Welcome to the Inner Compass podcast because your direction was never outside of you. I’m Carol Hasbrouck and this is the space where we stop outsourcing our answers and start listening to the wisdom that’s already within. Each month we’ll explore what it means to live, lead and move through life guided by something deeper, your own knowing.

Through real stories, honest reflections and soul fueled conversations, you’ll learn how to reconnect with your truth, take aligned action and trust that still small voice that never steers you wrong. If you’re ready to stop pretending you’re fine and start following what lights you up, you are in the right place. So let’s dive in today.

I’m so excited that we have the audio director of Naiman Creative with me today, Jordan Rosenberg. And Jordan is a friend and a business colleague and he is the man behind the scenes of these podcasts that come out of sunleader’s podcast sharecast. I just was thrilled that he accepted my invitation to speak with us today and I’m going to turn it over to Jordan so he can tell you a little bit about himself.

He’s not only an audio director, but he tells me that he has a new band. So tell us about yourself, Jordan. Thank you for asking me to be on this episode with you, Carol.

That’s awesome. Definitely. Friends, business colleagues and yeah, you know, I’m usually over there behind the chair.

It’s definitely different being over here today, but a little bit about myself. So I am the audio director for Naming Creative. Very fortunate to be in the position that I’m at.

Josh and I are longtime friends. We used to actually be bandmates in my original band down here in Florida that kind of progressed into, you know, eight years ish later. Now we’re still friends and I work for him and we get to both do audio within the company a little bit, which scratches that itch a little bit for us being musicians, which is.

Is fantastic. Just super grateful for the opportunity and I like to think of myself as so much more than just an audio director there. Of course.

Yeah. Let’s see. Outside of work, I am a full time musician so I play guitar and sing as well as write the music for a new project called Lucky Loser, which is a band that I am forming with my brothers, older and younger.

I am the middle child. So it’ll be the three of us, just the three of us. Writing, music, playing.

Not just the two of us. Not just the two of us. Yes, the three of us.

Writing, creating, playing, performing. All the fun stuff. Wonderful.

And you said it’s out of Atlanta. Is one of the brothers in Atlanta? Yes. So actually, my younger brother Jaren.

Shout out, Jaren. Love you, buddy. He is going to school for music production in Atlanta.

And my older brother actually recently moved in with him in Georgia, so. So both of them are up there. It’s the most centralized that we’ve ever been to each other.

Sure. Yeah. And what a great place to start a new band and new project.

And certainly they’ve got a big enough city. Absolutely, absolutely. Tampa and St. Peter treated us very, very well.

But I would say it’s not very comparable to Atlanta. No, it’s a whole different level. Huge music.

Huge. Yeah, a lot of stuff going on. Good, good.

And you can tell that by the traffic. Oh, goodness, do I get warned about that so. So often? But it’s great that it’s a big music hub and that’s your passion.

So that’s what. What I like to talk about on this program is, is people’s passions and how listening to that inner guidance system, that inner voice, leads them down the path of life. And sometimes that path isn’t where they want to be, but they take it anyway and they learn their lessons along the way.

I certainly myself have had that happen. Yeah, I’m gonna go double there, for sure. Yeah.

Good. And then sometimes that path is miraculous beyond belief, which also has been my experience. So let’s talk about your path that you took that was miraculous beyond belief.

How did that start? What was the message that you had inside of you? What did it take to have enough trust to move forward into that? How long did it take for you to have enough trust? All fantastic questions. Let’s dive into the history of the previous band, PM Tiger. Okay, so that group originated from my bedroom in Peachtree City, Georgia.

This was about eight years ago now. What’s the name of the band? PM Tiger. Okay.

Stands for paper Mache Tiger. Oh, that was. That name was created by our guitar player.

Former guitar player. Whatever. John Bruno.

Amazing friend. Amazing guy. Amazing guitar player.

Great name. Chooser. Yes.

But that group started up there in my bedroom. I was writing a lot of music. My older brother wasn’t a musician at the time, and he was very heavily inspired to help me fulfill my dream of being a musician.

So he took on the role of manager and was pushing me to write, finding me opportunities for people to meet with, for shows, to perform, and really just trying to get that ball rolling for me. And within writing a lot of the music, he was falling in love with it, let’s say. So from there, I really pushed him to, like, I. I taught him some of the keyboard parts, and then he took it upon himself to learn a lot more.

Ended up buying a keyboard for himself, a professional setup. From then on, he was the keyboard player for the rest of the life of PM Tiger. So did you come up with the concept of starting the band? And was that something you’ve known your whole life? Did it come to you through a situation, or how did that happen? So I’ve been playing guitar since I was nine.

Okay. I’m 29 this year, so. So it’s in your blood? It’s in my blood, yes.

My. My father was a musician. He played piano and sang, Getting himself through college that way.

And then I guess I just had it. Had it in my soul. And at nine, it’s playing a lot of Guitar Hero with Joshua, who is my older brother, and we playing a lot of Guitar Hero.

