The Peace of Persistence

In 2018, we had the extreme privilege of interviewing Tony Taylor, an author, pilot, and interplanetary navigator. He navigated to every planet in the solar system and was an extraordinary human. Sadly, he passed this August, following his battle with cancer. 

In honor of Tony, we've decided to offer his full, extended Patreon episode for free to the public. Thanks to our Patrons for making the original interview possible, to his sister, Lynn Taylor, for making our introduction, and to Tony, for his unabashed spirit and love of life which he so generously shared with us. 

If you'd like to share it with anyone, please pass along the original link here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17720284

We've so been looking forward to this episode with Katie Weatherup, the incredible engineer turned shamanic practitioner of Hands over Heart. Katie talks about her journey from being an energetically sensitive child to transitioning to the work of shamanism, seeing consistent results across the board of her clients being healthier and making more holistic choices. She's super open, vulnerable, and shares with us a way to retrieve parts of our souls we’ve lost along the way.

For more about the story behind her books, including Sex, Shamanism, and Healing: My Kissing Quest, the role spiritual health plays in our lives, the need to approach change with compassion and more, catch the uncut, ad-free version at www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence. I hope you enjoy meeting her as much as I did.

Show Links: 

Links:
Michael Harner, founder of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies: http://www.shamanism.org/fssinfo/harnerbio.html
Katie Weatherup’s Shamanic Healing website: https://handsoverheart.com
Fire Ceremony: https://handsoverheart.com/2017/01/20/fire-ceremony/

The work of Byron Katie - A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around

Debbie Ford’s The Dark Side of the Light Chasers

Intro:
Today we get to sit down with Katie Weatherup. One of my closest friends, my weekly accountability partner, and my sister in the short film Stealing Zen is Katie's cousin Christine Weatherup, and I'm so grateful she thought to make this introduction.

As a gifted intuitive and highly trained healer, Katie Weatherup has helped many on their personal paths by using the healing power of Shamanic journey & soul retrieval.

Believing that gurus are no longer a good fit within our modern culture, she teaches each person to trust themselves to be their own best expert. Katie is the author of Practical Shamanism: A Guide for Walking in Both Worlds, Sex, Shamanism, and Healing: My Kissing Quest, and Sacred Travel: Practical Shamanism for Your Vacations and Vision Quests.

She says that working as a mechanical engineer, she has always understood the necessity of system integrity. The human spirit is a highly complex system, which can break down in complex and subtle ways. Much of her Shamanic work is oriented towards wholeness. She helps people find their way back to themselves, all the parts they've lost, forgotten, denied and disowned. She love the elegance, simplicity and power of soul retrieval. It is deeply rewarding to know that an hour of her time is often life changing for her clients, affording them unprecedented levels of wholeness and right relationship to the universe. 

Show Summary:
I'd love to hear about your upbringing. What were your early years like?
Really great. Katie had very kind parents, who she says weren’t as energetically sensitive like she was, so her culture didn’t really have a reference for her particular struggles. When Katie was surrounded with a lot of people and feeling overwhelmed, she says she reacted by delving into her studies, becoming “queen of the nerds,” an academic decathlete for two years in a row. She lagged behind in her social and emotional skills and had to work on them as she got older, got her engineering degree, and then got into being a Shaman through a bit of a circuitous path. 

What can you tell us about Shamanism and its role in your life?
Most people don’t know about it. Although it’s becoming more popular, when Katie wrote her book, it sold very well because there weren’t a lot of options at the time. She describes four different quadrants of human experience: mental, physical, emotional, and energetic body. In our society, we’re biased toward mental body. We’ll have classes in trigonometry but not emotional intelligence. We work on physical fitness but don’t know to look for physical cues of stress. Once we get past the mental, physical, and finally emotional bodies, most people don’t know about or believe in an energetic body. Although you can get along without thinking about it, people like Katie, who are energetically sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others can have a tough time. It was so overwhelming to Katie as a child that she dissociated.
What she would say about Shamanism is that it’s a body of knowledge that can be applied, just as Buddhism is another system to address the inner aspect of who we are. Her tradition of Shamanism was fathered by Michael Harner, who studied indigenous cultures, as an anthropologist, all over the world, many whom had no interaction with one another. He noticed major commonalities among their traditions: power animals, soul retrieval, listened to a drum or did certain things to alter their state of mind, and a human in the tribe who could be an intermediary, talking to the guides to get information to bring back for the well being of the tribe. 

Katie especially appreciates the way Core Shamanism goes beyond cultural appropriation to what is universal across different cultures and time, before the introduction of Christianity in particular. Michael Harner distilled it and figured out a way to teach it, and one can go to the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and take a class. She finds that it’s an excellent compliment to modern society that helps us focus more on being whole.
For people who question whether you’re talking to actual spirits or an aspect of yourself, Katie says that as a teacher, she doesn’t mind if her clients see it as a way to talk to their inner selves or as a framework to talk to masters from their religions. She sees consistent results across the board of people being healthier and making more holistic choices.

