Hi. Welcome to the Conscious Connection podcast. I’m your host, Carol Hasbrouck.

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. Today I’m going to be sharing my notes on what I wrote down this morning about being spontaneous and taking leaps of faith throughout my life and the blessings that has brought to me. I’ve had many.

I realized when I was writing this list down it didn’t take me any time at all to make the list because they just pop. There were really big adventures and they just pop into my head and each and every one of them brought me mostly blessings. Every now and then I’d get a lesson or two because I’d jump in before I knew what I was doing.

And often I would jump in before I knew what I was doing. But every now and then that wouldn’t serve me well. So let’s get started.

I also believe that leaps of faith, doing things that you’re afraid to do or others might think you’re crazy, create neural. And I’m not a scientist, I’m not a neuroscientist at all, but I believe they create neural pathways that are new in your brain because it’s something you’ve never done before, you’ve never experienced before, and you have to navigate your way through it. So the brain is an instrument that we can create new pathways within it and teach it about how we want those pathways to
be.

So that’s about as scientific as I get. I was trying to think if I had any huge leaps of faith as a child, and so far I haven’t been able to come up with any. Maybe while I’m doing this, something will come to mind, but I think I pretty much lived the regular, ordinary kind of play by the rules childhood.

I wanted to make sure my mom was happy, and in order to do that, I had to kind of play by the rules. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was no angel, but I didn’t get caught because I was the third one. So I learned how not to get caught.

Or maybe my mom just had blinders up by then and she didn’t want to see, so she chose not to. So. So as a child, I didn’t have a lot of leaps of faith the first real true leap of faith for me was when I graduated from college and I was 21 years old.

I had inherited about $1,200 from an aunt maybe five years earlier. And that money got put away and I wasn’t allowed to use it until I graduated from college or, or turned 21. And so I got the money and bought a stereo because that’s what every good college student does.

And then the leftover money. So on $700. A friend of mine and I got in the car in St. Petersburg, Florida and drove to California.

It was a blast. Now I was trying to think about the different cities we went to and experiences we had and only a few stood out. It’s been a long time, obviously since I was 21 years old, but for me I really wanted to see the Rocky Mountains and of course that was along the way.

And Boulder was one of my very favorite places to go to on that trip. So Kathy and I got in the car and, and headed out. We did not.

We had a plan of where we were going, we had a map, but we didn’t know where we were staying and we didn’t know what we were going to do when we got to the different places. Now also this morning I thought about my mother because now I’m an adult and I’m a mother and even a grandmother. And I thought, oh my gosh, she must have been terrified that her daughter was getting in the car with another 21 year old woman and driving across the country with an atlas and that was it and $700.

But we did, we had a blast and we ended up in Tahoe. Lake Tahoe. Now Lake Tahoe is the most sacred place I’ve ever been.

This is my own personal perspective, the most sacred place I’ve ever been. I’ve been back to it maybe eight or nine times since. I absolutely love the spirit, the energy, the beauty of Lake Tahoe.

I ended up falling in love with a man. There’s usually a man involved in my stories, which makes it kind of humorous for me now. And I moved out there, I came back and got all my stuff and, and moved out to Lake Tahoe and lived there for four and a half years.

Now what that did for me was many things, but also what it did for me was I got to snow ski. I had never even seen snow before I went there. I got to snow ski, I got to hike, I got to sail.

I didn’t. Even though I grew up in Florida, I didn’t do a lot of sailing. Now get this.

I learned how to water ski on Lake Tahoe. I grew up in St. Petersburg with warm waters and I learned how to water ski with really, really cold water in Lake Tahoe. But I tell you what, when you learn how to ski in Tahoe, you learn how to stay up so you don’t fall down into that water.

I just had so many blessings and events in my life that I look back and I think that was such a good thing for me to do. I call it sowing my oats. I just went and I had fun.

And I was a waitress. I had a four year degree in finance. And I went and waited tables and became a ski bum.

And what a great time I had. And I’m so glad I did it now again. My mother when I left was not happy with me and when I got back was still not happy with me.

Now she loves me. So she didn’t show it outwardly, but I could tell she wasn’t happy with me. Years later she said to me, you know, that was probably one of the best things you could have ever done, was to go out there and spend a few years on your own figuring out life.

And that’s exactly what I did. And the boyfriend didn’t last. That’s okay.

Lasted a couple of years, three and a half years. And a year after we split up, I thought, you know, this is a lot of work living in this snow. So I’m going to move back to Florida where it’s a lot easier to live.

That was my first leap of faith. The second one that I could think of today was another journey across the country when my friend Joyce and I got in the car as Dame’s Gone Wild. And we traveled 10,000 miles serving charities and staying with host families.

