1. It's Me Jen! My Journey; Unfolding, Awakening, and Embracing the Feminine

Speaker 1: 0:00

I was on these dating apps and I was going oh my gosh, I keep attracting people that feel really waffly to me, like they don't feel grounded and sturdy. And the more I started to dig in, the more I realized like I'm functioning at work in my masculine or I was at the time I would say probably 90, 95% of the time. If I'm functioning 90% in masculine energy because of the way that magnets work, I'm gonna attract partners that are functioning much more in their feminine energy when you're dating. And that's what. Maybe it's a little vain, but maybe not. That's a part of what compelled me to get into this, because I was like, oh shoot, I don't wanna keep attracting that kind of man, like I want to have a man that is grounded and that can lead to some times and so that I can feel safe to soften and be playful. So my work over the last few years has been to reintegrate the feminine energy. Hello, it's me, your host, jen, and fellow journeyer on this path of learning how to reintegrate feminine energy into the boardroom. So we'll talk about things like conscious capitalism and leading with vulnerability and awareness and connection and play. We'll be diving into the bedroom. So basically, we're gonna talk about the horizontal bombo and all seriousness. We're gonna look at how to create a deeper level of intimacy and connection in your romantic partnerships, but also in all of our relationships. I think we've become so disconnected, so how do we gain that in our relationships? And then we're gonna look beyond that into any tool or practice that helps us become more magnetic and more full. So manifestation techniques, meditation and personal development approaches that will help us move through challenges to step into our brightest, fullest, most magnetic version of ourselves. It's all the things. It is the whole shebang. So buckle up buttercups. We're diving in. All right, we are here at episode one.

Speaker 1: 2:34

I'm excited to dive in with you today and at least give you a little bit of an overview. I thought it would be a good idea for me to start with my story, tell you how I arrived here in life a little bit and why this conversation about reintegrating the feminine has become an obsession that I can't outrun. I thought it would be kind of a three month stint I love to learn and it literally has turned into a three year deep dive and I keep getting these little pings and nudges from the universe to continue to pursue it and also to share what I'm learning. So here I am. I hope that you can see parts of yourself in my story, and vice versa, and maybe take bits and pieces of this that will help you in life to be more fully integrated, to have joy, to have fullness in your romantic partnerships, to lean into things like intuition so that you have clarity on decisions you're making in life. A lot of these things are relationship oriented, but certainly the first and most important relationship is the relationship that we have with ourself and that guides all of the other decisions that we make in life. And so I'm excited and nervous, shaking in my boots, which I'm not wearing boots, I'm wearing slippers. All right, so we'll start with a little bit of background about me.

Speaker 1: 4:01

I grew up. My parents were divorced when I was pretty young I think I was six I should probably ask that I have two other older brothers and a younger sister who is 16 months apart and when parents got divorced, my dad stayed in Fargo, north Dakota, with my two brothers and me and my sister and my mom moved up to a suburbs outside of the Twin Cities, minneapolis area. We ended up living kind of far outside of the cities, about an hour, hour and a half away. With traffic it was worse. With snow it was worse than that, and so from a very young age my sister and I learned to become pretty independent.

Speaker 1: 4:40

We have a very hardworking mother, which I've also learned how to work hard from her and really admire that. I remember particularly one time where my mom had been working hard. She was selling insurance at the time. She was flyering door to door, which kind of comes full circle with me in real estate, but I'll get to that later. So she was looking to expand her business and my sister and I remember talking with her and we were like how can we help mom? You know, how can we make this easier for her? So we would make a list of chores between her and I and we would turn on the TV or turn on music and we would just go to town on the house and clean it all up. I was probably eight years old at the time.

Speaker 1: 5:21

This one particular Saturday my mom was going to go flyer and work on building her business for her insurance portfolio and we needed groceries, and so my mom didn't have time to do all of the things all of the time. So my sister and I made a grocery list and I asked my mom to teach me how to write out checks. Remember when checks were a thing. So she signed the bottom of it and dropped us off at the grocery store with a grocery list and a blank check. And my sister and I were seven and eight probably at the time and I remember holding onto the little handle of the grocery cart, barely being able to see over the edge of the handle and getting looks from people but not really understanding why people were looking at us. Here we were with the checklist, checking off our groceries, filling up the cart. We get to the counter to pay, can barely see over the ledge to write the check, and we bagged all our groceries up and we went and sat outside the grocery store against some members, sitting against the wall with my sister and waited for my mom to come get us. We all did what we had to do during that time but nonetheless it is a part of how I became who I became.

