Ayelet Baron Part 2: Discussing A Life Changing Trilogy & Learning To Question Everything

In Part 2 of the conversation, Sam reveals how Ayelet's book trilogy, called F*ck The Bucket List, impacted her own life and prompted deep introspection. They discuss themes and lessons from the first few chapters of Book #1 in the series.

Ayelet Baron is an adventurer trekking into possibilities with curiosity and courage to help us own our power and become aware that the future is human. After a successful career as a tech executive in the Silicon Valley, she began to see that there is a healthier way to live and work. A keen ability to help you not only face challenges and problems but to transform them into your biggest opportunities. And, seeing possibilities changes everything.

As a multi award winning author, facilitator and keynote speaker, Ayelet contributes insights into conscious living, conscious business, future of life and work and questions everything.

Her books and talks serve as guides where each person and organization is asked to do their own work. Her forte is serving as a trusted partner and she is recognized for her ability to bring transformative, holistic, large-scale change across all sectors. Her strategies bring together people, perspective and result in real world outcomes.

There are eight billion people on this planet today, and an increasing seven percent (180 million) are owning our power. Some are choosing a healthier way of living and some are creating the systems we need to flourish. And this is where Ayelet is focused on—together with her community, she is partnering with changemakers, visionaries and pioneers who are transforming education, business, healthcare and wellness, regenerative agriculture and areas we are starting to identify and create.

To connect with Ayelet: https://ayeletbaron.com/
To purchase Book #1: https://www.amazon.com/Bucket-List-Soul-Discover-Wonder/dp/1647041856/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Transcript

0:06

I meant to ask you before we started recording and I forgot, so I'm just going to say it on the call. Do we say the word? Do we say do we say? It's up to you. Some people say the word and some some people say F the bucking. I'm going to say f the bucket list. Yeah, it's up to you. That word. I definitely say it, don't get me wrong, but I say it context. I'm just going to say f the bucket list. But you guys know it's. Fuck the bucket list. It's a trilogy Ayela wrote. Actually, you wrote it during the pandemic because you talk about that in the first book. There's three, obviously trilogy. There's three books. We do not have enough time to talk through all three. So I want to kind of focus on the first one, which is called F The Bucket List for the Soul discover the Wonder of you, as Ayelette shared. Actually on the COVID the author is the universe with Ayel at Baron, which I love. And I think I want to first share how I came to discover the books and why they've had such a big impact in my life. I've told you, and I tell people who I think are ready to hear it, this is the most impactful book I've ever read. Like, hands down has changed my life. And I want to kind of tell you guys more about that before we get into paragraphs in the book. I'm going to try so much not to cry because I do not want to embarrass myself, but that's how much your books touch me is just on such a deep soul level. And I hope people that are ready to hear your words really go and read the book, because I think you'll discover, like I have, there's just so much in there that will start to wake you up to how the world is and give you really good thought provoking questions and also encouragement to find a healthier path in life. If you do feel lost or stuck. After Ayella and I we met in 2017, I think we kind of stayed in touch on and off through email. And then, like most things in life, life kind of got in the way. I think we lost touch there for a bit. And then I probably saw you post about your process of writing the book and publishing the first book. I picked it up in 2021, so this would have been four years after our trip. And I think within the first two pages, I literally had that like, holy shit moment. I felt like you had a window to my brain, to my soul, to my thoughts, but you were able to articulate them in a way that I couldn't even articulate myself. So I felt so understood. I read the first two pages, and then I think I just read the whole book in like, a matter of days, and then I could not help myself. I got on the email and thought, I haven't talked to her in a while. I don't even know if she'll respond, but I'm going to send her this email. And I dug up the email and I wanted to read it for people. So this is 2021. I wrote you and I said, I don't know why I didn't pick up your book sooner, but I'm a believer that books sometimes find you when you need them the most or are ready to take in their teachings. I just finished the first book in the series and had to reach out to thank you for writing this. I really needed to hear these words. It did indeed feel like medicine for my soul. Mostly since my 20s, when I entered the corporate world, I have felt extremely out of place and not on the right path. Despite having a life and job most people deem a success, this feeling has only continued to grow as I'm now 28 and continuing to climb a corporate ladder that brings me more stress and anxiety than joy. What's worse is I find it nearly impossible to express these feelings to anyone without them thinking I sound selfish, ungrateful, or crazy. Your book articulates my feelings in a way that I cannot even express and makes me feel not only sane, but right. I don't know what's next for me, but your book has forced me to contemplate several questions and look within, and this gives me chills because that was like, three years ago. And I think all of the lessons I picked up in the book sort of just simmered with me, but also helped me kind of get through the next couple of years and then fast forward. I ended up taking the leap and trekking into the unknown. I ended up quitting my corporate job earlier this year and took a life changing six month sabbatical. I reread your books several months into my sabbatical. These are books I'll continue to reread, but every time I read them, depending on where I'm at in my life, they have a different impact. So that holy shit feeling. I feel understood. Fast forward. I'm now in my sabbatical. I'm reading your words and I'm like, Hell yeah, I can relate to this. You feel the truth because I've started to kind of experience it myself, if that makes sense. And I also just want to say your writing is so beautiful. Every paragraph, I feel like I want to mic drop or I want to frame it as a quote on my wall. The way you articulate your thoughts is just so beautiful to me. So that's another reason I just really enjoy the book so much. I know that was a lot, but I really wanted people to understand why these books have helped me so much. And I'll also put a disclaimer of like, I know, ayela, you don't say this in the book, and you're definitely not out to encourage people to quit their jobs. I think you even jokingly told me that's not the message I'm trying to get across. And I understood that, and I didn't read your books and think, oh, the answer is to go quit my job. I kind of had that feeling already within that I just needed some time to explore. But your book forced me to ask more questions. It woke me up. It gave me the courage, and