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It's not that expansion is often easy. And I think it's a problem only because then I feel we can be so hard on ourselves or think there's something wrong with us if we have these moments where we feel the discomfort, we feel the contraction. Expansion is not always easy and typically it's not easy, but we can choose the path of ease. And that all comes into how we relate to the discomfort and how we also support ourselves as we're navigating the discomfort. Welcome to Elevate Daily.

The podcast for those ready to elevate their life one intentional day at a time. I'm your host, Alexia Ouskard, here to give you a permission slip to unapologetically savor the beauty and richness of life. Join me as we explore modern rituals, self leadership, the gene keys, and the art of elevating your health, wealth, love, and leadership. It's time to elevate. Let's dive in.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Elevate Daily. I'm Alexia Ouskard, and I'm so enthused as always to have you here with me today, especially as this episode feels extra sacred as the secret is out. If you haven't heard already, I am pregnant. And so in today's episode, I wanted to actually share with you a little bit. I'm not gonna make this like a pregnancy play by play. I wanna share with you my journey of preconception, the journey of

prepping and claiming the desire to open the portal of pregnancy. What I have learned since falling pregnant and how it's impacting the ways I'm leading, the ways I'm loving, the ways I'm living, a couple of those key learnings. And honestly, how I find all of this is so grounded in how we all navigate seasons of expansion and how we choose to navigate seasons of expansion, whether we choose to navigate them through a struggle

and frustration energy, or do we choose to experience them from a frequency of ease? Not saying they're always here to be easy, but that we do have the conscious choice on how we choose to perceive the experience and where we can choose the path of ease. And then of course, I'm gonna ground in a few sacred structures, a few rituals that I have found deeply supportive that I feel not only...

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are supportive if you're navigating pregnancy, prepping for pregnancy, but are also at every expansion experience, whether you're someone who's wanting to fall pregnant, is pregnant, recently had a baby, wanting to grow your family, wanting to expand your business, wanting to expand your wealth portfolio, your real estate portfolio, whatever it may be. This...

season I've been in has just been such an incredible reflection and mirror from a physical level of how we can choose to lead ourselves through these seasons of expansion. And as someone who walks shoulder to shoulder in my body of work with all my concierge clients through massive expansion points, I have seen that

there really is a difference in how you choose to embody the experience. All of my clients have navigated the hustle experience. They know the depletion burnout cycles. They know what it means to get what they want, but to do it from such a place of so much willpower, of so much effort. And through our time together, there's really this energy where they elevate their identity. They elevate their embodiment. They elevate and they refine to the core essence of what really matters.

core values, their highest gifts, and ensure then that all that they are channeling their precious energy and time to is actually of highest service for the mission that they truly desire to expand while also ensuring that they get to savor and live a delicious life on the journey. So when I consciously chose to step into the preconception portal, so I don't think things just begin when you fall pregnant. I think just like any time,

you choose to expand in your life, there's that portal, there's that window of time before what you desire happens that is very sacred. And so for Z and I, my husband and I, it was actually very important that we as a team and as a unit chose to step into our desire of wanting to expand our family together. And so...

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How Z and I have always navigated expansion in general in our lives, in our work lives, in all areas of our lives is this. We are very aware of the importance of sacred structure, of having rituals that ground our partnership and actually ensure that we move in the world as a team. I think it's really easy for people to say, move as a team with your partner. The same way a sports team knows they need their...

specific practices, there are structures in place to ensure that the actual team functions effectively. As partners, it's so important that you have and you prioritize those sacred spaces, those sacred structures and those rituals to ensure that you are truly able to navigate each season authentically for, find, each person individually and as a unit. So what was really powerful for Z and I is earlier this year, we went and did our visioning.

retreat ritual that we love to do. And so we chose to go, we went away to a beautiful space, about an hour outside of where we live. And we did our weekend together where we really sacredly spent time getting clarity on our visions. So how it works is we focus on, and actually I'm going to be sharing in a few episodes from now. It's the first time I'm actually sharing a visualization on the podcast and visualizations are something I guide and create a lot of for clients.

