Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Conscious Connection Podcast. I. Carol, I’m your host, Carol Hasbrouck, local real estate expert, author of the book 10,000 Miles of Miracles, now available on Amazon.

I’m also a motivating speaker and am looking for some speaking events, so if you know of anything, please let me know. On this show, we uncover ways to follow your inner guidance system so you can live your most authentic and fantastic life. Our mission is to help you learn how to differentiate between your ego thoughts and your true, authentic higher self, which can lead you to your life purpose.

On new adventures, and even to new callings, you can finally live the life you desire and the life you deserve. My guest today is a new friend we met not too long ago, maybe six months ago or so, and her name is Janine Merkle Pearlstein. She is the author of a fabulous book called Finding youg Lighthouse, a Leadership Guide to Navigating Change.

She’s also a business anthropologist and champion for her clients, helping them find and fix productivity leaks by identifying their hidden beliefs and resistance that gets in their way. I found that to be very beneficial in reading her book. We had a book club with it, and I uncovered many things that I didn’t realize I believed, but were holding me back through Janine’s work.

So welcome, Janine. Thank you, Carol. It’s so beautiful to be here with you.

And my very first question, because when I hear you say this, I’m always wondering, what is a business anthropologist? Right. It’s a big one. All right, Anthropology 101 here, something I used to teach at the university.

There are four subfields of anthropology. It’s anthropology being kind of the study of man, but that’s a big topic. So there’s archaeology, which a lot of people think about.

There’s linguistics. There’s physical anthropology, which is the study of human remains. And then there’s my field, my subfield, socio cultural anthropology.

And this is the study of how humans interact within their cultures. Now, as a business anthropology, I look at businesses and organizations as a subculture, as an entity that helps shape human behaviors. So my specialty is in behavior change.

And as a business anthropologist, I want to ensure that people are living and working within structure, within the structures that help them be happy and healthy and productive and engaged and like they’re singing in the shower in the morning because they really love what they do. So a business would hire you to increase morale, engagement from the employees, that kind of thing. When they find that productivity is lacking or going down because of this, is that bingo Right.

Yeah, you really nailed it. It’s a positive thing. When there’s been a lot of change in an organization, usually they’ll start seeing, as you said, productivity leaks.

They’ll see absenteeism, they’ll see high turnover and low morale. And so that’s a good time to bring us in and have a look at the human behavior. You know, we look at strategies and operations as well, but we want to make sure that that’s integrated with the human component so that the people that are showing up to implement the strategy are all.

Are all singing from the same sheet of music. Yes, I remember you talking. We are part of a group called SunLeaders, which we’re podcasting.

We’re recording here in the Neiman Creative Podcasting Studio. Studio. And Josh Naiman is the creator of SunLeaders.

And I remember you talking about the values of the business and how the employees, when they’re showing up, if they’re not showing up within those values. Is that correct? That’s right. Right.

Tell me a little about that. Sure. Values is one of the non negotiables for.

For hiring for fit and having productive employees. As an anthropologist, I look at the components of culture and what makes up a culture. It starts with the individual.

So there are four attributes that all individuals bring to these, to any kind of interaction that we have that I’m interested in particularly. And the first one is your attitudes, highly changeable attitudes from any given day to day. This is your state of mind or your feeling about something at a given point, your behaviors.

That’s just your actions, your reactions to different circumstances, your behaviors. I’m sorry, your beliefs, which are your conviction in the truth of something. And then finally, the fourth and least changeable is your values.

And these are the standards, the qualities that you deem most worthwhile. So as individuals, we bring these into everything that we do the moment that we start sharing these attributes with other people, and then we add norms and traditions onto those. Now we have a culture, and in a workplace culture, we’ve got policies and practices instead of norms and traditions.

But we’re still sharing our attitudes, our behaviors, our beliefs, and our values. So going back to values that we had a beautiful, robust discussion about at SunLeaders, when somebody’s standards or qualities that they deem most worthwhile aren’t in alignment with the values of their employer, they have a difficult time with following through with any kind of directions or strategies that their employer wants them to do. And typically that in our world, we say, that’s a bless and release
scenario.

You really want to hire for values now. Now, beliefs are a little bit changeable. It takes a minute to change a belief.

