20: Moments in Feeling
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My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Hello, my beautiful people, and welcome back to the Moments Podcast.

I seriously missed you guys so much last week. I sat down to record an episode and I was sitting in the car and I was about to record. Actually, I started recording. I recorded like five minutes and I was like, you know what? I don't think I'm going to do an episode this week. We were on week 20 or episode 20. Isn't that crazy to think about? 20 episodes in and I've somehow managed to stay consistent and on top of it. I'm really proud of myself for that. So honestly, I'm going to pat myself on the back for a second. I'm going to pat myself on the back for a second.

But I really do think it's just because I love this podcast so much, it's hard for me to not think about it every single day. And I'm always thinking about new things I want to talk about, or I'm always writing things down that I want to include in the next week's episode. But I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy to be back. And when I tell you guys, not that I've been going through it for the past week, because honestly I haven't, but I've been feeling the motions the past couple weeks. I mean it. And that's kind of what I want to make this episode all about. So I'm titling it Moments in Feeling.

moments and feeling everything. I mean, feeling joy, feeling happiness, feeling overwhelmed, feeling stressed, feeling anxious, everything you could imagine. And I told you guys last week or when I posted that I wasn't doing an episode this week, it's because something really exciting was happening this week. That might be a little bit delayed or it might not. Honestly, it's like a 50-50 chance, but there's a slight chance that you guys are watching this or seeing that this is also a

a podcast that's available on YouTube, meaning you can watch it instead of listen to it where I'll record myself on camera as I record it on the audio. So that's super exciting. And I really can't wait for that chapter of my life because I do love YouTube. I love creating, but I also love this podcast and I don't know, I'm just looking forward to it. So I don't know if this episode is available on YouTube, but if it is, let's go. I'm so excited. This is going to be a weekly thing and I'm going to film all of the episodes from now on.

So that is freaking hype. And also, do you guys know what else is hype? The Instagram account literally just hit 50K. Right as I was about to start recording this, I looked at the Instagram and we hit 50K on our Moments podcast and I could not be happier. I love that Instagram just as much as I love the podcast. And if you guys don't follow it, I'd love if you go did that because basically what I post on there is like every day or sometimes every other day, I'll post just like a little

Either a photo that I've taken or a photo that I found on Pinterest with some kind of inspiration or quote or anything on there that just really helps someone, I don't know, get your day going. Because I love Instagram graphics. Like my explore page is one of my favorite things ever and I spend so much time scrolling through my explore page. Okay, I can't speak English, but I love scrolling through my explore page. And I don't know, just reposting things on my stories, saving them to my collection, writing things in my notes that I find on there.

And overall, I don't know. I just love it. I don't really know where I was going with that. But back to the episode, it really feels like I haven't recorded in so long. And honestly, that's because I haven't. And there has been so much going on in my life lately that I've just been all over the place. So I'm so grateful for that. And I'm so excited for what the future holds. But it's been super hard for me to stay focused.

like focused and zoned in on one thing because there's so many moving pieces in my mind right now and I think that that has been a huge factor in all of the different emotions that I've been feeling and I want to give you guys a little bit of an update these past I can't say a week because it's honestly been two or three weeks I've been dealing with a lot of just overwhelming heaviness and and being stressed and being anxious and losing track and just wasn't really on like

like a high. I wasn't on cloud nine. And I think that that was hard for me because if you guys listen to an episode, I don't know if it was maybe a month ago, three weeks ago, I was talking about how happy I was and how I had everything figured out and you can do it too and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can, but there's definitely waves. You can't stay on that high the whole time and there's nothing wrong with that.

Because honestly, the most learning that we do is when we do go through those lows and we have to go up to go down and we have to go down to go up. And it's all just part of the cycle and it's a beautiful cycle. And I think that that's the awareness. That's the point I'm getting to right now, which is where I finally feel ready enough to talk about kind of what I was feeling. And this might sound like,

Oh, were you depressed again? Were you blah, blah, blah? No, I was really doing just fine. I was happy. I was a happy little bean, but I was just feeling emotions that I hadn't felt in a little while. And I know that that happens to the best of us. And I'll get more into it, but quick little life update. I spent...

about a month and a half in Hawaii this second time around you guys know last time I was out there I was out there for like six or seven months and this time around in Hawaii I was on top of the world I felt so good I felt so much better than I did the first time and I was planning on coming home at the end of February from that Hawaii trip and then just staying home for good and

But before I left Hawaii, I'm living on the island of Oahu. So there's a bunch of islands in Hawaii and I wanted to visit a different island, Kauai. And I also had this really cool work opportunity that was there.