So it's been really lovely to actually bring it here. And this is the visualization that he and I both do at these retreats together that support us with getting really clear for ourselves. What is the highest vision we see for ourselves a year from now? We write our whole vision out. Then we read individually our visions and the other person who's listening really gets to feel, gets to notice, gets to see what it is that our partner really cares about.

And then we get to have a conversation. Like, what do we notice are obviously where we have overlaps? Are there any gaps? Is there any areas where we're noticing something needs to be refined, simplified, to ensure both of us as a team feel that both our individual visions and our collective vision are of highest service and supported. So when we did this ritual and this retreat, it was so clear that while we both have work visions and things we see in our, multiple areas of our life that actually

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the number one vision that stood out the most, it was our big expansion point for this year, is expanding our family. And it was so important and so powerful because we had that same feeling separately and then therefore together. And it was during this retreat that we really grounded in our conviction of what we're calling in, what we're naming, what we're claiming.

And this is what I think is so important about any area of expansion you're wanting, is I find way too often that we can get stuck in this slight energy, this very specific energetic, where we do truly desire something, but we're afraid to fully claim it. Because I'll name, claiming it is vulnerable. Claiming it means there's room to be disappointed, for things to not go the way we want to. There's a whole vulnerability in the conviction.

but I will also very confidently say that I find if we don't claim what we truly desire, we can't fully receive it. Or we make it a whole extra long complicated journey to receive what we really want. And so I don't take it lightly that the two of us actually named it. We put the energy into it and we actually spoke about, like there was also an aspect of us naming together. What would it actually look like? What are we gonna choose? What are we each gonna have as our trade-offs?

What are we going to both be committed to and devoted to to ensure that if we really honor this next sacred chapter, we both feel supported, we both feel held, and we both feel like also our ambitions get to be seen and known in whatever way will be true for this particular expansion season. And what's so beautiful is we fell pregnant in that cycle.

exactly after this retreat. So we went on this retreat together, claimed it, named it, and then it was within that next cycle that we felt pregnant. And I say this with a lot of gentleness because with anything that you're desiring to expand in, the timeline is not something we can usually control. So in our case, this is just what happened to happen because I think to be fair, I think we had had a while before we fully claimed it that we had been preparing ourselves to step into the pregnancy portal.

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But you know, really don't like to give this feeling that like, if you desire something and you put a vision in and it doesn't happen immediately, that there's something wrong when sometimes there's very key pieces to the divine timing that matter in ways you will know and maybe never know. You're being refined. You're being asked to embody your identity on a deeper level to really receive it. Like there's all these different facets, but I will never diminish the importance of, find, claiming what you truly desire.

putting your heart on the line. Anything that I have seen that is so beautiful in life requires that moment where we're not afraid to feel like our heart could be broken in the process. Because if you love and you love with your whole heart in any area of your life, there's always the potential of being.

heartbroken, but it's like also what in life is worth living for if we're not willing to put our heart fully on the line for it. You know, that's where like the real deep true experiencing is. And that's my philosophy for sure. And so that was our journey of prepping and there's so much I could say, but also one other key piece that feels important to name is, I feel like it came right into pregnancy. So I would say one of my biggest initiations of pregnancy was and even falling pregnant was seeing the relationship to control and surrender.

control and surrender. And I know for me, something that was just kind of an interesting observation was, you know, okay, so I think it's really strange first and foremost that for us to navigate, I just don't think it's talked about enough that I I spent most of my life setting up the systems and tools and dynamics to ensure I wouldn't fall pregnant, right? And then suddenly you shift into this dynamic where you're opening up your body to want pregnancy, to surrender to pregnancy, which is...

really different. If you think about it, it's quite a significant shift to have. Then on top of it, I found there's all the dynamics of like, you know, you need to know when you're ovulating, you've to know your cycle, like all this stuff. And so because I have that natural overachiever, he was like, wants to research wants to figure everything out. I noticed that part of me that was like, even though in all honesty, I'm someone who has known my cycle, I have been cycle sinking for years.