it just made me feel less alone, because in 2021, I was at a point where, like I said in that email, I felt so misunderstood, and I had all of these thoughts, and I would just push them down and think, you're crazy. Like, no one else is possibly thinking this. And I'd even express them to certain people who wouldn't get it, and they'd be like, what are you talking about? And so when I picked up your books, I just felt like, oh, my gosh, someone in this world is asking the same questions. And I realized a lot of people are. They're just too afraid to say it. So that's my sincere thank you for helping me and my own life through your books. Well, to me, when people ask me what co creation is, that's what you just described is us understanding we're in the world and that there's like, I don't believe in audiences. I believe in community, because an audience you're talking at, you're performing at, and there's a division there. But when you're building community, we can support each other and be able to create what many people think is impossible. But it is possible because we have everything we need. We're just not aware of it. And it was really important. It was funny because when I was writing the books, I had an agent, and then I realized that they would probably want me to change the name of the book, and then they would want me to change it to make it more of a how to book. And I don't believe in how to because I'm not you. And every experience is different. I mean, I had a guy who was on city council in his town, and he picked up the second book, the one for the adventure, Trekking into the Unknown, and opened it on a page and just read that page. And then he went into a town hall meeting and said, you know what? This is what I want to be able to express to everyone here, because we've just been wasting all these cycles talking about nothing. And so I find that the universe put the books out in a way that it meets you, hopefully, where you are, and it sounds like for you, it has. And it was kind of funny because I wrote one book. I didn't realize I was writing a trilogy, and I wrote one book, and then I asked a couple of people for some thoughts, and they were like, oh, my God, there's too much in it. And for some reason, my computer crashed. And I had saved it in three different I managed to save it, but in three different chunks. And then I realized I had three books. The universe kind of guided me about what needs to be said because, again, I learned to trust the currents I turned. Like, all of a sudden, I'll be talking to someone and a quote would appear, or it was just crazy. I'd just be working on something, and things would begin to appear. Because people often come to me and say, you've written all these books. Help me write a book. I'm like, I'm not you. Well, what's your routine? I'm like, I'm not a routine person. We can talk about what you are and where you're at, but I can't tell you how to do anything because I'm not you. And that's why the first book to me is so important. Because if we each really dive into our soul and understand how amazing we are we're amazing. We're amazing human beings that were told all these stories. And many of us have endured unbelievable traumas in our life and by people who experienced it themselves, so they didn't know how to shift. And so here we have an opportunity with this book or whatever experience you have in your life, to go in and say, okay, am I allowed to say that I'm amazing? Or is it just when I do my personal brand and I splatter bullshit on the web? No, it's true. And so if more of us are able to really show up for ourselves, then we're able to show up for each other. But if we don't, we just continue this crazy track in history. And I have to be I've been doing a lot of soul searching the last couple of months and especially in the last month when a lot of things shifted. And I don't want to live in this world of suffering. I don't want to live in this world of where everything is designed for division. I spent a year in my corporate life. I don't know why. It was insane, but I was, like, the chief inclusion and diversity for crazy countries in the world. And all I saw was rhetoric and division and even corporate social responsibility or communication. We're dividing everything. When if we had leaders who actually were socially responsible, who knew how to communicate and brought together and knew how to tap into that wonder that is in every human being, we wouldn't need all this conflict management. We wouldn't need all this division. But for some reason, we're bought into it. I mean, look at the world today. I've been saying for a long time, even though eternally, I'm 27, so I won't say how many years I've been saying this, but I've been saying, like, we have a leadership crisis in every sector of the world. Luckily, there are a lot of amazing people right now who are stepping out and pioneering amazing things. We just don't hear about it. But it is happening right now. But if you look at the status quo, it's all the same rhetoric. It's all the same stuff. And how many books do we have? How many workshops do we have? How many Ted Talks do we have? Unless we wake up to our own selves and become the leaders that we need, it's all going to be the same. And I don't want to live in that world. I want to live in a healthy world where we don't judge things, whether I'm bad or good. I want to be able to assess for myself. I don't even want to judge. I don't want to judge. I don't want to blame. I don't want to shame anyone, because what's the point? But I get to choose what is healthy and what is unhealthy for me. And if every single one of us knew that, we would be in a different world. That's a really good segue to my first question about book number one. So the first chapter and you kind of call the chapters expeditions, right? Because this is a journey of self discovery. But the first chapter is called Initiation, and it's all about becoming aware and conscious of the path you're on, realizing that you're not actually the victim, but you're the one in control of your life, despite us all sort of blaming other people or blaming technology or blaming the broken systems. And your first intro to the book, you have this really beautiful John Lennon quote. I won't read it all, but in summary, it says, Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect anyone to come and do it for you. You have to do it. So and you kind of just touched on this, but there's a lot of people that are conscious leaders, and then there's a lot of people that I sometimes wonder, will they ever wake up? Or what's going to get them to wake up and start realizing the things I've come to realize? What is your take on that? How can we make it so that more people and society as a whole becomes more conscious and supportive of each other? I think it's an individual journey, and I think that, again, there are a lot of people who are like, how do we wake the sheep up? And I'm like that's division. Again, why are we saying some people are sheep and some people are not? We're not going to create a new, healthy world with the same things that divide us. And so I believe that 7% of the 8 billion people on the planet today are making different choices, are more conscious. And that's a lot of people, we just can't find each other. And people are at whatever stage they're at because there is no like I was joking around with a friend for this new project I'm working on, and I said, what if I was talking