But it was a super last minute trip and I didn't know how to fit it into my schedule because I was already starting to get stressed just because I knew I was coming home and there was so much that I had to do before I left. But I decided to go on the trip anyways and it was so much fun and I met the most amazing people, had some of the most incredible experiences. I went to the coolest freaking places and hikes ever.

But that being said, that whole time I was there, I was kind of just in this weird emotional state and I couldn't figure out why. And I was with someone who I love so much. I've talked about her on here before and I will continue to talk about her. She's going to be on the podcast one of these days, Hannah Gerash. She is like such a genuine human being and she is someone who I relate to so much on so many levels. And we just had a lot of like deep conversation and a lot of

talking about our emotions which I think is what made me feel my emotions even more and honestly looking back that's such a good thing but at the time I did not want to be feeling like that I was in this beautiful place with these really awesome people doing these awesome things and I couldn't shake certain feelings that I had been feeling but again I'll get back into that this is just supposed to be a little life update and then after Kauai I was back on Oahu for literally like 12

Out no, not 12 hours 24 hours and 12 of those hours. I had a really awesome brand deal with this company guys I don't know if you've ever heard of waikoko coconut water But I found them last year when I was out in hawaii and i've been obsessed with them ever since I always tag them in my story and and they finally one day like responded to me tagging them in their story and they're actually like local to hawaii so they can only ship to the mainland if you order on amazon, but

They reached out and they were like, hey, like, let's go do a photo shoot. Like, we can go to this secret island. And I was like, oh, my God. Heck, yeah. Like, it was such a full circle moment considering how long I've been obsessed with Waikoko and how long I've been drinking their coconut water. This is literally not an ad at all. This is just personally, you guys have to try this coconut water.

If you're in Hawaii or order it on Amazon, I don't know. Up to you. Anyways, so I did that all day and then we got home late that night and I had to pack because that weekend we were going to San Diego for Hannah's 21st birthday. If you guys haven't seen that all over, it was a bunch of us. It was literally so much fun, but it was another one of those things where I wanted to be super excited for it, but I

But I was just overwhelmed. And when you're overwhelmed and you don't have any time to sit with yourself and to figure things out mentally, that feeling doesn't quite just disappear. Obviously, there's ways to push it back. And that's what I did a lot of that weekend. But now I finally come home. I've had time by myself. I've had time to reflect and understand why I felt all those emotions. So that's what I really want to talk about.

And now I'm home for two days. Wow, I'm all over the place, aren't I? For two days, and I'm going to New York with my family for four days just to visit my mom's side of the family because we haven't seen them in so long. And I skip every family ski trip because I'm not big on the skiing. I don't like the snow. I don't like the cold. But this year I really wanted to go. So I'm going with them. Then I'm home for...

little while maybe five days and then I have a spring break trip planned which I'm so excited about but I'm stressing myself out thinking about all that I'm gonna choose to be present and be in this moment and talk about the emotions that I have been feeling and how I'm healing from them and why they're just so important and I also I want to go into this for a second I want to talk about how grateful I am for every opportunity and every experience that I've had in my life and

And I just want to make it clear that when I'm on here and I'm talking about my emotions or how I sometimes feel burnt out or overwhelmed or stressed, I want to talk about this on a general scale because I know that these emotions can relate to so many people. And I simply want to talk us all through them. And I know we're all in different situations. And I don't know, lately that's just been weighing on me. I saw this TikTok and it was super messed up. It was like...

Talking about people in like my line of work and how they're so ungrateful and they always talk about burnout, but they're just these privileged blah blah blah blah blah. I understand that I'm privileged and I feel so lucky to live this life. And the only reason I talk about these emotions is one because it's important for all of us to feel our emotions and just because a situation is different, things can still affect our minds the same way just because we have different lives.