Shamanic journey and soul retrieval. Those are completely new concepts to me, and I imagine much of our audience. What are they?
Shamanic journey is about going into an altered state to gain wisdom from that state. It might be produced by listening to a drum beat, since many traditions use a specific drumbeat to create theta waves that allow people to access this altered state of awareness. People also use plant medicine, circular breathing, ecstatic dance, fasting, etc. Katie says there are many ways to relax your hold on the present moment and allow yourself to go somewhere else. Because some people are very connected to their guides, she says occasionally they’ll discount their guidance because they’ve already heard the answer in so many different ways, and it sounds too familiar. Katie’s practiced Shamanic journey for 18 years, and she loves being able to talk to guides.
Katie doesn’t necessarily think it’s for everyone, unless they’re drawn to it, but she wishes everyone would have a soul retrieval, where someone qualified is working on their behalf. Like the other Shamanic practices, it’s a universal concept that when we go through trauma, we lose parts of ourselves. Psychologists call it dissociation, and Shamanic practitioners call it soul loss. She starts by explaining that the soul transcends the human experience. When people go through a traumatic experience, the last thing they want to do is be fully present, and dissociation is a common tool, especially with children experiencing trauma. Once that part of you has dropped out, Katie says it doesn’t know when it’s safe to return.
We also give parts of ourselves away in relationships. She says that in our culture (think Jerry Maguire), we often give away parts of ourselves to each other, and in a way, it can stabilize the relationship. Although it’s not so bad when you’re with the person, we forget to get those parts back after a breakup. She often finds that people still have close energetic ties to long-ago exes. When she does soul retrievals, she connects with the person and then goes to find the lost parts of their essence, from past traumas or relationships.
When she first experienced her own soul retrieval (with her mother, actually), she realized within a day that if she were able to do only one thing with a client, she’d want it to be soul retrieval, because it can change things for the person within a single session. She loves to make the foundation of who they are available to them, finding it incredibly powerful, especially for people who’ve experienced major traumas in their lives. Often, people who’ve done a lot of work in therapy and traditional healing can work very effectively with the parts they have left, but she finds it so much more powerful for them if they can get all their essence back. Although she encourages anyone who wants to explore Shamanic journey to go for it, she really sees soul retrieval as her core, most powerful practice for people who need healing.

Now you mentioned it can be a drastic, quick change... Can 1 session be enough?
She designs her soul retrieval practice to be one session, unless she’s working with someone who’s in the top 90% of people who’ve experienced severe trauma. For that 5-50% of her clients, she does two sessions. She says it’s very unusual, but she values people’s time and efficiency, and Katie appreciates that her guides help her to do what she calls a “thorough wrangling” of soul parts left behind. On the topic of rapid change, she has people read an article beforehand about how such quick healing can cause disruptions in relationships that may no longer be sustainable. Likewise, if you have an unhealthy work environment that matches your family of origin, for example, cleaning up the core wounding around the family of origin could suddenly make you incompatible with the unhealthy nature of the work environment. 

Can you give us an example or walk us through a brief introduction or exercise?
Although Katie admits brevity is not her superpower, she talks with us about fire ceremony, also posted on her website in detail. 

How did you decide to write your first book?
Katie was in the shower one day, when she says her guides told her to write a book, even though at the time, she didn’t feel ready. As she started to write, one chapter at a time, she realized she had a tremendous amount to write and credits her editors for its quality. For those wanting to write a book, she says to remove the critic from over your shoulder and make a deal with yourself about being vulnerable and exposed - that it’ll get an edit, and you can talk with your critic later. Unlike previous times in human history, although people might think she’s “woo woo,” she’s not putting herself in mortal danger of being burned at the stake, etc, and she had to remind herself of that.

Other than your inner work, do you have any habits or traits that have contributed to your happiness and success?
Katie’s really good at seeking out her own healing work, energetically. “I think getting feedback from another person is a really important piece because we can’t see our blindspots.” She wants to make sure she’s able to use her tools as a practitioner in order to grow, not in order to stay stuck.
She also notices a huge difference in her agreeableness when she’s able to enjoy her hot tub under the stars on a regular basis. 

If there were one thing you'd like the world to see differently, through your eyes, what would it be?
People are so hard on themselves. Katie references a TED Talk by Brené Brown about shame and vulnerability that currently has almost 8 million views, and how it’s clear that people have a hunger to get rid of shame. She says the problem with exposing our vulnerabilities is that we often get accurate mirroring that small infractions are just that, in the grand scheme of things. For example, a public figure who makes a small sensitivity infraction and then is publicly shamed. She thinks the work on our own (shadow work, sash calls it), is universally some of the most important work we do, including soul retrievals and Maitri (Pema Chodron) - an unconditional friendliness with oneself.
For those moments when you can’t let go of a past shame, Katie recommends a shamanic practice called the transmutation breath. Rather than avoiding the emotion, breathe the feeling of that experience into your heart, and then exhale as neutral energy. She compares the way we organize our energy like the organization of a house of cards, that can’t really be used for anything else until you knock it down, breathe through the feeling with awareness, start at neutral, and allow yourself to build something new. It’s a practice, something to build and exercise.
Katie discusses how our need to protect ourselves from mortal danger in the past as a species has translated into our need to avoid unsettling emotions in the present. Where the intention to be compassionate with oneself might not transform as effectively, the practice of the transmutation breath can be incredibly transformative. The fire ceremony is similar, but more formalized, and the breath is something that can be accessed right in the moment. 

