Brenda 00:00:01 Hey, Ashley, it is so good to see you.
Ashleigh 00:00:05 Brenda. It is so nice to see you too.
Brenda 00:00:07 And I'm looking at your beautiful new background and your beautiful new home. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to hear the story of how this happened and just to catch up and connect. But before we dive in, I have a question for you. And I can't wait for this answer because I've been like thinking it could go 12 different ways. What is one thing that either you did or didn't do that has led you to your yes filled life?
Ashleigh 00:00:34 Oh. The one thing that I have done, Brenda, and this has been this is the story we're going to talk about today. I have honored the little girl inside of me who has thought in different situations since she's been really little. Wait a minute. That's not right here. Wait a minute. That little canary in the coal mine. Little. Wait a minute. You know your spidey sense is off in a little bit. Way or a big way.
Ashleigh 00:01:11 Yeah. What I have done in the past six years of my life is sweep out energetically anything that doesn't feel right.
Brenda 00:01:26 Yes. You have. And you know we haven't sat down and talked since I think November of 2022 when we were together in Bel-Air. And you feel different. I feel different like we're in a different timeline than we were in November of 2022.
Ashleigh 00:01:45 We are in an absolutely different timeline and that it's so interesting. Like that is where my trajectory split and my upcoming book is called split. My first memoir is called swing a memoir of Doing It All. My next book is split a memoir in pieces. Okay. And the name split means a lot of different things. Okay. For our tarot enthusiasts out there, people who know tarot archetypes. The main cover of split is going to be the Three of Swords. Okay. It is all of the it is about all of the break ups and breakdowns that really go right to the heart of our humanness. Like the things that hurt the most.
Ashleigh 00:02:30 That's what the Three of Swords is about. And the tarot for people, the archetype is the, the heartbreaks that cut the deepest. Okay. And the last time you and I spoke, I was just a couple months away from realizing my marriage. No, I was a couple of months away from deciding I didn't want the struggle of trying to stay married to Manny anymore. While I was also facing the challenge of co-parenting three boys to at that point were teenagers and one, we still have one who's not quite a teenager. In order to parent with integrity, I had to be on a different side of the table from my husband and I couldn't be married to him anymore and say, nope, I'm going to take back agency and I'm going to say, no, we're going to parent like this. I had felt my place on the family totem pole shift when my oldest son became taller than me and entered high school. I suddenly felt like I was like third in charge in my home, like behind my husband and my child.
Ashleigh 00:03:45 You know, you know, Brendan now the kid has hair on his balls. So now he's he's ahead of me. Like, what? Wait, what is happening here? And I was looking around and I was like, wait a minute, so I'm going to be I'm going to be lowest one in this whole family. Like that's the setup. That's the paradigm that my Greek husband had been under. And even though we had bumped up against some cultural things while we were, we'd been together 20 years. Brenda, it wasn't until we were parenting teenage boys together that his underlying misogyny reached threshold levels that I hadn't seen before. Right. Like I had, you know, he was. When we're just hanging out with little kids, it's different than like, right. Totally right. He would be sitting on the couch with our son, who is like now the same size as him. And I'd be talking to our son about his homework and my, his father, my now ex-husband would be like, oh, honey, could you talk to us about homework after the game? Like, to me.
Ashleigh 00:04:49 So like like like.
Brenda 00:04:51 Like your parenting is inconveniencing them.
Ashleigh 00:04:54 Like the boys are watching sports. You're not going to have anyone listen to you now. Yap yap.
Brenda 00:04:59 Oh my goodness.
Ashleigh 00:05:01 Yeah. Okay. It was like I lived in Barstool Sports for a bit. Brenda. It was like, I am not doing all this for this.
Brenda 00:05:07 I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing because it's so relatable. It's so relatable. And you know, when you said that you are honoring your little girl and the part that the inner Ashleigh, the little girl, Ashleigh, and every time something was like off a little bit, I'm just curious. I want to go back there for a second and then let's pick up your story. Was it always easy to listen? Because oftentimes I have fun with my own little girl. She says things that are very inconvenient.
Ashleigh 00:05:41 Oh, God. It wasn't easy to listen because I hated the part of me that was so needy. I didn't I didn't call it the little girl part of me.
