77. Untethering from Old Self Concepts & Choosing Growth in the Midst of Chaos

✦ Today in The Meadow, we’re talking all about identity shifts, detaching from the self, and remembering who you are when life feels heavy.

✦ We chat about the initiation this second move to Los Angeles has been for me. 

✦ How you get to choose whether to let the fear take you under, or face it head-on for it to shape you into the person you are meant to be.

✦ Why Real transformation requires discomfort. Your triggers and patterns come to the surface when you’re finally safe enough to heal and process them.

✦ And how Identity isn’t something you “find”—it’s something you build, moment by moment, through the choices you make.

✦ & diving into moments from The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer 

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Thanks for stopping by the meadow. Thank you, I love you. I'll see ya on the next one! <3

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Transcript

0:59

Hello everybody and welcome back to In the Metta with Kiki. I am so fucking happy that you're here and I'm so happy to be here. Welcome back guys. yeah. I am just in such an interesting time in my life. And I'm just so, so hungry for this world and this community and my people and these conversations to bring you back to life. Seriously, this podcast is absolutely everything to me. And I know this year I've been back and forth, dipping in and out a bit, but I just cannot say enough how much I want to fully commit to showing up here every single week with you guys to chat and connect and build the life of our dreams. Yeah, and a very interesting time in my life. And I think that, yeah, I'd like to start this episode off just updating you guys on all little things going on in my world. And to tap into the book, The Untethered Soul, a little bit. I have briefly mentioned this book a couple, not even a couple, I think it was last year. It's been many months, I think, since I've been talking about this book, but. It's a book that I can just come back to again and again and again and again. And rather than doing like a book club moment, I think I'm just gonna, yeah, just read excerpts from it throughout the next few episodes whenever it feels right. I like that idea. I like the idea of like kind of going through and just reading parts of books versus needing to do an entire deep dive book club moment. Let me know what you guys think about that. But yeah. life has been fucking crazy these last couple months um i feel like i am going through some sort of initiation process of my move to la it really reminds me of the first time i moved to la when i was 17 almost 10 years ago which is insane oh my gosh that's fucking crazy because it's 2025 now so it's been a hot minute and um Yeah, so much of my life has changed since then and although I was like, you know, spending so much of my time in LA the last five years, my home base was San Diego. So, you know, this is the first time I've been officially moving back in my own apartment with my partner. And it feels like although my community is so strong and my people here are so like, just so real and genuine and like I like are my family. I feel really grounded in that sense. I definitely feel like LA is my city, but it's almost felt like this just restart, I guess. And for a minute, it was really getting me down that it felt like it was a reset because it feels like I have poured so much of my life into Los Angeles and my career and my life and everything that I've been building over the last decade, it feels like. to have it feel like I'm restarting in a sense at first felt really scary and just like I was behind kind of like really confused as to why I was feeling that. But now I really do feel like it's feeling like a restart because I'm stepping into a new chapter of my life and everything's different now. And I'm really seeing that in a positive way now because not only is it feeling like a reset but Holy shit is life throwing curveball after curveball after curveball at me I don't want to linger too much on this aspect of the conversation But just want to be real with you guys that like I don't know what the hell is in the stars in my own astrological chart or whatever the fuck Life has just been just Insane like I feel like there's just been one thing after another after another after another that has just been like so overwhelming and so heavy and so scary and like really difficult, know, through business, through personal relationship, health, like my mental health, like it's so many things piling on that it's been really difficult to navigate. And there was a moment where as I was going through all this, it really felt like, oh my God, like. what's going on, like there's something really fucking wrong. Like it really felt like I was just like got off on the wrong path somehow. Like I was just so confused as to like why everything was just happening all at once seemingly. I was like, keep joking with my best friend. Just like, okay, mama, like I think I'm okay with the lessons. Like I don't want any more lessons right now. But there was a moment where it really felt like there was just something wrong happening in my life and I just want to go to come here with you guys and just tell you where I'm at now, where it feels like I'm kind of just going through my another like spiritual awakening, I guess. I feel like there's been so much difficulty in my life the last few months, but there