Mindful Pause Podcast

EP 40: Finding Balance, Creating Space and Following the Calling of Your Heart with the Balanced Black Girl, Les Alfred

Today we get real with Lestraundra “Les” Alfred who launched Balanced Black Girl in 2018 as an extension of her popular fitness blog, The Balanced Berry.

She vulnerably shares how she overcame her biggest challenge and turning point of letting go of the career she worked so hard to create and find the courage to step faithfully toward the unknown of what was calling her.

Balanced Black Girl was born on the belief that wellness isn’t one size fits all. Her calling to fill a necessary gap in the fitness world and create a safe space for women of color to have candid conversations about wellness, self-care, and self-love has paid off. Through her Balanced Black Girl podcast and live community events, Les fosters a powerful community that is all inclusive of all shapes, sizes and colors.

I hope our soulful conversation today inspires you to step in to your courage and not be fearful of change, that pivoting in your career is okay and to always listen to the calling of your heart.

Follow Les at: https://www.balancedblackgirl.com

Thank you for listening, sharing and reviewing this podcast! I am so grateful for you!

Ep 40: Relationships: When to Break Up or Stay?

You know that scene in Sex & the City, where Carrie is talking about her relationship with Burger and Samantha tells her the test of whether you want to be in a relationship or not is like THIS :) or like THIS :( ?

It sounds like a pretty simple barometer of how to tell if you should be IN a relationship or get OUT of a relationship, but I think we over complicate things. I know, I get you. love can be complicated and matters of the heart shouldn’t be taken lightly. Moreover, it’s not realistic to believe that love is going to always be a celebration, or easy and bring constant happiness. 

But when you can step back from your monkey mind and that messy clutter of your thoughts, you know if the relationship is making you smile or if it’s not. And I think if you truly got quiet and tuned into your feelings, you will know the answers. I share this thought in episode 36 and 38 where you have all of the answers within you and your feelings are your internal GPS system guiding you to those answers. If you tune in, youre gut feeling will show you if you should stay or run for the hills.

This doesn’t relate to just relationships. It can be used in all aspects of life.

What is keeping you up at night?

There is definitely a difference if you’re waking up at 3am totally excited and inspired for a project or you wake up at 3am feeling anxious, stressed and worried. 

I had 3 friends this week ask me about their relationships, sharing with me what their concerns are about their significant other and a lot of their complaints (he doesn’t listen, he’s aloof and not calling me back, I don’t think he’s that into me, he is not empathetic to my feelings or trying to understand where I’m coming from). I know we usually share our complaints with our closest friends more than we share our celebrations, but when you are piling up complaints, this is a sign to take a closer look at your relationship (or job, or project or situation or whatever is keeping you up at 3am) and see if it’s making you smile or frown.

You are not in the business of piling up red flags. You are in the business of finding joy and engaging fully in all that life has to offer you. So, what is your energy? Are you like THIS :) or like THIS :(.

Feelings are your internal GPS. They are like little intuitive signs that are trying to give you direction. Sometime it’s a stop sign, or a turn sign showing you to change your direction, or sometimes it’s a big ole’ red flag. We get over emotional when we get caught up in our feelings and create stories around them. I’m not talking about that today. You know the difference when you’re an emotional wreck over something or someone versus you have a gut feeling, an intuition or a subtle knowing. This is coming from you heart and these feelings are you internal GPS guiding you to the answers.

These feelings will knock at your door until you answer them. Sometimes it’s a subtle knock. Sometimes they will have to break the door down and smack you over the head if you ignore them. You will learn the lesson one way or another. They are a quiet whisper to help guide you to what is missing and what needs your attention.

My invitation to you this week is to get quiet and tune in. When your mind shouts so loud with chatter, it is difficult to hear the whisper of your heart and soul that is trying to give you the answers, so you must turn down the volume of your thoughts and tune into your heart. Your heart and feelings will guide you if you listen. In Episode 36, I talk about You have all the answers within you. You don’t need to ask other people or ruminate over a situation or person. That just creates more clutter in your mind.

When you get quiet and still in order to hear what your feelings are trying to tell you, the answers will appear. Meditate, get out in nature, journal, take a bath or a walk – be with yourself for a period of time. Trust yourself and atune to what is calling you in your body, mind and spirit. Tuning into yourself and your intuition will build trust with yourself that you have all of the answers within.

Will you do me a favor and let me know if you would like me to expand talking about any of the subjects that we talk about on Mantra Mondays? My sole purpose is to serve you and help lovingly guide you to the topics you wish to hear. So, send me an email, a DM, a text, a smoke signal. I am listening.

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

Ep 36: You have all the answers within you.