Something was going on in my mind where I was just like, this can’t be how you actually play the guitar. Pressing a button. It can’t work like that to have all of these noises come out with just pressing a button.

I wonder how you would actually play some of these songs. And got my first guitar, started playing, started taking lessons and realizing, oh, wow, I can’t play any of this. This is so much more complicated than I could have ever thought practiced.

I always kind of had the bug of not like the bug to practice, not to put it off. So I was very into 8 to 10 hours a day just playing the guitar, honing in on eight to ten hours a day. So I didn’t have many friends growing up.

I was very much so a loner. And especially going into my early teenage years, I was very isolated to myself. And so I spent all of my time, all of my time playing guitar, recording videos of myself playing guitar.

Made multiple YouTube channels where I just was uploading songs that I wrote. So this was definitely a soul call. Definitely.

I’ve always felt this thing of I know exactly what I want to do, what I need to do, since I was nine. And that truly is a blessing. I am so, so fortunate to have had such a clear vision of what I know that I want and need to do in this physical life here.

Have you ever tried to get what we call a real job in life? And if you did, how did that go? They never last long. So you did try? Yes. Yeah.

Because you thought you needed to meet the norms of society. Absolutely. I’ve always felt, you know, I’VE always been told that I walk to the beat of my own drum.

And in that I definitely graduated high school. I won’t say barely because I think I had a 3.4 GPA, which isn’t terrible, but I skipped 50% of the year.

I just wouldn’t go. Still got a 3.4.

I did decent on the. On the tests, so that I’m thankful for. But you know, I was a problem child through high school is what I have been deemed by my parents for a lot of years.

And I do think that I. We. Everybody has come a long way. But that definitely, you know, prompted different musical genre styles to get my angst and anger and loneliness out for and just fueled my passion for music even more.

You know, seeing all of these bands and musicians and people that I look up to and all of these genres of music was lighting the fire of inspiration for. I need to be in a band. I need to go perform.

I need to play on stages. I need to know what this is like. How old were you when you first got in a band? 14.

Okay. And I was in a band with Everybody was over 18 in my first band. It was a very heavy rock band.

Super cool. Played some of my first shows. I was the clean singer and the lead guitar player.

So I was doing all of the solos and all of the lead guitar things. And then in that genre style of music, when the chorus would come, I would sing that part and the rest of it was screaming, which I wasn’t screaming, was unable to do. Was that the difference between a clean singer? Okay.

I didn’t know that meant you showered every day or. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Screaming versus whatever normal singing would I say. And that kind of concoction made up these genres back in what, 15 years ago. That post hardcore genre style.

It’s like a form of metal music basically. Yeah. Nothing I ever listen to.

Jordan. Yeah, to me I would put my mother children. I would make my mother listen to all of this music on to and from driving me to band practices to and from guitar lessons.

She got multiple hours a week of screamo music and sitting there and just listening to it. I actually think that she grew to have a soft spot for it. She could hear parts of things that she enjoyed.

I. I think, I mean that could be where you got the name problem child from. By making. I mean I’m just dressing in all black and being edgy and listening to metal, skipping school and things, you know.

Yeah. Well there’s certainly worse all weren’t green flags for My parents, I guess, but. Right.

But going into college, you know, had some opportunities, had some life things happen. Right. As I was starting tuition, living in Gainesville with my buddy John Bruno actually.

And this was before, before PM Tiger. But some unfortunate life circumstances happened. I found myself living back at my parents house in Georgia.

I wouldn’t have it any other way though. The universe had a plan during that time in which I was, we’ll just tastefully say legally bound to Georgia for a couple of years. Oh yeah, Okay.

I ended up meeting Laura within that first year of being there. And who is Laura? Laura is my wife. Okay.

Of six years. This. Seven years.

This year. Six or seven years. We’ve been together almost 10 years total.

Met her, complete happenstance of just being in Georgia, right place, right time, against my will and wouldn’t have it any other way. Met her, started the project right around the same time PM Tiger. And yeah, that kind of just spiraled in.

It was myself, my older brother and at the time my really good friend Max. And he was also kind of like Josh. He was falling in love with the music that I was writing.

So I had written about 20 songs at that point and they were just like, wow, this is so, so cool. If, if this ever were to be a band or something, I would love to be a part of it. Joshua’s learning keyboards.

Out of nowhere, I’m pushing my friend Max to buy a bass and learn bass. Like guys, we can do this. This could be us right here.

And yeah, it ended up being that trio for about a year. And then we started talking to John Bruno, an old friend of mine in Max’s and he drove up to Georgia. I remember we had like a kind of practice rehearsal thing where we were all just hanging out with the idea of what if.

And he came up with the band name during that time and that stuck. And seven years together doing that band up until last year, we, we parted ways. Everybody’s kind of doing a new music venture at this point.

And yeah, I couldn’t be more excited for what Lucky Loser has to offer for the near future. Wonderful. Now what kind of music will that be? It is a blend of.