was a moment when I was letting it take me under and I was letting it take me down and I was letting it be, you know, an example of me doing something wrong. Whereas I'm now seeing the divinity in all of this and how meant to be every single step and every single moment of this entire journey is in the sense that I think, you know, before all the shit started crashing down on me, like, and again, don't want to be that dramatic. Like there's so much magic in my life. There's so much abundance, so much beauty, so much everything going on. And I am going through a really difficult chapter in my life and both can be true. But before when I was really just letting that take me under and letting that paint the picture of my reality, I'm now witnessing and seeing that like before all these external factors were so blatantly triggering me and causing all this chaos in my life. I was able to hide so much easier behind myself, sabotage and my patterns and my staying small and my just ignoring my needs and my commitments in my life. And I think that as all of this outer shit is bubbling to the surface, it's putting me head on into and in front of and through all of my triggers and my wounds and my fears and my self-concepts and my insecurities and my judgments of myself. it's so painful, but it's also breaking me open into such a stronger and new version of myself and it feels like I've hit this just crossing point of my life where there's two paths that I can go on. know, it's like path number one being I can let this take me under and I can let the fear and the heaviness and the darker energies win and stay small and ignore my business, ignore my brand, ignore my platform, ignore the world that I'm building. and continue staying small, numbing myself through sleep or with alcohol or whatever, you know? And then there's another option, which is the path that I am choosing on is to confront all of this so fiercely head on and allow myself to feel the full spectrum of everything deeply and fully and choose to move forward with that strength. And I'm already witnessing just how much lighter life gets when I'm able to switch into that energy and also switch into the energy of just surrender and faith and trust and know that this is a part of my path and that this is a part of my journey. Same as when I was 17 years old in 2017, about to turn 18, moving to LA for the first time, doing my best to make it in this industry, in this world and You know, nine months went by and I was reaching like the worst time in my fucking life. Like it literally felt like I was at the rock bottom of bottoms and I held on and it felt like overnight the next day after I held on through that storm. The quote unquote horrible things that were going on in my life, I didn't realize were what was catapulting me into the most abundant friendship filled, opportunity filled, magical filled. year that catapulted my career, catapulted my community, catapulted my life and it was just on the other side of that shit and it was just on the other side of me feeling that shit too and trusting that like I can go through heaviness and I can still show up and teach people and I can still show up and guide my community to get through it because I'm going through it. You know it's like I think it's so easy when we are in these positions of leadership that we're, we think that we're supposed to have everything together and that like we're supposed to just get it and that like life is supposed to flow and it's supposed to be easy and that that's just like what we're meant to do as people who step into these roles but the more I realize that it's like I am meant to teach this work because I have gone through the shit I've gone through so much in my life and I've made out another side and I've not only made out another side I've not only survived but I've been able to cultivate a loving aware, connected, just light and playful energy and connection to the universe and the world, even through the shed and even through the darkness and even through the heaviness. And so I do realize that like that is what makes me the right person to talk about this stuff. And also knowing that the world is so abundant and that like my perfect people are going to find me no matter what. And they're going to resonate with me and they're going to feel me and they're going to hear me and they're going to want to be a part of this. And they're going to resonate with what I have to share. It's just so easy that like whenever I do feel these heaviness of a fog I like to visualize that as just like you know the fog that rolls over the ocean onto the shoreline and when you're in the fog It's so easy to just stay fucking frozen to just curl up into a bed and to just put your covers over your eyes and just stay so fucking stuck because you can't see the way forward. So it's so scary to take that first step. the more that I navigate my own journey and the more that I lean into the surrender and the faith and the trust, this is all part of it. And that I have a choice in how I'm going to move through it. I have a choice to show up for myself, to take care of myself, to listen to my heart, to listen to my intuition. to show up for this brand and for the world that I'm building, the commitments that I have, my health, my family, my community, my reading, my rituals. Every time that I show up, even in the face of fear and heaviness, and every single time I take that step forward, no matter what it is, the fog begins to