***We are aware the audio quality of this episode is terrible. It is what it is.***

This is the episode that started it all. We met up for coffee for one of our usual amazing conversations, and decided to put my phone on the table to record the whole thing, to see if we could pull off something podcast-like.

Production-wise? Hard no.

Content-wise? Hell yeah.

If you're able to churn through this one, head to S1E1 and listen to us debrief this very recording, sometimes even playing back parts of it to discuss in further detail.

And in silence. 

With decent microphones.

Enjoy! Or don't. That's your business.

Abby & Ryan

TIME CODES:
12:00 - Is it lazy to not do the rounds? Or is it self care?
14:00 - Abby says Ryan needs to have compassion for himself

16:20 - Ryan bullies himself into doing what he needs to do. Self imposed rigid structure
18:45 - Ryan gives example of time his bosses had a conversation with him that could have been troublesome, but I stayed in my business and recognized the comedy. I had no need for them to see my side of the story
23:40 - Abby: What did you do to be able to do that?
24:00 - Ryan: I stood up for myself in my marriage, and whatever it took for me to work up the ability to do that, poured into everything
25:45 - Ryan: I gave myself permission to be what I am apart from what they are.
26:30 - Ryan: The boundary I was looking for was where I end and the world begins.
27:30 - Abby: You got out of your own way and started staying in your business.

28:28 - Abby’s hysterectomy idea

31:00 - Ryan’s peeing in car story

34:30 - Abby talks about the lizard brain
36:15 - Ryan’s work example, filtered through that lens

38:45 - Life is practice
42:45 - Your body is your brain
45:00 - We don’t fault people for not having learned this - it took me 11 years of marriage

46:00 - Ryan doesn’t think he has empathy
48:00 - Abby and Ryan talk about moving forward toward growth and their fears of going back

58:00 - Standing up for yourself

59:45 - Wet hair

1:03:00 - Woke people recognize woke people, but stay with the muck people

1:08:00 - Muck people

1:15:00 -  Compassion vs growth
1:20:00 - Ryan’s dad was never satisfied with his own growth

1:27:45 - Social norms around complements. I SEE YOU HUMAN, social norms

Bathroom Breaks

1:43:36 - Living in your truth can attract attention

1:50:00 - We name the podcast

🥔🌊🦃🎵🚤🦴

Abby & Ryan debrief the entire 83-episode run of the True North Podcast, and then send each other off with gratitude, love, and a splash of nostalgic sadness.
 
 Seriously. Thank you all. Thank you for being on this journey with us, for watching us grow, and growing alongside us. We added the "with Abby & Ryan" to the title so that you could find our podcast amidst all the other "True North" podcasts out there, but really, it's always been with Abby, Ryan, and YOU. So thank ya for bein' there, thank ya for lovin' us.
 
 With Gratitude,
 Abby & Ryan
 
 Also, RYAN WROTE A BOOK!!!
 Gummy Bears for the Soul: A Collection of Life Lessons That Are Easy to Swallow But Hard to Digest as Told Through A Cacophony of Stories About My Dad That Are Definitely All True*

Launch Party link (available until 11:59pm CST March 20, 2022):
 https://forms.gle/8ZujaeYnuGW5rnEFA
 
TIME CODES:
4:37 - Our favorite episodes
14:54 - Our biggest takeaways
30:47 - Our most cringeworthy moments
38:09 - What surprised us the most
41:32 - What we'll fill this time with now
51:10 - What we'll do next
 
GRATITUDES:

• Abby is grateful that Ryan said "yes" to the podcast, and for doing everything he did to make it happen and keep it going.
• Ryan is grateful that Abby said "yes" to meeting every morning to read the Bible together when they worked at the Y.

 MODEETS:

• Join Ryan's tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

🐝🤦‍♂️✨🍑✨🤷‍♀️

Ryan is a second-born middle child. Anyone who puts stock in birth order dynamics just learned a lot about Ryan from those two pieces of information.

In this episode, we interview his older brother Brandon, who has lived in Japan for the past several years. We start by discussing the differences between American and Japanese culture, and what it was like to pack up their entire lives into 16 bags and move across the ocean.

"I am a specific person. I have specific gifts and abilities that are unique to me, and I also have limitations that are also unique to me, and this does not detract from who I am as a person or the types of things that I can hope for. But it does mean that I need to be able to be realistic about the times that I can help and the times that I can't. Because if I can't be realistic about that, then I'll hamstring the impact that I could be making, in favor of the impact that I can't make. So in the end it became a process of, 'Let's not make it anything; let's just see it.' "

"People use their head to establish the direction and their heart for the method, when really it should be the other way around."

