035: Jackie Woodside - Igniting the Flame of Infinite Possibility for the Human Spirit

Jonathan DeYoe: Hello. Welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money podcast, I’m chatting with Jackie Woodside. Jackie is a certified professional coach and a licensed psychotherapist and has 25 years experience in both fields. She’s authored three bestselling books, and I’m just going to read the titles here very quickly because I like the titles. Calming the chaos, a soulful guide to managing your energy rather than your time. Time for change. I love this subtitle, essential skills for mastering the inevitable. It’s a brilliant subtitle. And then money vibe, your financial freedom formula, whether you have money or not. She’s a TEDx speaker and an expert in creating conscious communities. She’s authored 25 coaching programs, including the curriculum for conscious living. Jackie, welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Jackie Woodside: Oh, it’s so nice to be here with you. You’ve got a great podcast, voice white.

Jonathan DeYoe: Thank you.

Jackie Woodside: I have voice envy. That’s an amazing voice for a podcast.

Jonathan DeYoe: Thank you so much. Uh, you’re the first one to say it, so I appreciate it.

Jackie Woodside: Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, I could listen to you all day. I may close my eyes during the podcast just because I enjoy it so much.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, I’m not going to get too embarrassed now. Jackie, where do you call home?

Jackie Woodside: Depends on what month it is. I have two homes in upstate New York on the St. Lawrence River, a mile from, uh, southern Ontario, Canada, in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. That is where I call home. June, July and August and a little bit in September and October. The rest of the time I mostly live in central Massachusetts and the little lake house there. And I sometimes frequent Washington, DC, so I have houses in lots of places.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow, where’d you grow up?

Jackie Woodside: Thousand islands of upstate New York, where my summer home, the two summer homes that I own right next to each other were both belong to one great aunt and uncle, and my other great aunt and uncle been in the family for six generations and I’m blessed to own two of them.

Jonathan DeYoe: Six generations, when did that start? Go back. What year is that? 6th generation?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah. Late 18 hundreds. The land, not the houses. The land has been in the family since the late 18 hundreds.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow, that’s impressive.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, and I’m very deeply, deeply rooted and connected to that geographic location. And it’s nice to be there in the summers because as I said, it’s a mile south of Canada and it is brutally cold in the mean.

Jonathan DeYoe: Did you grow up on that land or near that land or just. You did?

Jackie Woodside: Well, I grew up in that town. I didn’t own that land when I was a child. It was my great aunt and uncles when I was a child, and before that it belonged to my great, great, great grandfather. It’s been in the family for an awfully long time. But when I was a child, we had a cottage just, oh, gosh, less than a quarter of a mile downriver from where these two are. And then. So I would wander the whole lane in the summertime. So we had a cottage there, but I lived just a couple of miles away in that same town.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. So this is sort of a foundational question for this podcast. What did you learn or what lessons did you take out of your childhood about money? And especially for you, entrepreneurship.

high school education in the: 1960

Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m just curious how, if you have relatives that had a farm and had businesses, how did you get.

Jackie Woodside: Because it was really hard. Yeah, because it was really hard. And then my grandfather, who owned the HVAC, ah, they didn’t call it HVAC back then, but he died in a car accident and left my grandmother without a job. So my father, my grandfather, and my uncle all died within car accidents within nine months of each other. And that was kind of the strong entrepreneurial side of my family. And so it was just like, yeah, no, get a job, because if you have a job with benefits and then you die, your spouse will be left with something. Yeah. So my grandfather was a farmer, so on Christmas morning, he would be up, uh, going to the farm, milking the cows, leaving, uh, early right after dinner, because he’d have to do the evening milking. So it’s either really hard or you’re not going to be able to support your family if you’re an entrepreneur. So that was just some unique circumstances that even though I had entrepreneurs in my family, it was like, yes, no, not doing that. So I’m the only one in my generation, or was the only one in my generation, that was an entrepreneur. My sister now has retired from a state job that she had for 30 some years, and she has a holistic healing business, but that’s after her retirement.