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I have a lot of connection. My cycle has been regular for the most part. know relatively I've been very aligned with the moons in a very specific way where I have clarity of when I'm going to get my period, when I'm going to be ovulating in general. But for some reason, because of course, classic social conditioning, because I was stepping into an experience I have a lot of uncertainty around, I've never experienced before, I noticed how

those moments where we're being asked to tap into a next level identity, a next level of experience that we have no experience of. It's one of the spots where I know for myself and actually one of my gene keys I have shows me that one of the shadows I can meet in my mind in particular, because that's the placement, is this feeling of inadequacy.

What that shadow does is it gets me in this dynamic of like, gotta go figure everything out. I gotta go research everything. I gotta know my cycle to the umpteenth degree. I even, me and a few of my friends all got these like very specific armband trackers you wear at night so you can track your cycle. And then the cosmic joke on me was the more I tried to figure things out, the more things started to not work for me. So it was like this funny thing where I...

got this tracker and I got this like eight months before Z and I were wanting to open up our pregnancy portal because again, I want to be prepared. I want to make sure I know what I'm doing. And my tracker out of the four friends who all got this tracker, mine's the only one that broke, you know, and you could get just frustrated by that. And there was that moment I first got frustrated just going, dang it, really? Like my tracker won't work.

But in truth, I know and I always trust these experiences where I just kept laughing whenever I would hear my own internal voice. I would feel this cheeky wink that was like, surrender, surrender, trust the divine timing, trust your body, trust your baby. And it was so interesting because I can see how everything was like breaking that was trying to get me to fix it on control. And actually a big conversation Z and I even had when we went into

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like at our retreat when we were really setting the intention for this portal and opening ourselves up to pregnancy was he was really clear with me, which I really loved in saying that we really wanted to not feel like we needed to fixate on the exact dates and the cycle and all these things. And that could we just have our rituals that support us with making love in ways that feel so nourishing and just so extra life-giving and so present. And can we just

consciously choose to enjoy the experience. Because at the end of the day, it just kept coming back to this reality of when I was in that control mental stuff, it was ruining the joy of at the end of the day, this is a beautiful time where I get to savor connection time with my husband. We get to open ourselves up to creating life together in the most sacred way. And that's what this whole experience, if we choose it that way, gets to be.

And so I wanted to name it because I realized how much that was like the initiation I almost went in now in hindsight in the preparation for conception. And then of course, when you then fall pregnant, you know, I'll never forget from the moment I first felt like I'm one of those people who is very connected to my body because of all the rituals and things I do. There's a lot of ways over the years I've cultivated a more present relationship with my body. And so I felt pregnant.

Like the moment I came around my period or when my period was supposed to happen, I had a feeling. I was like, I feel a little different. I remember I did a speaking gig the night before and even at the speaking gig, I just felt this energy of this melt energy. just, huh, like this very specific type of exhale, this exhale into my body in a new way. I know, I this feeling. And Zina and made a choice where,

we chose actually to not, there was that part of me again who wanted to maybe right when I felt it, go get a test to confirm it, to get that external validation that what I knew was true. And thanks to my beloved husband, he gave me the invitation of like, Lex, we already know, we already know in our bones and our body, why don't we spend the next week really letting ourselves just feel it without needing.

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attest to be the confirmation. Can we just know within ourselves? And so I'll never forget that week of just noticing how I could just feel the knowing, how I could open to the expansion, how I could surrender to this new chapter without needing some external thing to tell me that it was true. And I just think about how much this plays out in so many areas of our lives, how we're all asked in times of big expansion.