Katie, thank you so much for being with us today! And thank you for joining us today on the Peace of Persistence. If you found us on the LITE version, we're glad you're here. If you want to hear more from Katie and all our guests, you can find our extended versions on patreon - at www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence. It's also a great way to support the show, if you like what you see and hear.

It's been an incredible season so far, and I'm so grateful for each guest on this show and how much insight they bring. Thanks for joining us, however you've found us, and we'll see you next week on The Peace of Persistence for more discussions on how to find the happiness and success in all our lives.

Description:
Voice actor and singer Carin Gilfry has always been happy. Today, she shares with us how getting locked in a closet led to an episode of This American Life, designing the perfect career to fully enjoy new motherhood, her habits of forward-thinking and taking small steps toward any goal, and more. Uncut version available at http://www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence.

Show Links:
This American Life - Carin Gilfry’s Radio Drama Episode (on YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wpZyb9Grfw
(podcast version): https://www.thisamericanlife.org/528/the-radio-drama-episode

Rosie’s Place web series: http://www.rosiesplaceshow.com/
(on YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWZ_k4cQ7d9dZuAU3jvuktg

Former Juilliard guests -
Camille Zamora (full video): https://www.patreon.com/posts/camille-zamora-2-16244525
(audio podcast): https://www.peaceofpersistence.com/blog/2017/9/21/sing-for-hopes-camille-zamora
Nicholas Pallesen (two part video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlyY2Pq4QsNs4CMbzp5SzvSGcXhBq1CGx
(two part audio): https://www.peaceofpersistence.com/blog/?tag=Nicholas+Pallesen

Guest Intro: 
Carin Gilfry is a voice actor, singer, audio engineer, coach, composer, and producer. Her voice appears in commercials for Zulily.com, Little Tikes, Jakks Pacific Disney Dolls, Luxury Retreats, Emblem Health, Audible, and many more. She has narrated and produced over 100 audiobooks, and has recorded voice over for hundreds of eLearning projects, IVR systems, training videos, and documentaries. She plays characters in the video games Heroes Charge, Warframe, and Heroes of Newerth. She has been coaching and teaching classes in voice over since 2013.

Carin holds a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from the USC Thornton School of Music and a Master of Music in vocal performance from The Juilliard School. She has performed with symphonies and opera companies around the world including the Los Angeles Opera, The Santa Fe Opera, Le Theatre du Chatelet, New York City Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, The Phoenix Symphony, The Santa Fe Symphony, The California Philharmonic, and the Chorale Bel Canto.

She has composed theme music for 50+ audiobooks, and written children's songs for her YouTube series Rosie's Place.

Thank you: 
Thank you for joining us on The Peace of Persistence. I LOVE coming to you each week with these amazing guests, and I hope you're enjoying it too. I can only keep going with your support, so if you like the show, I'm going to ask you today to do one of three things. Ready? Ok.

1. You can review us on Apple Podcasts or imdB.

2. Take a minute to think. Who do you know who is happy, satisfied with life, and has had some success? Introduce us to them or them to us. We're at peaceofpersistence.com and [email protected].

3. Go to patreon.com/peaceofpersistence. It's where you can support us for only $2 per episode for ad-free episodes with 2-3x the content.

That's it! Pick one of those three actions if you like this show. For those of you who've already done one of those things, you are are my heroes, and the show has been able to keep its momentum because of you. Thank you! And thank all of you for joining us each week, no matter what version you enjoy. We'll see you next time on The Peace of Persistence for more great content to help all of us find the happiness and success in our lives.

Description:
In this episode of The Peace of Persistence LITE, Tony Taylor brings his wisdom as an Interplanetary Navigator, Pilot, and Author to the forefront, as he talks about taking risks, navigating to all of the planets in our solar system, using fiction to write “the bigger picture of truth,” and seeing the world from a wider perspective.

Join us at http://www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence to hear Tony's deeper understanding of war, his perspectives on racism, growing up during segregation in the Deep South, his greatest joys, and more. You can also hear more from all of our guests and support our show there, at Patreon.

Show links:
Tony Taylor's books: Counters, The Darkest Side of Saturn, and Black Sky Voyage (to be published later this year)

Tony's website: www.blackskyvoyages.com

Tony's Inspirations -
Ernie Pyle's WWII war correspondent articles - http://mediaschool.indiana.edu/erniepyle/wartime-columns/2/
Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
George Orwell's 1984
Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End
Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

Intro:
Tony Taylor was a space cadet before there was a space program—meaning that his mind was in space while his body walked the earth. He decided early on that he wanted to be an astronaut. Fortunately, the space age came along with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 while he was still in high school, and his dream entered the realm of the possible.

Knowing that astronauts usually start as pilots, he went to the US Air Force Academy, followed by pilot training, and eventually found himself in Vietnam flying 100 combat missions over North Vietnam through some of the best air defenses the world had ever seen. During that time, he became a war correspondent for his hometown newspaper. The articles he wrote would later lay the foundation for his first published novel, Counters, in 2008: a tale of young pilots, the Red Baron, and a collie named Sub-Lieutenant Sam. After returning home and spending a few more years in the Air Force, he resigned to go to graduate school, finishing with an M.S. in physics.