And I don't know, the TikTok was just hard for me to see. And I just wanted to be very, very open about the fact that I am grateful and I know that I'm lucky. And that's not what talking about these emotions is. I'm not supposed to sit here and complain. That's not what I'm doing. I'm talking us all through the things that we feel. I just really wanted to put that out there because I don't know. I just needed to for my own state of mind. Because here we go. Moments and feelings.

Sometimes the most beautiful things can be happening around you. Like you can be in the most awesome place with the most awesome people, just like I was talking about Kauai, but you still just feel and you're not always sure what you're feeling or why you're feeling it, but you definitely feel it.

Sometimes these emotions can just weigh on you so heavy and you try everything, every possible coping mechanism that you can think of, like sitting there and writing down what you're grateful for or being out in the outdoors or putting your phone down, turning away your screen time, meditating, journaling. You can try it all and sometimes you're still going to feel.

And this was super hard for me because when I was in Kauai, it was the day February 22nd, 2022. So it was supposed to be a really, really powerful day energetically. And I was just feeling off. Like I expected to wake up that day and was thinking, oh, the universe is going to give me so many signs today. I'm going to learn so much about myself. I'm going to feel so good and so healed. And instead, God or the universe, whoever it is that you choose to believe in, decided that

to hand me emotions. And I was like, I thought I was going to learn something really cool about myself today and you're just going to make me sad. Right? So that's how I felt in the morning of that day. And then I came to terms with the fact that that is exactly what I'm supposed to be being taught right now is that I have to feel my emotions because for years and years and years, I just avoided my emotions like a crazy person. I was seen as the one who is always so positive, always so happy, literally everything.

unicorns, rainbows, and bubbles all the time. And I still consider myself to be one of those people. But now, the older I get, the more real life shit, excuse my language, that I have to deal with. And as we grow up, we just have to deal with stuff. And it's not fun, but you definitely get tested responsibility-wise and just so many things. So I was feeling all my emotions and I

And what older or what younger me would have done or me, a past version of myself, would just take those emotions, bury them deep, deep down, block them out with this positivity. And I still do that. Don't get me wrong. But for so long, I would go months at a time feeling sadness, feeling anxiousness, feeling stressed and overwhelmed and just tuck it down under until one day I would have a breaking point and I would just be unwell and it would all just flow out.

And that's what I was supposed to be taught is that you can't do that. When you feel your emotions, if you let yourself feel them, they pass a lot quicker and they don't build up inside of you creating these blockages and just this negative subconscious. When you feel it and allow yourself to feel it and believe that you're on the wave for a reason, it passes so much quicker.

And I started to have that realization, right? And then I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's why I'm feeling this. That's why all of this is going on. I need to talk about it. I need to write about it. So I got my journal out and I went to start writing and I couldn't write anything. Nothing was coming to me. My brain literally just turned off and I was so bummed about it.

And then the realization I had from that was that you have to allow yourself to learn and to feel and to truly accept what you're being taught before you're capable of sharing it with someone else. This is something that Hannah Jara and I talked about is that you have to fill yourself up, fill your own cup before you can start overflowing into other people's cups. You can't take an empty cup and fill someone else's because you're not going to give them anything.

And that all goes back to how something that's so important to me is sharing things that I genuinely feel or relate to or am genuinely passionate about sharing. And every once in a while in situations like that, I'll catch myself trying to force these lessons onto other people when I haven't even fully processed them myself. And this can go into so many different aspects of life.

And the one aspect that I noticed it the most is that you have to be able to love yourself before you can love others. And I've talked about this before, but you really, really do need to learn how to love yourself before you can overflow that love into other people. Because also the past couple of weeks, I struggled a lot with insecurity. And honestly, I've been a pretty confident gal lately, like since...

I don't know. I've just been feeling better about myself overall than I was about a year ago or even six months ago. And I noticed myself falling off of that track and I was so unhappy with like what I looked like, what I felt like, just stupid little things that should not really phase me were really phasing me. And...