Can we trust what we know? Can we trust our vision? Can we trust what we are uniquely seeing before we have some external, tangible thing in our hand that says, yes, you're right. Yes, you know. Yes, this is the truth. It's like, can we truly surrender to the knowing of our bodies and our beings of our truth? And so,

It was so beautiful because then by the time we even took the pregnancy test and got that final confirmation, yes, it felt like that relief. Yes, it felt like a celebration. Yes, it felt like a dance party. And at the same time, it just felt like, you know, like I'm already here. I'm already surrendered. I already knew that, you know? And so that was so, so beautiful. And it felt like just such a rite of passage into.

some of the biggest learnings that I've had so far on this journey of pregnancy. And I wanted to share a couple of them with you because I do just really feel like they are some of the lessons that like, while I have experienced so many expansion seasons and I've walked a lot of clients through and I continually walk through clients through massive expansion seasons, this is the most physical expansion season where I'm like feeling my physical body go through the stretch, go through.

the choosing to expand, the choosing to make space, the literally creating a miracle from the inside, something I can't even see yet my whole body knows is happening kind of experience. And so as I share these, I really want to invite you to tune into how you can relate to these in the area where you're most desiring to expand in your life right now. So the first one was, I mentioned this a little bit at beginning, but I really want to land this is as we expand discomfort,

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is part of the experience. And I name this because it's not that expansion is often easy. And I think this is something that is really not talked about enough. And I think it's a problem only because then I feel we can be so hard on ourselves or think there's something wrong with us if we have these moments where we feel the discomfort, we feel the contraction. You know, like I can just even think about the last week, some of the

Massive celebratory expansion points. just walked with clients through and simultaneously some of the contractions I have been there firsthand, seeing them, witnessing, holding them through in the process. The and. Can we hold the range of the and? It's not always easy. Expansion is not always easy and typically it's not easy, but we can choose the path of ease. And that all comes into how we relate to the discomfort and how we also support ourselves. I find

as we're navigating the discomfort. And so for me, right, there's, mean, gosh, first trimester, I've heard it talked about so many times yet. I think it's one of those classic experiences where you'll never know until you're in it. The same way I'm already humbled and very aware that I will never, like I could read so much and prepare myself so much for the postpartum period of when our baby is here in the world and.

It's nothing I will ever fully grasp until I'm in the experience. The same way in so many areas of business, you can try to tell yourself all day you'll know how to do something. You never know until you're doing it. And so I will never forget when I experienced the first set of nausea kick in and I was like, whoa, this is full on, this is really uncomfortable. And I know people mostly talk about morning sickness. I didn't have morning sickness. I feel like I just had nausea off and on throughout the day. It was not.

stable. It was nothing I could predict, which I think is again, part of my initiation of surrender and letting go of control and letting go of trying to figure everything out. I found that the aversions were causing like a joke because it was like one day I would be only wanting one type of food. I'd be like, today I really desire chicken. And then the next day I'd be like, I cannot stand the smell of chicken. You know, it was so weird how even there would be so many moments where

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things that I usually love pre-pregnancy, I could not stand. I love salads. I love fresh vegetables, like raw veggie. Could not touch a raw veggie or most veggies in general during my first trimester. It was just so, I was actually so into dairy, which was so strange because to know me as now I literally had such a massive, I've gone through a massive gut healing, microbiome healing journey.

years ago and I actually was fully lactose intolerant until about like two years ago and then I started to introduce it. And then funny enough, one of the things that has been and continues to be a source of nourishment for me in pregnancy has been cottage cheese, like specific cheese, like very specific dairy items, which again just shows the power of listening, of being in tune and honoring where our body is guiding us. And I think in terms of this

key point I want to make around discomfort. think what I saw so much when I was nauseous and when I'm also seeing a lot in second trimester, what I feel for me now it's almost more physical. Now it's like I get these very specific parts of my body where I feel tension, I feel pressure, and it gets really uncomfortable. There's definitely been some meetings I've been sitting in where I'm just sitting there like, oof, you know, really having to breathe deeper.

better care of myself in those ways? Do I know what is actually of highest service for this? How can I support myself on this? And what I always consistently remind myself is with each breath, like as I would breathe through my nausea, as I would breathe through these physical aches I'm feeling in my body now, as my body is physically creating space for this life to grow inside of me, is I would consistently come back into this remembrance of I can choose to consistently remind myself.

that this is for the highest good. can consistently remind, like let my mind remind my body, you've got this, I've got you, we've got this, this is temporary. This is creating something so beautiful and I would take time and I just would vision this beautiful baby and I just would vision so many aspects that I was looking forward to and just taking time to also connect with my body in the moments of discomfort, touch my body.