disperse. And you still might not see the end of the tunnel and the light at the end of it, but... You know that whenever you take that first step forward in whatever way that means and however big, however small, life begins to shift. And it all boils down to the day that we have. Not the life that we have, not the years and years and years of a lifetime that we have to live, but the day that we have to live. How are you going to show up for yourself when you wake up in the morning? How are you going to speak to yourself when you wake up in the morning? Are you gonna hit snooze a million times, go on your phone, let the anxiety seep into you, let the dopamine explosion go off in your brain, leaving you just desperate and addicted for more throughout the day? Or are you gonna choose differently? And like, again, I'm saying this because I'm saying it to myself, because there are two different versions of me. There is the one that sleeps in and opens up my phone for a thing. There is a version of me that goes to bed reading books that nourish me and that... give me life and then there's another version of me that goes to bed scrolling anxious and fear There's a version of me who numbs and sleeps as a coping mechanism. And there's a version of me who witnesses what's going on and has enough of that conscious awareness to recognize what's going on and to recognize that I want better and I want different and that I'm gonna make a different choice. Meaning that even if I crawl into bed for a quote unquote self-care nap when in reality I know that it is self-sabotage. If can snap myself out of it and pull myself out of bed and go on a run and go on a walk, put a podcast in, put some nice music in, that is choosing different. And that's me casting the vote that I want for the person that I want to be in the life that I want to live. And that every day is a new day. We don't have to let the heaviness of the past make decisions for the version that we want to be today. That does not exist anymore. The past only exists in our mind. And of course, in the deeper sense, it exists in our subconscious. So it's not as easy as just snapping your fingers, but you can choose that that is a part of your story from the past and that's not who you are anymore. And it's difficult at first. You've got to do it again. You've got to make these choices, these new choices for the new version of you want that you want to be for yourself again and again and again and again. And then a habit forms, habits form within a month or two and suddenly you start chipping away at that subconscious program and You start to see yourself showing up more naturally and more organically in this new version of resolve and then sometimes you got to start again and Then you just got to figure out how you're gonna pull yourself back into it and not only that but you know You make the progress you make the changes you make the shifts and then you want to get to your next level to shift even higher and different and that requires a new set point that requires a new version of yourself, but It's this ever, ever evolving, ever becoming ongoing journey and relationship that you have with yourself and your reality and the life that you want to live. And it's a conscious choice in every present moment, how you want to act and how you want to show up for yourself and how you want to view yourself. The self concept that you hold of yourself is everything. You know, like I think that like so many parts of my life right now are pulling me away from the leader that I know that I'm to be and the teacher that I know that I'm meant to be. And it all comes down to how I view myself and the work that I'm here to do in the world. You know, when I'm in the identity of the teacher and of the leader and of the student who's learning alongside every single one of you guys, I am able to show up. that but when the gremlins in our minds and the anxious thoughts and the self-deprecating and insecure thoughts come up and if you're only in your own brain in this echo chamber of negativity what do you expect? it's only gonna lead to actions that are in alignment with that negative self-concept with hiding, with people pleasing, with staying small, with not being able to ask for what you're worth and so How I see it is that we just gotta surround ourselves with this shit. We gotta feed our brain this good shit. We gotta feed our brain books and podcasts and teachers and lectures and ideas that fulfill us and that nourish us and that bring us up and that show us our power, that can inspire us to show us what is real. this quote that I cannot stop thinking about is that we have to stop building our dream life and start to build our dream day. You know, like in the pursuit of the brand that I have been building and my business that I have been creating over the last few years, like it's always a cycle where I get so lost in it that I forget the life that I want to build for myself. You know, like why do I want a business? I want a business because I want to pour my heart and soul into a brand and a business that lights me up and that makes my heart feel like it's on fire. That's what I want for myself. I want to feel aligned and connected and present with the world and the universe and if I'm stuck behind my computer for seven hours a day in insecurity and in fear and I'm not walking outside then what am I doing? I don't know if I added this quote to the podcast from a couple weeks ago, but I have to mention this right