It would cause me to not ruin relationships with people. I don't really know exactly how to explain this, but I would find myself comparing myself. I would find myself being more jealous of people around me. And that's not something that makes me happy. That's not something I want to do. I don't like jealousy. I like to be the one who is ecstatic for the people around me, like from a genuine place. Like I just really get happy for other people.

And I noticed that when I'm struggling with my own self-worth and my own insecurity, it's harder for me to do that. So what I really had to do was start loving myself again. And I noticed that, wow, when you do that, it's crazy how much the two affect each other. Genuine happiness for others and less comparison really starts to show and it really comes out.

So that's what I mean when I say you have to fill your cup before you can fill other people's cup. And do what you want with that. Take it however you'd like, but write that down. You have to fill your own cup before you can fill someone else's cup. And I finally was able to talk to my therapist about all of this yesterday because I hadn't been able to because I'd been so busy. And we went over a lot of stuff. And I just want to share some of those things today.

that she explained to me with you. Happiness is not seeking pleasure. It's not running from the emotions that you feel. But happiness is truly being able to find peace amongst this chaos. Everything can't be perfect all the time. We've learned that. We all know that. Yes, we can choose to focus on the good and that is something that I strongly believe in, but it can't be perfect.

So happiness isn't constantly chasing that pleasure, that short-term fixation of being on cloud nine. And I think that for a little while, even recently, that's what I thought it was. That's why when I got to cloud nine, I was like, oh, cool. I'm going to be able to stay here forever because I have all this awareness now. No, no. Finding that true peace is when you can find the happiness. Life is going to get busy. It's going to get overwhelming.

But when you can sit through that and you can learn from that and you can truly feel it and be able to move past it, that's the key. Be able to move past it. That's when you're going to find that true happiness. We need all of those emotions to continue to understand what happiness really is and what it feels like. We wouldn't know if we didn't experience. And I have an example. I want you to think about it this way. Like when I...

lost my grandpa back in December. Obviously, that was sad. That was really freaking hard for my family and for everyone who knew him. But one thing that we were able to take away from it is this new appreciation for life and this understanding that life is short and that the day comes before you even know it's going to come.

And it teaches you. It teaches you that appreciation. And that's why you need these experiences. You need to go through these emotions, this grieving, this sadness. And not always just grieving. I mean like everything in general. You have to go through it to learn from it to find a point where you really do understand it all. You understand why you have these highs and why you have these lows. But overall, you can look at it from this bird's eye view. You look at this bigger picture and you begin to notice...

That if those small little things didn't happen, you wouldn't understand this. You wouldn't really feel happy if those negative events didn't happen.

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But everything that Thrive has to offer is an absolute 10 out of 10. And I don't say this lightly. I say it from the bottom of my heart. I love everything about this brand. And honestly, being able to tell you about them is such an honor for me.

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Quick little intermission, you guys. We all know how important it is to prioritize the right things in our life. And maybe for you, that's prioritizing doing leg day at the gym or making sure you go for your hot girl walk. But how often are you prioritizing your mental health and making sure that therapy is a part of your weekly routine? If it's something that you've been open to, if it's something that you've been considering, I highly recommend BetterHelp. And thank you so much to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode.

I absolutely love BetterHelp. I love therapy. I have talked about it over and over and over again. And that is for a reason. It is the greatest thing ever. Having an outlet and a person to talk to about what you're going through and getting unbiased opinions and advice is so, so beneficial.

So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just have to fill out a brief questionnaire and you'll get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash moments today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash moments. Now, I don't know if that makes sense, but in my mind it did. And all that being said...

Another thing that's really important to note is that you are not your thoughts. You're not a body, but you're a soul. And you get to choose whether or not you become these emotions. And I know that those two things can sound a little bit contradicting, but the goal here is to create a new lens, a way to be able to feel the emotions so that you're not pushing them down, you're not hiding them. But instead of looking at them as pain, as sorrow, you look at them as growth.

And I say this over and over on every episode, pretty much on all my Instagram posts. Anytime I post a motivational TikTok, you have to see these negative, I put that in quotes, emotions as growth, a learning experience, a learning curve. Because when you do that, when you shift that mindset, the way that you think about it, it feels a whole lot different. And it doesn't feel so much like pain, but it just feels like feeling.