"It's not about understanding the truth; it's about understanding your place within it."

"You're looking to your insecurity voice for validation, when you should be looking to it for growth imperatives. It's not telling you wrong, you're listening wrong."

"We want people to get to know us, not contextualize us."

"I don't have to understand why they do what they do, to accept that that's what they do."

TIME CODES:
5:30 - Downsizing life
12:11 - Getting our dad back
17:26 - Father wounds and childcare workers
27:12 - The tension between our desire to help and the limits of our helpfulness
41:51 - Japan Brandon vs. America Brandon
45:01 - Addressing the problem vs. solving the problem
59:00 - Feeling like a foreigner in your own land

GRATITUDES:

• Brandon is grateful that his collection of hard-earned life lessons can and will be passed down to his kids as just the way the world works.
• Abby is grateful for the roles Ryan and Brandon have played in her own self-actualization journey.
• Ryan is grateful for his brother for modeling what it looks like to "run his lap" of parenthood.

  MODEETS:

• Join Ryan's tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

🦴😬🎵🎁

**SORRY FOR RYAN'S WEIRD SOUND QUALITY**

Ryan is hung-up on people perceiving him as credible, and is therefore hesitant to openly admit to how woo-woo he is. His concern is that there are people out there who blindly trust in things with no solid reason, and so when he opens up about trusting them as well, he'll be lumped in with the non-critical thinking masses who will believe unfounded things with very little scrutiny or need for compelling evidence.

• He does energy healing but is skeptical of Reiki practitioners
• He uses crystals but distances himself from the "crystal people"
• He uses essential oils but hates when people treat them like cure-alls and replacements for medical care
• He's open to astrology but thinks horoscopes are bullshit
• He actively manifests but hates The Secret and dismisses the Law of Attraction people
• He reads Tarot but is skeptical of most Tarot practitioners
• He uses numerology but judges others and himself for giving it any credence at all 
• He doesn't not believe in reincarnation, but definitely doesn't put stock in any existing belief system about reincarnation

Basically, he believes in woo-woo stuff only after throwing all the skepticism and scrutiny he possibly can at it, and seeing that it still stands. AND, he only trusts other people who also meet the spiritual with heavy doses of skepticism. In this episode, we unpack that.

And then we also talk about manifesting.

TIME CODES:
22:39 - Manifesting
39:29 - The realities we live in are the ones we create
44:20 - Health and unhealth as consequences of the mind

GRATITUDES:

• Ryan is grateful that this recent snowstorm gave his toddler a much needed change of scenery.
• Abby is grateful that this recent snowstorm has reminded her (through her son) about the value of simplicity.

 MODEETS:

• Join Ryan's tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

🤯😭🎁

What is trust, really? In the first 20 minutes, we settle on this loose definition:

• Trust is about safety. You know what needs to be put in place for you to feel safe.
• If you feel the need to put them in place yourself (because if you don't, you won't be safe), that's the antithesis of you trusting someone.
• If you believe the other person will/has put those things in place on their own (such that you don't feel the need to do it yourself), that equals you trusting them.

 Where do you place your trust, and why do you place it there?
 
 Reasons Ryan has extended trust in the past (which isn't the same as trusting them):

1. Conflict aversion. If I tell someone I don't trust them, they'll take it as me questioning their character, may become offended, and might hurt me. So I've extended trust to people I didn't trust, to avoid conflict.
2. Outsourcing self. I know that I'm not trustworthy my default. Just like love, respect, value affirmation, etc., if I find something lacking within myself, I look for others to affirm it for me. I wanted people to trust me to compensate for my lack of trustworthiness, and the best way to get trust is to give it.

 One component of Tribalism is Implied Trust - meaning, it can be assumed that anyone in a given tribe has a certain set of things in common. So, if you vet people's trustworthiness based on certain characteristics, and you find they belong to a certain tribe, that one piece of information implies a whole collection of boxes you could reasonably check in the "do I trust them" checklist (i.e. if you're in my tribe, I find you more trustworthy because it's assumed that the characteristics of people in my tribe are things I've found trustworthy).
 
 When someone knows you well and loves you well, it doesn't occur to them to get offended at the prospect of you being who you are.