Ashleigh 00:05:49 I called it like the lazy, weak part of me. Like the whining part of me. Like the part of me that can't just get it together. Oh, they can't just get over it like so. No, it was the part of me I detested. And then through through swinging and renegotiating my marriage and the things I wrote about there and really examining my relationship with perfectionism and how it played into my work and my own mothering and my own experience of being mothered. I think swing is sort of like like, mommy issues. And then now split is like daddy issues, like, wait a minute, who's gonna take care of me? Wait a minute. It's me. Am I happy about that or sad about that? Just all of all of the different things. But the way that it the way that it came to a head in my marriage was I'm very good at sustaining myself on very little. Like I can be very happy with not very much input. Right? I think it's my sad rising.
Ashleigh 00:06:51 It's like. It's sort of like. It's a bit of a golden retriever energy. Like, just give me a hint that we're going to play and I'm happy for a bit, you know? that is my good nature that like, I lead with in in the world and that I led with, with my family and in my marriage, like, oh, okay, I'll do a little more. But you're, we're going to play ball, right. Like we're it's going to be reciprocal at some point. so when it was never reciprocal and I would have feelings about it, I would feel really embarrassed and weak and, and I would feel bad that that person on some level must know they're disappointing me too. And still they can't get it together. So then I would have this, like, secondary kind of shame for my caregiver or my husband or whoever it was who I was. Like, They they know this isn't like kosher, you know? But I'll act like it's okay. And so it was like, I kind of knew I was being codependent even from a young age, but I was like, I thought I was the only one equipped to kind of be level headed in a lot of situations.
Brenda 00:08:01 Oh, I love this. So one of the things that I have discovered in the two years since we've talked that codependency is sometimes masking deep empathy, unmanaged empathy. And I see that in you. And not unmanaged empathy, but in, in the the version of yourself where you're sitting on the couch with your teenage son watching sports, talking about the homework, and your husband's like, hey, let's not do that right now.
Ashleigh 00:08:29 unmanaged empathy, I, I love that so much, Brenda, because it was like, as a little kid, my alarm bells would be like going off for a lot of different people at once. Like, you know, wow, my mom really doesn't feel settled or my my dad is stressed about this and my brother is struggling. And you know, I could sense, you know, from people. So then, yeah, your empathy is like you're kind of in panic level, like for these other people, right? Because you're like, wow, they're not feeling ease, right? Right.
Brenda 00:09:01 And so how did that impact you? If they were not feeling ease, then.
Ashleigh 00:09:06 I would dance, I would dance. Okay. Whether dancing was dancing out of the frame, being so busy with work and school and jobs and all these things, like a lot of responsibilities for a kid. Like, I had two jobs by the time I was 11. It was like, I have an 11 year old now, and I'm like, he still can't put his shirt on right away. Every I'm like his, you know, his t shirts like high on the front. I'm like, you can't tell, can you? so it's just we're all different people. So for me, I, I either made myself so busy that I never had like a moment of leisure, so I would have a target on my back. I just was like, you know, that was I was moving like a moving one of the ways I would dance and I would do some great things and I would be like kind of flashy, but I would also kind of be on the perimeter or I would be right in someone's business, like with my hands, like literally cleaning up the biggest mess that they've ever had with them.
Ashleigh 00:10:06 And that would I could do it with a smile on my face and I could have good stamina, but afterwards I would feel completely depleted, like I used to take my father in law to all his doctor's appointments, and I said I was so happy to do it. But I realized, oh wow, just like picking him up and talking to my mother in law, then debriefing her after. And I was I was zonked, Brenda. Yeah, but yeah, I didn't realize, wow, I'd been running on that kind of like energetic exhaustion for years. And just, like, running right, plowing right through it.
Brenda 00:10:42 And it's a little bit like chasing the gold star. Like always, if I do this thing, I'm going to be good enough. If I do this thing, I'll be worthy of love and belonging and acceptance and doing the things I want.
Ashleigh 00:10:53 That and, and and because this is something that's just coming up in my energy work right now, there's also this familiarity with exhaustion or there's the familiarity with sort of like the, the like, like I was just talking about kind of like rushing out of frame, like there's a lot of there's a lot of protection in being busy or protection and like, really working hard, like, so that no one else can ask you for something.
Ashleigh 00:11:18 You know, there's like, you know, there. Right? There's yeah.
Brenda 00:11:22 You don't have to say no if you're just so busy that you can't possibly have a space, I mean, so that it takes away all of the potential conflicts of saying, no, I don't want to or no, I can't, or.