Jonathan DeYoe: So just really quick. I know that. So you go to college, and when you go to college, you’re thinking about getting a job. How do you transition from getting a job, going to college, getting a degree, getting a job, to. I’m going to launch my own thing.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah. So I was a clinical social worker. My master’s degree was MSw in clinical social work. So I was in the mental health field, and my first transition into entrepreneurship was going into private practice as a clinician. I’m, um, fluent in American Sign language, so it made it a little bit easier for me as a clinician. I had a subspecialty that a handful of people in the country have as clinicians, so that really built my career. And then from there, I transitioned from that into full time teacher, speaker, professional development trainer, and coach. That was a little more bumpy, I would say, because I didn’t have that subspecialty, although now, because I’ve been doing this for so long, I also do a lot of professional development training, leadership work, and executive coaching with deaf people, using my fluency in American Sign language again. But when I first went from being a therapist to speaker and teacher, I didn’t realize how easy it was for me to be an entrepreneur in a private practice with a very rare subspecialty. So I dove into this thing of being an author and teacher and speaker, thinking like, well, I’ll just figure this out. Just about killed me the first couple of years. But I’m nothing if not a hard worker and resilient. So I stayed with it, and that was many, many years ago, and I love what I do.

Jonathan DeYoe: There’s something about somebody that grows up where somebody in your family gets up to milk the cows and then has to do the evening milking. That makes you work harder. It makes you understand that this is.

Jackie Woodside: Going to be know. My family has my brother and sister and myself. We all have a very strong work ethic. My grandfather that died with the HVAC company, his son, my uncle Tom, also started an HVAC company out of his garage and built it to a multi million dollar international company. So super proud of what he was able to do.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So you’ve been talking about igniting human and spiritual potential for a long time. Can you define what that means to you.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah. So I just have this belief that we’re all here kind of with a divine purpose. I call it your soul print. And that life itself is enriched. Not only your individual life, but life itself is enriched. The more that each of us aligns with our infinite flame, that soul spark, that soul print, if you will, that the more we align with who we came here to be, the happier, more fulfilled we are, but also the more we rise up into that fullness of who we came here to be, the more that humanity evolves into more hospitable, loving, kind place. So I’ve committed my life and my career to that. Igniting the flame of infinite possibility is one of the lines in my mission statement, actually. Yeah. My mission is I’m a torch bearer for a vision of a world transformed, illuminating freedom, fulfillment, and passion, igniting the flame of infinite possibility for the human spirit. So that’s my mission in life. And that’s what gets small.

Jonathan DeYoe: Just a small mission.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, just something little to get myself up and going in the day. So that’s my commitment in life, that we ignite the flame of infinite possibility that is inherent in each and every one of us. When we understand the infinite potential of life itself, when we know our purpose, our mission, and our values, and then we just go out and start creating life around that. Now, that sounds kind of easy and simple maybe, but it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, is sort out kind of who you are and then design your life. So I’m launching a course in January called living in the domain of miracles, and it teaches you exactly how to do that. My curriculum for conscious living is the basis of this, living in the domain of miracles. And that’s exactly what I teach people to do. It’s so powerful.

Jonathan DeYoe: So just real quick, I want to go to the type, to the human and spiritual. It doesn’t sound like you’re differentiating between the two. And I was going to ask a question about what’s the difference, but it sounds like they’re very much the same in your sort of view.

e house very quickly. I had a: 01:00

Jonathan DeYoe: Have you ever heard the word and I’m going to screw up the definition, but tatagada, garba.