about being on a call and people talking about KPIs. And he said, well, what if KPIs become key play indicators? I'm like, I love that because let's create playgrounds, not battlegrounds. What if work becomes play? What if AI actually we use human intelligence and integrate menial things, and then we get to spend more time with children or with elderly or with each other, with ourselves, right? We're the creators. We can do all these things. And so if you're going into trying to convince everybody of something, it's not for you. And that's why my books aren't for everybody, because not everybody. The people who want to fight, let them fight. So it's a mind shift also for us, not for us being it's like that moment I had in Nicaragua where I was like, got to make the world better because I don't want to come back to see this state. And I'm like, wow, that was really arrogant. It was like a real wake up call for me to say, who am I to judge this? These kids are happy. And when I talked to the mothers, I think you were on the same group I was in. I can't remember, but they were like, oh, my daughter wants to be a rocket scientist. They had all these amazing dreams. So I'm like, who am I to be so arrogant and bring my view onto this? I have no right to do that. And so I think that's the same thing. If you find yourself in a state of judgment or in a state of blame or trying to convince people because they have to do it, then you're not. But my dream is that the messages in the book get to millions of people. It doesn't mean that I'm going to sell millions of copies. It means that someone like yourself who, by the way, you're living, it's making an impact even if you don't mention the book. Right? And and that's the ripples are what I'm focused on. Because often people say, how many books have you sold? I said it's how many lives have they touched directly and indirectly? I love that about you, by the way. I feel like so many people say that they want to sound humble, but then you often find out they're actually not. They do care about the number of copies they've sold. And you are so genuinely authentic in every aspect. And it's something I'm constantly inspired by about you. Because even when we met on our Nicaragua trip, you don't introduce yourself as like, oh, I've written all these books and I've spoken and been written up in Forbes. You said none of that. And it wasn't until after our trip, I think I looked you up and I was like, oh, this one's very successful. But she was very humble and that speaks volumes. And I love that about your character because you truly know how to not let your ego get the best of you. But that is so hard, even for myself, right? I go through periods where I'm constantly just like, is this my ego speaking or is this out of true intent? And it's almost like a muscle you have to build up and if you're not used to living that way and even with the podcast, right, I'll sometimes question just making a difference. I don't really care about how many people are listening, but does this matter? And it's a reminder of just if one person hears some of these words and it helps them in some way, it does matter. It does matter in any small way. I'm going to cry now because it is I feel like this conversation is a co creation of what's possible. And I've always wanted to talk to someone. I've stopped doing podcasts for a while because I want to talk about the content. I don't want to talk about me. And when you told me about it, I was like, oh my God, I would love to. Because we could talk about the things that are in the book and then they could help other people, which would be really cool. And I think that's again, I think also a lot of things have been hijacked in our society, and so there's a great deal of unlearning and unconditioning that everybody, including myself, have had to because if you listen to the new age I was going to say crap to the new age. Philosophies, you can edit that out if you want. They will tell you you got to go from your head to your heart or you've got to do stuff about your ego. But we are nothing if we don't have a healthy ego, if we don't have a healthy sense of ourselves, if we don't catch ourselves going, wait a second, where does that come from again? Because again, it's living someone else's story of what it's supposed to be. And just like work life balance is a hoax. This ego thing is a bit of a hoax because if you show up as a whole person or a whole organization or a whole system, you're aligned. So is your mind, your thoughts, your heart and your actions aligned? And to me, that's a big part of conscious leadership, is not saying stuff or writing stuff and then not living it. And for me, everything like I write daily now and everything that I write, I have to do. And if I don't, the universe comes in and says, ha, let's test you on this. And then it becomes real. But that's also where your level of awareness becomes a lot more in tune with just your journey here, or you. Don'T even write it right if you're not living it. You consciously say, I can't put this advice out in the world if I myself am not following it. But I think you mentioned earlier, if you look at hypocritical leaders, whether it's in some of the greenwashing industries I've seen or whatever, leaders saying one thing but doing another. Leaders saying, no meeting Fridays, but putting a meeting on the calendar. There's so many examples of Hypocrisy that I think that's sort of one place we need to get to is more authentic leadership and living the things that we preach. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I got invited to do a four hour workshop on communication and trust and relationships, and I'm going out and I'm talking to people. I'm not just coming in and saying, oh, here's the best, because there is no best practice. And people are looking at me like, Funny, but you're like, the expert. I'm like, I'm not an expert on this company, and I will only feel like I made an impact if they can go back to day to day. And communication improves, customer relationships improve, trust improves. And so even in doing this work now, it's really important for me not to come in. Of course, I could whip up a presentation and talk at you for however long you want, but I have no interest in doing it. For me, it's about, again, it's understanding what co creation is at every level. Like, even if you have in your life, when you have a partner, so many people battle and get into conflicts and have to be writer or whatever. But what if we saw that relationship as a co creation? What if we were able to say, why am I with this person? Do I want to wake up every morning and be right and fight and hold my ground? Who told us that that's the way to be? It's just insane or in raising kids or whatever. It's like, is that really your story? Is that really how you want to show up? Do you want to go into work every day? Or do you want to bring in a concept like radical honesty and say, there is another way? Well, and I think so many people we throw out this term hamster wheel all the time. I wish we had another analogy, but the treadmill that won't stop. I don't know, but we all feel so, like, hustle bustle and caught up in all of the things of life that I think we don't often stop to question things or be conscious of the choices we're making. And a big reason why I think your book resonates with someone like me so much I've been working in corporate for the last ten years is you too climbed the corporate ladder