Speaker 1: 6:39

I took care of my sister. There were times when mom would get home late or traffic was bad or the snowstorm was coming in, and I remember feeling scared when my mom make it home. I remember cooking shake and bake chicken with my sister and having to pretend, or feeling like I had to pretend, that I wasn't scared. So I took my feelings and my emotions and I started to, at a very young age, push them aside and be tough and be strong and be resilient. Right, I know I'm not unique in that A lot of you listening today probably have very different experiences, but a similar upbringing in some of those ways. So learned to sort of push that aside. At the same time I know that I'm wired to lead. I'm classic, one of those kids. I can remember being five years old and playing house and running around on the playground and being called bossy. Those two things, layered in my early childhood, led me to develop those muscles, those muscles of independence, of strength, of fortitude, of resilience, of tenacity. I mean I was putting together grocery shopping strategic planning at eight years old for the week of groceries.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Fast forward a few years, my brother Ben so not my oldest, but the second oldest, second born in the family. He had always exhibited mental health challenge symptoms from a very, very young age. You can look at pictures of him. He never smiled in pictures at six, seven, eight years old. So very young age he was exhibiting those patterns and then in his early teens he started to get involved in some pretty heavy drugs. So his whole life was a struggle with mental health challenges and drug abuse, drug addiction, drug selling. I remember times when I would come home and the Christmas presents we had gotten like a PlayStation was gone and found out years later. He sold it for money so he could buy drugs, and so there was this constant challenge in battle with him. I will say on the other side of that, oh, I wanna honor, honor who he is. He was an absolute genius, a creative, bleeding heart, an amazing musician, literally off the charts with his IQ genius and just kind of a tortured soul. When he was happy and he was present and he was mentally in a healthy place, man, he was amazing. And when he was coming down from high we didn't know what we were gonna get. He often didn't have a job or was struggling to keep a job or didn't have a car, and my parents were rightfully so. I can only imagine, as a parent, how hard that would be. Their energy was primarily focused on saving Ben and helping Ben and trying to help solve the problems and get him the resources that he needed.

Speaker 1: 9:50

My sort of perspective of my adolescent years that was primarily junior high and high school was that there wasn't a lot of space for me and that I needed to handle my own shit right. And I did. I did pretty well, I got really good grades in high school, I was the class president, and I don't. I don't bemoan that, it just is what it is. So then I decided it was time to go to college and I had kind of I wouldn't. I wouldn't, didn't go crazy in high school. But I grew up in a pretty religious Christian family and so I felt like I was kind of a partier and I needed to tame myself.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So I got on the straight and narrow and went to a private Christian college and at the age of 20, met my then husband. So I was going to a very conservative church. That's another story for another day. It was not healthy and I'm not gonna obviously name the church, but I was going there and was very strongly encouraged to hurry up and and marry this man because we didn't have premarital sex. This is a lot of information, you guys. Oh my gosh, I'm putting it out on the podcasts. So we dated for three months. We are engaged for three months and then we were married. So I was married actually, we met at 19,. I was married at 20 and took my independent self into that marriage, but also certainly there were parts of me that I was working on fitting into that box that ultra conservative. I hate to label things, listen, I hate to label things that way, but I don't know how to describe it to you. We had a lot of rules and it wasn't all bad and, by the way, my then husband amazing man, tons of character, an amazing dad would do anything for the kids. We got married really young.

Speaker 1: 11:58

I didn't know who I was and so at that time then I also started working for a church and I had gotten a degree in music and I'd focused a little bit on business and communications and didn't know what I was going to do with my music degree. And I ended up in leadership surprise, surprise in a church where I was leading the music or we called it worship music upfront. So I was the person on the stage that led the congregation every week. I led a band, I recruited people, I helped put every Sunday program together. So a lot of strategic planning, recruiting, visioning, a ton of leadership, actually masculine energy muscles into that.