These experiences equipped him, he believed, to follow through with his astronaut dream, which included becoming the first person to walk around on Mars. After several applications to NASA, followed by several rejections, he decided this was not to be, so he consoled himself with the next best thing: working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and KinetX Aerospace, Inc. to navigate unmanned NASA spacecraft through the solar system. He visited (metaphorically) all eight planets over the course of a thirty-year career, navigating spacecraft on projects Voyager, Cassini, Mars Polar Lander, Galileo, and MESSENGER among others. As a capstone, he also helped navigate the New Horizons spacecraft to minor planet Pluto.

These experiences helped provide underpinnings for his second novel, The Darkest Side of Saturn, in 2014: a story of an asteroid, a preacher, a reluctant prophet of doom, and a ballerina—things that naturally go together. His third novel, Black Sky Voyage, is targeted for release later this year (2018). It provides a vicarious substitute for his astronaut dream; instead of walking around on Mars, he writes of the first colonists on Mars in a tale that includes a president, nuclear annihilation, and a polite alien.

A scientific and objective realist, he nevertheless enjoys evoking the mystical in his novels, salting liberally with whimsical humor. His published works have collected several honors, including the international Eric Hoffer Award: First Place Winner for Genre Fiction, and Short List for the Grand Prize; the Arizona Literary Contest: Book of the Year Award; the Books and Author Award: Winner for Science Fiction; the Global Ebook Award: Silver Medal Winner for Science Fiction; and various Honorable Mentions and Finalist awards.

Tony lives with his wife Jan in Sedona, Arizona. He is proud of his two daughters and two grandsons. Between travels and tennis he hopes to produce a few more novels before launching on a black sky voyage into the great unknown. He may not be the only interplanetary navigator in Sedona—land of vortices and UFO enthusiasts—but he’s probably the only one who actually worked for NASA.

Thank you!
If you enjoyed this episode, check out our extended version, with a full show summary, at http://www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence for even more great insight from Tony Taylor and all of our guests. We still would LOVE to hear how you're enjoying the show - so just head on over to Apple Podcasts, search for The Peace of Persistence in the iTunes store, and leave us a review. We'll be sure to thank you on the next episode. Thanks again for joining us as always - stay tuned next Thursday for another great interview to help all of us find more happiness and success in our lives.

Bryan Stacy's an expert on sexual health and having tough conversations, and he's making it easier with the world's first virtual sexual health clinic, Biem. Today, he discusses his battle with testicular cancer, the app that's helping to make awkward conversations easier and behavior better, a new mindset about masculinity, and the importance of connecting with others.
***More at http://www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence - including ways to be more authentic and attract what you want in life, how to break the ice on having awkward conversations, the importance of rituals and being alone with your thoughts, and more. 

Show links:
Biem - http://biemteam.com/
Bryan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/talkingnut/
Bryan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/talkingnut
Bryan's blog (primarily focused on his chemotherapy journey) - One Big Nut - http://onebignut.tumblr.com/

For the extended episode and a full description of the show, or just to support the show, head over to our portal on Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/peaceofpersistence.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute to share us with a friend or review us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or Imdb. Every share and review – or even rating – helps new people discover our show. Also, if you know anyone who's extraordinarily and genuinely happy who has had some success in their lives, if you think they'd be a good fit for our show, let us know at [email protected].

Thanks, and we'll see you next Thursday on The Peace of Persistence.

Intro:
Hi, and welcome to the Peace of Persistence, the show where we seek to uncover the keys to happiness and success, one honest conversation at a time. I'm your host, Abigail Wright, and today we get to talk with my old friend, Wempy Dyocta Koto! Wempy. I met Wempy, who was beginning his entrepreneurial journey in 2009. Today, he's primarily in investing, and we're finding out what he's doing as I'm catching up with him today!

Bonus Content:
Join us and subscribe at Patreon to hear the extended version (for all our guests!), and hear how Wempy's parents intuitively molded him into the man he is today, the benefits of martial arts and training physically, the art of true charity, and how to leave a real legacy in life with your family. 

Show links:
Muay Thai, MMA & Fitness training Camp Phuket Thailand
https://www.tigermuaythai.com/

Our Full Versions on Patreon
https://patreon.com/peaceofpersistence

Review us on Apple Podcasts:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peace-of-persistence/id985068016?mt=2

Review us on IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5659398/

Show summary:
We first met almost a decade in NYC, and I haven't seen you in person since we last caught up in London back in 2012. How has life changed for you during that time on your journey?
Wempy describes his life as going through abrupt changes every 4-5 years, often involving moving from place to place, for example, from Singapore to London. He says there are no small evolutions in his life - it's either an abrupt change, or no change at all. When were first met, in 2009, Wempy was living in the States in New York and San Francisco, and then he moved home a bit with his family in London. After that, he decided to move to Jakarta in Indonesia and says nothing in his life is ever permanent. In that short time, he's gone from being an employee of a corporation, to being an entrepreneur in consulting, which he eventually evolved into doing mostly investing.