Ashleigh 00:11:34 People appreciate you more when you say yes, Brenda, if they know you're so busy, then you're. Yes. That's it. Yeah. It's like it's very it. I love seeing and this is something in this theater of a home that I'm in alone a lot of the time, because my kids are only here every other week. I really got to see the play out of my own consciousness of, like, because, you know, if there's a mess, it's my mess. Brenda. Like, I can't blame it on anybody, right? But for the first few months that I was here, I'd be like their dishes in the sink and I'd be like, and who are we mad at? Because it would be you.
Ashleigh 00:12:10 And it's like, oh, oh, wow. I had that conditioned response to sort of be annoyed with whoever could be annoying.
Brenda 00:12:18 It's outsourcing the responsibility.
Ashleigh 00:12:20 Exactly. So it's been it's been radically lonely and radically empowering because it's like, okay, wait, how how happy am I on a day alone when nobody bothers me, right? Yeah. How happy can I be just on my own? Or will I always be bringing something into the frame and something into my brain to irritate me, even if I really do have like a whole long day of peace in a quiet house.
Brenda 00:12:47 I relate to this so much. It wasn't until my my daughter moved out in October of 2022. So right before you and I were sitting at the the table in hotel Bel-Air and, when she moved out, I was initially frustrated and I was like, gosh, she left so many messes. And then it was about like two weeks later, I, I sort of had a heart to heart with myself. And I was like, wait a minute.
Brenda 00:13:12 She's been out of the house for over a month. There's literally no one here to blame but me.
Ashleigh 00:13:20 So you had the same experience?
Brenda 00:13:22 Exactly.
Ashleigh 00:13:23 Conditioned response. And that other person usually is kind of messy. So it's like reinforced, right? Right. And then when you realize you're having that same, you're having that same physiological response when there's no stimuli. You're like. The call is coming from inside the house.
Brenda 00:13:40 That's right. That's right. The call is coming from inside the house. Okay. So this is so good. And I'm realizing you and I just jumped right in. Listeners, in case you don't know. Ashleigh has been a guest on the podcast before. Back when it was called waves of Joy. And she shared about her book swing. And I'll link that episode in the show notes, and I'll link the book in the show notes. but, Ashley, it has been so fun to watch you evolve and to watch you pivot and to watch this house that you're sitting in.
Brenda 00:14:18 Come into beingness. It's so inspiring. Like truly inspiring.
Ashleigh 00:14:27 Thank you. I think what's happened, Brenda, is I've jumped timelines.
Brenda 00:14:32 Yeah, totally.
Ashleigh 00:14:32 Over and over and over, I really think. for your audience, who knows about jumping quantum timelines or believes in it? Follow along. For those who are like, what the heck? Okay, did you watch Quantum Leap when you were a kid? You know, it was a good one, right? And he could go different places all the way. The only way I have been able to achieve goals that have, goals that have out tricked me for a long time. Do you know what I mean? Like stubborn goals. Stubborn goals. The only way I have been able to achieve stubborn goals is to act like. To act as if they already happened.
Brenda 00:15:18 That's right. And so I have a question before you go on. Is it acting as if. I mean, I know it is, but what amount are you allowing yourself to feel as though they already are there?
Ashleigh 00:15:30 Well, here's the thing.
Ashleigh 00:15:31 I say act as if because I am such a feeling. Bird cancer moon. Okay. Oh. Me too.
Brenda 00:15:38 Me too.
Ashleigh 00:15:39 Oh, there we go. High high high high. Too much, doesn't it? Being human, I've got notes for the operators. That's right. You too hard. Too hard on the heart. It is. No, no, it's too. It's too tender. The human heart. Okay, So I say act as if. Because I'm really. I, in cliftonstrengths. My number one strength is activator. Okay? I am a doer. I learn through doing, I learn through doing. I learn through doing. Okay, so I say act as if. Because what I do is I. I do this with my clients and I do this with myself. And this is how I got my literary agent. This is how I decided to break up with my literary agent. This is how my platform exploded by 55,000 people in 45 days. This is how I do anything that works.
Ashleigh 00:16:34 Brenda. Okay. Anything that works is because this is the place I strategize from, I pretend. Okay. So if I was going to do my book split right now. Okay. If I want to finish that book and and launch into the world the dream book that it could be to like, you know, launch me into the next part of my career. What I would do is I would imagine that we are two years out from that book launching. Okay. So I would imagine we are in spring 2027. All right. And my book came out 24 months ago, and it hit New York Times. And I had like a run. And it was this and it was that. And then the show came out in the fall, and Broadway critics were interested in my one woman show. Brenda. Okay. Like, I'm just going to be like, okay. All that happened, all that happened. But I want to be two years past that Because for me, even in the set, even in the satisfaction of imagining a goal being achieved, there's so much anxiety and uncertainty around it of whether there'll be jealousy, whether I really made money, whether there'll be haters that come up, you know, from behind the hedge what you know, I need to say the great thing happened.