Oh, it’s a open genre, I guess. It’s all the way from classic rock vibes to very experimental electronic punk stuff. So there’s really a wide.

There’s a heavy influence of like just indie rock esque songs, vibes in. In a lot of the songs. But some of it gets weird.

And are you writing the songs for that or primarily? I do compose Most all of the instruments. When I. I have this thing, which I’ve had for more years than I can remember, but when I hear music or, like a part of something that I’m writing in my head, I hear all of it at once. So it’s multiple guitars, bass lines, drums, synths, vocals.

So many melodies at once that I need to sit down and get it out piece by piece. And then I arrange it, and it’s like, wow, that’s what I heard in my head. That’s crazy.

And. And that’s what this podcast is about, is those things in our head. Oh, yeah.

That we have to get out. And for me, it’s not as complex as a whole song with all the different instruments and words and all of that, but that’s a beautiful example of your inner voice speaking to you. Probably shouting at you.

Get this down on paper before you forget it. Back in the day, you could say, maybe it was screaming at me. It could have been screaming at you.

That’s right. And how wonderful that you. I mean, you light up when you talk about your music.

I’m sure you know that your whole energy, just your eyes, everything just lights up when you talk about it. I am music, and music is my life. And I’m so grateful to have known that since I was nine.

I could just. I don’t. It’s so much like love, which is a very hard thing to explain to people.

And the most cliche line of all is exactly proportionate to my musical life as well. But it’s when you know, you know. If you don’t know until you know, but you definitely know when you know.

Yeah. And it was exactly the feeling. I just.

I’ve always known clear, definitely need to be playing guitar and writing music. That’s what I’m meant to do. That’s what I feel like.

I am the happiest, the most free, I am the most creative. And all of those things fuel my soul truly. Like, I can’t even describe the past week.

I’ve written four or five new songs. I believe almost every day I’ve written, sat down, like, wrote a new song, and I feel electric every single day. I walk around listening to these songs now for the past week, every day.

I use it to help when I work out. And, like, the energy is unlike anything else. And I have found that before I trail on too, too much, that when I’m in the zone, let’s say.

So I sit down at the computer, truthfully, sometimes I can write the entirety of a song in 30 minutes. Sometimes it takes six hours. Just kind of depends.

Even six hours is not such a long time. Right. I have been told that.

And I have trouble turning it off once it’s on. I am. The feeling of electric is true, like walking away from the computer and I’m still as though adrenaline is just coursing through my veins.

And I actually struggle with turning it off. I struggle with my sleep a lot around writing music because I will be so wired after writing. I can’t rest.

I feel like I don’t want to eat. I hydrate a lot because I can just tell that that’s what my body needs. But it’s so hard for me to relax and rest once I’ve gotten my, like, vibrational level so high.

Your frequency, there’s probably something to that. Yes, of course. But I do feel the happiest and there probably are ways to be able to come down off of that.

You just haven’t discovered them yet. And, you know, hopefully you’ll find that. I also hope so.

Yeah, for sure. I know some remedies that have definitely helped me over the years, but nothing has been sure fire like a switch turning it off. Which maybe I don’t want.

Well, it may not. Yeah. Maybe I don’t want that anyway.

Right. It may take some time, some process. So, you know, if you have to go to sleep, that you quit writing at whatever time that is so that you’ve got this.

And I’m thankful that we live in Florida because there is something that is here that I can kind of rely on to help me relax. And I’m thankful for, for sure. That’s really that.

And like taking some Advil and hydrating with water is maybe the only thing that can kind of decelerate like energy to go to sleep at least. But yeah, it’s. It’s a wonderful feeling.

The. I don’t know anything else that makes me feel quite as electric as that. Um, besides traveling abroad with Laura that actually gives me.

Or traveling abroad, period, with my brothers, with Laura has made. Gives me that same, like, really excited energy that doesn’t really go away. And I guess it’s quite unique that I can create that in 30 minutes and have that feeling as though I just flew 10 hours on an airplane to go to some other country.

So that is special. Well, I have to thank you for having me reflect on that. That’s wonderful.

Yeah. Well, I have to tell you my observation of knowing you. So I’ve known you for a little over a year now, and you’ve always Been a kind, caring soul.

And sometimes that soul has been a little dim. And I hope it’s okay that I share that, but it has. I mean it.

Oh, the past year and a half has been. It was never dark, but it’s dimmed. And we’ve talked about that.

And, you know, we’ve talked about Dr. Pulley and how he helps with that. He’s helped me tremendously with that. It’s our incredible therapist, by the way.

Yes, our incredible therapist and fellow podcaster. He has a podcast called the Mental Note. Shout out to Dr. Pulley.

He changed my whole life. Still is. Still is.

Changing my life. Same, same. And I love you, Dr. Pulley.

And so in seeing you now, compared to then and the things, and you didn’t share exactly what you were working through, and that’s fine. You didn’t need to. But you told me you had things to work through, and so you’ve worked.