very successfully. Worked for Cisco for a number of years. So when you're writing, it's not just words on paper, but it's things that you've lived and breathed firsthand, and I think that's what makes it so relatable. One of the paragraphs I want to read that when I read this is one of those it's highlighted like, this is my highlighting from 2021, and this is just an example of how your words resonate with me, and I think others listening will too. You say, Many of us have been so engaged in the hustle and bustle of pursuing a successful life that we have simply not had the time or energy to be aware of the choices we're making or what we're assigning value to. And we may be exhausted, overwhelmed, burned out, stressed, angry, humiliated, scared, and simply spiraling within the very decaying system society has created, forgetting that we are capable of creating a healthier alternative for ourselves and each other. We have the power to choose how we invest and engage with life. We get to say yes and usher in what's healthy, and we get to reject what's unhealthy with a hell no, thank you. We have the power to trust our intuition and connect deeply with what's meaningful for us. That is what I'm talking about. Just such a beautiful paragraph, and every paragraph is equally as beautiful, but you just summarize so much, and you can tell you've lived it firsthand. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I know at one point you had those feelings of not having time or energy to even ask the conscious questions. Yeah, I was a really good corporate citizen for the world. I mean, even when I called my boss to tell him I was firing myself, he told me that I wasn't allowed to because I always put the company first. And then recently I talked to someone who I hadn't talked to since I fired myself. And I don't want people to fire themselves. I want organizations to become healthy. Why do you call it firing yourself and not quitting? I'm just curious because that sounds very. Intentional, because it's knowing what's healthy for me that I didn't quit. I did not say I'm quitting because that is a military term as well. I'm going to retreat. Isn't it funny that we use all these military terms like retreat or like vacation. We're going to vacate, we're going to empty. We're really, like, gone rogue. So I fired myself because I was told that I wasn't allowed to go. The words that I was told was, it doesn't matter. You always play hurt. You always put the company first. And it was a very decisive moment of saying, no more. And then I talked to someone, I think, six months ago, and he said to me, because it was a different country, he says, I never got to say goodbye because you just left. He said you were replaced by three departments. And before that, I was told I was replaced by three and a half Men. But this guy I said, yeah, I heard. I was replaced by Three and a Half Men. And he said, no, you were replaced with three departments. Oh, wow. I remember reading that in the book. Wow. And I've heard that before, sadly. I was working, and I had global jobs, and I felt really like because we were doing so many amazing things, I mean, I have to say some of them were really when people started asking me what I did, I said, I make certain men richer. And I said, oh, my God. That's not a good thing to say. It's not healthy. Because all I would see was like, I'd be working my ass off, and then this person would have these many boats and could afford and while I was traveling, they had people taking care of things, which I couldn't afford to do. And I could see the disparity of it, and it just didn't make sense for me to say, I'm also and I would do it all again, because I met amazing people. I worked across the world in different sectors. I've seen the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich, and the most inspiring people I ever met were in a slum who didn't know what their next meal was. And I got to do things at the cusp of technology that most people don't get to. So I know firsthand that nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible if the 7% of us can find each other and create playgrounds of creativity, of understanding, of communities, whether it's growing our food together and community gardens. We don't all have to move to Costa Rica and live that way. We don't all have to be digital. Nomads. But if we don't know how to share and the only time we know how to share is during a crisis, and I know that firsthand, and I write about it, my first memory in life is war, and that's when I saw community come together. So if we can do it during a time of war, we could do it in any situation. But the thing is, we don't know how, because we've learned to be like these individuals with these personal brands and have influence and judge each other and shame each other, and it's ridiculous. It needs to stop for anybody who's ready. If that's the way you want to live your life, that's fantastic. I'm not here to judge you. But if you know that there's another way, the whole world is open to you, even in the toughest and I've worked with some of I had a guy who lived in a slum who used to put his poetry under his pillow, and when he got depressed, he wrote about it. And I showed him how to use technology and how to build community and how to connect to a point where he got invited to share his poems and make some money. And I said, Nobody needs to know that you. Live in a slum because you have a mobile device, and if you have connectivity, you're equal. And he was a beautiful poet. And so when people say to me, I'm too positive and I don't take the perspective, I'm like, no, you don't understand. You're in this world where you're judging everything and you're not seeing what's truly possible. I know. I love that your book is not a how to. It really isn't right, because there's not a one formula that's right for everyone, and we wouldn't want that. But I do think there's a lot of really good lessons and thought provoking questions to help you design your blueprint of your new life. Right. And I again encourage people to read the book because it's really hard to just summarize this in a short amount of time, but what do you think it starts with? Is it people becoming conscious? Is it people taking an action if someone's like, hey, I'm not happy in the path I'm currently on like I was, and I feel like there's something more I want to do more in the world. What are some things you might recommend? Well, I just want to get into the how to for 1 second, which for me, the how to is saying, the first step you should do is this, and the second step you should do. And the third it's not a cookie cutter, but it has a lot of questions in it that you can figure out. Like, if you want to start by reading the third book, because that's what's calling you. Read the third book. Life isn't linear, and it's not linear if you just want to open it at a certain page and you get something from that page, that's fantastic. I don't know what works for you. And I think for each person, getting in touch with your questions is absolutely foundational. I mean, if you look at the world today, imagine the world is a house or your life is a house. If the foundation is starting to crack and I will use the world analogy and starting to rot, what are you going to do? Are you going to build another floor? Are you going to extend it? That's what we're doing. Let's save the world. Let's fix the world. No, you would like, go, okay, what else is possible? And so