Are you still working with the company you founded, Wardour and Oxford?
Absolutely. He says that's where he does a lot of his "brain work." He does still work with governments, large, multinational companies, and rising and emerging companies on the consultancy side. He realized that consultancy doesn't scale quickly and decided to instead invest his money into companies that were scaling. He gives the analogy of being the chip inside of the computer that provides the financial support, advice, mentorship, and guidance to help evolve their companies. He doesn't enjoy the daily grind and wants to be where his ideas are needed, so that's where he spends a lot of his passion and therefore, a lot of his time.

I read an interview you posted on Linkedin with Suzanne Kaplan, where you said, "Our time on earth is not negotiable," referring to your business and the fact that you love your work, clients, and partners. What are some of the most important things you do to make every moment count in your life?
He says whether you believe in a supreme being or not, when your time is up, your time is up and not negotiable. He simply tries to live every second in the moment. He believes that the happiest people live with a conscious sense of living on purpose, with gratitude for yesterday and purpose for today and tomorrow.  "Here I am. I am alive. This is what I'm grateful for for yesterday, this is what I'm living for today, and this is what I shall live for tomorrow." He also believes great people's plans revolve around what they're doing for others.

What do you think are the most important qualities to develop as a leader?
Listening. Not about listening to reply, but listening to understand and enact and then, afterwards, developing strategies or plans?

Clearly, listening to others' perspectives is important to you. How much is travel a part of that for you, has travel always been a priority for you, and how has it enhanced your life?
It's always been a priority. Wempy says he'd rather die and have traveled a lot than to die with a double story house and two cars in the garage. He talks about how "first world problems" are really different, and how when you see how the rest of the world lives, it's much harder to take everything for granted.

Wempy goes on to talk about family. He believes he'll regret not having more time to see his parents, on his deathbed. He feels that he's missed out on a lot of their lives and their growth as people, and that as they get older, he's chasing time to find ways to see them more often. It's the biggest downside, he feels, to being an independent spirit abroad. He's currently looking into moving back to Sydney or London to be closer to them.

Do you have any other habits or traits that contribute to your happiness and success?
Having self-awareness. Wempy discusses the importance of knowing yourself as a person, your possibilities, and your limitations. His self-awareness has increased a lot over the years, and it's also allowed him to have more empathy for other people. He also doesn't speak before he thinks. He's definitely not one of those people who tweets before they think and causes problems because of it; rather, he considers the impact of what he does before doing it.

Do you have any other advice for us?
"Look down." Although he believes it's great to surround yourself with great people to try to elevate your own life, he gives the advice to, every once in a while, look down. To be clear - he doesn't mean it in a derogatory way, or to suggest that you could measure someone through material wealth, good looks, ability, disability, or anything like that. That said, he says we as humans judge and know what looking down means. For example, if you're feeling like you don't have very much money right now, rather than looking up at them, look at people who don't have what you have - who don't have Skype, or electricity, or food on their plate. People who don't have arts and culture even in their pipe dream. Wempy's also grateful to not be at the top, and talks about the kind of problems someone like Mark Zuckerberg might have, about which we could know nothing. So be thankful to not be Bill Gates, but also be thankful to not be trafficked right now.

Wempy feels fortunate that in his travels, it's not something he can ignore. Although there's homelessness in London, New York, etc., it's not as prevalent as it is in Asia, or other parts of the world. "As part of our commitment to improve by looking up, our commitment to improve should also include looking down."

Thank you for joining us today on The Peace of Persistence! If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute to share us with a friend or review us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or Imdb. Every share and review – or even rating – helps new people discover our show. Also, if you know anyone who's genuinely happy and has had some success in their lives, if you think they'd be a good fit for our show, let us know at [email protected].

In the meantime, you can subscribe to the lite version wherever you listen to podcasts. Or visit us at Patreon.com/peaceofpersistence to find our full versions, or if you just want to support the show. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on The Peace of Persistence for more great content to help us all find more happiness and success in our lives.

Overview:
Michael of Michael Chadwick Photography joins us for a great interview in his studio about his long journey from selling plasma to survive to owning his own home and award-winning business. Subscribe to our show at http://patreon.com/peaceofpersistence for the extended version, where we also discuss the importance of focusing on the vast majority of things going right in our lives, Mike's surprising involvement in Deborah Voigt "little black dress scandal," carrying each learned skill through life, what marathons teach you about life, and more.

Show links:
Michael Chadwick Photography: http://chadwick.photography/

Find Michael's book, Balancing the Art and Business of Wedding Photography, on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Balancing-Art-Business-Wedding-Photography/dp/1483595986
 

Intro:
This episode comes to you today from South Jersey, where I first met Michael Chadwick at my high school, where he was my student teacher. If you're reading this, you've found the LITE version, where even today's bio is shortened. That said, Mike has had an amazing life, and if you feel so inclined to check out the longer version on Patreon (http://patreon.com/peaceofpersistence) by becoming a subscriber and supporting the show, I highly recommend it.

Michael Chadwick went from music education to the Interactive Voice Response industry and formed his own company.  From there, he moved to Dallas, and formed his own artist opera company in the Dallas area called The Living Opera, which provided many opportunities for young opera singers in the region.  He also stage directed and sang opera. He then moved to Manhattan, where he reconnected with his longtime friend Suzanne, and they were married.