Ashleigh 00:17:53 And then life has continued to be great. Like the bottom didn't fall out. I have to pretend like then smooth sailing and ask myself, what's next? If I already knew. Yes, this is a hell of a book. Yes, this is a hell of a an ice theatre production, because that's my that's my dandy idea to star in an ice show that I write and direct and produce by the time I'm 45 years old, which is this fall, because I've produced a lot of ice shows, I've skated in a lot of ice shows. I've done that, but it's like, oh, to to do that with my own work and kind of adult ice theater. It's this kind of it's this thing, this crazy fun idea that I was able to think of by putting myself in the act as if, if, if split. If split is the book that hits New York Times and then swing maybe hits New York Times two after that. If it's the book that launches the next part of my career, what do I really want to do with my time? And I was like, I want to choreograph another ice show.
Ashleigh 00:18:56 And I was like, oh, well, then let's just do it at the same time.
Brenda 00:18:59 Yes.
Ashleigh 00:19:00 Cute. We're condensing time. We are. We are putting our passions into the present, because I think that's when we are the most lit up. That's when we're the most ourselves. I'm not just a storyteller. I'm not just a memoirist. I'm not just a figure skater. I am a bunch of those things. And I'm a spiritual seeker, and I am a goddess worshipper, and I am a dog lover, you know what I mean?
Brenda 00:19:27 It's like. Yes, yes.
Ashleigh 00:19:29 Bringing all of my Max Joy components into every day. Brenda, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to, like, concentrate it. Like I'm going to get I'm going to get fresh air every day because I love fresh air. And you know what I love doing the most? Out in fresh air. Some kind of physical labor around my yard. I want to be carrying heavy stuff and kind of huffing and puffing.
Ashleigh 00:19:57 But then at the end I can be like, oh wow, all those pots are over here now. Like, I want to, I want to have a visual like you did a kid and kind of be like, oh, you know, a little like tired and like, that's the that that is one of, like the prime ways that I can live out my experience in my 3D body. Oh my gosh, doing that.
Brenda 00:20:22 Yes, I, I relate to this, so I decided in in early 2024, I was like I have said for the last two years, I want to travel full time and I can think of 700 reasons why. That's a terrible idea. And the fact is I want to. And when I let that lead everything, the universe conspired to make it happen. And I ended up being able to have these beautiful experiences all over the country, just me and my dog and my Prius, meeting all kinds of people, staying in Airbnbs and hotels and with my friends.
Brenda 00:20:58 And the best part? The hardest part. But the best part was I got to spend the last month of my dad's life with him, and if I would not have given myself permission to just do the thing I wanted to do, that wouldn't have happened. And so it there's something really powerful about what you're saying, that we stop waiting. We don't wait until the thing happens to experience the joy. We just do it.
Ashleigh 00:21:26 Exactly. And it's it's funny because it's such, what we're talking about right now is such a, like, pushed upon component of Law of Attraction or Abraham Hicks or The Secret or anything. So many spiritual teachers say, you know, act as if it's in the present, or imagine it's in the present, or write your gratitude journal like it already happened. But I think if we're still holding ourselves back from satisfaction or ease or ways that we would allow ourselves to live an ordinary day because it hasn't happened yet, our subconscious knows. So I sort of I started doing this thing, actually, it was before I got my agent for swing.
Ashleigh 00:22:11 I said, oh, I really want to get a custom closet. This was in my old house and I had an old very. It was a big closet, but the organization was just awful and it always was messy. And it was like everything exposed. And, I just felt stressed every time I looked in my closet and I said, you know what? One swing when I get a book deal for a swing, I'm going to redo my closet. And as soon as I said that, I said, no, I'm going to redo my closet right now, and I'm going to pay the money and I'm going to I'm going to spend $5,000 on a closet because. And then I'm going to make that book happen. Do you know what I mean? It's almost like you spend the money before you have it. But like, you know, I wasn't spending all my money, but I was spending all my wish points. Brenda. That's right. The thing I wanted more than anything was that closet.