You’re working through them. And this new band, I also know a couple of months ago, you took a trip abroad with Laura. Absolutely, I did, yes.

That was when I first noticed your energy level being much, much higher. Yes. Much more clear and vibrant.

And then now you’re in a new. And you don’t think you had. So the other band, PM Tiger, had already broken up, right? Yes.

Yeah. So you didn’t have a band and you went abroad with Laura. Tell me, where did you go? So we went to London this most recent time.

Kind of a spontaneous trip as we went to see a music group that we tried to see about five years ago, and they. The lead singer got a throat infection and then actually came. Canceled the entire tour five years ago and came forward being very vulnerable and was like, I do.

I don’t like to tour. I don’t like playing shows. It causes me a lot of anxiety and, like, mental stress.

And I prefer to just write music in my bedroom in whichever countries that he has his little writing houses set up in. And so we finally got an opportunity randomly to go see them, and the one date was in London. So we went ahead and, you know, made a whole.

Made a whole little thing out of that. Talk about passion. I had to do it.

I had to do it. This year, though, I. I appreciate you recognizing the shift. Oh, yeah.

This has been the biggest year of healing for me probably ever in my life. And I’ve been in, you know, I’ve been doing therapy. Not necessarily, like, super duper consistently, but I’ve been in therapy since I was 14, so 15 years of my life.

I’VE I’m familiar with with the therapy space, but the healing that’s been done this year has absolutely changed my life and I feel like the most elevated, clear version of Jordan that has existed thus far. And it is an incredible feeling. I will say that I’m the most I’m the most in love with myself that I think that I’ve ever been and now a word from our sponsors.

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Yay. What a beautiful thing to be in love with yourself. The most in love with yourself.

Something that I don’t think that I felt since I was there’s an interesting shift that happened towards my later teenage years and early twenties where I developed anxiety. I’ve never had anxiety before. I’ve always been walked to the beat of my own drum.

You know, I was very, for anybody that knows, looking extremely seen emo through my younger teenage years, like 13, 14, 15 and 16. You know, black, straight hair, dyed hair colors, tight band shirts, colorful tight pants. A statement.

Yeah, statement for sure. And I was so confident in myself. Like I would say that I had immense self love.

I was extremely into this is me. I love myself. I love being eccentric, I love peacocking and that was just the essence of myself.

And then somewhere, Somehow something around 18 to 20, something completely changed and I started feeling a much more intense loss of self worth and self love and like confidence in myself and developed anxiety and like not wanting to be very social out in public and things and wanting to stay in. And I still have remnants of that for sure. But I’m much more of an extroverted person.

But I portray a lot of introverted tendencies. I am alone 90% of the week. Not talking like oh, 90.

I’d say yeah, I couldn’t do that. I am alone either. Working, doing music, playing disc golf, working out, riding bike, whatever it is.

But I’m usually by myself and Laura gets home, you know, around 7 or 8 at night, but then we go to sleep at 10 and that’s the most that I I get like two nights of that a week and then we get one full day on the weekend together, so we make the most out of our time. But primarily I’m. I’m alone.

And you’re okay with that? I am. I. I don’t mind the solitude. I have cats to keep me fulfilled.

I have myself to keep me fulfilled. I really think that the journey this year in learning to love myself has opened up a door through the isolation that has really just shed a light on being able to pay more attention to myself and giving myself the things that I need, like exercise every day and eating healthy and not overindulging myself in whatever it may be, whether that’s food or alcohol or not being physical or watching television. Like my screen time of watching television is if it ever
happens throughout the day, it’s at night with Laura for an hour or two.

Otherwise I don’t watch TV really at all anymore. And that’s such a big shift for me. I would just.

No wonder your energy picked up. Waste my days away. Just like kind of not wanting to be present so I could, you know.

Fortunately, TV and movies are good to put you somewhere else in some other setting. But yeah, I found over this year just paying a lot more attention to myself of what do I need for me and I need to be there for myself and to be somebody that I trust. And that’s what I discovered.

Like, I don’t want to be somebody that says that I’m going to do something and then doesn’t do it. My. One of my favorite things in life is when you say that you’re going to do something and then you do it.

That feels so good. It’s an incredible feeling. Integrity.

And I’ve. I feel like I’ve let myself down a lot throughout the years. And so I don’t want to be that person anymore.

Sure. I want to be somebody that I can rely on so that other people can rely on me too. And.

And that comes from self control. And the self control comes from the self care. Absolutely.

I mean, it’s all of that is the self love. Yeah. The society, whatever teaches us that, you know, we shouldn’t be focused on ourselves.

That just isn’t true. Not true at all. And you gotta put your own oxygen mask on first.

And all the great masters of all the great teachers of all the different philosophies and religions have said to thine own self be true. You know, love thyself as thy neighbor, you know, and Dr. Pulley and his whole kingdom teaching is love God, love yourself, love everyone, in that order. And we get it out of order because society tells us that we should perhaps love God.

If God’s part of your experience, then love everyone and then love yourself. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t help somebody else if you’re not in a position to be able to help them.

