00:00 Wildflowers, and the mask before the mic turns on
 02:00 Five people who shaped her, minus family
 07:00 The mind lives in fantasy, the body lives in reality
 10:30 The chameleon years in Vail
 13:00 A child's identity, questioned by strangers
 16:30 The proposal, and the cost of staying quiet
 19:00 Withhold, withdraw, project
 21:00 Where the body keeps its warning signs
 25:00 Legs, shoulders, and learning your own signals
 33:00 Years of getting sick, and what the body was trying to say
 36:00 Natural hair, and the fear of standing out
 39:00 Who Alana is now
 46:00 The condo, the safe route, and the regret that started forming
 56:00 Choosing LA against advice from nearly everyone around her
 1:00:00 The heaviness of driving back into Vail
 1:10:00 Turning the boulder into a pebble
 1:13:00 Closing rapid fire: books, tools, community

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 CONNECT WITH ALANA ROBINSON

Website: https://www.mydearlittleself.com
Newsletter: https://www.mydearlittleself.com/subscribe
Instagram (personal): https://www.instagram.com/alanakay1
Instagram (My Dear Little Self): https://www.instagram.com/to.mydearlittleself
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alana.robinson.507
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alana-robinson

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 IDEAS & REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho — https://amzn.to/3SQNYNy
The Big Leap — Gay Hendricks — https://amzn.to/4wv7zkY
The Eight Secrets of Conscious Luck — Gay Hendricks and Katie Hendricks — https://amzn.to/4vPm5UL
Hendricks Institute — coach training and certification
The withhold, withdraw, project cycle
"The mind can live in fantasy. The body lives in reality."
The Cycle Effect — a nonprofit supporting girls in mountain biking, Vail, Colorado
"Wildflowers" by Scott Buckley — the music featured in this episode

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 CONNECT WITH ASHER WRIGHT

Memoirs to Millions: https://memoirstomillions.com
Life Changing Wisdom Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com
Weekly Intel Newsletter: https://m2mweeklyintel.com
100 Books That Changed How I Think: https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge
Free Memoir Strategy Call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/memoirs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asheralbertwright
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227
Facebook: https://facebook.com/lcwforu

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS

Asher Wright is a 22-year US Army veteran, Jamaican immigrant, and 7x published author. He helps veterans, immigrants, and entrepreneurs turn their life stories into published books that build authority and income. New conversations every Saturday.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 MUSIC CREDIT

Music: "Wildflowers" by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au | CC-BY 4.0

In 2023, I looked up the symptoms of dyslexia.

Before I understood why I was crying, the tears were already falling.
I sat in them for thirty minutes.

I am not formally diagnosed. What I have is recognition.
A pattern I had carried for decades without a name.

Then I built a system out of what I could finally see.

Three moves:
1. Name the Villain
2. Find the Hero
3. Build the Sequence

The sequence is the system.

Read the full brief:
https://m2mweeklyintel.com/brief/2026/24

Apply as a vendor (250 author spots open):
https://lifechangingwisdom.com/register-vendor/

Asher's Top 100 Book Challenge:
https://asheralbertwright.com/1000bookchallenge

---
ABOUT MEMOIRS TO MILLIONS
Asher Wright is a 22-year Army veteran, memoir coach, and book publisher
helping immigrants, veterans, and entrepreneurs transform their hardest
chapters into published books. Mission: 10,000 memoirs by 2030.

CONNECT WITH ASHER
Podcast: Search "Memoirs to Millions" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asher-wright-310731227/
Marketplace: https://lifechangingwisdom.com

Music: "Snowfall" by Scott Buckley, released under CC BY 4.0.
www.scottbuckley.com.au