I say this at the end of all of my yoga classes. You have all of the answers within you. But then why do we ask other people for their answers and opinions? Why don’t we ask ourselves for the answer first? Why do we question ourselves? You know what I mean: Girl, what do you think of him? Should I go out with him again? Should I buy this shirt? Does this outfit make me look fat? Should I talk to her about this? Where do you want to go for dinner? I don’t know, where do YOU want to go? You know what you want, so why do you ask other people? You want to go to that new trendy restaurant that just opened and have a big bowl of pasta Bolognese and a good glass of cabernet, so why not say what you want? 

The answers are within you if you tune in. They were there all along.

Why do you ask other people for the answers or permission to the answers you already know are inside you?

This is my invitation to you this week: to watch when you ask for other people’s opinions before looking within. I don’t know why we do it. We all have our own reasons. It could be that you truly value that person’s opinion and respect them. That’s great, but why not start with yourself first and begin to value your opinion. It may be that you question yourself and doubt your answers. It may be that you’re afraid to really show up and tell people who you are, what you like and your choices. The work here is to let your mind get quiet and not ping pong between the what ifs and the chatter of the mind, and let yourself become still (go for a walk, meditate, lay down, get out in nature) and see where the answers show up.

The work for you this week is to begin to make friends with your heart and intuition. You may ask other people for the answers because you haven’t developed a trusting and loving relationship with your own intuition yet. There is always that quiet whisper of your heart and soul that guides you to your truth, but your mind shouts so loud that you cannot hear it. So that’s why we ask our friends, “I have a weird feeling he’s cheating on me – what do you think?” I don’t know if I like her, should I go out with her again? I shouldn’t eat that slice of cake, but you think it’s okay right? I’m not happy, do you think I should find another job?”

Each time you feel the need to ask someone else for their opinion, first stop and ask what do you want? What do you want? Where is this gut feeling coming from? If you can tune in to yourself, most of the time you know the answer. We may not want to face and deal with those answers. There is a gut feeling, an inkling, but we ignore it and want a second or third opinion, perhaps hoping we are wrong. You know the truth, but you may not want to face it. This is where courage comes in. Instead of asking others, hoping your gut feeling is wrong, tune in and look at WHY you are avoiding your feelings, the red flags, the gut intuition that are trying to point you to the answers.

This isn’t an exercise just for negative feelings. You may feel really excited about someone or an opportunity, but still ask, should I go for it? When you tune into why are you asking someone permission to feel good or excited about an opportunity, you may find that you’re asking for a second opinion because you are fearful or scared or you don’t believe you are worthy. Maybe your subconscious is used to sabotaging abundance. Maybe you don’t trust that this goodness is really here for you. 

I don’t know what the reason is. It will be personal to you. I do know that there is a lot of information you can learn about yourself by turning inward and looking to your own answers than from someone else.

So why not practice this week and see what shows up for you? I would love to hear from you on my blog and thank you for rating, reviewing and sharing this podcast with those who may benefit from it. It means so much to me that together we are building a community of conscious, caring humans. 

I hope this process will help you start tuning in to your own intuition and begin a relationship of trust with yourself. It’s okay to talk to your friends about concerns and get advice. I do it all the time. It may be conversational and enjoyable. But you know way better than they do what you should do. You are powerful and strong. Trust yourself to make the right choices. It’s like building a muscle – you gotta use it all the time. Build that faith that you know what to do. All you have to do is tune into your own heart. Stop asking for permission for answers from others when the answers are waiting inside you.

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

EP 35: Conscious Connection, Vaginas and the Pursuit of Humanness with Stef Osofsky

Stef Osofsky is a spiritual coach, blogger who travels all over the world and host of the pursuit of humanness podcast. She offers intuitive guidance for courageous, authentic living + creating. I think we all want that!

We cover so much in today’s podcast from how to create conscious connection in relationships, to shame around a woman’s cycle to yoni steaming.

But really at the heart of conversation is how you can fully engage in life and attune to the wisdom of your humanness. This is a hard concept for most of us to grasp, because we have our preferences of what feelings we want to feel and those we prefer to avoid, so we avoid or deflect instead of lean in and feel.

To Stef, spirituality as being a human gives you room to be flawed, to feel all things light and dark and the permission to explore that very wide spectrum of what it is to be human. The pursuit of humanness is showing up for everything and all of it in between and fully engaging in life

Stef provides a step-by-step method of leaning into both dark and light feelings to equally hold them in your hand without judgement or preference. This is the pursuit of humanness, when we can be all things, feel all emotions without deeming it good or bad. It is the ultimate detachment and also fullest engagement with life.

Stef teaches us that you can use this 3-step guide in all aspects of your life including having more conscious connection in relating to others and cultivating relationships that are informed by self-awareness of what you need, want and what we have the capacity for. Really conscious relating means having healthy relationships to have both receiving and giving, feel safe and secure in your relationship, and empowered in sexuality and sensual identity.