now. If I'm repeating myself, that's okay. We need that sometimes. It says poem. Bye. second. Victoria Hutchins and it's titled Don't Save Joy for Last. And the quote goes, And wow, does that quote not hit her what? Oh my goodness. feels like every day it's deeper, just untangling of what it means to to live life in my dreams, you know, what it means to recognize that like, why can't I just accept that it's here already? I look around myself and I'm living in my dream city with my dream partner, the love of my life, you know. with an amazing community and people that love me, a healthy body with legs that are strong and that work and it's like never enough. It's always this if when game of well when we get here then I can be happy and I can relax and I can feel good and I can feel good about myself and why can't we just let ourselves feel that now? Why does it feel so scary? Why does it feel so scary to like, let our guard down? Like, is that it? Is it like this fear of like, oh, well, if we feel we're content, then we're not going to strive for the life that we want to live. Why can't we have both? Why can't we feel content and why can't we feel at peace and work towards the life that we want to live and work towards bringing our visions to reality? Why can't we have both? So as I'm navigating this journey of my life, I am... So grateful to have you guys here with me and to share all the resources and the novels and the books and the ideas that are really helping me through everything. And it's funny, it's like I say, you know, at the beginning of the conversation about how I'm going through some of the hardest times of my life, I also feel the most connected to the universe right now and to myself. And I think that I've been learning about how the subconscious mind will kind of keep things from you until it feels like you're ready to heal and process them and suddenly it can just hit you like a ton of bricks. When it rains it fucking pours and I think that's kind of what I'm going through right now. I think that like I've done so much internal work where it's like there's these things and parts of myself that I wasn't really necessarily ready to process before that I am now and it's just it's something to navigate. another as always another fucking learning lesson from the universe or whatever you like to call it but um yeah before i end this episode i want to dive into a couple quotes from the book the untethered soul by michael singer this book has helped me through so many seasons of my life and it is truly timeless you cannot go through it enough times and it's all about you know being the conscious seed of awareness of our life and not identifying or tying ourselves too deeply with ourself and our thoughts and this self-concept that we have about ourselves. And so I'm going read a couple little quotes that spoke to me and let's get into it. This one is from chapter one, the voice inside your head. In fact, your thoughts have far less impact on this world than you'd like to think. If you're willing to be objective and watch all of your thoughts, you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody except you. They're simply making you feel better or worse about what's going on now, what's gone in the past, or what might go on in the future. If you spend your time hoping that it doesn't rain tomorrow, you're wasting your time. Your thoughts don't change the rain. You will someday come to see that there is no use for that incessant internal chatter, and there is no reason to constantly attempt to figure everything out. Eventually, you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. it's a commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems and holy shit is that helping me through all the things that are going on in my life right now the simplicity in this book feels like too simple to even wrap your mind around but it's literally that our thoughts are not helping us in the way that we think that they are we think that like the more we ruminate and the more we stress and the more we worry that that is what will be the solution to our problems. Like if something stressful is going on, it's like, well, of course I have to think about it. Of course I have to stress about it. Of course I have to panic and spiral about it. Like what's the other choice? We don't realize that like we actually can shift the seat of awareness, of consciousness to recognize that we are the awareness behind these thoughts and we can witness these thoughts and we can observe them without attaching ourselves to them. Easier said than done. But that's why having this book by your bedside table and like as a tool to reach into, read it once, annotate it, read it again and again, and pick it up whenever you need little pick me ups when you're spiraling or if you're anxious like me, that deals with lot of anxiety. Chapter two is your inner roommate. And this is a quote that's about to me. Worldly doesn't mean that you have money or stature. Worldly means that you think that the solution to your inner problems is in the world outside. You think that if you change things outside, you'll be okay. But no one has ever truly become okay by changing things outside. There's always the next problem. The only real solution is to take a seat of witness consciousness and completely change your frame of reference. To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you're lost in the energy of the problem. Everyone knows that you can't deal well with