Now this time we only had $500 and it was 30 some odd years later. So 500 was worth a lot less than 700. Back in 1977 is when I would have first left.

This trip was in 2012. But we got in the car and we drove 10,000 miles. We served 30 organizations.

We stayed with 26 host families. We only knew 12 of them before we left. So 14 plus places we stayed we had to find along the way.

Some of them were friends of friends of friends. Some of them were people we had just met. And again, if my mother had been alive at that time, she would have thought I was crazy and she probably would have worried about me.

But fortunately she was one of my angels in heaven, along with my father, and they were watching over us. We Never experienced a bad circumstance in three and a half months. Everyone we met was wonderful.

We learned that people have a basic goodness inside of them. And that’s a really powerful thing for me to know that basically people are good because there’s a lot of crap going on in our world right now. And there was, even then, a lot going on in the world.

And if I focus on that, that’s what I’m going to bring into my life. But if I focus on the goodness of people and the love that we met and the love that we shared, then that’s what I’m going to bring into my life. Now, out of that journey, I wrote a book.

And that book has now propelled me to start a speaking career. I’m almost 70 years old. I’ll be 70 in December.

I know I don’t look it, but you can’t see me. And that was a joke. I’ll be 70 in December, and I’m starting a speaking career at 69 years old.

Now, most people wouldn’t do that. And I’m not saying I’m special, but I am different because I’m willing to take leaps of faith. Now, that speaking career is going to help people follow their inner guidance system, teach them how to do that.

It’s really a very easy, simple process. Most people just haven’t taken the time to do the steps that are needed to find out what it is that excites them in life and then get quiet and tune into themselves to do that, and then get the tools to bring that into fruition. I’m also doing.

I just wrote a keynote speech on I’m tired of pretending I’m fine. Now. One of the organizations I’m in, the acronym for fine is Effed Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.

So whenever anybody says I’m fine to you, you can just kind of smile and say, no, really, how are you? Because if they’re just saying they’re fine, they might be fine. But oftentimes we say, oh, I’m fine. No, really, I’m fine.

And we’re not. We’re anything but fine. And so I’m going to share that with audiences.

And I have a program I’ve put together to help people walk. Walk through that not feeling fine, and get from fine to free. And so that was a leap of faith.

Still, it’s an ongoing leap of faith that I’m doing. I just put my first Facebook post out, asking my friends to introduce me to event planners and retreat organizers, even leadership development within organizations. Because what I teach about helps organizations as well as individuals.

Of course, individuals Organizations are made up of individuals. And so I just put my first Facebook post out because I asked my buddy AI what was one thing I could do to get the ball rolling. And the answer was just post it on Facebook and tell people you’re looking for that.

Well, I have five leads now for people that might or might not turn in to be my next speaking engagement so that I can become a paid professional speaker, which is something I’ve wanted to do since I was about 30 years old. I did it for a little bit in my early 30s, and then I stopped and I had babies. And that’s fine.

I had children. Best thing that ever happened to me was having my children. But a lot gets put on the back shelf for.

For people when they start a family. And again, it’s the greatest blessing I’ve ever had was having my boys. Okay, so the next thing I have on my list is this podcast.

When Josh asked me, Josh Naiman of Naaman Creative, who produces this podcast. I had just met Josh maybe three or four weeks prior, and he said he had a podcast and he was looking for podcast hosts. And I raised my hand, and then I thought, what am I doing? I don’t know how to do a podcast.

And then my spirit just kept saying my soul was nudging me. Just do it. Just see what it’s like.

You’ve never done it before. Just do it. And it has been the most amazing experience of my life.

I don’t know where this podcast will go. I don’t know who’s listening to this podcast and who it’s possibly helped, but I know for myself, and it has helped my leadership skills, it has helped speaking skills, it has helped me get the word out of what my intentions are in life. I’ve become friends with Jordan, who’s the producer here, and he’s just an amazing man.

And I wouldn’t have made that friendship had it not been for this podcast, so. So this podcast was a giant leap of faith for me, and I’ve been doing it for, I think, about 15 months now, and it’s just been wonderful. I am going to take a little hiatus from it, but I will come back, I promise.

There. I said it to the world. So now I have to.

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Visit naimancreative.com to have your voice be heard. Okay, the next thing on my leap of faith journey is a couple of months ago, I took an acting class. Now, I have always kind of wanted to be an actress.

I’ve never put any energy into it, time or energy into it. And one of the ladies that I go to church with, it’s at an art studio and a production studio, and I said to her, erica, do you think it would be beneficial for me to take an acting class if I want to be a professional speaker? And she said, absolutely. So in a few weeks, they had one offered there, and I signed up with Bill Levengood, who’s a very renowned local playwright and actor, and he taught us the Meisner technique.

