We are just going into Mercury shadow as we record this. Literally yesterday, Mercury came into its shadow before it's retrograde. Now, if you don't know, Mercury retrograde is this elusive phenomenon where the planet Mercury, which is in charge of communication, electronics, the things that we say, the technologies that we use and is it three, sometimes four times a year, it has this illusion that Mercury is going backwards. And the rumor has it that when that happens, technology goes wild and it's unreliable and not only that, but things, anything to do with communication. So things can get misunderstood. You find that, if you're, they say, if you're booking travel, you should check everything. All five times, if you're signing legal documents, if you're sending a text message, like anything that has to do with communication, travel and technology is on the wire. What happens the first time ever, we just logged on my internet nuts and I had to have a full on to re reset.

these things happen, right? But yeah, we've never, that was the first time, is it, that we've ever had to restart in our however many episodes that we've done. But just as you were, so you were, you went off, offline, you went to reset your internet. I thought I'll just pull some cards and I'll pull the cards that are in the sort of house. I'm using the Prism Oracle card deck ones, and these are quite, they're like one word cards. They're very instructional and directional and two cards flew out of the deck straight away. Like they're just pew. The first one was stop. Stop what you're doing. Turn off. Turn off the internet. The second one was trust. Because I think. We can, or we could have got Oh, we're not meant to do it today. Or it's not working. It's never going to work. Whatever kind of thoughts we might have. But instead it's no, stop, trust what is happening. Trust that, what we're about to do is going to be even better. And then the third card, which didn't jump out, but I thought I'll just pull a third one just for good measure, was flow. So stop, trust, flow. And I feel like that's the energy that We've moved into, and you can say that you could use that almost as a philosophy if, you're going traveling or you're about to have a really difficult conversation with somebody or there's potential that communications could get crossed. Or even you're trying some new technology for the first time, maybe like this is your first podcast that you've ever listened to and like you've never pressed the buttons on your phone to listen to it or listen to it on your laptop, whatever for the first time. And sometimes I think, just stop. Just trust and just move into the flow are pretty good words to live by, especially when we're going into retrograde because things are going to happen, right? Yeah.

we do live in a world where it, where doing has been prized. We have to do, things have to flow, things have to move, you have to strive, you have to struggle, you have to go do, what did you do today? What do you do for a living? This is the language that we use. And it can get like super overwhelming to the system. And then we feel like when we want to stop that we're failing in some way or another and that we're broken in some way or another. But just like your computer, like how many people don't ever turn their phone off? You need to, right? Like your phone keeps on going and then suddenly you're like it's been a bit slow and you give it a turn off and a turn back on again. And then things just seem better and that trust card is, It's so important because in the stop was when we have a real potency energy. And how many of us, when we're in the stop think, Oh no, it's not going to happen. I stopped. It's things have come to a halt. Nobody loves me anymore. Nobody cares. This is awful. I'm, I'm destitute and everything's all wet. This is going to be what it is like forever. And what I just did when I turned the internet off. So I have one of those. link machines because I, my studio is in my garden and I just gave my link machine a bit of raking and it was boiling hot. It was hot. And I'm like that's obviously not been turned off for a while. So I just stood there and I was like, Oh, thank you so much for all the amazing conversations you've helped me facilitate. And so much has me sitting here using my laptop on the internet. And it's thanks to that. Device because it used to be before I had that device, my internet dropped all the time. So it was just coming into that gratitude and the trust that, you know, what if it doesn't work? It's because something else is meant to be occurring today. Or maybe I'm just meant to not be doing anything

and you'd be very grateful listeners because we were talking about the weather before the Before we got going, so we clearly meant to talk about something more profound. I love that you talk to inanimate objects because I do too. I talk to my printer my printer's he never lets me down, but I think that's because I, he's got a name. I love him. I talk to him. I'll say, Thank you so much for printing that. Wonderful. Thank you for squeezing all of that ink out and making that really colourful. And I know that today's going to be used because my daughter's doing her she's doing some work for her university course and she needs the printer today. I've had to wake him up this morning. I used to do it when I worked in offices. I used to talk to all of the printers and the heaters and people used to think I was mad, but, they very rarely broke down on me and printers are renowned for breaking down or, used to say, okay, we're going to get you a new part. We're going to get you a new part, Harry. We're going to get you a new part. You deserve a new part. You need some new toner. We're going to get you some new toner. And I'm glad that you also talk to inanimate objects because that makes me feel a little bit less crazy.