This is also kind of a random little tidbit that I want to throw in there. I also talked to my therapist about how my anxiety has been better. And we dug a little bit deeper into it. And she goes, haven't you been talking about how you've been super like hyper aware lately? And I was like, yeah, I've been talking to my therapist about how my anxiety has been better.

And I was like, yeah, yeah. Like I just like know what's going to happen in situations and I'm just really aware and I don't really know why. She goes, in your mind, you were able to shift anxiety into awareness. And she's like, you, a couple months ago, if you were telling me that, instead of being like, oh, I was so aware, I knew blah, blah, blah, blah was going to happen. You would have been like, oh, I'm so anxious because I know blah, blah, blah is going to happen. Isn't that crazy? I literally, in my mind, subconsciously,

Instead of saying I had anxiety, I changed it. I shifted it into having awareness. And obviously everyone's situation is different. I know there are certain times where my anxiety cannot be confused for awareness because I am sitting there physically anxious about serious things. But in some situations, I've just found myself making that shift and it's really cool to see it happen naturally now. And it just goes to show the power of your mindset, of your thoughts, of all of it.

So I just wanted to share that. And another thing I've really realized lately is that gratitude is so much more powerful than we realize. And by gratitude, I don't just mean sitting there and being like, oh, I'm so thankful for my mom. I'm so thankful for my dad. I'm so thankful that there is a roof over my head. Yes, that's gratitude. But I mean just like real, real, real gratitude.

towards everything that happens in your life. And I posted it on Instagram the other day. And the Instagram caption, I didn't even plan on writing it. Like I was just trying to write a simple little caption and it ended up being really long. This life is the only one that you get. Make this one worth living. And by that I mean give meaning to each and every day. Learn something from bad days. There's always a lesson. There's always something to be grateful for and you won't find those things by choosing to focus on what you lack.

Because you'll notice, as you do that, you find more and more things that you're missing. Now imagine how incredible the other side of this would be. Choosing to focus on gratitude and being able to find so many more things to be grateful for. Step out of your comfort zone. Do the things that scare you. Create new memories. Along the way, you'll find so many new things that you love. Understand that someone else's beauty never takes away from your own. You were made to be unique. There was no one else out there quite like you.

Embrace yourself with open arms. We are all beautiful people with our own traits that make us shine. Don't lose yourself trying to mimic someone else's. Treat yourself like someone that you love. When you learn to love yourself, you learn to love the world a little bit more.

Show yourself compassion. We are all healing every day. Evolving yourself is a never-ending journey. The waves will continue to come and go, and you may not have control over what's handed to you, but you do have control over how you react. A couple days off does not ever mean that all progress is lost.

That being said, there are truly no days off because remember, you're living life with gratitude. If you can't give 100% and you can only give 30%, you know in your heart that you gave 100% of that 30%. And that's all that matters. Having a perfect life is simply a mindset. You decide what perfect is. No one else. But I can tell you where you are right now at this point in time is perfect because this is your journey. And without realizing it, you're writing a book.

And it's all just building the plot. Your perspective is everything in this life. And it all starts with your thoughts. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just randomly wrote that. Like I was just sitting there on Instagram typing a caption and then all that came to me. I actually haven't read it out loud. I know it probably was kind of all over the place, but it's got some valid points. It really does. And I hope that there was something that you could take away from that.

But I will say I felt very, very happy when I was able to write that because, like I said before, I had been having all these eye-opening realizations and gaining so much mental clarity, but when it came to writing about it or talking about it, the thoughts would just turn off. My brain would not go. And I think a lot of that is just that you can't force things. You really can't. Wait for yourself to fill up and be patient with that and trust that you're on this schedule for a reason. You're placed on this schedule.

I also kind of want to go back to something. Well, it's kind of a new topic. I don't know. We've probably talked about it already. But your mind is literally a supercomputer. And when you have negative self-talk, you are constantly programming it to think like that. So one thing leads to another. And one negative piece of information that you feed it begins to grow and grow and grow until that is simply what your computer programs off of is negative self-talk.