No, that doesn’t he. That just doesn’t make sense. So yeah, you gotta focus.

And it. There are healthy ways to be selfish and then there are inappropriate ways to be selfish. And taking care of yourself and showing yourself self love to remind yourself of your self worth is an okay form of selfishness.

You should do that to anybody listening. Definitely take the time to do that for yourself so that then you can be there for other people. Right.

Like you want to show up as your best self most of the time, I think, right? Oh, absolutely. That’s my goal every day. You know, my prayer in the morning is that I am the best representative of God that I can be that day.

And you can replace that word with spirit or higher power or universe or whatever you want to, whatever your experience is, but be the best version of that. What’s the word I’m looking for that energy. As you can be.

As I can be each day. I’ve also learned that it’s not healthy for me to compare myself to others. It’s only healthy for me to compare myself to who I was yesterday.

You comparing yourself to you is okay, but you will never be somebody else. So you. Yeah, it’s hopeless.

It’s futile. When I come, when I stop and say, okay, that person that I have had a couple of anger episodes lately which just have come out of nowhere and they’re in there, right? And I’m not beating myself up over it. And I’m looking at it going, wait, I don’t want to be that person.

What do I need to do? It’s a part of you. So you’re taking the accountability to recognize, oh, that is in there. That is me.

I don’t want to be that version of myself anymore. So I want to correct it. But it’s not like you are pretending that that doesn’t exist.

Right. And it’s okay to have anger. It’s just not okay for me to voice that anger.

It’s okay to have flaws in this. It is, it is, it is. It turns out, it turns out it is not as true.

That’s the human part of us. So I would love to ask you something which is okay. I. You mentioned that you do a daily prayer.

Sounds like a meditation form to me. Would you say that you meditate every day. I don’t meditate formally.

Every day I do meditate. I am working on getting a consistent meditation practice and I haven’t been able to get very far with that. However, every morning I wake up and I have coffee with God.

So every morning I have three or four devotionals that I read. They’re not all religious, they are all self enhancing, self improvement and some of them contain scripture. And then I go and look up the scripture now on my phone.

I used to look it up in the Bible and I read that scripture and I reflect on it. I have a friend that we kind of send things back and forth to each other sometimes. Beautiful.

This happens every morning? Every morning. What a wonderful way to start the day. Yeah.

That’s amazing. I don’t miss it now. It can be 15 minutes and it can be two hours for sure.

And when I get to the two hours, then I do sit down and do the formal meditation. And my day does start with a simple prayer of, you know, show me what you want me to do today and help me to show up as the best representative of you as I can be. Yeah.

And it’s that simple. I think coining it as a formal meditation is true. That all sounded like meditation to me.

That sounds like you take some time to. Now, are you reading these? The four? You didn’t say scriptures, did you? The four. No, four devotional devotionals.

Are you reading those out loud or that is like an internal mantra for you? I read them internally and then sometimes they contain affirmations that I say out loud. Beautiful. Yeah.

I love that. I ask because along with the self love, self care, I have integrated meditating and I not every single day, but almost every single day of the week. And I love doing it with Laura too.

We do it every Tuesday and Thursday and then on the weekends when we’re together. But it’s a 15 minute meditation with meditation, soothing music, and I would love to walk you through what my meditation is. Please do.

I don’t think I’ve been able to break it down for anybody because it’s always internal. I feel like this is the right place to do. It is.

Yes. I always start by addressing the universe and saying how much I love the universe and that I’m thankful for the universe. And then I kind of lead myself into everything that I’m thankful and grateful for as a start to the day.

So opening my eyes, having ears to hear, having skin to touch, having a roof over my head, having a wonderful life partner next to me having two wonderful cats. Everything that I can think of very clearly visualizing and saying that I’m thankful and that I’m grateful for it. And then I move into a practice of self love where I. I transition from saying I love you to the universe to I love Jordan.

I love you, Jordan. I love myself saying it over and over and visualizing myself hugging my younger child self. And once I visualize that, and after a lot of this took a lot of months of practicing because normally when I meditate I can’t visualize anything.

But now I’ve gotten to a point where I can comfortably kind of move through these states. And I hug my younger self, tell myself that I love myself. Now in my most, probably the past three months, my younger self and then my current self and then my older future self.

And I address and embrace physically with all of them in different ways, though, my younger self is like kind of hugging my waist and I’m giving like a hug back with my hand kind of on the back of the head myself. I’m doing kind of like a handshake hug, bro hug kind of thing. In each of these.

I’m then looking at myself dead in the face and saying, I love you. I’m proud of you. I like visualizing, visualizing this.

Yeah. Internally I’m saying these things. Beautiful.

And then after that, I transition into basically positive affirmations to the universe with breathwork. So. Oh, I guess before anything I start with breathwork, just like focusing on breathing in, breathing out.

And then once I kind of feel in tune, hi, universe. I love you, universe, kind of opening the door. Everything I’m thankful for, loving myself in each version of myself.