I’d never even heard of it. It was right up my alley. He said, I want you to express exactly how you feel and hold nothing back.

I’m like, are you kidding me? I have been waiting my whole life to do that. And that’s what acting is. You have to put yourself in these different roles.

And in order to put yourself in these different roles, you have to allow the roles that I am to come out and not to tamper them, not to hold them in and try to construct them so I sound good and look good. No, I have to be me. And so that was a very fun class.

And now I’m in an OODA, and I can’t remember OODA’s last name, but I’m in an OODA acting class. And it’s a completely different technique. I never even knew there were different techniques for acting classes.

So that is just a lot of fun. And it’s surprising. When I tell people I’m in acting classes, the reaction typically is, oh, my gosh, that sounds like so much fun.

I wish I would do that. Well, do it, you know. And so I had my first staged reading last Saturday.

I had been to one acting class, and Bill sent me this notice that they were looking for participants for this staged reading in Tampa. And I said, bill, I’ve had one class with you. You really think I qualify? He said, absolutely.

So I contacted the woman. The only question she asked me was if I was a union member. And I said no.

She never asked me if I had any experience. And I went and read the play Dinner with Beverly with a group of very well known local actors here in town. It was such a wonderful experience because I thought I would be really nervous, and I wasn’t.

I was A little nervous and that’s okay because that gives me energy. I wasn’t nervous. Now I didn’t invite anyone I knew because I didn’t want to look out and see anyone I knew in the audience.

But I still felt like it was a great introduction into the acting world. I have no idea if I’ll ever be on stage again as an actress. However, I’m getting myself prepared just in case.

And guess what? I’m having a ton of fun along the way. Oh, and by the way, I got paid to do that staged reading, so. So I am an official, professional paid actress now.

All because I took a leap of faith and I said, you know, I’ve never taken an acting class. I think I’ll do that and just see what it’s like. What if I had said, oh, I’m not going to be any good at that and you know, people will laugh.

What if people don’t like what I. If I did all of that self deprecating talk that we can sometimes do, I would never have experienced what I got to experience last Saturday on that stage with I think there were seven of us with six other professional. I mean these people had degrees in acting and act in plays here locally all the time. And there I was and I think I did pretty well.

I only messed up once and I didn’t pay any attention. I just kept going and you know, because I’m human, so it’s okay. So my acting class, I just love.

Another thing I’ve started doing that I never thought I would do or it just never had crossed my mind is I’m doing weekly breath work with the WIM hof. I don’t know if you’ve heard of WIM hof but if you haven’t, it’s w I M H o F I think and look that up if you’re interested in breathwork. He does a very interesting technique that just surprises the heck out of me how I am able to get enough oxygen into my body that I can literally hold my breath for I don’t know how long it is.

I don’t time it, but every time I think I have to take a sip of breath, I don’t and I hold it even longer. And the benefits of that breath work. Then I see colors that I’ve never seen.

And let me tell you, I’ve been on some. I’m a child of the 70s, okay, so I’ve seen some colors before but not naturally, not from breathing. And so I get with a group of people on Friday Mornings at Plunsana on near Home depot off of 22nd Avenue.

And we do an hour of breath work outside with some wild music, too. I love the music because it’s very energetic, heartbeat kind of music. And so I’m doing that now.

And who knows where that will lead to, but for now it’s enough. I don’t need it to lead anywhere. I’m getting the nerve up to do the cold plunge because they also have the cold plunge there and I haven’t done it yet.

And I’m going to do it. So I just put that out there, too. And I’ve told Michael, the owner of the company, that I will do it.

I just haven’t gotten the nerve to do it. And who knows? I might love it, I might hate it, but I’m going to try it because if I don’t try it, I just won’t know. So I’m going to do the cold plunge.

Now, I used to jump into Lake Tahoe, so it can’t be any colder than that. And I would stay in for a good 10 minutes when I’d go into Tahoe, but I was a lot younger. It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m going to give it a try.

The last thing on my list about Leap of Faith is, and I was counting the men I’ve been in love with on the way here today. And I have been in love with seven men in my lifetime. I mean, love, love, not just infatuation, not just lust, but actually in love with seven men.

And I feel like they need to be named so Bob, Michael, Lou, Bruce, Pierre and Jim. And even though none of them lasted forever, whatever that is, they all will always be forever in my heart. And there’s not one of them that I wouldn’t gladly give a hug and a kiss to if I saw them.

Now, I couldn’t say that right away, of course. I had to work through my process of being rejected or me rejecting them or whatever it was. And Lou died.