Ashleigh 00:23:00 And I was like, so that is one of the things that I tell myself in this house. This house is big and beautiful. And I tell you, I cast for this house a year and a half before I moved in. and what I did was I printed out a picture of this gorgeous, modern, kind of craftsman type house and in the front of it. I printed it out from Pinterest. It was a house that when I showed Manny and each one of my kids, everybody went, oh, like, I like, blew their hair back. Sort of like everybody was like, impressed by the house. Okay, there there were different architectural styles and different houses that I showed everybody, but this was the one that made all of us ooh and Okay, so I made a picture. I printed a picture of that. And then on the front I cut out a beach photo of me and Manny and the kids and his parents and our pets on the beach and on vacation. Okay.
Ashleigh 00:23:58 And I put us all, like, beach chairs on the driveway of the house. I glued it on okay with the glue stick, the back of the house, the back of the piece of paper. I wrote down everything I wanted in our dream house. Okay. There's one sentence I wrote. Room for me and Manny and Jack and Luke and Nico. And then I put my in-laws names and I put my pets names, and I was like, urge, urge, urge, urge room for all of us. Oh. Period.
Brenda 00:24:31 Oh. That feels different.
Ashleigh 00:24:34 And that is the piece of paper that I burned. And when I burned it in my backyard in this little tiny cauldron, it was the first time I had burned at home. Is a part of my casting or manifestation, or intentions or wish setting or rituals around the moon? just because my office was on the second store or second floor of our house and I would usually do my ritual work there, I would burn with friends for years on new moon or full moons, but this was the first time I burned like a proper, which, you know, on my own back patio as soon as I lit the match.
Ashleigh 00:25:10 Sirens blared from all directions. From all directions. And of course, I have this tiny little cauldron and fire. It's not because of my fire, but it was the sign. Okay, maybe I should do more of this. Like be this intentional. Get every sentence right when I am deciding what I want to wish like really like because that that was a sign when I was like, what feels exactly in resonance. And there was something about that sentence listing the members of the that I was like, I don't know if this is too inclusive or too exclusive. It's all of us. Do you know who's in this house on it on its fullest day, Tommy? Me in my big master suite up there. There's a balcony, too. It's like I'm goddamn up there.
Brenda 00:26:02 It's gorgeous.
Ashleigh 00:26:04 My three kids in the kids wing, okay? And my two pets. And this house was built by a veterinarian, so all the floors are heated. There's room for all of us. And I don't even think there's room for a boyfriend.
Ashleigh 00:26:19 I don't even think there's room for a lover, I think. This is a. The shape of this house has helped me sort of figure it out. Figure out like, what is the shape of my life and the shape of my family.
Brenda 00:26:33 Well, and the thing I'm hearing right now is, like, healing house is healing house. Yeah.
Ashleigh 00:26:42 This house was built the year I got married, Brenda. And I think that that is a really nice, really nice detail. And the woman who built it, she got, she actually got pancreatic cancer and passed, like, right after it was done. Oh, and I, I sometimes think like, okay, Lynn, if you could be here bossing me around all day, like, what do you want me to do? And she's like, put up Christmas lights. I'm like, all right, you know, done and done. She never got a chance.
Brenda 00:27:09 So there's a couple things that I want to kind of unpack here. One is you talking about the wish and the manifestation and the law of attraction and the rituals and the moon.
Brenda 00:27:18 And, you know, one of the things that that my own personal journey has included is there was very closet energy work. Like I have always believed in energy. I've always been able to communicate with the other side. I've always had psychic knowing coming in, and yet there was something about it that I always wanted to hide it behind science or hide it behind like socially acceptable kinds of things. And I've noticed a big change in you over the last several years where you are out of the spiritual closet, so to speak. And that resonates for me as well. And I'm curious what that journey feels like on this side, because I know a lot of our listeners are kind of they're not necessarily in the spiritual closet, but they may not be totally out.
Ashleigh 00:28:07 Okay, there was a big change for me when I started referring to myself as a witch in jest. Okay, a witch in a funny way, right? Or witchy? There was. That was a threshold. And honestly, just a few months before that, a friend who I really love, posted something that said, have you ever thought only witchcraft will save us? And I had this gut feeling like, oh God, you shouldn't really call it witchcraft.
Ashleigh 00:28:38 Like, like, you know, people are gonna. And I was like, wait a minute. Okay. Whenever I have an aversion to something, I go, wait a minute. Let's lean in. What? What is that about? Right. Something that like, oh, I can't if if I'm uncomfortable with a friend using a word. What? What is wrong with me in that word? Right. What's what's the trigger about?