If beliefs are out of alignment between employees or employees and an employer, then you want to create alignment to the extent that you can. And you want to be able to identify where those beliefs are, what might be hidden, because your beliefs are by default, in the way that our brains are wired, Our beliefs are informing our behaviors all the time. So how our brains are wired.

And that’s because a belief is a thought we’ve had over and over and over, is that correct? That’s exactly right. And so because we’ve had it over and over again, we’re convicted in the truth of it. It’s the beliefs live in the realm of our subconscious mind, which makes up about 96% of our processing capacity of our minds.

I mean, it’s the master of the ship, truly. And it will always inform your behaviors. Your beliefs will always inform your behaviors, unless you’re using grit and determination to change a behavior.

Now, if you’re using grit and determination, you are bypassing your subconscious mind. You’re using that 4% of your processing capability, your conscious mind, to do it, which is fine. It can work over time, over time, but it, it will get thrown off course if there are any kind of external environments that, you know, make you sick or make you tired or throw in, you know, a recession or, you know, a problem with the market economy or something like that, that stresses you out.

In times of stress, you will always fall to the level of your beliefs. So if you want to change your behaviors, you really need to be looking at your beliefs because that, that truly is the master of the ship for you. And so you do that on an individual basis with the employees.

And what is your ideal business number of employees? Let’s start with that. Sure, we’re pretty agnostic to the type of business and even the size of the business, but I’m interested in the size of the team that works together that makes up a, a cult, a subculture, because that can sometimes be just one shift or one department or one location from a. In.

In a bigger business. But I like sizes between 5 and 30 is a really good size in terms of how nimble they can be in times of change. And so because we want to align operations and strategy and communication models with the behavior that gets those strategies implemented, we look at systems and structures, and back to your question, we look at the individual.

So we want to know what’s happening in the business. What are the practices that might not match up so well with the policies? Mm. And so when you identify that, then it’s either a matter of finding out if that individual can change, if enough people on the team can change to make it cohesive with the employer’s beliefs and visions and values and that kind of thing.

And if they can’t, then perhaps they get relocated to a different department or a different team or realigned. Realigned. That’s a good.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. It’s an interesting opportunity for us to really look at who is influencing the culture. You know, we’ve got different people influencing culture in different ways and for different reasons.

You know, usually it’s because they have either wealth, power, or prestige. And within a company, that means they’ve got the decision making process or authority around those entities. But prestige is sticky.

There was one instance that was really notable for us. We were working with one of the big three automobile manufacturers, and we were in one of their plants, and one of the shifts was slow. It was so slow that they were running into the.

The problem of potentially shutting down the line. And, you know, it was costing them a million dollars a minute to shut down the line. So you wanted everybody to really be pulling their weight and working up to speed, and they couldn’t figure out why this one shift was so incredibly slow.

So when we went in, we started asking some more unorthodox questions about behaviors and beliefs and. And values. And what we ended up learning was that there was a tiny woman who had a very small voice, and she physically had a very small impact on the system.

But her father was the pastor of the church where everyone else on the shift went to church. And she herself had a very slow operating pace. But because she was revered as kind of like the royalty of the shift, everybody was matching their pace to her.

So she knowingly. Or no, no, it was subconscious. Yeah.

And so she had a tremendous amount of influence over this shift, over the culture, of the productivity of this shift. Even though she didn’t have wealth, she didn’t have prestige in terms of, you know, being able to dictate how much people got paid or when they could have time off, that sort of thing. She was otherwise powerless in her position, but her prestige was very high.

Wow. So you really dig into not just their workplace, but perhaps their personal lives, too. That would, of course, mold their beliefs and their attitudes and their behaviors and their values, Right? Exactly, exactly.

It’s indicative of the work that anthropologists do. It’s important for us to Take a holistic view, because we understand that you could pull a lever in one area of your life and have the result of it show up in a completely different area of your life. So we really do look at people’s beliefs and values and things like finances, whether they’re spenders or savers.

We look at their career path and what they believe is possible for them or maybe not possible for them. We look at their relationships. I’m interested in their birth families and their current relationships.