so the internet, when we got the new internet a few years ago, they were like, Oh, because you can change the name of it and what should we call it? And I was like, let's call it Bob. And so our internet's called Bob. And so when we sign into the internet, it's called Bob. And then when we set up, I'm not going to take the password, but when we set the password, it's all initials. It's like the first letter of an affirmation. about how well the internet works and how thankful I am the internet always works so well. And so when I'm remembering the password, I literally have to say that affirmation because I'm, I don't remember what the letters are, but I remember what the sentence is. That sent me down a little rabbit hole because it's things like when, I know we don't always type passwords in, but having little affirmative stuff on your passwords, like it just. It just brings a little bit like there's what there's one password that I use and every time I type it, it just like it makes me laugh. And I'm like, it's funny I'm like oh I know what one I did there. And it just brings that little moment of joy, and this kind of reframe in your brain where you're literally saying thank you for my amazing internet that always works all of the time. As you're trying to inevitably typing a thing in because your internet has

Yeah. It's such a great tip especially with passwords, because, we can, passwords can be quite, it's a little bit like driving in the car when you get road rage, like passwords can infuriate you when you put the password in a number of times and then you don't get, you still don't get in. So to have a password that is an affirmation, It's just like a great life

right? It's all about the life hacks. And no, I was even thinking about this morning because yesterday I had my soul space coaching call. And my members could come and they can bring anything. And we, we talk about a whole range of things. And actually a lot of what was coming up was how do we bring more joy into our life every day? And I was thinking about how actually that's become such a habit for me and it's not the big things. And yesterday we were talking more about the big things, but it's not really the big things. It's the little things like when. When I walk home, there's this huge lavender bush. I'm not a thief, right? But there's this huge lavender bush that we walk past and I always just pick three or four little sprigs of lavender and I like smell it and I'm like, Oh, it's just so nice. And the kids do it. And then I bring it home and I always think I must look like a crazy with my lavender. All of the time, but it's just these kind of little things and the sun was shining. I'm not going to talk about the weather, but the sun was shining and I could just feel it. And I just turned my head as I'm walking so that the sun was beating on my third eye. And it was, and I just brought that gratitude for the light codes that are pouring down on me today. And in that moment, I feel such I don't know what the word is, like joy. We spoke about joy and is it a happy thing, but just this gratitude and this warmth and this joy for being here and being alive and being able to experience that. And that, if I think back in my life, it's a habit that I've had to cultivate. And I think it's one of those really important hacks in life we spend most of our day the things that we don't want to do.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's that aliveness. It is. It's that connection to, and you feeling all of your senses, feeling the sun on your face and feeling the breeze. And it is a little bit, I think when we can appreciate the little things, that's when it's, it starts to snowball. If we can't appreciate the five. Pounds to 5 and how can we appreciate the 50, 000 it's all the same thing. And that's why I do the gratitude journey four times a year and I, sometimes I feel like I can't impress how important gratitude is for our lives. I do still feel like a lot of people, I'm trying to do, make my little waves in my area of the world and the internet. And the people that come on board and do the gratitude, they, I call them my boomerangs because they come back. Because it is, it's contagious. It's uplifting, it changes your vibration, it changes your point of attraction, it changes your point of perspective, and you can start to be appreciative and grateful. For the teeny tiny small things and the things that you didn't even realize that you needed to be grateful for not that you need but that you could be grateful for because We might think they're just small moments in time and that we don't need to reflect on them or we don't need to think about what the power in That moment was but when we do what? It's essentially a spiritual stock take. It's not just giving gratitude every day. So it's literally looking at all of the different facets of your life and finding all of those areas where you can give gratitude and appreciation. And the impact is so profound. It's just, it permeates every part of. your body and who you are and what you're doing in the world. And the impact that it has on what you're creating in the future is starting from such a, just a positive, joyful bedrock of gratitude. And like you say, you have to cultivate that, we have to practice it. And that's why I do it repeatedly because life happens. They're going to be difficult things that happen in our life. We have the ups and downs and It's having the tools when we're in those moments to give ourselves some space to, you don't need to be happy clappy all of the time, but if we can find a little nugget of happiness in the darkness, then we're on that first rung of the ladder.