Brenda 00:28:58 Yeah, it's the trigger about.
Ashleigh 00:29:00 Because it's always something. It's always something juicy, too. It's like, you know, it's like, choose your own adventure, right? When you're like, what a trigger. Yay! It's like you're gonna find something. Like a side quest. And then I really started thinking, and I was like, you know what? It really is. It really is the word that feels like it makes the most sense. And so then I started using, like, you know, witchy or, really good friend of mine called this House which mansion? And I'm like, okay, yeah, let's do it.
Ashleigh 00:29:35 so I started leaning into, like, using that word in a funny way. You even have a t shirt that has these little cartoon witches on it, and it says girls will be girls. And just like wearing that out, people really look at me, and then they kind of like this and it's like, yeah, you're a little scared. You're scared because you believe it or you don't. And it's like, it's almost it's this edge kind of thing that I've like started like kind of wearing as like, oh yeah, a little, like a woman who may be unpredictable in a way you don't like. Yes, I will wear that, I will, I will wear that, that, that badge that to me and part of it is I've moved out of some patriarchal systems that I was in for a really long time out of my traditional family system. I'm no contact with my parents and my siblings. I've moved out of a marriage. I do feel a bit like, a woman gone feral, you know, like nobody's the boss of me.
Ashleigh 00:30:35 Like it really feels.
Brenda 00:30:37 It's kind of fun, isn't it?
Ashleigh 00:30:39 It is. And it's like, what's. What's the way you're the wildest, and it's like you're a witch. You know, like the little kids, you know, the kids and the pets on the street love you. But some of the, some of the, you know, people might be like, I don't know what she's up to. I, I love that idea that some that I may not be I may not be, like, super sunshiny and palatable to everybody, which growing up, I just wanted to be sunny to. I wanted to be the sun. I just wanted to be the sun for the whole world.
Brenda 00:31:14 I wanted to be liked. And I was willing to do anything not only to be liked, but I also needed people to be okay because that's how I felt safe. If they were okay, I was safe.
Ashleigh 00:31:27 Yes. And what I love about ritual, what I love about what I love about ritual, is that a couple times a month I get straight and honest with myself.
Ashleigh 00:31:44 I write out like, what do I want? Like, more than anything, like, here's where I am. Where the gaps. Like where? Where am I wanting. Right. And it's like okay, get excruciatingly clear on what the perfect picture looks like. Okay. Not just I want something different. No I, I think it's I really love taking the time to ask myself. No. Get clarity. Clarity. Nope, nope. Because I have such a busy brain and going around in my day, just like we were saying with the conditioning and looking at a mess and wanting to blame a person who's not even there. Your brain does that all the time, will tell you, oh, you can't do this. You can't do that. It'll just you'll kind of like, bump up against the same old walls. but having a real, like, come to Jesus with yourself every, every two weeks makes you go. No, I don't even want that anymore. I got clear. No, I'm not telling myself I want that just because, you know, I thought I did before or whatever.
Ashleigh 00:32:44 It's like, you know, you sort of have your coordinates, like you're calibrated to where you want to go. And from, like a really quantum standpoint, my imagined, code for jumping timelines is when you can imagine fully a certain percentage of the details, because you don't need to know every detail, but you have to be sure and every detail that you've imagined. Your heart lines up with it as an absolute yes. You have no longer have reservations about it. So and the thing is, the first time you imagine each of these, your nervous system might go berserk. but then it's leaning into, okay, if I get that, I know other people may be jealous or other people will say this or that, but do I really want that? Yes. Okay. What I do, I call it alchemy. Is it feel all like. It's like I call it alchemy, the fear, alchemy. The downside in that timeline. Okay. And to me, it's almost like you're putting your head like through a waterfall into, like, the next timeline.
Ashleigh 00:33:52 Like, here I am, right? And it's like I'm peeking in and I'm going to lean into that discomfort. And usually I feel it like right in here, like under my solar plexus. Right. And it's like, no, no, no. Okay. Just take it. And it's like, okay, you're just gonna feel it. No. How bad would that feel? How bad would that feel? And it's just like turn it up to max sensation. And within like 90s usually it's just like an emotion you know, going coursing through your body. It's like, oh it doesn't hurt as much or it doesn't sting as much.