get into the mindset of your life being something that just needs to be kind of reconfigured. Even if you have a huge mortgage, if you have kids, and you feel whatever it is, it's a story. Once you realize that everything in life is a story you tell yourself and a story you tell other people, you start stepping into your power and you start realizing that, hey, I can either be a player in somebody's story, or I can write whatever I can. Over time, there's no magic to how we do it. And I think that's where a lot of the people who go through awakening, they go get a coach or they go get someone and nobody has mastered it. If they have mastered it when we do master it, the world would look very differently. Like right now we're navigating two worlds a world of division and hate and shame and blame that's falling apart where people are burnt out, where we have so many wars between nations, wars between people, wars within ourselves because we're all so caught up in the stories we were told. But there's a new world being built right now and there are amazing people doing things. And that's 7% of the 8 billion people, you won't find them in the news, you will find them on the edges, not fighting the system but like as Bucky Fuller says, making things obsolete by choosing a different path. So to me, the first kind of thing is what questions are you asking yourself and what are you willing to do to figure out who and what is healthy for you and what is unhealthy for you or toxic for you and what are you willing to let go of to make space for what emerges? I love that. And I think you also get into in the book thinking about how you define success and you share your own experience of chasing all of these outward measures of success the title, the money, the promotion. And time and time again we hear from people that once the initial euphoria of getting that success wears off, you're often left with disappointment. You're often left with really big trade offs in other parts of your life, be it your health or time with family. And I think you'd agree that also asking yourself questions is also questioning what you're chasing and why and what success means to you. And are the things you are chasing, are they worth where you're having to trade off in other parts of your life? Absolutely. The book really does dive into that because I have trained myself. Every time the word good comes up, I don't want good news, I don't want bad news. And even in my writing I've tried to not write they anymore. I try to write we and us and just becoming conscious of little things in your life that help you make the transition for yourself, not for anyone else. And it's kind of funny. When I sent the book out to a professional editor, they changed it all and I had to change it all back because they didn't. And some of it is also there are things today that I do very differently because I wrote the books a while ago and now I'm here. And so I could see kind of like my own evolution and so looking at that not in the eye of society and success. I was talking to a friend of mine who said when we learn how to walk, on average we fall 19 times but we never quit. And so what is the success and failure? Like, maybe we're just leaving ourselves breadcrumbs at some point and all of a sudden we're ready to look at things that we weren't ready to look at before. And I think you have to look at too. There's successes and then there's how you feel with those successes. And from my personal experience over the past few years, I had all of the things on the outside, but how I was feeling didn't match. I wasn't the happiest I could be. I wasn't relaxed and calm and an enjoyable person to be around. And I know a lot of people who have that same feeling. So it's like something's not working. Clearly the formula you've been taught for success is leaving you feeling not a way you'd like to feel. So I think that's like a good starting point too, to start to question things. I know another topic seems like it continues to be a buzword. I'm hearing a lot about it lately, but it's clearly always been around is burnout. Burnout physical and emotional is part of what led to my sabbatical. And I talk to people now in corporate who are still experiencing burnout. But it's like they do often blame the employer or blame the system or other people. And I'll try to recommend things like working more efficiently or setting boundaries. And the response I often get from people is at the root of it fear. Like fear of pushing back, fear of realizing that they have more power than they think. What are your thoughts on that? Because I know so many people right now who working crazy hours are burnt out and it's like they can't get out of that routine. So everything we built around business is unnatural if we go back to our nature, right? We really born to be productive, efficient and full of growth. No, maybe like growth around learning, but not like financial growth that we always need more and more and more. And so the structures we're in have all been become machines. And we are not machines. We are human beings. We have this whole thing about happiness. And to be truly human, you have to experience grief, you have to experience sadness. You have to then be able to kind of be human. Like there's a reason when you live in nature and you see sunsets, you see so many colors that probably were the crayola the crayon colors later on. But they all exist in nature. They're not like man made. They're a natural variety of it. We have the same emotions. And so it's easy to blame the employer. And especially if you're working like crazy, you don't have the time, you don't pause. But we need sleep, we need rest, we need dialogue, we need a hug, we need a place to cry. We need all that. We're not machines. And so we also need people to build organizations and as employees to say enough. Like if a cup of coffee is going to cost $8 and we're willing to pay it, then it's going to cause$8. But if we say no, we're not going to pay $8 for a cup of coffee, then things will change. And usually it takes like 1%. If you look at the organic movement, if you look at the incredible efforts that are happening right now around the circular economy, around fashion, sustainable fashion, there's a lot of shifts that are happening that aren't greenwashing. There's still a lot of greenwashing because it's like same stuff, different channel. But if we're accountable as human beings and we say, this is my boundary and fear is the biggest virus on the planet and so did I really think that I'd be living this lifestyle ten years ago with just having all my stuff with me? No. But I trusted to say it's like falling down and getting up. It might work, it might not work. I don't know. And so unless you experiment in life, unless look at you, the courage it took to you, because we also have families. For the longest time, my mom would say to me, what happened to you? People couldn't believe that I would walk away from having everything. And it wasn't just a job, it was a marriage. It was like a whole bunch of things that I realized were toxic for my well being. Not all at the same time, thank God, because that would be a bit much for me. It's really about burnout, is when we don't pause, it's a sign. And I had to get physically ill for it to manifest and say, Stop. Enough. And that's when I fired myself because I was on medical leave and my doctor said, if you continue on, you're going to die. Wow. So it was very real. But again, can