Right. This is I think the true thing about how we're told to lift our vibration like don't get stuck in the harder emotions. And I think it's been misinterpreted. a lot that, okay, it means that I have to turn my frown upside down and after, I can't feel these things. And if I do, then that means that I'm going to start manifesting the stuff that, that I don't want in my life. It, for me, it's more about first of all, changing the baseline. So what's the, what is my actual baseline? And I know that there were times where my baseline was like down in apathy, That just seemed to be like where I would default. And now even when there's things that are hard, right? And you're going through something and you're like, this is not You can hold that emotion and we can still somewhere find, as we're walking down the street and the sun shines and we think, Ah, there's light codings in there and I'm going to turn my head and just enjoy that for a moment. Even when this is going on and this is happening and I'm going to be grateful for my body that's allowed me to move and do this. And if my body is working as it should be that, but I'm still finding that I can listen to the thing that's healing or that somebody's reached out for me. It's like still honoring what I'm feeling, what I'm feeling, what I'm feeling. And there is this practice, there is these things, there's something else and sometimes it is just a case of turning your head into that so you can allow yourself to feel that emotion because in that moment, your vibration is raising. And then the thing that you're moving through, the thing that we feel like we're stuck in, we actually begin to move through and then that thing gets met with. A moment of joy, a moment of gratitude, a moment of peace, a moment of acceptance, a moment of hope, and I think that is how we raise our vibration. It's not Oh this is really bad. And I'm in grief. I better not be in grief. I better be in joy. It's not sustainable.

And sometimes it can feel like you're really reaching, like it's really difficult to see. Yeah. And sometimes it's that we're the light in the world, in all the darkness. It's us that are actually the light and that is about come back to us. Grateful to be alive and to be breathing and to be able to feel the emotions, however deep and difficult they are. But something happens. I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast before, or even if you know this story, but I've always practiced gratitude. It really came back into focus when my daughter was in an accident. back in 2016. And she had an accident with a horse and she lost a lot of teeth and she had a lot of facial surgery to reconstruct everything. It was a really difficult time. And For the first few days of that experience, I was just in the moment. I was just being the support, I was doing what I could, you're just running on adrenaline, you're not really thinking about, I'm not thinking about gratitude, I'm not thinking about all of that. But then over a couple of days and as things started to settle down and we got into a bit of a routine and you've got your family support network around you, there was just like a literal moment in time when I'm laid there at the side of her on the bed, when I just started to look, this, because I'd, cultivate a gratitude previously because I'd built up my gratitude muscles to some extent previously. Granted I wasn't practicing gratitude to the extent that I am today but I knew what gratitude was. There was just a moment and this thought dropped into my head and I started to look around the room and look around the experience and kind of revisit my day to find those moments of joy. And it was things like the smile that the the nurses had when they saw Leah being able to drink through a straw for the first time, or the smile on Leah's face when she tasted chocolate milk for the first time, or the just appreciation for the NHS and for air ambulances to get us to the hospital. And. the love of family to support us. And I remember saying in that moment that, I don't know why this has happened. And. I know that we're not deserving of this to happen to us, but I know that there'll be a bigger, there's a bigger something going on here. There's something else that's coming from this. And just being able to, I think I found maybe about 10, 10, 15 things to be grateful for. And just that ability to start to document that, to write that down, to think about that. It shifts the needle in the brain to, and it moves us into action a little bit more of, okay. I'm starting to feel a bit more hopeful about the future. And we've got the support, we've got the help that we need right now. And I'm not sure how this is going to unfold, but it started getting us to think as a family about how gratitude was now going to play a part in our life and what that was going to allow us to do. And all of a sudden, so my daughter who she played violin, she still plays violin, but. As a result of that accident, she couldn't play the violin because she couldn't hold, literally, couldn't hold the violin between her shoulder and under her chin. But she asked her, she music was her thing, right? Music was her life. She loves music, still loves music deeply, so she asked if she could learn to play the piano. And so that's, so then she started to learn, so now she plays the piano and she plays violin. And it was things like, she wanted to still take part in her end of year, she was at primary school at this point, and she wanted to still take part in the end of year school play, but she couldn't speak at this point, but she still wanted to be part of it, because she'd always wanted to be part of it, and she wasn't going to let that go. And And we used gratitude and we used visualization to, to think about, what would she want to do in the school play and how would she want things to be? And with that gratitude piece and with that visualization piece, we were able to start to develop a bit of a plan so that we could work with the school and work with the teachers and find a way for her to have a part in the school play. And so just that all came from that initial stem of gratitude, raising our vibration, And creating a vision around what we want to do for the future, and then starting to take even teeny tiny action steps to move us up or through or out of a situation that we find ourselves in. And so, that's the power of gratitude. I think it gets, I think gratitude gets a bit of a bad rap. I think a lot of people know what gratitude is, they know the benefits of that, but it's almost like it's not, Oh, it's a bit too airy fairy or yeah, I'm not gonna waste my time doing that because I've got all of these other things on my to do list and it's just, That was the most intense experience that I had with the power of gratitude. And when I realized that the impact and what powerful transformations it had, I just knew that I needed more people to know more about it. And it's just a wonderful experience. So if you're not practicing gratitude, I would urge you just to give it a go and don't do it in a you can do it in a solitary experience. It's good to start these things and learn to feel how you do it. But when you do it in a community or a group where other people are doing it, the impact is even more profound because you start to see what other people, how their lives are transforming and how we are unique, but also we've also got a lot of things in common with one another too.