Speaker 1: 12:42

And I remember when I got that job being asked, there was a board of elders during the interview process and it was a well intended question by an older, actually a female on the on the board and she said you know, you're a young mom, how are you gonna do this job and be a good mother at the same time? And I didn't even know that that was a question that would be that could be asked. Probably, probably shouldn't have been. It had even crossed my mind to think about how I could do both, because that's what you do, you do both. Well, I don't even remember what I said to her, but I remember in that moment thinking, oh shit, I'm being watched in a different kind of way. And I really got to lean in and show up. I can't sacrifice how I'm showing up as a mother and I certainly can't sacrifice how I'm showing up as a leader. And so at that time I read the book called Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg.

Speaker 1: 13:41

My take away in my 20th, I guess, four-year-old brain at the time was that I needed to be more like a man and be more bitchy in the workplace in order to succeed, lean in, show up at the table, don't lean back, don't shy away. And so I did, and I had a certain, I think, degree of success in the job that I was in. I don't think I was ultra bitchy at that church, but there were definitely times when I feel like I had to really stand up for myself and lean in. So again, that predominant theme of developing this muscle, of showing up and being self-reliant and being really tenacious and go-getter and proving to the world that I could be a good mom and a dynamic leader and that's all fine and good and there is a season for that for people probably but I started to wear out on that. I also started to reach a ceiling in my ability to lead in that arena.

Speaker 1: 14:50

I went back to get a graduate degree in leadership. So I had ten years of experience and a graduate degree and I was making about $45,000 a year. But then I remember learning that my male counterparts were making about 20% more than I was and I asked the question well, what? Why can't I make that amount? I just got a graduate degree. It's the equivalent of the second degree you have. Well, you don't have a title pastor. Well, I never wanted to be a pastor, let me be clear. But I also went to even have the opportunity because of my gender at that particular place, and so it was really clear that I was hitting a ceiling financially and in my leadership opportunity and how I could influence and grow.

Speaker 1: 15:39

And so I was looking for sort of backup options and talked to my sister and she was in real estate working with developers and investors and she said you should join me in real estate. I had previously gotten my license, thinking I could do like a hustle on the side, and that did not work for me. I sold like two units. It was really hard to have small children and be going back to school and all this stuff. So I said no, thank you, and I reached out to anybody I knew that was working in corporate and I tried to get interviews. I really doctored up the resume. I thought I'm pretty damn smart, I'm pretty good at what I do, I should be able to get an interview. I got literally not one interview anywhere and eventually I was dying on the vine in my job and so I fell backwards in a real estate.

Speaker 1: 16:33

I joined my sister and we were about a year in and I had replaced my $40,000 income so it doesn't take a lot of units to. It was like four units or something, four or five houses that I sold and I was like, okay, I mean, I get it pretty easily replace this income. But do I really? I'm not a salesperson do I really really want to jump into this real estate thing? And there was some straw breaking the camel back situations at my job and I jumped ship. I gave him a notice and I jumped into real estate full-time, thinking it would be a bridge to corporate because I always saw myself as this businesswoman right. So After that first year we were just about a year and a half in and that was the.

Speaker 1: 17:22

I remember the morning I was. I remember the morning I was laying in bed and I got the call from my mom that my brother was gone. And I don't even think I cried. I think I was so not surprised, but just like wow, this is real. I kind of always knew that this would happen because of the way his life was going. He was 37 years old and he died of heart failure. So that was the thing.

Speaker 1: 17:53

And at that time then my sister needed a little bit of a respite from real estate and she pivoted and went in more into staging homes. And I went into my boss's office or the manager of the office at the time and said, like I can't do this. I can't sell real estate and launch a business and deal with the loss of my brother and my sister needs to take a step in this other direction. I just feel so alone, I don't know how I'm going to do this. And he just he said well, I you just kind of have to trust me. I see a lot of people come and go in this industry and I see the people that succeed and you have what it takes, you can do this. And so I borrowed his belief in me, which is not a bad thing to do when you're not sure if you can believe in yourself, you borrow. Borrow somebody else's belief in you.