Jackie Woodside: No, tell me about it.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s a sanskrit word that basically means that it’s the seed that’s in each of us. It’s not the divine because it’s buddhist. Right. But it’s the seed that’s in each of us. Tata Garba. Good word, though. So what gets in the way of each of us igniting our own potential? What bogs us down?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, I mean, it’s fascinating to me, right. I call it a design flaw. It’s a design flaw in the design of a human being, because people don’t understand this. I’ve had the blessed opportunity of literally sitting with hundreds and thousands of hours listening to human beings talk about themselves. 30 years as a full time therapist, 30 years as a coach. That’s a lot of hours in the chair listening to human beings. And we all have the same inner conversation. I’m not good enough. What if they find out? I’m going to be judged. So, the design of a human being, our brain, is designed for us to survive, not for us to thrive. So we are constantly on the lookout for what? And today, it’s not like the bear is jumping out of the bushes or the lion is going to come eat us. It’s not that level of survival. So how the mechanism, psychological mechanism, of the human ego interprets the world today is that I’ll experience some kind of narcissistic wound, some kind of wound to my personality of being judged, disliked, embarrassed, marginalized in some way unappreciated or made wrong. So we’re constantly on the lookout for that. So it means we don’t take risks. We have a negative inner dialogue. The Cleveland clinic did research that says 80% of most people’s inner dialogue is in that realm of be careful, judgment, criticism, either self or others. Uh, our inner dialogue is really quite negative. So that’s a design flaw. And when you come to understand that that is just the design of a human being, there’s nothing wrong with you. You can also then learn to counter it and how to, I say, use your mind to train your brain to have a better experience.

Jonathan DeYoe: How many years into sitting with people until you said, oh, I see, there’s something similar? We’re all asking these same three questions.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, it’s a good question. My first five years of clinical practice was with children and adolescents, so I didn’t see it as much, but probably, I would say three to five years into when I expanded into doing my private practice and was working more predominantly with adults, it became evident pretty quickly. And it’s all different circumstances, right? Different stories. But if you boil it down fundamentally, people are self protective.

Jonathan DeYoe: So it’s really interesting that when you’re with kids, you didn’t see this as much. Is it learned? Do we learn how to self second guess ourselves?

Jackie Woodside: I don’t think so. I mean, yes and no. I honestly think it’s part of human development that at some point when your frontal lobes, the seat of your kind of judgment and wisdom and decision making, gets on board, then there’s this constant battle between your emotional center and your kind of rational mind. And your rational mind is careful and cautious. So I don’t think it’s learned behavior. I think it’s developmental, because, look, I didn’t have the greatest younger life and experience my dad dying and my mom doing the best she could and all that, but I’ve worked with people who had perfectly fine childhoods who have the same exact thing, and I’ve even worked with people. I use this example a lot. I had a client once where there was, like, six kids in the family. Same parents, same small town, same teachers, same coaches, same everything. Same gene pool of them. Like, two of them stayed in the small town, kind of had. I hate to say this, but a smallish kind of provincial life. Their job and their home and just kind of their same life that they’d grown up with. Two of them went off, and one was in LA and one was in New York as a lawyer making tons of money, like, super successful. And the other one was, like, working in know all these contacts, and two of them literally became drug addicts and both died early. Same gene pool, same parents, same messages, same small town, same teachers. So how can you say that it’s your parenting that makes you that way? I say it’s not. It’s not just your parenting. It’s partially your parenting, but it’s a combination of your genetics, your karma, your parenting, and then your own psychological development. And for those who don’t understand that, that you can overcome your thinking and your limiting beliefs by using your mind to train your brain, your life can be pretty marginalized.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, how do I tell that I am not living up to my potential? Like, what? Are there common markers? Yeah.

Jackie Woodside: You’re not. Neither am I. Nobody does.

Jonathan DeYoe: How do I tell I’m not doing the best job I can at living up to my potential?

g into this space. I tried in: 1994

Jonathan DeYoe: So talk about that. The people who pay attention to their inner world. This is a crazy question. You can’t probably answer this statistically, but as a percentage, how many people pay attention to their inner world versus people who don’t?

Jackie Woodside: That’s a great question. You’re a very good interviewer, by the way. So it’s a great question. I think I’m a little skewed because like attracts like on the energetic plane. So certainly my life is filled with people who are conscious and aware and doing work on themselves. But statistically, what we hear is that 80% of people have their lives have their minds filled with negativity, which tells me that 80% of the people aren’t really waking up to the fact that your thoughts aren’t true. They’re just your thoughts, patterns of neurons firing, and they don’t have to define you. So I don’t know this statistically, but I would say intuitively? Intuitively, I would say probably a very narrow ten to 20% of people really are waking up to that. There’s something bigger in me that wants to be expressed in life, and I’m going to commit myself to understanding it.