Not from a purely therapeutic or psychological perspective, but I’m on the lookout for patterns of what has allowed them to be successful in the past and where they have potentially gotten in the way in their lifetime. I’m also looking at their relationship with their physical bodies and then their spiritual selves. What do they believe is bigger than them? Or what kind of work have they done on themselves, even professionally? All of this plays into the holistic perspective that I take.

And it’s really only through taking this perspective that we can really get to the meat of the problem sometimes. Well, that makes sense because really, holistically is how we all show up. Right? Right.

Right. It’s a myth that we can. That we compartmentalize.

We really do show up as whole human beings in everything that we can do, and we bring ourselves with us. You know, we might be able to shut one piece down for a little while, but it will show up eventually, particularly in times of stress. That’s just how we work.

I say it comes out sideways, then I love that. I love that, like, I can pretend to be somebody else. I can stuff emotions and experiences down, and then it’s going to come out.

And if I’ve held it on long enough or I’m pretending way too much, it comes out sideways. Oh, my gosh. And it’s brilliant.

And it’s never pretty. That’s right. Well, that’s right.

That’s right. You have so much less control over something that bursts under pressure than something that you do knowingly and by choice. Yes.

And I’m training or teaching my granddaughter, she’s 8, to always be herself, to be authentic, to not be apologetic because I said, and here’s the fact, you’re going to show up eventually. And if you try to hide, and I only know this from personal experience, if you try to hide who you are to fit into somebody else’s world, it’s going to come out sideways. And she just looks at me, I go, it’s okay, honey.

Just someday, later, someday you’ll go, oh, that’s what Nanny was talking about. That’s right. I got us way off track.

But I love that you really dig into the holistic part of it. It sounds like it’s a huge benefit for the employer. Sure.

They may not like what you find. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Because they might be the problem. Well, that’s true. You know, we will only work with companies where the leaders are willing to look at themselves as well.

You know, you can really only be nimble in times of change when you’re willing to challenge your own limiting beliefs. And that’s the hallmark of a good leader in. In my estimation.

And so, you know, we. We’ve been blessed with clients who. Who are willing to go there.

They are willing to look. They want to know what’s. What’s been holding them back.

Because it’s often hidden to us. You know, we. It’s part of the human condition.

We can’t read our own label from inside the bottle, so. Right. Sometimes it’s helpful having somebody else look at that for us.

In anthropology, we call that the difference between the edict perspective and the emic perspective. The edict perspective is the outsiders or the consultant or the coach who can see things clearly. But it’s also important to get the insider’s perspective, the emic perspective.

You know, nobody knows themselves better than you do, to a point, because what is usual becomes unseen. And so those two perspectives together are really where you find the magic of what needs to be changed, of what has been great, as well as what potential has been left on the table. So we can all use this in our everyday life, right? Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Right. I mean, much of what I do is, as we’ve discussed before, Carol is helping people stand in their strength and get out of their own way.

My signature coaching program for individuals is called stand in your strength strategies, because so many of us find value in having that new perspective come in and share with you what you can’t see. And. And that’s, you know, it’s why I have a coach, and it’s why my coach has a coach.

And it turtles all the way down. Because really, it’s. It’s a beautiful thing to be in partnership when you’re trying to do big things in life.

Yes. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. Right.

And I have found in therapy, psychological therapy, when I am able to uncover a belief that just isn’t so. It’s like this aha moment for me, and I go, oh, my God, I’ve been living my whole life based on this one. And I know there’s more than one, but based on this belief, didn’t even know I had.

That’s right. And it’s created my behavior. What do you say? Informs my behavior? Yeah, it’s absolutely true.

And the thing is, that’s part of the human condition, and none of us are immune. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, no, I’m self aware. I know what’s going on.

I know what’s making me tick. But I can tell you I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I’ve had a lot of help along the way. And I have guided a lot of people through finding their own hidden beliefs, and I’m still uncovering my own.

And, you know, we have a choice as humans when we come across one of those hidden beliefs that isn’t serving us, that we can choose to, you know, be upset with ourselves. Like, why didn’t I see that? And shame on me for not fixing this sooner. Or we can celebrate the fact that we’ve just peeled another layer of the onion, getting closer to wholeness.