you shift the conversations? Can you start asking questions? We have so much fear from the outside that you can't find a job, you can't do things. What are those limiting beliefs that are there? Because we only get this one precious experience here at this time. What do we want to create and with who? So when you start asking yourself those questions instead of all these other questions and not everybody like, I realize that a lot of us futurists are really arrogant because we talk about the future of work as though everybody's working from an office, when in reality, there are people working three jobs and they still can't put food on the table. And so there's so much bias in what we're doing. And that's why we are not in the great resignation. We right now are in the great questioning. And the more of us that question everything, the question, the choices we make question know the source of everything. Whether it's the soil of the food we eat, whether it's the medicine we consume. I started taking supplements to someone who would tell me, this was made with greed. This is not healthy for you. And so I kind of did research and I looked into it and I said, you know what? This isn't a company I want to support. And so, yeah, sometimes I don't have access to things that I would love to have access to because I'm saying no to certain things. But unless more of us say yes and no to ourselves, to what's healthy for us and no to what's unhealthy, especially when it comes to people, I decided, like this whole belief that I got about burning bridges, it's like some people come into your life, some people leave. Why do we have to stay in toxic situations our whole lives? We don't. There are 8 billion people on the planet. How many people don't you know? How many things have you yet to experience? Not that you have to experience all of them, but even if you get to know zero point, there's a whole lot of people that are out here and ready to again create. Yeah. One of the things you say in your book is that we've all been conditioned to believe that someone else apart from each of us is the architect of humanity. As if there is a special counsel that dictates how our humanity should manifest itself. We've been led to believe that it's always someone else who dictates how life should be experienced. I chuckled as I read that, right? That there's this special counsel because you do just start to think, how ridiculous is that? We sort of are all on this, myself included. I have been like this the majority of my life. Where you're on this automated track, it feels like where you're just kind of selecting from a menu of options at each step and you never stop to think, well, we're the ones who created this, so why can't I create something new? And what I love about your book, we won't have time to cover it all, but chapters two and three start to encourage us to examine all of the things in our suitcase of the journey of life and leave out the toxic things and leave in the things that are healthy for us. And then you extend that to what you just mentioned, examining all areas of our life like the media we're consuming. That really resonated with me because at the time I read that, I was reading a lot of doom and gloom news or watching a lot of doom and gloom news and just not surrounding myself with the best healthy content and the food, the products, and just examining and saying, do I want to put toxic chemicals on my body? Do I want to eat chemicals that have been approved by some government body? But I know intuitively are not healthy for me. So I just love that the book really encourages you to examine all parts of your life. But also with that reminder of you get to choose. Yes, there's a lot of choices we have out there that someone stamped as safe, that we just know in our core maybe aren't the best for us. So I love that idea of just creating your own healthy menu, whatever that looks like, for your unique life. And I think letting go of the blame, which is really hard, especially in North America, because we've been taught to blame. And again, if we're our architects of humanity, which each of us is the architect of our own human life, like, no one's coming to save us. It's an old story that a lot of different beliefs are there, but we need to be the leaders we need right now, especially in this. If you're on the planet right now, do you want to be burnt out or do you want to create? And I'm not saying it in a flippant way, but it takes a lot of inner work. And that's why you can't go up and say, oh, everybody needs to change. That's why you can't say, this is for everybody, because you have to have a willingness for that introspection, for saying, oh, my God. That voice in my head that tells me that I don't have enough, that's actually my grandmother. And my grandmother had this belief because of her history, but that's not me. So what is me? What is it that I want to believe and think and how do I see it? Or that was something that a teacher told me or whatever. I saw it on a movie and I thought that's the way it was going to be. I remember when I was ten years old, I thought that when you grow up, you're always happy. And then as I got older, I was like, Wait a second, where does. That story you can't wait to be an adult, right? And then we're all adults. I wish I was a kid again. Well, it's like people ask me, Where'd you grow up? And I'm like, I haven't. And they're like, what do you mean? I said, who wants to grow up? Who wants to be responsible? In that story, I still want to play. I want to still experiment. I love looking at life as an experiment. Different chapters. Yeah, I think that's so powerful, that mindset shift from, I got on a track, I have the path to success, and I can't get off of it. No, it's like you can reinvent yourself, you can experiment, and you can also be multidimensional. You can have different interests. It doesn't have to be I have this one thing that defines me. I also love towards the end of the book, you talk a lot about how attitude is everything, and an attitude and beliefs, I think, kind of go hand in hand, but examining what beliefs do I have or what attitudes do I have that maybe I've adopted or I've been conditioned to embody that aren't healthy for me. And realizing that you actually have the power to shift your mindset and decide how you'll react to certain situations or the attitude you will have when you show up. Because that really does there's so many fundamental lessons, but one I go back to a lot is attitude about life. Because it's really easy to view everything as I'm the victim or woe is me or they're doing this to me and therefore I'm going to go about my whole day unhappy. But if you can reframe that and look at the positives or try to look at what are the opportunities, not just the fires to put out, it can dictate your whole mood and feelings of the day. Absolutely. And in the first book the universe wrote this when you want something you've never had, you need to do something you've never done. And so it's really about curiosity. Like you can have somebody that gives you the how too. But what are you curious about? How do you ignite your curiosity? How do you ignite your imagination? How do you ignite your courage? We need courage right now. We don't need to be victims of things. Even now in the toughest situations, we have an opportunity right now to say how do we stand for our humanity? Not for division, not for more of the same. And yeah, when it comes to fear, have rational