Jonathan DeYoe: So when you do client work or when you’re speaking to a crowd of people, think demographically, I’m just thinking about millennials, and they’re changing the work life balance equations. Do you think younger generations are waking up or leading the charge, or what’s the result?

Jackie Woodside: I would like to think that, but that’s what we said in the 70s. That’s true. And then those people got old and went conservative. I don’t know what happened. So what happened? Right? Because in the 70s, they said the age of Aquarius and people are awakening and people started using psychedelic drugs to have that kind of spiritual connection, whatever. So we said that was happening in the. We’re saying it’s happening again. Yeah, I guess. Just like individual human development is not linear, like it’s forward and back and forward and back. If you think perhaps human development is also nonlinear, maybe the forward movement. And then we got into reaganomics in the rise of kind of conservatism over the goodness knows where we are today with a very divided country. I don’t want to get into the politics of it, but you can probably tell from how I speak, I am as liberal as they come, because I believe there’s only one of us, there’s just one conscious. So I do what I can to embrace the whole of it. Even when I see things in front of me that know, kind of face, palm and shake my head, I say, gandhi said this. When you see something that you find untenable, look at it and say, I am that, and then look to find the place in you that holds that same energy. That’s not the exact quote, but basically, when you find something that you find untenable in life, look at it and say, I am that, and then seek to remove that from yourself, I’m going to.

Jonathan DeYoe: Just shifting gears a little bit, because I know that, uh, in some of your books, they talk about success tools, gurus talk about ideas for time management and handling your to do list more efficiently, and you kind of poo poo that a little bit. What do you suggest we do instead?

Jackie Woodside: I do. I say it’s a set up for failure. Yeah. Uh, it’s so amazing. What a great question. So let me just say why. I say it’s a set up for failure, right? So you can’t manage time. And people be like, what do you mean? All these gurus teach, you have to manage time. Well, you and I could have. We’ve been on here for 25 minutes now. We could have spent these 25 minutes doing nothing, not speaking, not engaging, and the 25 minutes still would have passed. We chose instead to spend the 25 minutes engaging in some useful dialogue with some very interesting questions and hopefully interesting and useful answers that gave us an experience. So did we manage time or did we manage ourselves? So I say you can’t manage time because time is a constant. You can only, God willing, learn to manage yourself. Your values, your commitments, your decisions, your use of the time that you’ve been given. So that’s why I say, you can’t manage time. And then I say a to do list is a set up for failure because people have these often very long lists of things they want to accomplish on a given day, and then they actually have very little time to actually accomplish that because it’s committed to other meetings or other activities. So when you don’t orient your activities in time, in a time slot, in a time piece of the day, it’s just in your head. And your head is not a structure. It’s better to get it on paper, on a to do list, but it’s better still to take that to do list and translate it into your schedule. When am I actually going to do that thing? So my schedule is populated from the time I get up until the time I go to bed with things that I’m committed to doing now. People be like, that’s crazy. How do you know when you’re going to feel like it? I don’t know when I’m going to feel like it. That’s the whole point. You train yourself to make commitments around your priorities and then to deliver on them. And, uh, it’s a very effective.

Jonathan DeYoe: What’s the lesson your inner monologue learns by training yourself to do the thing and then doing the thing?

. If you decide, like, ah, at: 03:00

Jonathan DeYoe: I hope the bike ride. Otherwise, this is a terrible story.

Jackie Woodside: Otherwise, this is a terrible story. I emailed the publisher. I said, I’m going to need another week. I’ll get it to you. Really? No kidding? I’m going for a bike ride. I didn’t put that sentence in there. I went for the bike ride. Why? Because it’s my life. It’s my schedule. I’m the one that gets to say, and I always want to live my values, and I’m always going to value my love, my friendships over one more accomplishment and getting things done. So it helps me to be super accomplished and productive because I’m clear on what I’m doing pretty much every hour of my life. However, the flexibility is built in because it’s my schedule and I’m the one that gets to say.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you’re not saying don’t have a to do list. What you’re saying is take your to do list and put it on your calendar. Every item should have a 15 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour window tied to it.

