Navigating Change: Powerful Reflections from Life Shift Guests | Bonus

I'm Matt Gilhooley, and this is the Life Shift candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends. I'm Matt Gilhooley, and I am the host of the Life Shift podcast. If you don't know, this journey started as a school assignment.

And every once in a while, I will put together a recap episode.

I take the final question that I ask each guest, which typically is the same, and I took all those clips and I put them together in little pieces and little episodes for everyone to listen to, because I find them really inspiring. And I've realized that we just have a lot more in common than we do have differences. And so it's really nice to listen to these recap episodes.

I hope that you feel a little less alone in your circumstance or you feel inspired to move through whatever you're facing right now. And so I hope you enjoy this episode.

Without further ado, I want to share the recap episode in which my guests respond to the question, what would you say if you could go back to that person right before that Life Shift moment?

Oh, my God. I. You know, just breathe.

I would say, just breathe because it's going to be okay, you know, and it's going to be a long journey, and it's going to be a lot of highs and a lot of lows still, but just breathe. That was that. That's the. The thing that I always think of. It's so cheesy. It was from this movie ever after.

I don't know if you remember that with Drew Barrymore, they're like, just breathe, you know? And I think about that all the time because I. It's something I don't do. I never breathe.

I always hold my breath, and I'm always like, because you tense up, right? And it's like, it's so silly. It's like, just breathe. Because we're humans. Human experience. It's what we are living in. It's a human experience.

I would say to stick to her gut because there are many things that I held myself back from doing or did, even though I didn't want to do them, because of the fact that, again, I felt like I had to.

And I feel like as people, but especially as women, especially, I feel like we're very intuitive, and we talk ourselves out of trusting that feeling, and we try to say, like, nope, that's, like, not right. We're overthinking it. But nine times out of 10, I find that my gut is right. And so I wish I had listened to that earlier.

Whether it's about, like, business projects I didn't want to take on or again, starting my company when I did. That's the one gut feeling that I. That I listened to.

But I feel like I wish I started doing that earlier until it got to the point where I was like, I need to just follow what I want to do. If that makes sense.

I will remind her what a complete stranger told me that day. So when the guy had made a decision that I'm a prostitute, I need to go back to Cameroon.

He called two female officers to perform the body search on me, removed my shoelaces from my tennis shoes, and sat me on a bench waiting to be processed.

As I was sitting there, desperate, completely lost and confused, wondering what was happening, another immigration officer was passing by, and he stopped. If you know anything about lax, it's crowded. So I don't know how he noticed me, but he did. He stopped and he asked me, what's happening, sister?

And I don't know what I was telling him because, again, I wasn't speaking English like that, so. But I started talking, and he stood there.

Listen, whatever I was saying, maybe I was mixing French with my language and some English in the in between, but he stood there and listened to me. And whatever I said at the end, he just told me, it's going to be all right. And that simple sentence, I never forgot it.

So if I had to say something to that me sitting on that bench, I would say the exact same thing that officer told me. It's going to be all right.

And I want to say the same thing to whoever is listening to this show, which, by the way, I want to take a moment to appreciate you for allowing these stories to be shared. Because beyond, as you were talking about, beyond expertise, we are humans, and it's humans who transform because we understand each other.

That's how we can help each other. Even with our skills, with our services, with our products, the only way we can truly help people is because we understand them.

So if someone is listening to this show, I don't know if you about to give up or you going through a tough time or you just need encouragement. I just want you to hear this. It's going to be all right.

Doesn't matter what it looks like right now or what it feels like right now, it's going to be all right.

Yes. So going back to Simon Simmons, find your reason why. There's always a reason why something happened.

It might not be your why or directly affecting you, but there's some reason that that happened and to just look at the why and try to find the lesson in it. Because, you know, whatever you believe in, and I believe in believing, you know, it, it happens for a reason.

It's just figuring out what it is and then taking it and, you know, sitting with it.

I think, you know, the, the obvious thing that comes to mind is leave. Right. But I think more than that, something that I really struggled with after I left was I'm not allowed to get divorced.

But I am in so much pain and I am so broken that if divorce sends me is the thing that sends me to hell, I don't care. I am in that bad of a place. And it's either going to be my life in this marriage or it's going to be my life outside of it.

And so I think the biggest thing that I would want to communicate is that any decision that you make, you are still loved and held. And God, the God that I believe in, grieves with you and laments with you and wants justice for you.

You will be surprised in a really good way. And like right after there was just so much dark. And I kept asking my therapist, where is the freaking light? Right?

And sometimes you just have to turn it on yourself. And I think that's what I did with Clara is I went and I was like, I gotta figure out, I gotta make my own hope here.

And that was me being taken in action. But it gets okay. It's okay. Like it'll be okay and you'll be really happy with where you ended up.

Yeah. Do you feel like a different person now?

You know, completely.

And it's not only this decision that I made to pursue Clara for daters, but it's also because I was in such a male oriented world before and like power suits, high heels, the whole thing in auto versus now having being really vulnerable conversations, talking about my personal life, something I've never done before. It's been, it's allowing me to really get in touch with my feminine energy side that I really haven't done a lot of as I as at all in my life.

I've always been super like more, you know, get things done kind of things. And I really love this version of myself that I have. This version of myself is fun on dates. This version of myself is flirtier.

This version of myself is not as anxious or like looking for a goal. And I think that's been a really fun person to get to know these last couple years.

If I can go back, I'll sit.

There and just look at him and.

Just smile and just maybe tell them to pay attention.

Be interesting to watch that.

Oh, man.

Because I, I knew that changed. I knew that was a moment in my life that, that my life changed.

Well, first I tell her to buckle up, and then I'd probably tell her. I don't, I don't even know what kind of advice you could give. You could give.

But I would just say probably to myself, that everything's going to work out the way that it's going to work out and everything's just going to be okay because it just has to be. And so I think that that's what I would say.

I would say breathe.

I would just say take a step back, you know, put your phone on airplane mode or just silence your notifications and just get in touch with, with your inner, with that inner dialogue. Stop.

Stop listening to that voice, that monkey mind that's telling you to go after that Facebook update or maybe just as you said, jump into that conversation in that conference call where you have to be the most insightful or the most thoughtful person, right? And just quiet, quiet pats. And the only way you can do that is through your breath.

So just take a deep breath, exhale, and you'll see that it's a lot less noisy, it's a lot less busy, and it's a lot less chaotic. And you're okay. You know, you're not. You're safe, and, you know, tomorrow's another day.

This brings up a whole bunch of other stories, but I was very fortunate to have two older male mentors in my life. And one of them was a gay priest, Roman Catholic priest. And he told me, don't worry about it.

You might think that you're a caterpillar right now and all spiky and not interesting and you might feel like you have to camouflage yourself and hide away, but there's going to come some metamorphosis and some change and there is this butterfly inside you. I mean, that's not the thing you say to a 17 or 18 year old boy. I was like, oh my God, butterfly. Good Lord.

But I cannot tell you how many times I have thought back to that little phrase and thought, someone sees a butterfly in me. Okay, there's work to be done, there's changes to be made, and let's see what comes of it. And that was very hopeful.

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.