He then took a job performing database administration for an arts fundraising and marketing company in Brooklyn.  He continued to sing and direct opera, but began taking photography more seriously whenever time would permit it. When he pursued it persistently, it provided him more and more opportunities to take it from being a hobby to a full time job.  After Michael and Suzanne moved to their first owned home in Medford, one year later, in 2013, Michael gave notice at his day job and took his photography business full time.  Finally, at just over 40 years old, Michael is fully in control of his own life, and he feels he's finally achieved the goal that so many people seem to strive toward: Happiness and Success.

He believes that happiness doesn't always come easily, and it doesn't always come quickly.  Persistence and patience, belief in one's self, and surrounding one's self with the right people are all keys to finding that happy place.

Show recap:
Let's talk about the moral to your story in your extended bio – that happiness doesn't always come easily, and it doesn't always come quickly. What does happiness mean to you?
Of course, this is different for everyone. For Mike, it's being in charge and in control of his life. Having that control gives him the ability to use his time to create and to do things for others to affect someone in a positive way. He feels fulfilled and satisfied and has the support system of his family and his wife Suzanne and her family. The safety net, he says, is invaluable. The same control gives him success, and he enjoys the luxury he has of being able to work harder and have it directly impact him and his finances.

I'd love to go back and explore the topic of control for you. In particular, a lot of people will talk about studies about internal versus external locus of control - the internal being that you believe that you have some kind of influence on the outcomes in your life. The external locus of control - those are the people who believe that other circumstances are responsible for the outcomes and events in their life. It seems to me that you've had a bit of a shift in your thinking in your life... Have you moved from a place of an external locus of control, believing that other things influenced your outcomes, to a place of internal locus of control, believing that you are in control of your life?
Absolutely. That change contributes to his happiness almost more than anything else. Because he's no longer blaming his lack of a degree, or giving up too much of himself in relationships, he can exert his own will over his life. Before he went to Westminster Choir College, in the late eighties in Louisiana, he remembers having no bed in a decrepit house, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and donating plasma twice a week so he could afford to survive, and realizing he needed to make a change. That big change of leaving everything, starting over, and working five jobs to afford school was the beginning of his long journey toward finding control in his life. Failing at the end of that time made him feel like he wasn't in control, and he didn't want that to be his life. Failing at his first marriage made him realize he could never give up that control again, and at that time, he shifted the responsibility back on to himself.
Mike wanted the opportunity to take responsibility for his life. He discusses the quote that is often attributed to Einstein, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." So many things in his life (in Dallas) were not working for him all at once, and he decided it was time to go. Immediately, he was able to be himself and excel at the things he did well. It was a long path from selling his blood for peanut butter money to having a successful, thriving career that allows him to support himself and his family, and to decide what he wants to do, even down to the wedding clients he chooses.

And you've won a bunch of awards from different places for your photography business as well?
Several awards from WeddingWire and every year from The Knot, he wins "Best of Weddings" because of reviews from his customers. He credits this to the realization he had when he and Suzanne honeymooned at Disney, where they went above and beyond everyone's expectations. He applies it to his wedding photography, knowing the names of the wedding party and family members, carries a bag with bobby pins and safety pins, knows how to help with bustles of wedding dresses and boutonnières - he says these are the things they remember.

What is your book called, and how can we find it?
Because artists often don't make good business people, he wrote Balancing the Art and Business of Wedding Photography. It's designed to give people the business foundation they need in order to succeed. It's not only the photography, but social dynamics, crowd control, relating well to the people, pricing, costs, equipment, etc. It also introduces them to many different types of weddings and what to expect from them - as well as surprising pitfalls.

Do you have any habits or traits that you'd attribute to your success and happiness?
Persistence. Belief, which he sees as a snowball effect, where the more you achieve, the more you believe you can. "Little victories over the years created a monster, where I really believe I can do almost anything." He jokes that his wife is an enabler, because she also believes in him and tells him so, and each success helps him achieve the next success.

Do you have any advice for us?
"Especially in this Internet age where we have such access to each other, be careful not to spend so much time minding other people's business that you let your own business go bankrupt."

Thanks, as always, for joining us on The Peace of Persistence. Please take a moment to share this episode or review us on Apple Podcasts, or come on over to our subscriber channel at http://patreon.com/peaceofpersistence. We'd love to have you join us in supporting this great show about happiness and success. Have a great week! We'll be back next Thursday with an amazing episode with investor and world traveler Wempy Dyocta-Koto.

 

Today, we have a very special treat for you. Thanks to our guest from season 2, Shannon Algeo, we get to introduce you to his podcast, Soulfeed. On Soulfeed, Alex Kip and Shannon Algeo help you meet your higher self through their inspirational episodes and enlightening interviews. I'm personally a big fan. Just keep listening for one of Shannon's episodes, called "Get Financially Lit." I thought it would be a great one to highlight because although we tend to focus more on finding happiness than success on The Peace of Persistence, that's one piece of our bigger puzzle to achieving a higher life satisfaction.

On this episode of Soulfeed, Shannon helps you identify
– What is money?
– 5 key steps to live in alignment with your purpose and earn.
– How to develop an empowered relationship with money now, and
– Ways to allow yourself to receive what you want in this life.

We'll be back with the next episode of The Peace of Persistence in one week, on March 1, where I get to talk with the founder of Michael Chadwick Photography, who's had to work very hard on achieving the happiness he's found in his life.