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feel my body, observe and listen. And I think it's just so powerful because it's so easy when we're in the discomfort periods of expansion in our lives to wanna bypass, to wanna avoid, to find ourselves overly anxious, wanting to fix. Instead of just allowing ourselves to hold sacred space and acknowledgement of, I see you, I feel you in the contraction, what are you showing me that I care about?

Can I inhale with you? Can I exhale with you? Can I consistently stay and choose to stay in connection to the highest vision? Because I found that as long as I stayed connection to the highest vision, that's where I could inhale and feel connected to the ease. The second thing I really wanted to name is, pregnancy has really showed me the importance of asking for our needs unapologetically. The leadership of being a well-resourced woman

has never been more clear for me and the gift in being so clear and honest about it. So I think it's just so natural that we can see what we've been supported by in the past as being the blueprint that we should just use at all these next seasons we operate in life. Yet the truth is if you're going into a season of expansion, it's important to have a moment and get really clear on what is actually gonna support you with the expansion.

What are the systems you need in place? What are the mentorship advisory support you need in place? What kind of village support do you need in place? I think it's just so important to name it. And as a very physical example, it's been interesting because for me, nourishment has never been more important. Really honoring, nourishing my body for more food, for fuel, for what it needs in any given moment. And it's funny because I can see past parts of myself that was just quite

fluid with sometimes my eating habits, or I would just find that I didn't want to be too much at specific times. I didn't want to be the one who was so needy. I needed to make sure she always had specific food readily available for her, or the protein bar on deck. I would actually oftentimes be the person to make sure other people had these things. And it's been through this initiation that I realized more than ever just how important it is to be unapologetic in ensuring that we know what resources us.

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and that we know the power of using our voice to name what we need, to honoring what we need, so that way we can have the sustainable, long-lasting energy that keeps us going beyond the season. And so I really name it, because again, I think it can be so easy, especially if you have any history of people-pleasing, of over-giving. I know that if you're here in my space, you're a high-capacity woman. You hold a lot. You're capable of holding a lot. And...

Even if you don't always need things too, I love to give the extra invitation to go for giving yourself the systems and the support and the nourishment that you want, that you know just helps you to enjoy the experience more. Because that also is highly valuable. Because sometimes you don't always need something, but you're like, would just desire it will be so much more enjoyable if I feel like I don't have to figure this all out by myself. Like all of my clients have me there as their personal strategic energetic advisor.

Because they are highly competent, highly competent. They've done many seasons where they've in many ways figured out a lot by themselves, yet they're like, I want to be seen. I want someone who's gonna help me hold what I'm holding. I want someone to ensure and to be with me to ensure that I am making the highest aligned decisions. I want someone who helps me hold my highest vision. It's like they don't necessarily always need, but they want, they know that that...

support them with being the best version of themselves. And so just really in your life, take me a moment to really honor, what do you desire? What do you need? And also what do you simply want that would support you with being the best version of yourself and enjoying the experiencing of everything that you're creating. And then along those lines, I feel is very aligned to name just a few rituals that I have found have been very supportive for me in keeping myself

sustained while navigating this massive expansion point. And so one has been ensuring I have the systems and structures in place for nourishing myself. So I think it's important in whatever expansions season you're in right now to think about how are you nourishing yourself and what do you need for nourishment right now? And how can you create a ritual that supports you? So for example, it can be so simple. Like for me right now, the one ritual I can do that helps