Speaker 1: 18:48

And I showed up in the office every day and, lo and behold, about a year and a half later, my business had started really taking an exponential curve growth. We were growing pretty quickly. I had my three daughters at home, I was still married and I decided that I, in order to have work life balance, I would build a team. And because I love, love, love, love teams and working together and having fun and I was feeling so alone in it and so I built this great little team with a friend of mine from from back in the church day days actually. It's an interesting connection different story for a different day, maybe I'll have them on Aaron and a body of his from a previous job and we had so much fun. We built this team. We were on track to close about 15 million in volume, and not that you need to know my income, but maybe this is for you If you're out there wondering if you can make a change, so I'll just share it.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Because real estate was ended up being such a cool vehicle for me to grow and use my gifts in an interest industry. I would have never thought would have shaken out that way. But within two years of jumping from my previous job making 45,000, I was grossing about a quarter of a million a year and I would have never in a million years I couldn't have even imagined making that much money. But I just showed up and did what I did and I followed some coaching and had success and so around that time people were kind of noticing how quickly I was doing that and also what a cool little team we had and and I think saw my ability to lead and to influence.

Speaker 1: 20:42

At that time I had such a good balance. I was loving not being seen, which is kind of ironic because I really want to be seen, not, you know, like unknown. But I had been upfront on a stage for so long I and just was burnt out. And so when I got into real estate, it was so nice to be behind the scenes. And so when I was asked you know, jen, would you explore leading this Minneapolis Market Center? There was at the, there was like 275 real estate agents and a handful of staff and I said no because I loved what I was doing and I could kind of only escape that Dharma to lead and influence and help people grow for so long.

Speaker 1: 21:28

Eventually that itch became too great to not scratch it. So I started having conversations about what it would look like to step back into a leadership role, and right around the time that I ended up accepting the position, my father passed away. So what I didn't share if I'm going to back up a little bit is that during my brother's last years of life probably I think it was three to five years. He would have been homeless had it not been for my dad. And you're looking back. Honestly, there were days I was like dad, you got to let him go. I don't know where his rock bottom is, but he's got to hit it and he's got to want to get help himself.

Speaker 1: 22:13

My dad felt so compelled to live a life of sacrificial love that he brought my brother in and loved him to death. He loved him until my brother just couldn't live anymore and my dad took on a lot. He took on a lot of dysfunction and a lot of toxicity and he sheltered me and my siblings and my mom. Honestly, even though they were divorced, they were still good friends. My oldest brother says that my dad basically just like jumped on a grenade. For all of us that kind of feels right. My brother, ben, was a sinking ship and my dad was on the ship and he was going down with it. So those last few years of my brother's life my dad just was deteriorating emotionally and mentally and he was drinking to sort of get by and functional, very functional. He ended up retiring shortly after my brother passed away and it was about a year later that he passed away of heart failure. So not a heart attack the same thing that my brother had died from, and that was a huge pivot point for me. The whole life I had been this highly independent, successful woman and, for whatever reason, the death of my dad was hit me very differently than my brother and it shook me and it pushed me to an edge of once.

Speaker 1: 24:00

It was right around the time that COVID hit that I finally started to face grief and let the grief wash over me. I was so afraid of my emotions, I was afraid of not being in control, and now, when I look at it, I'm like the masculine energy in me that wants structure and logic, and I think that part of me was afraid of the fluid emotion, the connection that I would feel and experience, even to my dad after he was gone, that I just shoved that all aside. I ran from it in every way that I could until I couldn't. It will chase you down. Life has a way of giving you what you need when you need it, and not that life gave me my dad passing, but the grief was something that became a way that I transformed. So I basically surrendered to the grief and I started to let myself feel, and when I did that, I started to feel years of things that I didn't know was there. I went into a cocoon for sure and in hindsight, man, I'm grateful for it seems weird to say I'm grateful for COVID and what that allowed me to do in terms of having a cocoon and not having to make excuses for like being home all the time and meditating and reading and crying and journaling and that's when I started my blog. It was all a part of that process.