And then the last part of the meditation is usually basically words of affirmation. So it’s like on my inhale, it’s like, inhale love, exude love, inhale peace, exude peace, whatever it is. And I also work on like inhaling whatever that’s positive and exhaling whatever is negative.

And I usually end with like a whole bunch of back to backs of just the Breathe in love, exude love. Breathe in love, exude love. I read something recently that was for so long I’ve said my main thing in life, all I want in life is to be happy, is to find happiness.

That’s what everybody wants. That’s what everybody wants, right. But I think that I’ve had my perspective changed.

I don’t think that I’m looking for happiness because that implies that there’s sadness. Okay. I think that I’m looking for peace.

Oh yes. If I can just have peace and tranquility in my life where I don’t have the worries and stress of these other emotions, I think that’s where I’ll be at. The full infinite bliss is the, the peaceful state.

So now I also work that into the meditation breath work where it’s like inhale peace, exude peace. Because that is what I think that I’m truly looking for. And yeah, that’s basically the meditation every day.

It’s right at about 15 minutes. It’s beautiful. Sometimes I do it twice a day.

Some. I also saw a video of Stevo, if you’re familiar with him. He’s from a very.

He’s like a stuntman, comedian basically. Have you ever heard of the films Jackass? Sure. Because of my older son.

Yeah, he’s in those. And he has been in and out of rehab over the years. But what he found on his.

Now he’s. I think he’s like 20 years sober or something. So what he found on the most recent one was meditating twice a day for 20 minutes.

Twice a day was the first thing to really align him with himself. He said that got him back on track with like, okay, I’m going to start my day like this and then at some point I’m going to, through all the craziness, I’m going to sit back down and I’m going to do another 20 minutes to kind of just hone back in on himself. And he did that and he said that it helped a lot.

So I’ve tried to adapt that with, you know, two 15 minute sessions. But sure, yeah, I usually hit one a day and that’s wonderful. It really has made me a lot more clear minded in terms of loving myself.

It’s just helped a lot with that journey. And so what you’re doing is spending time with yourself. Oh yeah.

And with the universe, saying that I am worthy of this time with myself. I’m worthy of these breaths. I’m thankful for these things.

It’s a relationship. It is. And it doesn’t just happen.

Takes time. Absolutely. And practice and communication, effort and honesty and all of the things that come with what you’re doing.

I really am grateful for your sharing of what your meditation looks like. Thank you for letting me share it. Yeah, I tend to.

I’m like overly ambitious, so I tend to do these complicated. Oh yeah. And, and then I don’t do them.

I definitely understand. So I think I’ll try the, the 15 minutes. Yeah.

And do you do that right when you wake up or do you have a cup of coffee first or what do you do? So I have read some things over the past few months that starting your day first, like rolling over in bed and looking at your phone, let’s say is the equivalent of taking like four espresso shots. Oh. Instantly from waking up.

So your brain will not be able to regulate itself properly throughout the day in terms of like your hormonal release. So serotonin, happiness, focus, what like fatigue, physical fatigue and mental fatigue or all can be directly correlated with the first 30 minutes of when you wake up. Which is all news to me.

This was new information. So I’ve cut out looking at my phone in the first 30 minutes I will usually like get up and use the restroom and drink a large glass of water and then I either sit or lay back down in bed and I meditate. So basically it’s the first thing that I do before actually starting.

Okay. And I swear I am so clear minded, I, I, so you’re, I’m going to butcher this, but your brain goes through different states of waves when you wake up. Yeah.

And balancing yourself through movement or meditation in that first 30 minutes regulates the brain waves and then basically eliminates midday fatigue. Helps you stay focused throughout the day, helps you regulate your serotonin release throughout the day so that it’s not just spiking and crash and Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s some merit to it. I feel like I have felt a difference over the last six months actually of like, wow, when I do this, I directly feel better the entire day versus even
recently.

I mean there was two days, Laura was traveling recently and there was two days where, you know, I went to bed really late, I woke up, didn’t really want to get out of bed, looking at my phone, kind of just rolling over, looking at my phone, scrolling on my phone. And now it’s been an hour. Now it’s been two hours still in bed on my phone.

And it turns out that now I pushed myself and would still work out in the day, but it would usually be so long, like 6 o’ clock at night. Like I didn’t want to do anything all day. I kind of was very lethargic and lazy.

And you know, I think that that is from not prepping my brain properly to start the day. So I guess it’s like little things like that. I’m thankful that I read that recently because I think that it did make a difference.

Absolutely. But yeah, it’s basically the first thing that I do when I wake up. And I would even recommend just doing a five minute meditation to start.

Fifth, I worked my way up to 15. Okay. I also struggle with overwhelming thoughts.

In therapy over the years, I’ve been told that I’m one of those people that doesn’t have 10,000 thoughts. I have 30,000 thoughts. So it’s just all, look at you, always going, I don’t like it.

I don’t either. I wish I could silence it. I have that too.