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to maximize so many other things in my life is I know that if I eat a very intentional breakfast, it makes it so one, I I digest my supplements I'm taking now a lot better. I feel so much better throughout the day. I just feel like it helps my nausea from kicking in. And so I have made it a very specific and prioritize ritual that every day I prioritize ensuring I enjoy a nourishing breakfast. And I

find that the more you ensure you are nourished, the more you find that you actually do have the ability to navigate the wobbly moments. You have a better ability to navigate the discomfort and you have a much better ability to feel that you are fueled and not depleted on the journey of expansion. The second ritual structure that I've been setting up. So for me, movement, and think movement is so important for...

all of us when we're navigating expansion seasons is to just move our bodies in the way that feels most aligned for us. So I have it set up that like while now in this season, I have to have different movement rituals than I did in previous seasons. You know, I've now still been prioritizing my strength training. I just now have brought it down before I was doing five days of strength training typically, and now I do three days of strength training. I've also found that walking

is a really powerful way that I process and I digest and I move through everything that I'm navigating as my body's going through this pregnancy. And I also have found prenatal yoga. Like I've gone and I prioritize it. I have my set ritual time I go, I have the community that I'm part of. And that really ensures that I feel supported to also make sure that as I'm going through all of this, that my body feels supported in moving energy through me.

The last ritual that has become a non-negotiable, honestly got me through first trimester, is water. Like the water element is always a very powerful element for me in particular. And so for me taking warm, know we're not supposed to, apparently one of the things is we're not supposed to take hot baths while pregnant. So I haven't been taking hot, hot baths, but just taking a warm bath every day has really been supportive and giving me that ability to be really quiet, really intentional with my body.

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really feel like I can connect with the baby, really feel like I can sometimes just rest. Like I find that's the moment when I often just go into so much deep receptivity every day. It's been really good at helping me. Yeah, just tune in and have that quiet time to just notice how am I feeling, what's coming up for me to also allow my emotions to have space. Cause that's the other big dynamic is

In pregnancy, obviously it's a massive one as there's a lot of hormones moving through our systems. But in all expansion points, find because we're refining, redefining, we're shifting our identities in many ways. There can be this overwhelm of emotions coming through our system. And so I find it's really powerful to have some form of a ritual that you know is there for conscious rest. It could be napping. Like napping to me is so powerful. It's another thing that I've been enjoying a lot during this time, but

I really wanted to bring the bath forward because there's also something about rituals where you're not necessarily sleeping, but you're just really there and you're very present and you're just in a space with minimal interference, noise, inputs, and it's really your space to just tune in to your inner voice, to your body's wisdom, and just in the slowness of being.

And so these are just some of the key pieces. mean, gosh, I feel like there's just so much more I could share on this journey. And I'm sure I'll be sharing over time on the podcast, little snippets of different things I've been navigating in this pregnancy journey. But so far, I would just be so curious to know what has stood out to you from me sharing this episode with you, if there's anything that's been a big takeaway for you. If you're someone I'd be curious to know if you are.

opening to pregnancy if this is something that's also on your heart as well in general, just so you know that you're not alone. I love connecting with others who are really like me figuring out how do we enter motherhood with intentionality and honor still being the entrepreneurial, ambitious women that we are. I'm just imperfectly perfectly figuring it out as I go with you.

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If you're someone who's not on that journey, but choosing to consciously be expanding, I'd be very curious to know what stands out for you in this. What are you expanding into? What are you consciously choosing? And what's coming up for you in this season, knowing that we all really need to just find the flow and the structure and the support that supports us with fully doing it in the most aligned way with our souls.

And if you are someone who's craving, if you've loved what I've been talking about, if you really resonate with being a high capacity woman, someone who's holding a lot, who's expanding, and who desires to do it from a place that feels really nourished, that feels really held, and feels like you don't have to carry the weight of it by yourself, feeling like your success gets to feel also light on the journey, I would love to invite you to have a conversation with me about my concierge experiences.

And as always, I just really cherish this space with you, this time together, and that we really are on this journey of elevation together. So until next time, I hope you continue to elevate your life one intentional day at a time. Big heart hugs always.

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