And this can go the same thing the other way. When you choose to focus on positive self-talk and encouraging self-talk, that is how the computer is programmed. And that's how it begins to think naturally. You want to feed your supercomputer brain positive things. And when it comes to the negative self-talk, stop talking it or else you become it. And I noticed that also when I was on my trip and I was going through these emotions. I just kept saying like, oh, I'm so...

bad, I'm the worst, I shouldn't be feeling like this, I'm blah blah blah blah blah and that's all I kept thinking and then I labeled myself as that when I didn't need to, I just needed to be present, I just needed to feel and I just needed to be able to let things go, be able to let go of what's not serving you. Negative emotions and negative self-talk are not anything worth holding on to. Let them be like a ripple in a river.

Feel them. Let them do their couple little waves and let them pass. Why do you keep splashing? Why do you keep making the ripple bigger? That is something that you have control over. Take this for example. This is one of the first conversations I ever had with my therapist. I was explaining to her how irresponsible I am because, I mean, you guys have heard all the stories. I've lost my wallet. I've gotten cars stolen. I just lose pretty much everything that is important to me that I shouldn't lose. I forget appointments. I forget calls. I

Um, and I blame it on myself all the time. I always say it's my ADHD and don't get me wrong. I'm sure that that's a factor, but I label, label myself as this irresponsible person. And every time I talk to her, I'm like, Oh, I lost this. I go, Oh, it's just, it's just the usual. It's just Lexi, very Lexi of me. And she's like, no, don't label yourself as irresponsible because then obviously, yeah, you're going to be irresponsible because you're telling yourself that you are.

We don't realize how much what we say to ourselves actually affects our everyday life. Sometimes we do, but you get what I'm saying. You're not your thoughts. Don't label yourself as your thoughts or your emotions just because you're really, really sad right now. Don't keep talking about how you're sad. Be sad and then let it go. And this being said, it's so tough because also, yes, you need to be able to talk about your feelings. I'm not saying if you feel sad, don't talk about it. I'm saying talk about it

And then let it go. Don't keep talking about it when you know that you can't change anything. You can't change the reason that you're sad right now. You just have to get through it. Literally, the only way to get through it is to get through it.

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

And obviously, I talked a lot about how you have to feel the emotions. And I know that this episode is kind of all over the place, but emotions are all over the place. So it's okay.

But the end goal of all of this is just to feel a little bit less of these negative emotions. Obviously, we grow from them. Obviously, we need to feel them. We've talked about all of that. But let's be real, okay? Nobody wants to feel stressed or sad all the time. And when I say, like, ride the wave, feel the emotions, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying you need to be depressed all the time.

But I do also want to share kind of ways that I pulled myself out of that little situation that I was in where I was constantly feeling these emotions. Something that I find myself doing, and here I go again. I feel like a lot of the things I say, they kind of contradict other things that I say in this situation.

Well, especially in this episode. But one thing that helps me a lot when I'm going through the motions is I like to drown myself with delusional positivity and not in a way that's hiding my emotions. But it's like I'm adding emotions that outweigh the negative ones. I think that that's the best way that I can put it. But literally the worst things can happen to me. And if you've known me long enough or you followed me long enough, you know that like I've had some stuff go down. I mean, I've gotten cars stolen.

I lost like all of my savings on a van that broke down two days after I bought it. I've had a cockroach infestation in my car. Those are just the things that are on the top of my mind right now, but I promise I've gone through a lot of negative stuff, but you won't hear me talk about it for too long because I'll, I'll outweigh it with overwhelming positivity. And seriously, since high school, people have always come up to me like, how are you so happy? Like how, how that, if that happened to me, I would be so pissed. Or if someone did that to me, I would be so sad. And I,

It's always just kept me smiling. I'm like, no, it's happening for a reason. I'm either going to gain something from this or learn something from it or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it actually works. Like people always want to call me crazy. I just had a recent experience with this.