Speaker 1: 25:39

So while I was going through that grief, I, the dynamic in my marriage, also started to change in a really big way, because while we were married young and I didn't know who I was, all of the sun, I was changing in every way at a very rapid pace and I was also struggling right Like that grief and depression and confusion, like I was dismantling my religious beliefs at the time when everything that I had done had been built upon that I was dismantling that. I changed careers. When I changed careers and started to undo some of the religious beliefs that I had, I lost every friend that I had, everything. Then I stepped into this position of leadership, so the friends that I had in my real estate community I all of a sudden was quote unquote in charge of them. And so again, I felt very alone and I didn't have the capacity or desire to function in my marriage the way that I had previously functioned. And I'll say this and it's necessary, I think, for me to own this part of because of how highly independent I was.

Speaker 1: 26:58

I dominated a lot in the relationship. I made decisions, I pushed for different things. I, at the end, when I stepped into my new career, my husband, as an effort to be really supportive of me, he quit his job and we both felt like it was the right decision at the time. But it ended up feeling a lot more weight. So all of this on my dad. My brother died, my dad just died. I'm leading, I've got the weight of this organization on me, I've got the weight of the household and making money on me, and so I couldn't really function the same in the relationship anymore and manage it and be in charge and make things happen.

Speaker 1: 27:38

All of a sudden, as I started to soften and feel things again and loosen my grip on everything in life, the relationship started to disintegrate more and more and more. I never again in a million years would have thought that I would end up where I ended up, but sometimes good things come to an end and I believe differently about relationships now. I mean, I definitely believe in commitment, but not commitment when it's out of alignment with values and beliefs. And so much of me had changed. We just weren't in alignment anymore either. So then basically, here we are. We're not quite to present date, but between that time of getting divorced and stepping into leadership and now I've dated and I've had way different kinds of conversations with girlfriends and colleagues than I would have ever had in my entire life.

Speaker 1: 28:48

I stepped into the real estate office that I'm in in Minneapolis and had my it's so weird to say this, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this now, but I shouldn't be I met my first friends that were gay and they became friends, and that was a huge thing for me because of how I grew up and I worked in the church, lived in the church, grew up in the church. I had never been exposed in a real way to people that believed a different way than me, so worked in a very diverse environment, and then started to talk to my girlfriends about sex, which we never talked about in the trip Well, very rarely. There were a couple of friends that we would kind of talk about in like a really skittish kind of way, but started talking about that and seeing how much shame there was about sexuality and sensuality and how much of that had gotten sort of shoved into the shadows too. And I remember one particular day this was probably three and a half years ago. Three years ago or something there was me and seven highly successful business owners in the same room and they were asking about dating and we were chit-chatting about that and I had been on an app, a dating app at the time, and hadn't even like I wasn't in a relationship at the time. But I remember telling them man, it's like I keep attracting these people that can't nail down a date, they can't make a decision. And then I'm going well, how about we meet here, how about we meet at this time? And then we'll do this and then we'll do that.

Speaker 1: 30:26

And I had also, you know, had been reflecting on my marriage and simultaneously I was stumbling into this information on Instagram that was talking about polarity. So I'm going to pause here and explain to you what the masculine, feminine polarity dynamic is. So there are there's a lot of information out there and a lot of different perspectives on how to look at this, and I will say that I have not learned at all. I'm not an expert. I have done a deep dive over the last three years. I've just hired a coach on this, so I do know some things. But this information that I have and what I know isn't final. I'm evolving, so that's my sort of disclaimer. I'm going to share with you what I think I know or what I've learned so far and how it's impacted me. So the polarity thing.