Brenda 00:34:21 There's tons of research to back what you're saying. Tell me. So there's, there's neurological and psychological research that says that if you measure emotion in the body by the markers in the brain and in hormones, even the most difficult emotions when you let them flow last 90s the thing that causes true suffering is not letting yourself feel the emotion, because then you're like kind of feeling the emotion, like with you sitting on the couch with in the opening story with Manny and your oldest son, like, like not letting yourself feel that, that heaviness of realizing they're not listening to you.
Brenda 00:35:02 Do you know what I mean? exactly.
Ashleigh 00:35:04 And they're never. Oh, he never will want Jack to listen to me like he listens to him. Like having, you know, respecting your mother the way you respect your father was never on the in the playbook, right? When when I still. I can only dip into that in small doses. I have to sit and feel and feel it completely because it's like it's very heartbreaking, you know?
Brenda 00:35:28 Right. Exactly. Right.
Ashleigh 00:35:29 Exactly. And you just it's like you're on the edge of a contraction over and over and over instead of letting yourself feel the whole thing.
Brenda 00:35:34 That's right. It's like bracing. Bracing. And the bracing causes so much pain.
Ashleigh 00:35:39 Oh, yes. And so it's when I let myself feel the good, the bad, the indifferent. Wait a minute. How would that really feel if that happened? That's when I get clarity. Wait, do I want that? Do I not? Well, what it does is it. It loosens up the attachment and the aversion.
Ashleigh 00:35:55 That's right. Because we want to want it, but we don't want and we we want to be living. It is what we want. We want to, like, know how good it's going to be because it's so good right now. It's good after good after good after good. Like that's where we really want to get into.
Brenda 00:36:15 So from your perspective, what is the relationship between taking the inspired action after you have dreamed into felt into lived into the goal? What is that relationship?
Ashleigh 00:36:32 For me, I'm a slave. I am a slave to what my consciousness tells me to do. Okay. I have done. Yes. Yes. Yes I am. It is, it is. You do not. You do not ask that hard and then not do the job. Oh my.
Brenda 00:36:51 God! Yes. Yes. You do not sit on the meditation pillow and practice being. You have to go take some action.
Ashleigh 00:36:59 And it's probably going to be something different. So the first different idea that comes into your life after you petition the sun gods or the fire gods or you know, Saint Joseph to find you a new house, you know what I mean? The very first inclination you have, you go like you know what.
Ashleigh 00:37:17 Like you're almost I used a golden retriever example before but like you are a working breed dog at that point. You are you have said I am hungry for this. Show me this. Show me the place to go for it. Right. Like, give me the scent. Give me a sense, man. You can't be like. Oh, I don't know if I asked for pepperoni today. You know what I mean? It's like.
Brenda 00:37:43 Nose.
Ashleigh 00:37:43 Doesn't lie. It's. I'm mixing so many metaphors, but it it it is this really primal, visceral thing. Almost like, you know, you, like, silent your human mind and calm your nervous system. You know, you silence your human mind as much as you can. You calm your nervous system and you feel like this divine pull. Whether it's our own fate or our own wiring, or our own VR headset that we've been programmed with. Or it is just a crazy idea that meat suit Ashley has this year. Whatever, I don't care, you know what I mean?
Brenda 00:38:18 I do, I do.
Ashleigh 00:38:19 It's crazy. Me too. Actually, she is super fun to live with.
Brenda 00:38:24 She is super fun and she's delightful and lovable.
Ashleigh 00:38:27 She's fun to be like. I don't know if you want to live with me, but, like, I love being me. Do you know what I mean? I do.
Brenda 00:38:33 That's because I feel that way about me, Brenda. Like, yeah, I'm a good time.
Ashleigh 00:38:38 For you to be. That's right. Right. And I don't need to be a good time for anyone else. Like, I don't need anyone else to prove, like, with their behavior. Like you're worth committing to. I'm like, I'm my goddamn favorite. I am my favorite and I'm so glad that I'm the custodian of me this time, because I'm. I'm a handful and I do, I do I do appreciate the challenge and I'm glad I'm not in anybody else's hands.
Brenda 00:39:05 I love that I feel that way too. I'm a handful and I own it and I'm okay with it.
Ashleigh 00:39:11 My hands are full with this. I got me, you.
00:39:15 Know what I mean?
Brenda 00:39:15 But I do. I love it, actually. I could go on and on and on and I, I want to and also I want to make sure that I give listeners a chance to connect with you. Where can they find you?