And I tend to think it’s not an or, it’s an end. So I go to the shame on me. And I allow myself to have that feeling and I realize, wait a minute, I’m human.

Right. And now I can celebrate. If I choose to change that, I can celebrate that and my own personal experiences.

When I come back with a different energy, the people around me all of a sudden that we weren’t clicking very well, and now all of a. It’s like, oh, we really get along really well now. That’s beautiful.

And they haven’t changed. Right. And I’m not kowtowing to them.

I’ve simply uncovered a belief that I realized I was holding onto and I changed my energy and how I show up, and then the whole room changes. That’s right. And then you create that ripple effect for other people to feel.

Yeah. And you’re leading by example. That’s gorgeous.

Beautiful work that you’re doing. Thank you so much. Who are some of your teachers? Well, right now we’ve been in discussion about the fact that I’m deeply following Dr. Joe Dispenza.

Now I have become uncompromising with my meditation thanks to his guidance. I find that in times of tremendous external stress, that when you can push the reset button on your brain and go inward and quiet things down, that the world becomes right again. And it’s incredibly valuable.

You know, I wrote a chapter in my book about meditation. I’ve believed in it, and I’ve done it for a long time. But I’m in a season in my life now where its importance has risen to the surface.

Because I recognize that I am constantly evolving, I’m constantly changing. And I can do that easier when I can get into the place where wiring happens in my subconscious mind and that happens in a lower brainwave frequency. So the better I get at lowering my brain waves and the better I get at opening up my heart, the more I have access to the essential part of me that I want to bring forward in my life.

And I’m less reactionary and I’m more proactive. And it’s such a beautiful recipe for success that it’s been a valuable investment of my time and energy and money as well to lean into deeper work. Yes.

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I resisted it at first and now I’ve been a whole week of meditating every morning and congratulations and I love it is a big deal. And I’m meditating to Dr. Joe Dispenza. And I love your word uncompromising.

And some mornings I have more time than others. But regardless, I’m sitting down for at least 15 minutes and I’m putting on one of his meditation guides. It’s a guided I’m just letting the audience know I’m not just sitting there trying not to think because I don’t think that’s possible.

First of all, maybe it is. Maybe at some point I’ll be able to not think. But I’m listening to it.

And I used to think he was kind of wacky. And he is kind of wacky in the. In the senses.

And he calls it the Newtonian sense, right? Like he’s out there, he’s in the quantum sense of life. And even after a week I just feel different. I can’t explain it.

I Don’t know if I’ll. Well, I know I’ll continue to expand because that’s what I desire to do. Yeah, you’re a seeker.

You’ll be growing forever. I wanted to. I’m one of these that I kind of jump into things.

So I wanted to go to one of his retreats, sign up for it. And I said, no, Carol. 30 days.

If you will do this every day for 30 days, at the end of that 30 days, then you can make a decision if you want to go to. Because he has retreats almost every month if you want to go to one of his retreats. So I’m looking forward to seeing what happens and how I progress with it.

And I very much, very much enjoy sitting down and spending that time expanding. I guess that’s what I’m doing, expanding my consciousness. You are, indeed.

You’re tapping into something greater than yourself. And, you know, we should all be so loving of our own selves to give the gift of that kind of time, to tap into that. It is a true gift.

And congratulations. I think it’s lovely. Thank you.

Well, thank you for telling me. And then I met with Emily, and she told me about him, too. Absolutely.

Yeah. That was wonderful. So he’s one of your big teachers.

Anyone else that you follow that helps you, or is that. I follow so many. I’m a big believer of reading many different books, listening to many different voices, and even the voices that don’t resonate with you.

Oftentimes, if you can get past the. You get past the image of who’s presenting or what might be rankling you about the way they’re presenting, oftentimes there’s magic in that. And so, you know, I follow people in spirituality in abundance, in business success, in business growth, in investing in, you know, just about love and relationships, just about every kind of personal and professional development sphere I enjoy reading about and learning about.

I’m a little bit of a junkie that way. I’m a nonprofit, or, sorry, nonfiction junkie. Nonprofit, too, I should say, but nonfiction junkie.

I really do love learning and growing. So my influences, you know, it’s really just. It’s difficult in this moment to think about voices that rise to the surface because they are so.