So he’s the one I see and talk to the most. Isn’t that interesting? But he is the one I see in my dreams and talk to in my waking days the most because we still have a very strong connection. But that’s a leap of faith, you know, I could just shut my heart down and say I am never, ever opening my heart to another man.

Because if I do, it might get broken. If I do, I might get hurt again. If I do, it might end up the same as all the others.

And then I wouldn’t get to experience the beauty of each of those relationships. Each of those relationships were beautiful, and they brought different gifts into my life that I would have never had had I not met those men and fallen in love and spent time with them. So I’m really grateful for those leaps of faith.

And it is a leap of faith. I mean, when you decide you’re going to commit yourself to another human being, whether it’s a man, a woman, whatever it is, it’s a leap of faith to commit yourself. And I highly encourage you to give that a try.

If you haven’t, or if you have and you’ve shut down, I mean, let me tell you what, especially after this last one, that was three and a half years ago, when we split up, I shut down big time. I didn’t want any man, any relationship, anything near me. And it softened.

It always does. It’s kind of like having a baby and the pain of having that baby. And you think, I am never having another baby.

And then we forget and we have another baby. So I’m really glad that for the men in my life, and like I said, most of my stories in life have. Have revolved around some guy that I met and that took me down a road I would have never thought I would go down.

My wish for you is that you walk through your fears, that you walk into them with your eyes open. Now, I’m a Sagittarian, so we are typically very spontaneous people. We’re very playful and happy.

I’m very much in the moment. I am an in the now person. I don’t make a lot of plans.

I have plans of having a speaking career, but I don’t have plans that I’m going to speak in this place first and then in this state next, and then I’m going to fly. I don’t. That says too much for me.

Some people are great at that. I just know I’m going to have a speaking career and I just need to take the first step in order for that to happen. So I just encourage you.

If you’re uncomfortable, that’s exactly where you should be exploring. It doesn’t have to paralyze you. Just look at it and walk toward it.

Take little baby steps. I’ve also started a new mantra. My son, who takes after his mother, just left on Saturday for two months in Costa Rica.

He works remotely, so he will still be working while he’s there. He’s going through a separation in his marriage, and he said, mom, I got to do something different. And I said, great.

What are you going to do? He said, I think I’m going to go live in Costa Rica. I said, what a great idea, because I would have done the same thing. So I took him to the airport on Saturday, and he’s there doing that.

So we’re both doing a new mantra, and Gary King with the Happiness Project taught us about this on Friday. And you take a piece of twine, and you tie 20 little knots in that twine. Not rope, but twine, and you tie 20 little knots.

And I realized it’s a lot like a rosary from the Catholic Church. I was raised Catholic. And each knot, every time, in the morning and in the evening.

So right when you wake up and right before you go to sleep, you put your finger on the knot and you say, little by little, day by day, my life is getting better in every way. And you go to the next knot and you say, little by little, day by day, my life is getting better in every way. Well, I started this because I thought it would help my son and asked him if he was interested.

And he’s just so. He doesn’t want to hurt his mom’s feelings, so he’s like, yeah, sure, I’ll take that with me. And so then the other night, we decided together that we would commit to doing that while he’s in Costa Rica in the morning and in the evening.

And so I’m doing it too now, because, of course, I want my life to get better every day, even if it’s little by little. Especially if it’s little by little, because then it’s not so drastic. And we’re doing that together as a family mantra to change our subconscious mind that rules our daily life.

Now I find myself throughout the day saying my mind is saying, little by little, day by day, my life is getting better in every way. So I’ve only been doing it for two days, and I now say that to myself all the time. So I just encourage you.

If you want to reach out to me, please feel free to do so. You can find me on Facebook at Carol Jones Hasbrouck, and I’d be happy to share some of the tools I use to walk through things that make me uncomfortable, because none of these things are. They all come with discomfort.

They all come with a level of anxiety and fear. And I just say, you know what? It’s not gonna kill me. I’m gonna give it a try.

Maybe I’ll love it. And I just wish that for you, too, so that you can live the life that you desire and the life that you deserve and I always stop and check in with my inner guidance system now I say always that’s not true I am now learning to stop and check in with my inner guidance system before I take that leap of faith. So if you know how to tell the difference between your ego because your ego is absolutely going to tell you not to do that your ego is here to protect you and keep you safe
or at least it thinks it is.

You think it is but your inner guidance system only wants what’s best for you only so if you can differentiate between the two again I can help you with that. If you can’t and you’ll tap in and ask is this in my highest and best interest? Is this where the divine wants me to go? Is this where the universe is calling me? Because we all have different callings and different purposes and I am so glad that I have Learned in my 69 years to take that leap of faith and just pray there’s a net. Sa.