It's profound. It's profoundly simple. Yeah. So many of us don't do it. And it can also be really hard in that moment. Especially if your baseline is. It's easier if you're a glass half full kind of person.

definitely is.

But if you've always identified as somebody who is a glass half empty kind of person, then things can change because like I said there was certainly times in my life where I, my baseline wasn't. wasn't of joy or of peace. Now, this doesn't mean that I don't ever fall into anything. So if I said that I would be definitely lying because there's times in the day, there's times in a moment, there's times in an hour where it's yesterday, hopefully my yoga teacher's not listening to this. It's it sounds so silly, but this is an everyday thing, So I went to yoga. I was not feeling it. I was feeling, my body was feeling heavy. I was tired. I was like, and it was like the hardest session and I was just, I was not having yogic thoughts. In those moments. And I was listening to my brain that was telling me all the things. You can't do this. She's annoying, which is not. She's amazing. She's annoying. Oh my God, I'm so heavy. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm never going to come to yoga again. I'm just going to wrap my map up and leave. My body's failing me. I can't do this. And she actually said something at one moment and she said celebrate your strength. She could see we were all struggling, celebrate your strength. And I'm like, okay. So out of this routine, there was, I don't know. It felt like 75 percent of the stuff I couldn't do. And then I thought, okay I can be here in a down dog and it's okay and I can enjoy that. And I can be here in this and I can enjoy that. Now, I still wasn't feeling it. I still would rather have been at home. But goodness me, when we got into Shavasana at the end of it, how grateful was I? And I was like, well done body that even though you didn't enjoy that experience, you did it and we got through it and I honored part of that, I didn't push myself into. And so things that my body was clearly telling me not to, and that's not the point of yoga anyway. But and it then gave me a talking point, even in soul space call yesterday, we were talking about, the range of emotions and I, and it came up as a talking point and now we're talking about it here, had everything always have been easy and always have been good. Like I wouldn't have had that lesson or I wouldn't have had this conversation to be able to relate to. Gratitude can be there in every moment. It's just, where do we focus it on? Am I focusing on the 75 percent of the thing that I can't do, or even 1 percent of the thing I can't do? Or am I going to allow myself the, when I got here, and I, I'm able to do this. And I think It's a habit.