Today on the podcast you will learn steps to consciousness and how to let go of your preferences:

1.     Have awareness to notice that you have a preference or avoidance
2.     Be aware of your capacity without putting any self-applied pressure on yourself to experience and feel what it is you are currently experiencing as it is. Extend compassion and grace to be in the unfolding as it’s occurring. We are so wise in our bodies and spirit. Everything that we have learned is supporting us as we are surviving. Instead of going to “I need to be doing something about this.” Have compassion that I don’t need to be doing anything other than what I’m doing now.
3.     Notice your capacity to “both/and” and attune to your resources within (what within me is working). Allow yourself to feel a variety of emotions. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, angry or happy. You have experience both AND you don’t have to do anything to fix. Can you hold both the dark and light and allow ourselves in whatever capacity we have to be with that AND also know we have the resources within that are naturally wise.

https://stefosofsky.com

Ep 34: How much emotion is too emotional?

I was on a panel of speakers a month ago for international women’s day hosted by lululemon, called Movement for Change. A woman in the audience was teary eyed and asked our panel of ladies, “how do you not show emotions because being emotional a sign of weakness?” This brave young soul got up and asked her question to the whole audience although she was shy about asking, told me later in a separate conversation after the event that she was called to ask it. I told her emotions are great! Sharing your scars, rather than your open wounds, allows you to be vulnerable and through your openness will invite others to be more vulnerable as well. Then you can connect heart to heart rather than mask to mask. In this way you both can connect and inspire each other to begin having real and deeper conversations. But sharing ALL your emotions and baggage, like word vomit, just to share it, with anyone, may be too much. Only share when the person has your back and cares for you.

So, it got me thinking. Being “emotional,” although often labeled as a female thing, is actually a human thing. No one is free from emotions. Okay, maybe except those rare psychopaths. There are people who may consciously or unconsciously choose to not partake in emotions, but we all have feelings – some more sensitive than others. Our emotions and feelings are not a sign of weakness. Society has placed unfair stereotypes of what strength looks like for a man and a woman, and it’s our job to unpack the meanings of them and see if they limit us or liberate us. The stereotypical definition of strength for men is that they are supposed to be strong not weak, not supposed talk about problems but fix them and showing emotion is a sign of weakness. Women are supposed to be natural nurturers, fit and youthful, happy and quiet.

All of these rules limit who we are and how we are supposed to show up in this world.

When we can divorce ourselves from these stereotypes and societal rules, we can then comprehend we have both feminine and masculine qualities and that men and women are more similar than we are different.

Showing emotions, having deep conversations, talking through our problems, crying – these are all traits of courage. Being vulnerable is a courageous thing because not a lot of people do it. Most people hide from an uncomfortable conversation, or shove their emotions under the rug or put on a mask to portray something they’re not – does this sound courageous to you?

So my invitation to you is to check in with what stereotypes you have bought into and are these really serving you? Are they holding you back? So, take some time this week to redefine what courage means to you – what does that look like in terms of certain qualities like being vulnerable, showing emotions and how can you show up to embody them?

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

Ep 33: Crush Your Goals Through Easy Wins with Mitch Harb

Meet Mitch Harb, host of The Easy Wins podcast. He is a fitness and nutrition coach who helps people live their healthiest and best life through small, easy and consistent ways. If you’re looking to lose the weight, eat better, start a business, go after your dream, he shares his easy and very doable methods to accomplish your goals and change your habits.

Studies show 97% of all people who start a strict exercise and diet program and actually lose weight will gain everything back within 18 months. And in 2/3rds of those cases, they’ll gain back even more. That doesn’t even count the people who have trouble getting started in the first place. In what world is a 97% failure rate a good thing? I know how this feels … i have been there!

Today, on SOUL SCHOOL WITH AUDREY PODCAST, Mitch shows us that you don’t need crash diets, or starve yourself, or do any drastic lifestyle changes, suffer, or create self-torture. All you have to do is to know your WHY, have discipline with your small, easy wins, be consistent and find your tribe. Creating consistent easy wins every day enables you to have the health, positivity and life that you desire.

I really learned a lot from today’s conversation and I hope you do too! The lessons of creating easy wins doesn’t just work in creating a healthy lifestyle through diet and fitness, but it can work in all aspects of your life – in your relationships, career, goals and living your fullest life.

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instagram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

For more about Mitch click HERE

Ep 32: How would you spend your time if you were the BEST at what you do?

I’m in b-school with Marie Forleo and she asked us this question: How would you act if you were the best in the world at what you did? Would you be doing what you are doing? Would you waste your precious time scrolling on instagram or facebook so much? Would you be online shopping or binge watching Youtube videos instead of getting work or whatever is important to you done? This is such a great question to ask yourself in all areas of your life, not just in your professional arena. We waste so much of our time on things that don’t matter. Tony Robbins calls it majoring in minor things.