Speaker 1: 31:16

So within us we all have two poles, poles like magnets, so positive pole and a negative pole. Or you can think of it as masculine energy and feminine energy. There's science around the different energies and actually like how it vibrates. So when you think of us on an atomic level, we are made up of atoms. Atoms are 99% energy and 1% matter. So everything in us is energy. We are vibrating, just like a live wire outside of your house vibrates with electricity, just like a string on a guitar when you pluck it. If it's, if it's lower or different density string, it's going to vibrate at a lower, slower frequency. Same is true for X rays and all this stuff. So I say that to say because this sounds a little woo woo. I know it's a little like a little bit out there, but I really am doing a lot of approaching this from a little bit more scientific level than I am spiritual, although there I have some spirituality connected to this too. So we all have two poles, two poles in us, masculine and feminine, and masculine or think of yin and yang. In the Eastern traditions, the shock shakhti and Shiva. Shakhti is the feminine, shiva is the masculine.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Masculine energy tends to be and I've referenced some of this already structured, logical thinking, protective, tenacious, disciplined, decisive. It's electric, meaning the energy moves out. It is a giving type of energy, or you can think of anatomy. It it's a penetrative energy, self reliant and the masculine at the heart, so somebody that has a more dominant masculine pole. So we all have two poles within us and one tends to be more predominant at our very core. It's our heart's sort of desire. The masculine's desire is to be empty. So that's why a lot of times that you hear very masculine forefront people saying like I just want to be free of conflict, I want to be, I don't want my mind racing all the time. Meditation is actually a masculine principle or masculine energy, because it's seeking to clear the space. Masculine energy wants to be empty and wants to be free to pursue, to achieve, to adventure.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Feminine energy, on the other side, is more fluid, it's intuitive and spiritual, and also remember that this is attached to the sides of our brain. So feminine energy is is more conducive to the right side of our brain and masculine think left or logic. The right side of our brain, we know from studies, is what's connected to consciousness, it's what's connected to our subconscious and if you are spiritual in any way, shape or form, no matter what your religious religion is, that right side of our brain is what tends to tap into the higher spiritual, intuitive frequencies. So the feminine energy is fluid, intuitive and spiritual, vulnerable, very playful, creative, magnetic. So this is the receiver, where the masculine energy is electric and penetrative.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Feminine energy is magnetic and receiver opening. It's like feminine energy opens, it's connection, feeling, the desire to be really connected and at the heart, core of feminine, somebody that leans at the core, core. So, beneath all of our shields and all of these overdeveloped muscle muscles that people like me have at my core, I have a more feminine energy full and so the desire there is to be full and to be seen. So I want to be full of love, I want to be full of feeling like I want my core is to be. I want to be full, and so the feminine energy will tend to speak in fullness and and speak in spirals and and wants to be seen, but not just on a surface level. That is like first level relationship stuff is like see how pretty I am. Second level is see my mind, see how intelligent I am. Third level is like feel my heart, like see no know who I am right. So at the deepest core of who we are, we all have one pole that tends to be more dominant than the other, but we all have both capacities.

Speaker 1: 35:57

What I believe is that for societies, for for centuries, society has and our cultures have absolutely leaned into and it was maybe necessary for a time, but also maybe not there's so much we could get into on this and we will. Domination, like conquering masculine energy, is to dominate and to conquer and to protect, and so for centuries we've done that in a lot of different ways. But then also in our American society, we've leaned into produce, produce, produce, produce, produce and lately hustle, hustle, hustle and it's like that's good. Believe me, I am all for achievement and goals and reaching your potential. I coach people to that. But I also am like at what cost and how far will we take that without going hold up?

Speaker 1: 36:57

I have so many people in my world right now that I'm like you are utterly burned out, you're depressed, you're having panic attacks, your marriage is suffering, you don't have friends, you don't have hobbies, and that's not a shame. That's like a hold up. If you were like limping and your arm was broken or dislocated, I'd be like whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to go see somebody about that. This is a little bit of a hold up. Everybody, we have an imbalance. We have a lack of wholeness, a lack of health in our relationship to ourself. Like if I'm afraid of my emotions. There's something happening there where, why can't the masculine in me feel safe enough or able to hold space for my own emotion? Okay, how about the relationship we have other people? How about in our workplace? But here is the good news that there are people.

Speaker 1: 38:01

As I've been leaning into this, I'm like, oh my gosh, there are books out there about conscious capitalism and healing organizations and shock tea leadership and all of these amazing things that we're seeing people go whoa, whoa, whoa. We need to bring in another aspect here. It doesn't mean that we don't set goals or we don't have plans, but I want to make sure that it's clear that I'm not wanting to go hey, let's just show up at work and like be hippies all day Although to be a hippie would be super cool. We will set strategic plans and set goals, but we can also do it at a pace that's sustainable. I think when we start with happiness and put Sean Acor as another author that talks about when we have happiness and we start there, productivity follows and oftentimes people are more productive when they start with from a place of wholeness and joy, and that is a more I hate to use the word balanced, but a more balanced approach.