a situation if you're getting anxious, scared, or angry about it. The first problem that you have to deal with is your own reaction. You will not be able to solve anything outside of yourself until you know how the situation affects you inside. Problems are not generally what they appear to be. When you get clear enough, you will realize that the real problem is that there is something inside of you that you can have a problem with almost anything. Again. How crazy is it to just recognize that? we're always gonna have a problem with something. Unfortunately, newsflash, never fucking ends. You know, when we solve this first problem, we're gonna have another problem and another problem is gonna happen. I cannot lie to you and pretend that you can manifest all your issues away, that you can manifest a life of zero worries or fears or problems or anxieties because like, newsflash, that's just being a human being on this earth. That's part of what we signed up for when it came to here. And so when we're able to realize that like, There's nothing outside of us that's going to fix everything. That's only going to put a bandaid on our issues and make them all go away. We have to realize our relationship to these quote unquote problems is how will we be able to step into a state of consciousness and awareness where we can be smarter and we can actually problem solve and we can actually make decisions for our betterment and for our better good. you know, making decisions when you're feeling calm and collected and at peace through meditation, through conscious awareness, through redirection, through reminding ourselves with this literature and these books, reminding yourself what is possible and what is out there. Alright, so this is one of my favorite quotes. I mean, more of like my favorite analogies in the book that I think that really puts us into perspective and is a great way to visualize what this means. This is from chapter four of the lucid self. So it's a long quote. Bear with me. The TV analogy is perfect for examining how our center of consciousness shifts from awareness of self to being lost in the objects that we're focused upon. The difference is that instead of sitting in your living room getting absorbed in the TV, you're sitting in the center of your consciousness getting absorbed in the screens of minds, emotions and outside images. When you concentrate on the world of physical senses, it draws you in. Then your emotional and mental reactions draw you in further. At that point, you are no longer sitting in the center itself. You are absorbed in the inner show that you're watching. So depending on where our conscious focus and awareness is, putting our energy into, that is what we're consumed in. That is our entire world. know, that's why we, I talk about that conscious awareness and that power of intention and focus through unlock your dream reality, my signature program, because that is our strongest superpower is by choosing where we're to focus our direction, our intention. Okay, back to the quote. Let's look at your inner show. You have an underlying pattern of thoughts that go around you all of the time. This pattern of thoughts stays pretty much the same. You are as familiar and comfortable with your normal thought patterns as you are with the living space of your home. You also have emotions that are your norm, a certain amount of fear, a certain amount of love, a certain amount of insecurity. You know that if certain things happen, one or more of these emotions will flare up and dominate your awareness. Then eventually they will settle back down to the norm. You know this so well that you are very busy inside making sure nothing happens to create these disturbances. In fact, you were so preoccupied with controlling your world of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that you don't even know that you're in here. That is a normal state for most people. Again, tell me this is not mind blowing. Like it's so insane how that is how we spend our life. We are so preoccupied by trying to control everything around us so that we don't get disturbed and change our emotional energy. But it's a useless attempt because things always end up coming up. Back to the quote. but you are really sitting quietly inside looking at all these looking out at all these objects. Just as the sun does not leave its position in the sky to illuminate objects with its radiating light, so consciousness does not leave its center to project awareness onto the objects of form, thoughts and emotions. If you ever want to start to recenter, just start saying hello. Hello. Hello. Try it. Now I'm back to talking about this. The quote is ended, but Try that, know, try when you're getting lost into it, just being like, hi, hello. Hey, hey, Kiki. Switch off that awareness and realize like, there's an awareness within your brain that's listening to all these thoughts. There's a two way dialogue conversation. There's something that's being said and something that's being listened to. You are the listener. You are that conscious awareness of witnessing the thoughts that are just coming through automatically. A quote that came before this I think would also be valuable to hear as we are reading this is, That is a superpower, baby. Use it. All right, now I'm going to finish off with this last quote. When you contemplate the nature of self, you're meditating. That is why meditation is the highest state. It is a return to the root of your being, simple awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. It's really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was. It's like you have been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot you were there. Somebody shook you and now you're back to the awareness that you're sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing has changed. You simply stopped projecting your sense of self onto that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are. Let me repeat myself. Someone shook you. And now you're back to the awareness that you're sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing else has changed. You simply stopped projecting yourself to self onto that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are. So it's about not tying our sense of identity and our sense of self onto the objects that we are perceiving, that we are consciously aware of. It's about witnessing the dramas and the chaos and the emotions and the relationships, witnessing them as the conscious awareness and recognizing that that is not us. We are not entangled with that reality. We are not those objects. We are witnessing these objects. Back to the quote. You realize that you are not who you thought you were. You're not even a human being. You just happen to be watching one. You will begin to have deep experiences within your own center of consciousness. These will be deep, intuitive experiences of the true nature of self. You will find that you are tremendously expansive. When you start to explore consciousness instead of form, you realize that your consciousness only appears to be small and limited because you are focusing on a small and limited objects. That's exactly what happens when you're focusing solely on the TV. There's nothing else in your world. If you pull back, however, you can see the whole room, including the TV. Likewise, instead of just focusing so intently on this one being's thoughts, none of this one human being's thoughts, emotions and sensory world, you can pull back and see everything. Okay, so I hope that wasn't too much to process, but I think that that is a really well spoken way of expressing our infinite nature. of our soul, of our being, of our energy. We are not these tiny, limited boxes of our brains, in our human, in our thoughts, in our emotions. That is not who we are. It is a fragment of the whole. We are one with the universe. We are a part of everything. True energy and consciousness radiates so much more than this limited, small awareness. And so when you're able to recognize the truth of your being and the truth of who you are, you're free because you're not tied down to these identities and these ideas and these thoughts and these fears and these problems that are arising in your life. You can be free of that. You can be bigger than that. You can go through difficult moments in your life and you can go through hardships and you can go through scary times. You can go through losses and pitfalls and wins and you can maintain your own independence. from it. And it's a daily practice, a daily commitment of showing up and realizing and remembering and waking, remembering that you are watching a TV show and you get to choose what channel you're on. You can be focusing on the problem or you can be focusing on the solutions. You can be focusing on your scarcity or you can be focusing on the abundance you have in your life. You can be focusing on your fear or you can be focusing on your hope. Because we are alchemists. have the power to change. We have the power to enact change within ourselves, within our realities, within our communities. We are so much more powerful than we think that we are. We are the creators of our reality. We are bigger than our programs. We are bigger than our struggles. We are bigger than our fears. And we have to remember again and again and again and again and again and then we forget and then we remember and then we forget and then we remember. So just continue devouring these lessons, these ideas, this literature, these podcasts, these kind of podcasts, these teachers, keep surrounding yourself with people who get it and who are able to reflect this back into you. You know, if you don't have people in your personal life that do, you have the wide world of internet. There's so many audiobooks and people and teachers to remind you of your true being your true essence of who you really are and what you really are and from that state from that being of infinite infinite source energy that we all are anything is possible absolutely anything is possible so i'll leave you on that i fucking love you guys if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review or send it to a friend that you think will like it i am Enrolling new students to my signature program unlock your dream reality where we dive into all things a subconscious mind and is Jam-packed full of tools and resources to help you wake up and step into your next level self and your next level dream reality because That's what I'm doing I'm getting through it and I want you guys to get through it with me All my resources are Available in the show notes below anything for free that you want to Step into my world with my magnetic morning ritual my path to purpose workbook It's all in there as well as my course and like your dream reality You can browse my website you can go into our earthly creations and to get physical products from our brand and Yeah, I fucking love you guys. I'll see you next week. Bye