It is. It definitely is. It really I'm so pleased that you were able to find the positive, the gratitude, and the, and I love that you talked to your body as well. I think I might, as well as talking to the inanimate objects, I think I'm going to start talking to, thank you, leg. Interestingly, my dad talks to, he was saying because my dad's got Parkinson's and Sometimes his legs don't want to do what his brain's telling it to do. And he was saying that he, yesterday he talks to his, come on leg, we've got a job to do. And I think just having that, bringing that into focus is sometimes just the thing that we need do the thing. So I'm going to talk to my body more. I'm grateful for my body.

I talk to my body all day long. I think that whole episode, not all day long, I think that's a whole episode in itself. When I did my body psychotherapy as part of my psychotherapy training the perspective shift was massive. And our body holds so much wisdom and it's just an, again, it's just another, it's another thing. And we, and if we start to think about how we talk to our body. It can change. It can change everything. So I'd love to dive into that at some point as well. and I'd love to dive, take notes, dive into the talking to an inanimate objects, because from a shamanic perspective, like it's huge. And if you're moving house, if you're getting a new car, if you're bringing a new crystal into your home, if you're, trying to fix your dishwasher that it's there's some real magic that can happen in there too. If we start to treat them as beings in their own right,

Yeah,

arguably they are

I think people do it with the cars, don't they? People sometimes give the names to the cars. But all the other, like all the other things that we've got around the house, why shouldn't they all have a part in the naming I think it's really interesting. I think we should talk more about how we talk to plants. People talk to plants. My brain's going all over the place, don't they? And the plants that are sung to and spoken to are the ones that flourish. When, when I had my depressive episode, over 10 years ago. And when I went back in, I had a phased return back to work. There was when I got back there, there were, I was in a new office. I had not worked here, but all the people were the same, but we were just in different space. And it was like some of the boxes hadn't been fully unpacked from their move. And in this box was this plant. It was literally like a plant in a pot. And it was like a twig. It had no flowers on it. It had nothing on it. And I really resonated with this plant and that I took the plant out of the box and I put it on my desk and I was like, Beth, what are you doing? It's dead. What are you doing with this plant? I was like, no, I have come. I'm back. I'm coming back. This plant is going to come back. I'm going to take this plant on board. And I spoke to that plant and I watered that plant every single day. And it was like a, it was symbolic of my own kind of, journey back. To be in me and feeling better and feeling well again. And the day that, the leaves started to sprout, everyone was like you fully believed in the plant. And I did.

Thank you. I believe in this love.

And it was such a random plant because it wasn't even like a, it wasn't upright. It was like on its side. So as it was growing, it was just like a random plant with a few leaves here and there. It wasn't a beautiful plant, but it was symbolic and it was, I believed in it and I spoke to it and I watered it and I nurtured it. And it was, symbolic of the nurturing that I needed to do for myself through that time as well. So I totally believe in the power of. Plants and inanimate objects and the body and everything, so we should definitely talk more about that.

be honest, all I'm sitting here thinking is, imagine we worked in an office together. We'd have been like kindred spirits. We'd have been like,

We'd have we'd have got stuff done. Yeah. Yeah.

and I wonder how many people are listening going, I wish we had a Beth in our office. And if you're the one sitting listening, listening to this, thinking, I wish you'd be the one because you do know who you will inspire. I was the one. And I would talk about all of the stuff. And I remember this. One of the girls going, she was temping with us and she was like, I can't believe how open you are about all of this stuff. And I'm like, why wouldn't, like, why wouldn't I be? And it was inspiring for I didn't know at the time. I was just I just found out about the law of attraction. So I was in that very exciting state. And you just don't know. And I think that this journey to coming back to being yourself and like wherever you are and allowing your full expression to come out. And if anyone says anything just blame us. I was listening to a podcast and they tell me to talk to the printer and the plants and apparently it works. So I'm just going to try it and then send them our way.

Definitely do that. Okay I've loved our episode today, we stopped, we trusted, and we flowed.

We did. Let that be our mantra for the day.