Speaker 1: 39:01

So there's this masculine, feminine stuff that I started to run into at the time that I was on these dating apps and I was going oh my gosh, I keep attracting people that feel really waffly to me. They don't feel grounded and sturdy, and the more I started to dig in, the more I realized like I'm functioning at work in my masculine or I was at the time, I would say probably 90, 95% of the time. So A my core pole, or my core desire, is feminine and I'm functioning in a way that is not totally true. While I've developed that muscle, it is still depleting me more than it is life giving to me. It is still more out of my nature.

Speaker 1: 39:46

I remember saying to coworker once he was male and he would identify with his core as being predominantly masculine. And I remember saying if you had to function in your feelings, in creativity, all day long as part of your job, how would you feel at the end of the day? And he was like oh God, I would hate that. I don't think I could do that. I'm like well, that's the equivalent of yes, but we've grown up learning how to do that. I think, unfortunately, men and women in our society have not grown up learning how to integrate feelings and connection and vulnerability and all of that stuff. So it's a learning curve for everybody.

Speaker 1: 40:26

I also did want to add this just because you're female does not mean that your core pole is feminine, and vice versa. You can be male and have one that is feminine. So there's all kinds of mixing and matching here. You also can be straight or gay. This is not gender specific and it's not sexuality specific.

Speaker 1: 40:49

When you come back to the polls, if I'm functioning 90% in masculine energy because of the way that magnets work, I'm going to attract partners and people, friends I saw this in my business too that are functioning much more in their feminine energy. Some of the men that I worked with, straight men that I worked with tended to be more really creative and playful and funny and fluid and less structured in their day and they were still highly productive. But I think I attracted them in because I was yet functioning in that super masculine mode. So know that when you're dating and that's what, maybe it's a little vain, but maybe not. That's a part of what compelled me to get into this, because I was like, oh shoot, I don't want to keep attracting that kind of man. I want to have a man that is grounded and that can lead to some times and so that I can feel safe to soften and be playful and all of that stuff.

Speaker 1: 41:57

So my work over the last few years has been to reintegrate the feminine energy. I still need and want to function in my masculine, but I have been working so hard on reintegrating the feminine initially, like I said, to attract the right kind of partner. But it's turned into so much more than that for me and has become, I'm realizing, I believe, that this is a part of my Dharma, which is why I'm doing this freaking podcast, that I think it's really important for our society, for our workplaces, that we reintegrate feminine principles from feminine archetypal principles that we have been, I think, afraid of. We've been afraid of her power, we've been afraid of her bigness. I don't know, women, if you've ever heard that or had that fear yourself of am I going to be too much? That is the bigness of the feminine energy in you. That is why, sometimes, people in our world will try to temper that and calm that down and put us in a box, and that doesn't mean that we walk around in the workplace just like raging, you know. But there is something about that that we have pushed down that is so powerful and so intuitive and so connected and in some ways primal, and I think it is really important that we integrate that. So where are we now?

Speaker 1: 43:32

We, by me, I'm still working. Like I said, I don't have it all figured out. I've just hired I'm super excited, I just hired a new Feminine integration sort of a leadership coach and so excited about that. I start that in about a month. This will be launched after I start that. But here's what I'm working on. I'm working on connecting in real relationships. I've really sought out time with girlfriends, um, and being vulnerable, sharing real things. So these are some of the things I would encourage you. If you're just like man Jen, I hear you here are some things you can do to just start. Just start softening your edges just a little bit. Share something real with your girlfriends like, or whoever your partner like. Share something that you're like oh, this feels a little scary to share. There's vulnerability there and starting to like let that shield down. I'm working on playing more. What does it look like to be playful and to not temper my silliness? That does come out at work, comes out a little bit in these kinds of settings. When I'm training in front of a room, I'm a little goofy and I'm silly and I let. I let that come out a little bit more. I'm doing game nights once a month with friends and obviously let my hair down during that time.