They’re so many and so valuable and important. Everyone. Well, just choosing what we listen to is gigantic.

I personally have not watched the news. I can say I probably have watched the news a dozen times in the last 10 years. Wow.

Good for you. Because I couldn’t anymore. Yeah, it started with the Newspaper.

I couldn’t read the newspaper anymore because I realized every morning I was getting up, getting my coffee, sitting down, reading the paper. And I was depressed. That’s right.

And I couldn’t figure out why. And then all of a sudden one day I went, oh, this is why. So I quit reading.

And now I still keep up on the world that people go, oh, you’re just sticking your head in this. No, I’m not. What I’m doing is I’m choosing what the news I want to take in.

And most of the time I’m reading it that way. It’s not bombarding my psyche without my permission. And I get what I need and I read what I want and it shapes who I am and the beliefs I have and the energy that I have in the world.

And it’s a choice. It’s a choice. Exactly.

It’s so important. You know, it’s so funny because so many of us know that if we stop for a lunch break and eat a bag of Doritos with a Mountain Dew, we’re going to feel like crud for the rest of the day. But we don’t pay attention so much to our mental nutrition and what has access to our brains.

And especially at the end of the day, if you’re tired, you’re a little zoned out, your brain is slipping into that alpha brainwave frequency. If you put the news on then, or you put some sarcastic sitcom on as you veg out on the sofa, it’s wiring into your brain. And you wonder, people wonder, why have I become bitter? Why have I become sarcastic myself? Why have I become so depressed? And it’s because you’re wiring that into your brain.

It’s people who listen to talk radio or the news in the car are subject to that same thing. You know, we drive unconsciously because many of us, you know, have been driving for a long time. And it’s an unconscious competence.

And so we’ll slip into an alpha brainwave state and what we hear gets wired in. I had an eye opening moment with that many years ago when my oldest son was in a car seat in the back and I used to always have on NPR on the show, and he was just getting old enough to start paying attention and he said, mommy, what does beheaded mean? Oh, my. Right.

And I thought, what am I, what am I letting him absorb? And it was that moment that it was brought into my consciousness that this isn’t, this isn’t good for my kiddo. It’s also not good for me. No.

And I started drawing some of those boundaries, some of those necessary boundaries myself, really paying attention to what had access to me, not just what am I choosing, you know, which is also. It’s like you were talking about you made a choice and that’s so valuable, it’s so important. Sometimes there are things that, that just messages that just bombard us and we’ve got to be.

Got to pay attention to what we allow. Yes, absolutely. And what we allow our children to.

My kids used to hate it because I would never let them watch the Simpsons or Cops. That’s right. You know, and so of course they go to their friends and watch it.

But that’s okay. At our house. Wasn’t.

They weren’t. And they’re still. Well now my son, one of my sons, has three children.

He goes, I get it, mom. Yeah, I get it. They’re so disrespectful to the parents.

Right. And I was glad to hear. Now I think he still likes Cops, but I don’t know that he would let his son walk.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a different filter for sure. Yeah.

Because we, we get information from so many different places now that it’s important for my emotional and mental and spiritual well being and physical that I censor what goes in. So a lot of what I do is read instead of watch it on the tv. Yeah.

That’s beautiful. Right. I had drinks with my older son’s employer recently.

He’s a news reporter for a small publication. And she said, your son is so great. What did you do as a parent that made your son so great? And he was there and he said, she didn’t Let me watch SpongeBob.

Oh. And you know, we were laughing about it as just a small quip, but it’s the same thing. You know, I didn’t want the sarcasm and the stupidity really, you know, to eke in there.

And as, as they’re growing up in their formidable years. Because all of this, you know, it, it really spins back to what we were talking about before. It, it shapes our culture.

You know, we are enculturating our children by the lessons that we share with them. And if we share with them that we value being intelligent versus being intelligent, you know, I don’t know, stupid, stupid or that kind of like biting sarcasm. You know, if we, if we value a higher discourse than that, we can teach our kids that and we can change the subculture that that informs their behaviors then.

And that’s what you’re doing with what you did with your children. And then now with your granddaughter, that you have an opportunity to help enculturate them in a way that shapes them in an appropriate way according to your values. And I’m not saying, you know, one person’s values are right and another’s are wrong.