Ashleigh 00:39:28 They can find me at Ashleigh Rernard on Instagram. So Ashleigh Rernard I say now spelled the smug way. Ashleigh. Ashleigh I g h all the extra letters in Ashley okay, you can find me on Instagram. I'm probably going to be doing a project in my house, maybe up a ladder. So just check my story, see what I'm up to. The thing that I'm the most excited about right now, besides writing a new book and starring in a one woman skating show, is I'm helping so many brilliant people launch their books. I think they always come back to. And the thing I love more than anything is coaching, because one of the things I'm good at is seeing the light and the talent and the potential in other people.
Ashleigh 00:40:12 So when someone comes to me and they've written a story that they want to share with the world, I say, okay, what do you love about this story? And then I see what lights them up and I'm like, oh my God. And you know what? Lights me up? You know what? I think other people are going to be okay. And then I act like the connector between them, you know, helping them shine in their unique way, which it's hard sometimes to be unique, especially on social media, because, like, you wonder, like if you're supposed to, like, please the algorithm or be like other people or what I do. And because I coached figure skating for 30 years, my clients. Science. They feel my competence. They feel my. My security. And saying, oh no, no, I know how. I know how to make you look fantastic. And I know how to get and keep the audience's attention on you, on you. I know how to make you the star, and everybody does it differently.
Ashleigh 00:41:07 You know, some people are great at face to camera. Some people I'm like, you know what? I want you to take a still photo and write everything. I want your writing out there, not your I want, you know, it's different for everybody. So I am helping to launch nine different books in the next 18 months. So if anybody wants social media help or social media and book editing help, because I founded an agency with my friend Jamie Macmillan, who's also my favorite editor. So I've editing support for writers, too. that's something that's just filling me up so much.
Brenda 00:41:39 That's amazing. And I just want to recognize for a moment how you have given yourself permission to pivot. And I want to celebrate that because so many times it's easy for us to get into our heads and think, oh, I've been doing this thing. And I, you know, I've been writing this horse a long time, and I just have to stay on the horse, even though the horse doesn't feel like the horse I want to be on.
Brenda 00:42:02 And I just want to celebrate and say, I see you and I'm inspired by you. And I love the pivot. And for any listener that's thinking, you can't pivot. Ashley and I are proof you can.
Ashleigh 00:42:15 Over and over and you must and you must forget about your niche. Forget about your niche. You know what? When you said this horse, you know you're not riding this horse anymore. I saw like Barbie, you know, riding the horse and the paddle board and then the boa. Yeah. And it's like she's so Barbie, you know what I mean? You and I have to have different vehicles. I don't want a horse anymore. I want a rocket ship. And then I want a buggy, and then I want a, you know, and then I want a house in the middle of the woods that no one comes to. You know, I, you know, this kind of experience, this experience of this sort of like, remote type beautiful, like it's just pinch me.
Ashleigh 00:42:56 I.
Brenda 00:42:57 I dream like, this is, this is my. My heart's desire is to have multiple places I call home. Because I have realized with my wanderlust that it is about I need a change of of scenery, I need a change of space. And so I long for an apartment in the city and a home in the country. And you know everything in between ocean, home, lake, home. And so that's where I'm headed, is creating that, like.
Ashleigh 00:43:27 The visual environmental difference, you need to change a literally a like change of scenery. Right, exactly. A movie a movie goes to a different town. And this part of the movie takes place in the mountains. That's right. This part takes place at the beach, right? That's right, that's right.
Brenda 00:43:44 This is Brenda at the beach. This is Brenda in the mountains. This is Brenda in the middle of the country. Yes.
Ashleigh 00:43:49 So you need the locations manager. It's going to be amazing for the locations manager for the Brenda Show.
Ashleigh 00:43:55 Well, you are you are your locations manager right now.
Brenda 00:43:58 I am, that's right. That's right. Yes. Ashleigh. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today. I appreciate you so much. Go check out Ashley's social media. Connect with her there. She's brilliant. If nothing else, you're going to learn a lot by what she posts and then go grab her books. So swing is already out and split is coming out and remind us it's spring 2025.
Ashleigh 00:44:21 Yes, it's coming out April 2025. The pre-order link will be live, probably end of January, so I'm not sure when people are listening to this, but we'll get that to Brenda's team as soon as we have it.
Brenda 00:44:35 yeah. Amazing. Thank you. Ashleigh.
Ashleigh 00:44:38 Thank you. Brenda.