Speaker 1: 44:50

I'm getting out of my head is so. Head is masculine, heart is feminine, so, uh, you know, masculine energy or a masculine kind of getting out of your head way of doing things is, like I said earlier, meditation. A Feminine way to get out of your head is to get into your body. So that's embodiment practices. It can be as simple as dance. For me Sometimes it's working out. It's Sensual is, in essence, is being aware of your senses. So, uh, that is sometimes a piece of meditation or mindfulness. But if I feel like I'm really in my head, I just pause and notice my senses. What am I hearing, what am I smelling, what am I feeling, what's the temperature of the air on my skin? So, getting into your senses, intuition, that's a huge one. Working on getting back in touch with your intuition and trusting your gut so many times I've gotten burnt in life when my mind, I let my mind, override my gut.

Speaker 1: 45:47

You hear this a lot that people are like I knew, I knew that was the right thing, or I knew that was the right thing and I Ignored it and I knew it. So one of the ways that I do this is with what I call free writing. So in the morning, instead of journaling, I just kind of like say up, I guess I would say sort of a prayer to you, speak to and through me, and I put my pen on paper and there is something that, because of the way your brain was developed so there's some neuroscience behind this this part of your brain, when you were learning to write, was, in your childhood, developed neural pathways in the back of your brain. So when we write with our hand, versus typing on a computer, it actually connects more to the subconscious part of our brain or a higher self. So I just put my pen and paper and start writing what? Without thinking, to the best of my ability, and I am astounded at what comes out. Sometimes it's kind of crazy. You can try that.

Speaker 1: 46:40

Creativity is something, too, that you know. I'm playing piano again, I have music in my background, obviously, and so, whether it's you know, even if you're not an artist like you, can still draw, you can even color, doing creative things. Creating this podcast is a creative thing. What can I create and birth and make? That is a very feminine nature.

Speaker 1: 47:03

This is a big one and a really easy one. To start with is being receptive. So receiving is sometimes, I think, very hard for us to do that. I remember just like, as I was leaning into this, I took a plane trip shortly after and I was like, if anybody offers to lift my luggage, I'm just gonna kindly say yes, I've, I lived a way. It's I'm pretty strong, I. The easy answer is like no, thank you, I don't need your help. And guess what that puts us in this masculine I'm self-reliant, I got it, I'm strong, I don't need you. It's like, ooh, what if we just said, wow, thank you, and we received the help even though we didn't need it? There's an easy softening that happens there when we start to just receive. Another easy one is anytime Anybody compliments you.

Speaker 1: 47:51

Women, this is so huge, quit deflecting it. Don't deflect it. When somebody gives you any compliment oh, that's a beautiful dress. Oh, this old thing, I got it on sale. Or this is back from height, my high school days. Or, like you know, jen, you're really great at speaking in front of room. Yeah, but I'm not like so-and-so, it's like Freakin a. Why do we do that?

Speaker 1: 48:14

When somebody compliments you, what would it feel like to open your heart just a little bit and go Thank you, like, just like a simple Thank you, that's really kind of you, and actually receive the compliment, receive it. This is up, the all of these practices, by the way and we'll eventually get into it show up I talked about from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond. I mean, what is it like in the bedroom when you are Absolutely shielded and guarded? You can go through the motions, clearly, but what is it like when you actually are? Your heart is open to receiving the connection? In that moment it's totally different. So there, those are a few things, little tidbits that you can Start to lean into if you're curious about this.

Speaker 1: 48:57

I am so incredibly glad that you are here today. I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have and I'm excited to continue on. Alright, welcome to the whole shebang. As always, thank you for tuning in. I hope that this episode is supporting you in becoming your most whole self so that you can lead your most full life. You are definitely worthy and deserving of that. All of the resources that we shared today are going to be linked in the show notes. You can check those out there, along with ways that you can connect with us if you've got questions or feedback or people that you think we should reach out to to highlight their story on the whole shebang podcast. In the meantime, please be sure to hit that follow button so you don't miss a beat. Share this episode, or any others, with those that you think could benefit from this conversation, and you can do the podcast a huge favor by leaving a five star review in the meantime. I hope that you have a fantastic Bangin Day.