Yeah, it is. There’s certain brains that operate that way, but we don’t have to. It never stops.

And the Dr. Dispenza, Joe Dispenza, who’s the one I’ve been listening to and learning from, you know, he and any meditating teacher, it’s all about that. The mind does not control the body. The consciousness controls the mind.

And then the mind. And the mind. No, I’m getting this wrong.

Can overcome the body. So the body has the urges, you know, the body wants the ice cream or the drugs or the alcohol or whatever it is, the cigarettes, whatever it is the body wants. And we let that body win.

You know, we let that body control us. And that is not who’s supposed to be in charge. Rarely do I meet people that have a high sense of self worth because we’re not really taught that to be ingrained.

So there isn’t that self love to say, hey, wait, I don’t need to do what my body is really asking. This unhealthy thing or whatever the bad habit is. I can just say no, I love myself enough to not, not do that right now.

But I don’t think we’re taught that. So I don’t necessarily think it’s that easy. But I do think you can find that through meditation.

Well, you can find it in a lot of ways nowadays, right. I went to a yoga class this morning with a friend and I. And a real yoga class, not I. I normally just go to the restorative ones now. Like, oh, well, I’m older and I just want to go lay down and.

And I feel like those are probably still nice. They are wonderful. Does that mean Zen yoga when it’s the kind of more calm way? Probably.

I don’t know, it’s not the yoga nidra. But anyway, I went to a yoga yoga class today and man, I used to be able to do that stuff. Couldn’t do it.

And I couldn’t do it. I mean, I did it, but I didn’t do it at the level I wanted to. And it made me realize how out of balance I am.

And that’s simply because I haven’t been doing it. You know, I’ve been finding other forms of exercise. I don’t just sit around like a lump on a log, but.

And. Or not but. And I want to go back to yoga.

However, my overthinking brain thinks, okay, I gotta go five days a week. I got. You know, and it’s like, no, Carol.

Five minutes of meditation, yoga twice a week, maybe once a week. If you could do it once a week for the next six months. Right, that would be awesome.

And I have to retrain my brain before I forget one of the things I do for myself. A friend of mine was a gratitude coach, and she had us make a gratitude jar. So you can take any glass jar, any kind of vessel, actually, and put flowers or words.

I have the lettering gratitude. My gratitude jar. And then I write little.

I probably have over 50 little pieces of paper that I’ve cut out and fold in half. And on there, I write what I’m grateful for about myself. Oh, I love that.

And I have not looked at it in eons. I pulled it out last week, put it on the middle of my dining room table, and now I go by and I just reach one out, and it says, I am so grateful for me because. Oh, and it’s your past self.

Oh, that’s so sweet. It’s so beautiful. Yeah, that’s amazing.

And it reminds me of why it’s okay and important to be grateful and love myself. I love that. And so I put that out as a.

As a tip for the audience as well, that. Make yourself a beautiful. Or just a plain peanut butter jar that you put slips of paper in.

I also have a God box, so when I tell somebody I’m going to pray for them, I don’t remember to pray for them every day. Day. So I write it down and I put it in my God box, and I know that God’s taking care of it.

You don’t remember everybody’s situations and problems every single day? I don’t. Carol, come on. It’s not just about you.

It’s not. And so anyway, those are just little practices that I enjoy doing. I’ve been listening to Marcy Schimoff’s podcast.

Marcy wrote a book, It’s All About Happiness. She’s been a happiness researcher for eons, and she’s doing the Year of Miracles. So, of course, with my book, 10,000 Miles of Miracles, I also know Marcie because I am a certified passion Test facilitator.

And so I’m sending Marcie my book because I want to get on her podcast. I want to be a guest on her podcast. Smart.

And in that process, I have renewed my relationship, even though she doesn’t know. I’m listening to. With Marcy and her wonderful guests that talk about miracles.

And I’m currently listening to Anita Moorjani, who is the one that had cancer and died and came back and the lessons. She’s got a book called Dying to Be Me and reminding us that it is not about all those things we learned. It is not about the cars, the money, the houses.

It’s not even about the successes in life. It’s about remembering that we are love and we are loved. So I think that’s a beautiful reminder.

It’s such a huge thing that’s easily overlooked, that love aspect, especially towards yourself. But I mean, the state of the world. I don’t know if there’s a ton of love for others out there all the time from everybody, but I feel like you should love yourself.

You should love everybody. There should be more love. Love just radiating.

And that’s why I implemented into the meditation, because I do want to radiate love more. Yes. Yeah.

I believe. Thank you for sharing that, by the way. You’re welcome.

I believe the state of the world is happening because it will teach us to learn. It will teach us to love one another regardless. So I can’t say I’m going to love you if.

Yep. There can’t be a stipulation. Isn’t.

Or. I mean, that is a proper word to be used, but it can’t have strings attached. You can’t.

I don’t. I can’t make you think the way I think. Act the way I act.

Vote the way I vote. That’s like giving to charity and being like, well, I’m going to do this because I really hope that I get something back. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that’s not. That wasn’t the point.