We also say yes to situations and people who drain us or don’t serve us. How often have you said yes to something and then immediately regretted it but still went ahead because you want to keep your word? If you were the best at what you did, you would protect your energy and time. I bet Oprah only says yes and agrees to things she is excited about and in alignment with.

For me, having a baby makes me really honor my time because I may only have 30 minutes to work or record a podcast while baby is napping. Most of the time it’s all about her. But even I get caught up scrolling on instagram or my latest guilty pleasure has been looking at facebook marketplace for used baby stuff and sakura bloom wraps – what a waste of my precious time. It’s so sad too! And I wonder why I complain I have no time to get a newsletter out this week. I majored in minor things!

So think about it: if you were the best in the world at what you do for a living how would you spend your time? I know I wouldn’t be on instagram, online shopping or binge watching Netflix. I would be highly prioritizing my time in order to be very productive on the things that mattered most to my business. If you were paid to be a professional athlete, how would you choose to eat and move your body? You would probably really honor and respect your body and fuel it with healthy options instead of feeding into your undisciplined habits. You would mindfully and intensely work out instead of casually walking on the treadmill scrolling through email.  If you were the best mom, how would you treat yourself? You would probably show yourself a lot of compassion and take care of yourself because that’s how you stay balanced so you can be fully present to your family. This question can be used in all areas of your life.

Obviously, you may not want to eat completely clean healthy foods all the time like a pro-athlete, but asking this kind of a question and having this intention helps bring you closer to who you want to be and helps to prioritize how you spend your time, so you can be in alignment with your best and highest self.

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

EP 31: Demystifying Ayurveda with Angela Glaz

Today on the SOUL SCHOOL podcast, Angela Glaz teaches us about Ayurveda, which in Sanskrit means “The Science of Life” and it’s considered the oldest healing science that originated in India more than 5,000 years ago and is often called the “Mother of All Healing.”

If you’re new to Ayurveda and are thinking what the heck is this, you are in the right place today, because Angela demystifies this ancient Eastern concept to help us recognize our issues and imbalances, shows you how you can balance your doshas physically, mentally and emotionally and how you can take your health into your own hands through your intake of food, lifestyle, movement and mindfulness.

We talk a lot about mindfulness here on the SOUL SCHOOL podcast, and it’s no surprise that here we are again where mindfulness is the key to create your change. It’s also the key to your power. We only scratch the surface about Ayurveda, but if you want to go deeper to learn individually about yourself and how you can best support your body, mind and spirit through balancing your doshas, you can join Angela at her Online Holistic Classes where she shares monthly recipes, tips, information and live Q&A all just for $18 a month.

I hope this episode opens your eyes to your own empowerment of healing yourself and finding balance.

p.s. I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!

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For more about Angela, please visit her website: http://ekayogaandayurveda.com

Ep 30: Life is a continual journey not a destination

I was talking with a friend the other day and she said she was frustrated with doing this self-help work. It is exhausting. She wondered if it’s easier just to be ignorant. I get it, It’s hard this whole consciousness thing. You have to be aware of your fears, go inward, look at your shadows, work on yourself. It is work.

Change is hard because it’s different than what you’re used to. I like to think of our evolution like a bridge. On one side is unconsciousness and across the bridge is consciousness, where there is a small place with a smaller population of people who are awake and living in alignment with their true self. You can see across the bridge, but the bridge takes time to get there. You will not arrive quickly. You probably will have some set backs. But if you keep going, you will have comebacks!

It’s not about the destination, it’s about how you joyfully get there.

Everything is here for your quest inward – the journey for the evolution of your soul. You are here for a reason. You have a greater purpose, personal legacy, and destiny to fulfill. When you discover and live in alignment with your True Self, you will find all of the answers within your blissful soul and live the joyful and abundant life of your dreams. You can check out if you want to, but you’ll be right back to where you were in a place unfulfilled reliving the same bad habits that hurt you and make you feel bad.

The journey back to your whole, True Self is a lifelong quest. It is the continued calling to turn inward, ask questions that are difficult, and seek answers where they are hidden so you can daringly greet life with courage, passion and love.

Your life is an ongoing work-in-progress to disconnect from the ego and fully connect with your True Self - your heart, your home, your Soul. Life provides you with a mirror to choose how you wish to see yourself and this world, choosing to live mindfully with conscious awareness in this present moment. It is the daily practice of staying open to the abundance of life. It is your powerful choice.

When you return to your whole self, rather than trying to be perfect, you are free to explore and express your highest vision of your True Self.  Your precious life is a continual journey of self-discovery, self-love, and the evolution of your soul. So. this is my invitation to you this week. Stop trying to get “there.” See how joyfully you can arrive, staying open to all of the gifts and lessons along the way.

I always love to connect with you on my blog, instragram or Facebook. Thank you for sharing, reviewing and rating this podcast. I love this soulful community!