• If they love you well but don't know you well, they love a nonexistent version of you that only exists in their head, such that the idea of being your true self can seem like a threat to the relationship.
• If they know you well but don't love you well, they likely harbor some level of attachment to you becoming the version of you they imagine they would love more.

 TIME CODES:
 13:17 - Why Ryan extends trust
 24:00 - Tribalism and Trust
 29:19 - Trust yourself most
 42:04 - How is success in relationship defined? (spoiler, it's not longevity) 
 45:04 - ANNOUNCEMENT: This is our last season!
 57:18 - Ryan epiphanizes the idea of extending too much benefit of the doubt
 
  GRATITUDES:

• Ryan is grateful for the editor/illustrator who worked on his first book with him.
• Abby is grateful her dogs, for teaching her patience and empathy, and also for giving her a new form of connective stillness practice.

    MODEETS:

• Join our tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

🤦‍♂️🤷‍♀️🥔

Do you ever notice that you seem to have done personal growth that you have no recollection of actually doing on purpose? Abby says no. Hah. It's more probable your values shifted and you just care less now about things you cared a lot about before.

Then we talk about a bunch of other stuff. Just listen to the episode and you'll get it all. Why do you even read these??

TIME CODES:
3:13 - Accidental Growth?
14:48 - Awareness
20:28 - Solitude
39:35 - Updating our Paradigms
49:00 - Love yourself the way you love your kids

GRATITUDES:

• Abby is grateful for her recent opportunity to connect with her snowbird parents.
• Ryan is grateful for a conversation he and Abby recently had about the future of the podcast.

   MODEETS:

• Join our tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

📝📦

Reference points! We all have a core set of experiences that we use to contextualize all of our new and incoming experiences. In this episode we unpack why this happens and what we can do about it.
 
 “The best predictor of a child's security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents made sense of those childhood experiences.”
 ― Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

1. Awareness. Learn what your reference points are, and recognize they're not set in stone.
2. Understanding. Learn why those are you reference points.
3. Acceptance. Release your "shoulds" around your reference points, and hold space for old ones to fade and new ones to emerge as you continue to return to your True North.

 Why don't we do this work??

1. It's a lot of things to learn, which can make it seem daunting.
2. It's not modeled for us, which can make it seem awkward and lonely.
3. It requires veering from the script we were given, which can make it seem scary.

 The Catch-22: If you turn every moment into a self awareness/self understanding/self acceptance life lesson, you'll never get to actually USE the lessons you learn, which simply amounts to cultivating presence:
 
"We're doing all this work in order to remove obstacles to being present, but if we obsess over it, the work itself becomes the obstacle."
 
Tools for getting back into your body and cultivating presence:

• Go outside.
• Identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can smell, 2 things you can feel, 1 thing you can taste.

 With any kind of repetitive training, the act itself will yield small, measurable, direct results. But the consistency will yield large, immeasurable, indirect results.

The point is to catch things you've been missing (reprogramming your reticular activating system). Then you start to catch epiphanies you've been missing as well:

"We don't hear what people say; we imagine what they mean."
― Byron Katie, The Work

 GRATITUDES:

• Abby is grateful for her son, and how he teaches her at least as much as she teaches him.
• Ryan is grateful that his dad played his part in breaking a generational cycle of abuse.

   MODEETS:

• Join our tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

😳😬😆🤯🤩🥰🥳

Last week Ryan said in passing that he's bi. This week, we unpack that.

When Ryan says he's bi, what he's saying is that someone's gender neither helps nor hinders his ability to be physically attracted to them. It's not that he discovered a new part of himself, but rather that he released the compulsory heterosexuality he was taught to internalize.

• If gender is nonbinary, then what's the difference between bisexual and pansexual?
• How does a married person explore their newfound sexual orientation?
• In an androgynous world where masculine/feminine expression was decoupled from genitalia, would any of the LGBTQIA+ identifiers have any meaning?

 GRATITUDES:

• Abby is grateful that she has the honor of getting to watch a close friend blossom and grow.
• Ryan is grateful that he seems to have internalized the life lesson, "you don't have to do all the work all the time."

 MODEETS:

• Join our tribe at patreon.com/truenorth11
• Get life coaching from Abby at IndigoCoaching.net
• Catch Ryan on TikTok at @the_holistic_mystic
• Watch us at TinyURL.com/TrueNorth11YouTube
• Email us at hello@truenorth11.com
• Stalk us at truenorth11.com

🥔🌊🎵🚤🐝