I’m not, I’m not here to, to say that. I mean, I love that we all have free will to figure that out for ourselves. Absolutely.

But I am a proponent of being really thoughtful about it and not letting culture take over by default. And it certainly can if we allow it. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and I’m not interested in getting any political at all right now. And it’s important for me in this time to love even harder. That’s right.

Than I loved before. And I never knew that love and harder would go together, but to love even more than I ever loved, loved before instead of judging, instead of thinking. You’re wrong.

I’m right, you know? No. Right. Right.

No. You’re a human being, I’m a human being. We’re both on.

We’re all on this earth trying to survive, trying to do the best we can, trying to be happy. That’s all we really want is to be happy. Right.

And so I believe that I’m being given an opportunity to look at people that are completely opposed to my values, my beliefs, and still love them. Exactly. Oh, isn’t that beautiful? Yes.

Dr. Joe Dispenza has a mantra that I have adopted that says there’s always more love to feel. There’s always more love to feel. It’s not a limited resource.

Let’s tap into that. And it’s a valuable thing when we’re working in organizations and businesses and we teach them how to have high stakes and difficult conversations with grace, because that’s something that has to happen in a workplace. And many people aren’t taught, you know, the art of disagreeing with somebody with grace while still having relationship.

And one of the key components of that that you just spoke to naturally, it’s just one of the beautiful things about you is that it’s valuable to go into any big conversation with the goal of wanting to be understood and wanting to understand another person. But what typically happens is that people go into it with the goal of being right. They’re so much more attached to being right than they are to being understood.

And I think that that’s what’s playing out in this us versus them economy that we have right now. This, this, the whole marketplace out there is really, you know, pitting us versus them. Which side Are you on? And you could put that to politics and sports and companies and cities, cultures.

You know, it shows up everywhere. But if we can break down those barriers by saying, no, no, I’m just here to understand, I’m going to do it with love. Because there’s always more love to feel.

And I’d like to understand you, and I’d really love to be understood in turn. Now I think you can get somewhere. That’s the beginning of opening up opportunity for growth and change.

Yes. And what if that’s what this is all about? What if what’s going on in the world, what if it’s all about helping us learn how to understand and be understood and love? What is it? He says there’s always room for more love. There’s always more love to feel.

There’s always more love to feel. What if. Yeah, I choose to look at what’s going on, and when I’m reading articles, instead of going, I go, oh, yes, that’s right.

Right. There’s more love to feel. That’s right.

That’s right. Feel the love. Yeah.

Send the love. It’s beautiful. What if that’s it? I believe in that.

I believe in that so much. You know, if you think about the metaphor of a seed, you know, take an acorn that has the potential of a huge oak tree inside of it, but the acorn has to crack open and become kind of a gooey mess before it starts. Before it starts growing anything.

Yes. And maybe that’s what’s happening with our culture right now. Maybe we’re in this process of cracking open because the potential that’s within us as a collective is so much greater than anything that has been made manifest yet.

Absolutely. And I believe we got lazy, we got complacent, we got politically correct. We just turned the other way, and now we can’t.

We don’t have a choice. I suppose there is a choice, but for me, now, I have to look at it and say, okay, now what? How can we be better? How can I show up with this and still be loving and with grace and mercy? And have I ever done that before? And, you know, could I possibly do that? That’s one of the things I like to ask myself when I’m feeling unforgiving, you know? Well, have I ever done that or could I ever do that? Well, yeah, I probably could. Right.

Well, then maybe you should go ahead and let them off the hook. That’s right. Exactly.

And because you might just do that tomorrow. That’s it. Right.

Oh, darn you’re having a human moment. Yeah. Okay.

Right, right. So, yes, thank you. That was beautiful conversation.

I’d like to circle back around to inner guidance system. Oh, yeah, I know that is a huge part of your life and your work, and you’ve told me some incredible stories. First of all, you’re in business with your husband, Scott, right? Yeah.

And you’ve told me some stories of things that. Places you’ve been and. And things you’ve done that were a direct result of your inner guidance system.

And would you be kind enough to share even one of those stories? Sure. That’s great. Sure.