I talked about it on TikTok, but I lost my wallet. Like, right when I got back out to Hawaii. And everyone was like, oh, my God, you need to cancel your cards. You need to figure out how to get a new ID, blah, blah, blah. Just freaking out for no reason, right? And I'm like, guys, I'll find it. Like, it'll either come back to me or somehow, some way, shape, or form. Like, I'll get it figured out. And I waited a little while to order a new ID. And I waited to get new cards because I had a feeling. I was like, I think that this wallet is going to come back to me somehow. And literally two weeks later, I get this call from...

the bus headquarters on Oahu. So meanwhile, I hadn't taken the bus once before I lost my wallet. They're like, hey, is this Alexis Hidalgo? I'm like, yeah, this is her. Like, what's up? They go, I don't know. I thought something was wrong or I don't know. And they go, we have your wallet. And I was like, what? No way. There's literally no way that this shit happens to me. How did they find my wallet? How did they get my wallet? How is everything still in it?

And I like to say it's because I choose to speak the positivity onto it. And I choose to believe that it was going to work itself out and I didn't need to freak out about it. And I'll catch myself doing that or I'll remind myself to do that a lot when I am feeling all the negative waves. I'm like, okay, just let it be, dude. You'll get through it like you always do. There's no need to put so much pressure on it. And...

The next one is one that my therapist told me, but she said that you need to be proactive in creating time for yourself. And I am still working on this one because I struggle with this a lot. I'll make my schedule super busy because I do like to be busy. But lately in my life, something that's very important to me is my alone time and is my time for self-care. And that's something new that I've incorporated into my routine. So it's almost like the past version of me is the one who's creating this super busy schedule and not this current version of me. So...

She told me to work on being a little bit more proactive and understanding that you do need time alone. That's like what you thrive off of. And you can't make this schedule where you have two hours alone once a week. Like that's not, that's not going to be good for you. You're not going to be able to be the person that you want to be with that. She said, just be proactive in it. Just plan a little bit more. Like if you know, take this for example, if you know that you have school tomorrow from

9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then you have practice from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and then dinner or something from whatever, whatever or homework and you need time for yourself. What you need to do is be proactive enough to wake yourself up an hour earlier so that you can have an hour to yourself to do whatever it is that you want. Whether that's scrolling on TikTok or reading a book or meditating or doing yoga, like do it.

And the next one is just make meaning of everything that's happening. And this is all getting a little bit repetitive, but make meaning of every situation that you're going through. When you make 90% of life is how you make meaning of it. And then 10% of life is what actually happens. You get to choose. You get to be in control of that. Make this a practice in your life. Make this something that you work on doing constantly.

The last one I have is to be able to sit with it, all of it, surrender to it, be able to be in this moment at this point in your life, at this phase, and just be okay with it. And it's hard for me to say all this because I know that we're all at such different points in our lives. I mean, I know that there's people who listen to this podcast who are in middle school and people who are in their 20s and listen to this podcast. So,

I try to make these statements as general as I possibly can. In this one, I think everyone can relate to. Wherever you are right now is where you're supposed to be. Sit with it, live with it, breathe with it, all of it, and simply surrender to it. Understand that life is going to happen as it's supposed to happen and there's really no reason to put all this pressure on yourself or all these crazy expectations. And by that, I still want you to have goals.

I'm not saying like, oh, just like let life happen. Do whatever you want. Have goals. Have a rough draft. But you don't need to set crazy expectations on yourself because if you do, you're only going to disappoint yourself. Life is going to happen and I don't want you disappointing yourself. I'd rather you be proud of yourself. So when you don't set these crazy expectations and you do accomplish all these things, you give yourself credit instead of discouragement. And that's what I want to end on. You're right where you're supposed to be. I mean it.

Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal and just continue to keep growing, okay? I'm so excited to talk to you guys next Monday. There's so many things I want to talk about and there's so much going on. So I have no idea what we're going to be talking about, but it's going to be something. And if you didn't watch this episode or you didn't see this one on YouTube, just know that next week...

Next week it'll be there. Anyways, I love you. Don't forget to download the podcast, follow the podcast, leave a rating on both Spotify or Apple, whatever you want. I'm so grateful for you and I missed you guys. I'm happy we're back in action and I'm so excited that I'm recording in Mater right now. It feels so good to be home. Okay, I'm going to go do some hot yoga. I love you. Goodbye.