fear. If you see a bear, don't hug it. But if you think you're not good enough or you don't have enough, that's an irrational fear. Or if you think that you're better than someone or you have to take someone down, that's irrational. Because I have learned through my life, especially working with some crazy people, that the more external, they needed a lot of validation from the outside because inside they were really scared and so they were bullying and they came out in real force. But when you started to peel the layers of the onion, you actually saw someone who was really not sure of themselves and they just played that role. And so our ability to say is that healthy for my well being? I'm not here to change. You can't change anyone else. You could only change how you react. That's what you're responsible for. And when somebody yells at you and says, you are doing this to me, it's like, wait, stop. Why are you reacting in that way? But when you're in the heat of the moment, it's really hard because we've been trained again to go on the defensive again. We don't know how to share. I'm seeing it in co living. It took me like a month and a half until the people that I was really wanting to be around showed up and were able to share. I just went down and made some lunch and one of the guys is doing twenty four seven support and I said to him, oh do you want some lunch? And he kind of looked at me, I said, I'm making this. Do you want some? Or I made a whole bunch of stuff, and I left it on the fridge, and I was like, Help yourself. And they're like, really? I'm like, yeah, but what if you come? And I said, I'll make something else, because I'm trying to teach myself how to do this, in a way. And if people around me just take I mean, one guy showed up, and I guess he stopped in duty free, and there's a bowl of chocolate there that he was like, this is for everybody. And so it's like the little things that we might not be aware of, of how well can we share ourselves with ourselves? How well can we share our like you said, there's still people around me who don't understand. How could you walk away? How could you not own a house? How could you not own a car? And if I have issues, they're always trying to associate with it. Well, it's not what you thought it was. And I'm like, no, it's not, because I'm trekking into the unknown. I don't know what it's going to be. I have no idea. But I know that it's a 50% chance that it's going to be healthy. For 50%, it might not be. So then I fall down and I go, okay, what's next? Yeah, I love that experimenting mindset, because it's easy. I think I got to a point where I was like, okay, well, I can continue to wallow in my own self pity around, what am I supposed to do with my life? There's got to be another way. Or I can actually go see. And a lot of things in life this is definitely a privilege of mine with my education and the experiences I've had is a little bit of a two way door, right? Like, I knew there's probably a door I can go back through if this whole sabbatical thing is just the biggest mistake of my life. But the pain of never exploring, eventually outweighed, just taking that leap and experimenting. And I think if it's so funny looking back on it too, because at the time, people are like, oh, you're giving everything up. No, you're not. You're just taking a little pause. And those things that ten years of experience doesn't just go away. So I think if you look at it as just I'm experimenting with a new thing in life that's been swirling in my head for years, the acting on it is freeing, in a sense, because you're no longer questioning what if your whole life. Yeah, and that's the whole point of the trilogy, is not to put like, if you have a bucket list, that's fantastic. My question is, are those your items? Do you really want to go see the Eiffel Tower? And why are you putting things on hold? I remember I was traveling. And I was going through customs and immigration, and they were like, Where are you going? I'm like, I'm doing a book tour. And I didn't have a book on me. I'd put it in the luggage. And they said, what's the name of your book? And I said, oh, if I told you, you'd probably arrest me. And he's like, it's okay. So I told him the name, and he started laughing. He said, oh, my God. He says, I see people here, like, they're in their 90s. They can barely walk. And I'm like, Where are you going? And they're like, we're going to Peru, because and I'm like they're like, it's our last chance to do it. We have to tick it off of our list. And so the question is, and this is applicable to burnout too, is whose life are you living? And if you want to live based on, again, that you feel the success and having other people stuff, that's fantastic. Then my books are definitely not for you. But if you really want to say, okay, well, what is healthy for me, then it's a very different story that we get to write, because then, sure, put a couple of things on the list, but why are we I want to live in a world where we don't retire. I don't want to live in a world where we have full time work and volunteer. Like this whole concept of giving back. What are we giving back? What did we take? Why can't we just give and take? There's so many new constructs that we can create, like for profit nonprofit. I've worked in both. Like, really? Why does that matter? Why do nonprofits not work themselves out to achieve their mission? Like, every year, it's like the same percentage of kids go to bed hungry. Well, if I'm giving to charity, why is that? So we have an opportunity here to say, what is it that we need? And I have to tell you, I have met so many inspiring people. And the difference is, instead of, like, putting together a pitch deck and doing a business for someone else, they're creating things that they need themselves. There's a woman I met, she's trying to get funding now because she got cancer from using condoms, because condoms are toxic. And she has done a ton of research about how many people it impacts. So she's creating a whole new line of condoms that don't hurt us, right? Because it's something that wasn't available to her. One of my closest friends, he needed a living donor for liver transplant. The doctors told him he had three years to live. He still didn't get the donor. He went through hell to get there. But finally this beautiful woman stepped up. But in it, I helped him start share my liver so he can help other people. He wasn't there yet, but he was already doing it. There's amazing things happening in education where kids are coming in now and are questioning and are using Socratic methods and the results are huge. There's tons in regenerative agriculture in every element. If more of us knew ourselves and started to create what we need, this world would be very different. I love that as a prompt for innovation too. And I'm sure you've used it with companies or individuals of not thinking about what is the white space or what is the most lucrative business opportunity within this industry right coming. I worked in innovation for years and it was a little bit of that. I mean, we would sometimes think about what we need. But I think if you're gosh, if you want to start a business or if you really want to help the world or think about how you can live your purpose, look at what are you authentically doing in your own life that you want to share with other people out of love. I think for me that's this podcast, even though there's no dollars tied to it, it was, hey, I had