You know, we. I was just. I was just reminiscing on this this morning.

We used to have in Flagstaff, Arizona, where we used to live, we used to have beautiful, big office spaces, light filled, close to downtown. It was really a. It was a gathering space.

And I was convicted in the truth that my clients needed this big space. We had big whiteboarding sessions. I could bring in big teams.

It was just. I felt like I was attached to the place. And after having been there for five years, our landlord came to us and said, we’re going to renew your lease, but it’ll be triple the rent.

Because he wanted to turn the building into medical offices. And so I said, okay, universe, what is this teaching me? I’m not totally sure, but surely we’ll find another office that’s just as beautiful, if not more, you know, this or something better manifests for me now. Shakti Gawain says that, and I love that.

So we looked everywhere and we couldn’t find one that didn’t feel like settling. You know, that didn’t put the stone in my heart. And so I said to Scott, my husband, I said, can we move home to a home office for just a bridge so that we don’t make some kind of a rash decision and keep looking and wait for the perfect office to show up.

I was devastated. I couldn’t understand why was this happening to me. And I remember talking to my coach at the time.

Like, I said, I’m going to surrender this, but I don’t like it. I don’t want to. So we prepared to move home.

We, you know, got our home office all zhuzhed up, and our lease in that office place ended on March 15, 2020. Oh. And so we were, you know, maybe two days away from the world closing down.

And we no longer had that overhead. We had all of the systems moved back into our home office. And I thought, oh, this is why I surrendered.

This is why I believed this is why I leaned into what inside was nudging me along the path, even though I didn’t know. I didn’t know why. And it was a season in our lives where we were becoming empty nesters.

We sent both of our kids off to College in 2020, and they were having a grand adventure of their own in Europe. And we thought, we’re online now. We could do this from anywhere.

And after a few times that you say that out loud, you think, why aren’t we? And this was when we really had to look at our inner guidance system and say, what is it telling me right now? Because there is such a fine line between being in a groove and being in a rut. And we started recognizing the signs that we were sort of in a rut. And we ended up moving to the Caribbean for a couple years during the lockdown phase of the pandemic because we really trusted in, what if there’s something really
great out there for us to experience? You know, what if we really valued the adventure that we talk about and the ease and the grace that we teach others? We really leaned into it for ourselves, and we trusted, and it worked out so beautifully, which is why why we ended up here.

We fell in love with the beach. Okay. And you still did your work? We still worked, yeah.

In all the places you’ve gone to because you had already started online. Yeah, we had, but it wasn’t full time until, as Covid did for so many people. That’s right.

Made it full time. Yeah. And do you still have an online presence? Yes.

Yeah. Quite a few of our clients are global, and we meet on Zoom and phone calls, and we’ll travel to an organization to do some team exercises and trainings. But then we’ll follow up with online programs, and we have a lot of recorded coaching, and then we’ll do meetings via Zoom, so we really do work from wherever we are.

That’s beautiful. Yeah. I get the feeling you don’t watch much tv.

No. And, you know, you can get a lot done in life when you don’t watch too much tv. That’s right.

Right. And I. You know, with that, going back to what we were saying before, I’ve had to really pay attention to how TV affects my emotions. You know, I’m so malleable with my emotions, with what comes at me, and.

And I’ll absorb feelings pretty quickly, and if the TV is meant to be dramatic, then I will feel it. And I need to ask myself, does this serve me in the direction of my Dreams, or could this emotion be holding me back? And I want to be in the emotions of creativity and growth? Well, it must be why we connected so quickly when we met, because I, too, have the emotional. What is the word I’m looking for? It’s that whole over feeling.

And it’s not an over. It’s just deep, deep feelings that I have. It is gorgeous.

And it can be problematic. Well, it’s true. Yeah, that’s right.

It’s like with great emotions comes great responsibility. Yes. But I’m also have great love, and that’s the biggest emotion of them all.

Right. Yeah. Beautiful.

Big empathy heart. And for sure, that’s why we saw each other on a different level. Yes, we did.

Yes, absolutely. What is one thing you’d like the audience to know about you that we haven’t talked about yet? Well, I have something exciting coming out. You do.

