True North with Abby & Ryan

***We are aware the audio quality of this episode is terrible. It is what it is.***This is the episode that started it all. We met up for coffee for one of our usual amazing conversations, and decided to put my phone on the table to record the whole thing, to see if we could pull off something podcast-like.Production-wise? Hard no.Content-wise? Hell yeah.If you're able to churn through this one, head to S1E1 and listen to us debrief this very recording, sometimes even playing back parts of it...

Abby & Ryan debrief the entire 83-episode run of the True North Podcast, and then send each other off with gratitude, love, and a splash of nostalgic sadness. Seriously. Thank you all. Thank you for being on this journey with us, for watching us grow, and growing alongside us. We added the "with Abby & Ryan" to the title so that you could find our podcast amidst all the other "True North" podcasts out there, but really, it's always been with Abby, Ryan, and YOU. So thank ya...

Ryan is a second-born middle child. Anyone who puts stock in birth order dynamics just learned a lot about Ryan from those two pieces of information.In this episode, we interview his older brother Brandon, who has lived in Japan for the past several years. We start by discussing the differences between American and Japanese culture, and what it was like to pack up their entire lives into 16 bags and move across the ocean."I am a specific person. I have specific gifts and abilities that are un...

**SORRY FOR RYAN'S WEIRD SOUND QUALITY**Ryan is hung-up on people perceiving him as credible, and is therefore hesitant to openly admit to how woo-woo he is. His concern is that there are people out there who blindly trust in things with no solid reason, and so when he opens up about trusting them as well, he'll be lumped in with the non-critical thinking masses who will believe unfounded things with very little scrutiny or need for compelling evidence.He does energy healing but is skeptical ...

What is trust, really? In the first 20 minutes, we settle on this loose definition:Trust is about safety. You know what needs to be put in place for you to feel safe.If you feel the need to put them in place yourself (because if you don't, you won't be safe), that's the antithesis of you trusting someone.If you believe the other person will/has put those things in place on their own (such that you don't feel the need to do it yourself), that equals you trusting them. Where do you place y...

Do you ever notice that you seem to have done personal growth that you have no recollection of actually doing on purpose? Abby says no. Hah. It's more probable your values shifted and you just care less now about things you cared a lot about before.Then we talk about a bunch of other stuff. Just listen to the episode and you'll get it all. Why do you even read these??TIME CODES:3:13 - Accidental Growth?14:48 - Awareness20:28 - Solitude39:35 - Updating our Paradigms49:00 - Love yourself the wa...

Reference points! We all have a core set of experiences that we use to contextualize all of our new and incoming experiences. In this episode we unpack why this happens and what we can do about it. “The best predictor of a child's security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents made sense of those childhood experiences.” ― Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal TransformationAwareness. Learn what your refere...

Last week Ryan said in passing that he's bi. This week, we unpack that.When Ryan says he's bi, what he's saying is that someone's gender neither helps nor hinders his ability to be physically attracted to them. It's not that he discovered a new part of himself, but rather that he released the compulsory heterosexuality he was taught to internalize.If gender is nonbinary, then what's the difference between bisexual and pansexual?How does a married person explore their newfound sexual orientati...