this experience of a sabbatical. I genuinely want to share what I've learned with other people and also bring guests on, like yourself, who have so much wisdom to share just because I hope it helps other people. And I don't know if you can. I think we all have those things in our life, whether it's an experience or like you said, developing a healthier product or discovering a better way of growing food. I mean, how can we bring more of that to share with people? And I think the money will follow but start from a place of what do we truly need? I love that. So much health and value. People say to me when they hear that I rate every day, they're like, how long are your posts? And I say to them, they're not for you. Because like anything in life, if it's valuable, we find the time, we find the energy, but if we're rushing and we're machines, then we don't find it. I love that response. Yeah. Even this episode, for anyone still listening, we're almost 2 hours in. You've clearly found a long term value, so thank you for staying with us. But yeah, I feel the same way about even the length of my episodes. I'm just like you get a lot of advice, obviously, when you start to have a podcast and it's again, so many rules we put in place based on what we've seen other people do versus just doing what we want and what's from our heart. So I'm glad I get the space to do that. That being said, I don't know if anyone's going to stick with us for 3 hours. I would certainly talk to you for five, so I'm going to try to wrap it up here. We obviously won't get through all the chapters, but hopefully what we've talked about gives people, I think will give people. A really good sense for what you write about in the book. The remaining chapters in book number one talk about topics like self love and self awareness, how to stop the insanity and find our own way, how to reclaim your own power and start living in a world of possibilities. And then books two and three continue to guide us all on a healthier path, helping us trek into the unknown and trust our hearts. And as Ayelett said, I think you could start with any of the three books. I did one, two, three. But now, having read them all, you really could start in whatever space calls to you, and you really could just flip open a page and you'll just be surprised at how that might be really relevant in whatever you're going through that day. You don't necessarily this is not, like she said, a linear type of book. Ayela, I'm going to ask you probably an impossible question, because I know there's several key messages throughout the books, but if there was one thing or a big thing you really want people to take away from the first book, what do you hope they walk away with? I hope people remember how powerful we are, how wondrous we are, and become the creators and the leaders we need, because our future generations depend on it. We depend on it. And if we know how powerful we are and stop giving our power away to people who are untrustworthy to organization systems that are killing us, we are powerful beings, and we're here to create. We're not here to fight. We're not here to take anyone down. And creation is a conversation. Creation isn't the next company or the next whatever, whatever creation means to you. Creation is pausing if you're feeling burnt out. So if you remember how amazing you are as a creator and then ask yourself, what is it I want to create with? Know the Mary Oliver quote? Life. I can't remember it, but I know it's in the book. What are you going to do with this gift called life? I love that. Where can people find your books if they want to read more? And what's the best way to connect with you? So you have to know how to spell my name, and if you know how to spell my name, you could find me probably everywhere on the Internet, but they're on every bookseller. And I actually have reduced the prices because one of my dreams is to get it to younger people. I'm really troubled right now with the skyrocketing rates of suicide about the number of people who are choosing to like wonderful, beautiful people who are choosing to leave the planet. Especially we're seeing it really high with young men and older because of the work situation as well. And I would love to get this to even though the title has the F word in it, I think we're all okay. I think I got one book review where I've alienated all this religious people or whatever, and I'm like, okay, it's not for you. But I find that the book actually, I've had 90 year olds read them. I've had young people read them. If you're ready for it, it meets you where you are and you could find it anywhere. And if you cannot afford it, you can contact me through my website or any of the non social media platforms that we have created. You can find me online and I'd be happy to send you a PDF because it's about us being powerful creators. And if that's what's getting in your way, I don't want it to. And I would love for book clubs to be having just find something in it to have a conversation about things. Because when I got your email, I got to tell you, I did cry. It meant so much to me. And what stood with me was how many people feel like we're alone. And loneliness. You don't see loneliness in nature. You see like an interweaving. It's mankind that created this separation and loneliness. And so the more that we know that we're here to be able to create and that's why I do say creation is a conversation. Because just reaching out and talking and asking and listening is huge. And most people just want to feel needed or seen or when they're not operating out of the success and the bullshit that we were told. You make time, you show up. So as long as you know how to spell my name. We won't spell it for everyone because it'll be on the title of the episode, probably. But I always remember you told me when I met you like the pronunciation. I yell it. Like I yell it out loud or something. But when I say your name, I always think, like I yell it. I yell it. Such a beautiful name. Thank you so much. Thank you too for just being so inclusive and offering if people can't afford I absolutely love that I can just speak volumes again to how you are really doing this from a place of love and wanting just to help and not looking at it as a business or what can I get from it. It's really you sharing your gift of writing with the world, which is just so, so beautiful. Hopefully we can do follow up episodes because we only scratched the surface. I know you have a ton of other books you've written and knowledge to share. I especially love everything you talk about with conscious leadership in corporations. And that's something I'd love to discuss with you further. We didn't have time in today's episode and I selfishly wanted just to jump right into the books because they are so precious to me. So thank you again, Ayela, for coming on and hopefully we'll have you back on in a future episode. I would love it and thank you for having me on and giving me the opportunity know, every time you just say it out loud, it helps me as well. And so having this opportunity is really meaningful for me, and I appreciate it. And I'm so excited to see where you're headed on your journey as well and always here. Thank you. I feel like I'm just getting started, but I'm excited, too, to see where that's headed. I have no idea where it'll go, but I feel like I have the mindset and the tools, thanks to a lot of the lessons you've taught me. Thank you. Well, you're amazing back at death.