For show notes on "Get Financially Lit," please find them directly at http://www.thesoulfeed.com/get-financially-lit.

Thanks for joining us for this week's preview of Soulfeed on The Peace of Persistence. Find them on iTunes or by going to www.thesoulfeed.com. We'll see you next week, with our next new interview featuring Michael of Michael Chadwick Photography. 

Hi there, Peace of Persistence listeners! This week, we have a very special treat for you, but first - a quick announcement. We need to take a brief pause to search for more guests, and I need your help. Close your eyes for a moment. Take a deep breath and then exhale. Now, take a minute to imagine your favorite people in life. Who do you know, who seems to have a light around them at all times? They're happy, satisfied with life, and know how to succeed at what they want to accomplish. (pause) Do you have someone in mind? (pause) If not, give it some time, see if someone comes to mind. (pause) If you do now - great!! Open your eyes, pull up our website at www.peaceofpersistence.com/about, and pause this episode to nominate your friend for our show. If you'd rather introduce us to them, just send them over to www.peaceofpersistence.com/about, and they can find out more about us and nominate themselves. That's www.peaceofpersistence.com/about. Thanks!

Ok, thank you for doing that! As I mentioned, we need to take a brief pause to search for more guests, and we'll return later in February (Because we're taking a break, this one's on us, Patreon subscribers). In the meantime, for today, enjoy this rebroadcast of a previous episode of The Peace of Persistence with Author, Educator, Environmentalist, and Co-founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben. Just this January in 2018, we've had a 30% tariff added to imported solar panels in the US, terrible mudslides in California, and bigger, faster avalanches throughout the world - climate change is a real concern, and Bill gives us some great perspectives about it and strategies to address it in this interview. So without further ado, I bring you Bill McKibben.

Description:
Host Abigail Wright gets to talk with her mentor, Josh Pais, actor, director, producer, and founder of Committed Impulse. They discuss how being present and increasing your tolerance for emotions and sensations can bring you joy, Josh's experience as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, 4 access points to staying present, and more.

To hear more about Josh's funniest moments as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, experiences working with other great actors (like Bruce Willis and Meryl Streep), technology in our culture, how Committed Impulse helped me heal from a major injury and changed my life, Josh's thoughts about chronic pain, addiction, and more, subscribe for the full version at http://patreon.com/peaceofpersistence.

Show Links:
Committed Impulse - http://committedimpulse.com/
Josh Pais on IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0656929/

Intro:
Josh Pais, actor, director, producer, and founder of Committed Impulse, was raised by his parents, Abraham Pais - a theoretical physicist who worked with Albert Einstein, and Lila - a bohemian painter and poet. They’ve had a tremendous influence on what has become Committed Impulse. You pick your favorite actor, and chances are, Josh has worked with them, because he's acted in over a hundred movies and TV shows. Currently, he's playing Stu Feldman in the hit Showtime series, Ray Donovan, among other shows and films. He's also a Co-creator/Co-exec Producer of a TV series that Sony is producing called PAINT. Among other films in which you might have seen Josh, his first lead in a movie was when he played Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

After college, disenchanted with styles of acting that rely on sense memory, Josh sought out theatre companies with a strong physical component in their approach. He worked with members of Joe Chaikin’s (chaykin) Open Theatre and Shuji Terayama’s Avante-garde Theatre of Tokyo. He trained with Tadashi Suzuki and his company, and worked extensively with Gabrielle Roth (to name a few of his guides and mentors). On a quest to find a way to bring all of this physical aliveness to his work as an actor, he became a member of the Circle Rep Lab Company, where he started directing. He put a group of twelve actors together and began experimenting for a 14 month period, wanting the actors to be fully alive, very tuned into one another and completely spontaneous. Much of what unfolded during that exploration has evolved into the core training of Committed Impulse, a high-performance training for actors, artists, and entrepreneurs.

Josh has been fortunate to work consistently in movies and television throughout his career and owes everything to the principles he picked up along the way, all of which are utilized in his Committed Impulse classes and Online Program. Josh currently lives in New York City, Sag Harbor, and Venice, California.

Show Summary:
To start, your parents sound amazing. Can you tell us a bit about your upbringing and how you discovered acting?
Josh grew up in the East Village, which, at the time, he describes as a vibrant, dangerous environment where everything was out in the open and nothing was hidden. A kind of third world drug culture, where heroin and acid were the drugs readily available around there when he was growing up. Although everything was completely raw and potentially unsafe for people visiting the neighborhood, those who lived in it had a sense of protection, because it was a very tight community. Josh's mom was a true artist, and they had performances in their house every two weeks. He took part in them at 9 or 10 years of age when it started, not thinking he wanted to become an actor. 30-40 people would come and perform with no judgment, and it was more of a celebration. His parents divorced when he was 3, and on his father's side of things, as much as his mother was an artist, his father was a scientist. A physicist who worked with Einstein, he was very interested in exploring the building blocks of the universe and how everything is constructed of atoms. He would tell Josh at a very young age things like “this table is made out of atoms, and this person is made out of atoms,” and it blew his mind as he pondered those things. Between the artistic side from his mother and the physical way of looking at things in his immediate environment, he took the best of both of his parents.