And we’ve been working on developing an app that will help our clients really stay on track with their vision and their purpose and their own guidance system that they’ve done the work to uncover and figure out where they’re going. And it’s so much nicer when you can stay on track with your goals and stay on track with your vision. So we want to help them do that on the daily basis.

So we have an app coming out, will be running with our coaching programs where our clients can. Can understand where they are as a. As in the realm of them versus themselves.

You know, how. How good have they done today compared to what they wanted to do? Okay, so that’s what that means. Okay.

Right. Or. Or compared to where they’ve been before.

Right. And, you know, we we spend too much time comparing ourselves with others, but that’. So.

So this allows them to quantify their efforts of living a life on purpose for themselves, which I’m so excited about. In real time on the app. Yes.

And it’s so my. I mean, it’s so today. Exactly.

Well, as a matter of fact, you know that I was telling you about the offices that we used to have in. In Flagstaff, and we called them the Lab. It was, you know, it was where Alchemy was done for Alchemy Academy, my business.

So we would go to the lab, and this app that we are soon to unveil is called the Alchemy Lab. And so we’ve taken the physical space and we’ve moved it into your pocket where you can keep track of your own purpose, your own vision, your own goals. That’s beautiful.

And you can do your own little Scientific experiments right there in the lab. Right? Exactly. With your metrics.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful.

Yeah, that’s wonderful. Thank you. So excited.

And that dropped in your lap. I mean, you don’t have to tell me exactly how it unfolded, Right. It really was divine intervention.

Yeah, Divine intervention. Starting last October. I, I really knew that I, I wanted some kind of a dashboard for my clients to interact with the coaching on a daily basis and was, I was looking for it passively, I was dreaming about it.

And the right person at the right time crossed my path. And the developers of this app, the tech geniuses, are a sister pair and they’re just beautiful. And they, you know, my heart saw their hearts and vice versa.

And we’ve had a gorgeous collaboration. I can’t wait till I unfold it with my clients. We start our pilot with some of my existing clients, clients next week.

Oh, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Well, the little bit I know about Dr. Joe, I’m going to venture to say you already visualized this, right.

Went out into the quantum field, grabbed what was already there. That’s right. And it, quote, dropped in your lap, Right? That’s exactly.

Because it’s already done. Yeah, yeah. Right.

And the more I learn. Sorry. The more I lean into the certainty of my dreams being realized, the closer they come to me.

I collapse time that way. And that’s the beauty of using meditation to work in the quantum field while also making positive, purposeful strides in this day to day life that we’re in. And when you do those together, when you put those together, that’s where the magic is.

As you’ve experienced over and over again. I have experienced and I’m more, I want to be. And I am being more intentional about learning and creating.

I’ve said so many times. Oh, I’m not, I don’t understand that neurological talk. I don’t.

I’m not scientific. No. I get what I need to get.

Right. I learn what I need to learn. And then the practicality of it is, am I doing the work right? It always comes down to no matter what it is, whether it’s my business, my family, my love life, my health, am I putting the work into it.

And I love the fact that it’s already done. Yes. Oh, it’s so beautiful.

It’s such a great way to live with intention, to trust that it, it, it works. Yes. It’s done.

It’s there. How does that make you feel? I know. It makes me all bubbly inside is how it makes me feel.

Yeah. This has just been so much fun. Tell us how we can get in touch with you.

You can find me@alchemyacademy.com Alchemy is with an I, E, A L, C, H, E, M I, E. You can find me at janinemp on Instagram and I’m on LinkedIn. Spell Janine for us.

Oh, sure. J, E, N, E, A, N. Because I got it wrong.

M as in Merkle, P as in Perlstein. Perfect. Perfect.

So thank you so much. My heart is full and open and our smiles are huge. I know you listeners can’t see the smiles, but you can probably hear them.

My heart is so Carol. This has really, truly been a delight. And thank you for all you shared with the listeners.

We really hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. You can reach me on Facebook Carol Jones Hasbrouck. And my book 10,000 Miles of Miracles can be found on Amazon.

I’m also available for public speaking events. If you need to get in touch with me for that, that would be great. And just know that Janine and I are here opening our hearts and spreading the love to all of you.

Sam.