So God. God has a way of getting our attention. And sometimes we have to get hit over the head with a two by four.

Oh, yeah. You got to go through some hard stuff sometimes, too. I believe that’s what’s happening in our global society, not just the United States, although we seem to be the.

The focus right now. I feel like we’re just in the middle of everything. Well, we think we’re.

We think we’re the leaders. We think we’re better all, you know. And I say we very loosely, but.

But it gives Me an opportunity to say, you know, I don’t agree with that at all for sure. And it doesn’t mean I. I get to withhold my love. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I need to pray for them. I do love that outlook on, like, because I do believe the, you know, darkest before the dawn, things get worse before they get better.

There’s always like mountains of up and down because you have to have yin and yang. You gotta have both. You have to have it all to have some.

That’s just how it works, you know, there isn’t light without dark. You appreciate the light more because. Because there’s dark and vice versa.

So I do like looking at the global situation, as you put it, which I agree with, as we’re going through a period where we’re learning to find that love ultimately again. And that might look like some crazy stuff and some not so much acts of love, but I, I love the thinking of this is all for a bigger purpose, to actually have us come all the way back around and see what we haven’t been doing, which is loving everybody, ourselves, each other and just living in unity as humans together, as though
we’re all so different or something. Right.

Turns out all of the humans are the same. That’s right. And we all want the same thing.

We want the same thing for ourselves. Like you said, you want to be happy. Now you’ve learned you want peace.

We all want. That’s what everybody wants. Everybody just wants to live our lives.

Want it for our children, we want it for our family, we want it for our friends. Nobody in any country anywhere is hoping that their situation is worse and that their life sucks. And so we get the opportunity.

Now the Course in Miracles teaches us that you’re either expressing love or you’re crying out for love. There’s only two ways of being in the world. You’re either expressing love or you’re crying out for love.

And the crying out for love part is fear. And unfortunately, that fear is being broadcast rather heavily as a control mechanism. 100%.

And if we’re not careful, we can fall into that, or we could stop and say, you know what? I’m just gonna love more. I’m just gonna love more. Even if I don’t agree, I’m just going to love more.

And let me tell you what, half of my family thinks very differently than I think. Same half of them, definitely same. I don’t try to change that.

I don’t love them any less because of that. This is me and Laura being vegan and never, ever have we ever pushed that on anybody? Why, that would be strange, I feel like. So I think it’s a beautiful opportunity for people to go inside, find out what’s inside for you.

Because what’s inside for me and what’s inside for Jordan is not what’s inside for you. We each have our own purpose in life. Jordan found his when he was 9.

I found mine when I was in my early 60s. I’m doing it now. I’m thrilled that I am doing it.

I’ve known about it, but I never really paid attention to it until now. But for the listeners, if you don’t know your purpose, it’s fine that you don’t know it. And if you want to get to know it, you’re going to have to get quiet, get to know yourself a bit, sit with yourself.

You’re going to have to do the things like Jordan described. It could be the visualizing of when you’re young, when you’re present, when you’re old. There’s many, many different practices that you can find throughout the teachings.

It all comes down to getting to know yourself better and have a relationship of love with yourself. That is spot on. Spot on.

Anything else you want to share, Jordan? No. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for asking me to be a guest, changing it up, making it a little different for me.

I love that and I feel like we’ve gotten even closer through this. So just appreciate the opportunity that you gave me. It’s a love fest.

It’s a love fest. Watch out, the love is coming for you. That’s right.

Well, I’m so glad you agreed to be on the show with me and to share your light and your love with our audience and tell them your experience of living from your inner voice and your higher power and whatever that is, that that’s your guidance and it brings you so much joy. So it’s available to everyone. I’m so grateful.

I’m so grateful for this opportunity. I’m grateful for all of the situations and circumstances that have led me to be right where I am today. Wonderful.

Do you want to share any contact information? Yeah. For anybody that is interested in starting your own podcast, whether that BE Sun Leaders or your own personal podcast endeavors, you can reach me@jordanaymon creative.com and we can start a conversation and start talking about how to make your dreams a reality. And if you’re interested in listening to some new music here soon, my old band, PM Tiger, is still YouTube videos and on Spotify and all that stuff.

But the new band Lucky Loser that I am so, so excited about. We may be releasing music at the end of this year, definitely 2026. So prepare yourself for some fun stuff.

Yay. Well, please get in touch with Jordan. You can reach me on Facebook at Carol Jones Hasbrouck.

I do have a book called 10,000 Miles of Miracles on Amazon. If you’re interested in learning how to follow your inner guidance system for a journey that your soul’s been crying out for. That is a great book.

You can, as I said, get it on Amazon. And I am looking for speaking opportunities if you know anyone that’s looking particularly for women’s groups or corporations that want to help their employees realize that they too have a purpose and to bring that purpose to light so that they can express themselves as themselves in the world. So thank you for joining us.

We’re always grateful to have you and we’ll see you next time. Time. Sam.