Tell me about being Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. You were the only actor of all the turtles to both voice your character and play him in the suit, right? What was that like for you?
Josh believes he was hired to do both because the physicality and the voice were so intertwined for him. Growing up in the East Village, he witnessed a lot of people who made themselves look bigger and more dangerous than they were, almost scooping their arms through the air. Although he'd never heard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he thought that his character Raphael was trying to find his place in the world, and realized that the way people walked in his neighborhood where he was growing up seemed somewhat similar to how turtles arms move as they push through the ground. He put those two aspects together, and during the filming, they just couldn't see anyone else's voice being physically connected to the character that he had created.

In terms of the actual shooting, the costume weighed 70 pounds, and most of the time, they could barely see through a tiny slit. They trained for about 4 months in martial arts before shooting, and all of the turtles became very tuned into one another, which they had to use during the filming, because they couldn't rely fully on sight and had to had a real kinesthetic awareness of the space, especially during action sequences.

Without giving too much away for free, can you give us a bit of a primer or teaser for what Committed Impulse entails and how it was inspired?
Josh loves to give stuff away for free, so he tells us. One of the key components is increasing your tolerance for the full spectrum of who you are. When you put yourself on the line – that might be an audition (for an actor), or going on a date, or pitching your product – it's guaranteed that you're going to have an increase in body sensations. It could be in the form of anything – nervousness, fear, excitement, joy (like butterflies) – and it doesn't mean you're unprofessional, because it's human nature when you go further in the world. If you don't know what to do when you experience something like nervousness, it will happen, you'll try to suppress it, maybe with breathing or relaxation or some other technique, and you might be able to decrease that sensation by decreasing the information your body is offering. At that point, you signal to your mind that you're not going to feel, and your attention goes into your thoughts, which at that point tend to go toward a negative place (“I suck,” or “they don't like this,” etc.). The problem is, the more that any presenter is in their head, the more the audience is going to be in their heads. The more any presenter is present with what they're feeling and experiencing, the more alert and active the audience will be. We think it'll be a problem if the audience sees that we're nervous. Referring to his father, Josh asks, “What is nervousness?” and says that for most people, it's like a chaotic energy spinning around in their torso. When Josh has people just experience it without the drama that it's a bad thing, and breathe, and stay connected to what's in front of them (their audience), then that sensation is no longer an issue. When they stay with the sensation, it keeps them present, and then any sensation they fully feel will shift within 7-12 seconds.

Josh used to experience crippling anxiety during auditions and knew he had more to offer than what he was offering, and he created committed impulse as a way to crack the code. “If we can get over this idea that there's an ideal state to be in, then we can create, no matter what.” If you hold onto the idea that some sensations are good, than you're going to perceive that some sensations are bad, and when they do occur, everything will go haywire. So part of the work in classes and in the online course is helping people to feel comfortable with the full spectrum of themselves. Those who've worked with Josh for a while recognize things like anxiety and fear and realize they can create from that energy, from that fuel.

Do you have any habits or traits that contribute to your happiness or success?
He says practicing what he calls the four access points to presence is key and will pull you out of drama and despair. He practices them regularly. One is to actually see the details of your environment and what's in front of you. The second is to really feel the sensations in your body right now at this moment in time. Not about whether you like it or not, but any sensations you can access – like the feeling of your butt in the chair, or some tightness in your chest, and whatever emotions are associated with it. The third is to consciously breathe – not to exhale any feelings you don't want to feel, but to inhale and exhale consciously to wake up the information that's in your body. The fourth (my favorite) is to catch yourself when you go off into any kind of mental drama, like wondering what's going to happen in the future, or whether you screwed up the past or it was better, etc. In class, when that happens, we're taught to say, “I'm back,” out loud, whenever that happens, which trains us to come back to this moment. As you start to drift off, you visually start to see less, your breathing decreases, and you disconnect from your body. So – to reverse that, say, “I'm back,” take a breath, see what you actually see, and observe the charge – what the atoms are actually doing in your body at that moment. It's that simple. That's what opens up the creative channel, and things will come to you in ways they couldn't have using just a little part of your mind. “Your creativity's in your body. You stay in your body, you stay in your immediate environment, increase your tolerance for whatever's happening, and the world is yours.”

If there were one thing you'd like the world to see differently, what would it be?
All of the sensations in your body are just pattern­s of energy, not good or bad. By increasing our tolerance for those shifts of energy in our bodies, everything becomes more fun, easier, and will keep us out of our heads, where all the trouble starts.

What's the best way to get started in Committed Impulse, for anyone who's interested?
Go to the website, www.committedimpulse.com, where you can sign up for a free audio lesson that will cover some of the things we talked about here and more. After that, you can look at the online course, and you can see what live classes are available in New York and LA.

Do you have any other advice for us?
No. Go have some dark chocolate, drink a lot of water, and go for a walk.

Josh, thank you SO much for being here. You and your work have really made such a huge difference to me as an actor and singer and human... I can't begin to say how grateful I am for you and to have you on our show. Thank you.

And thank you for joining us today on The Peace of Persistence! If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute to share us with a friend or review us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or Imdb. Every share and review – or even rating – helps new people discover our show. Also, if you know anyone who's genuinely happy and has had some success in their lives, if you think they'd be a good fit for our show, let us know at [email protected].

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