Jackie Woodside: Absolutely. So if I’ve got like five or things I need to do quickly, I’ll put those five or six things in a half hour window. Call the vet, call to cancel my mammogram. This was some of them from this week. Call and make that dentist appointment. So if I got a bunch of quick things that I need to do, it still goes in my schedule in a smaller window, and you can’t see all of it on my calendar. But when you click on it, the whole list is right there.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right. This is not important, but it’s a question that pops in mind. What do you think about these people, that time block or color code, their calendars? Do you do any of that?

Jackie Woodside: I color code. Yeah, I color code. Yeah, I do like the notion of time blocking. I’ve not been effective at doing it, but I just read. I can’t remember. Maybe it was on twitter, a productivity thread on Twitter where a guy says he does three hour sprints in his day. That’s 9 hours. So I guess he works a nine hour day. Anyway. He breaks his days into 3 hours, three hour segments where he’s got, like, specific things that he’s working on each of those 3 hours. I thought, that’s pretty good, but still not specific enough for me. Like, for example, when I was writing any of my books, if I just had on my calendar write book, my brain would get to that hour and be like, uh, I don’t know what to do. So instead of write book, I would put things like collect chapter heading quotes. Collect quotes for chapter headings, work on the outline for chapter one, write conclusion of the book, write the introduction to the book. Right. So, specific, specific tasks that I needed to do in that, whatever two, three hour time slot that I was doing, then your brain actually knows what to do. One of the reasons for procrastination is, uh, people don’t understand that they have to actually tell their brain what to do. So they don’t schedule things or they try to schedule things, but they schedule really big tasks without breaking them down. And it has the same effect. Your brain just goes into fight, flight, or freeze, and it will go into freeze or flight, hopefully not fight, and you won’t be effective.

Jonathan DeYoe: So I want to dip a little bit into money vibe.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah. It’s a great program.

Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, you apply decades of work into this, and the thing that actually stood out to me was the four factors. So can you just kind of give us a thumbnail? Um, the four factors.

Jackie Woodside: The four factors of money, vibe.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

Jackie Woodside: What stood out for you about it? What was it that you really felt most drawn to?

Jonathan DeYoe: So there’s a very common thread across almost every guest, and that is awareness is first. And I know that.

Jackie Woodside: So, great, isn’t it?

Jonathan DeYoe: Right. So I’m just curious, why is it so important that awareness is first?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, we can dive into that easily just with this sentence that I use all the time when I teach. You cannot change what you cannot or are unwilling to see. Right. So if you’re not, uh, again, I was a therapist for an awfully long time. And what I found when I treat, particularly people with addictions, I mean, even things I treated sex offenders. So even people that had really egregious, uh, levels of addictive behavior, they would say, it’s not me. Everybody does this. Men addicted to pornography. You don’t understand. You’re a woman. All men do this. And these were guys who were, like, losing their marriages, losing their jobs, really unable. Every alcoholic I ever treated. You probably don’t drink that much. You’re a therapist, but you don’t understand, like, everybody drinks this way. So, again, the psychological mechanism of the ego is designed to keep everything the same. So we use things that are, in the therapists call cognitive distortions, that are simply thinking errors. We allow ourselves to think in ways that allow our behavior to stay the same, and we all do it. I have a cognitive distortion right now. I’m not lifting weights, and I’m a post menopausal woman. If I don’t lift weights, I play basketball, I play racquetball. So I have a cognitive distortion that says, well, you exercise and you’re keeping yourself fairly fit. That’s a cognitive distortion. There’s tons of research that says if you don’t lift weights in a postmenopausal woman, you’re going to end up with some form of osteoporosis. So we all do it all the time. So the first pillar, you cannot change what you cannot or are unwilling to see.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. And then just, can you define vibe for us? It’s not like the vibe. It’s. Define vibe.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, thank you for asking. So, one of the other pillars is your beat creates your vibe that creates your life. And you’d be like, what? Your beat creates your vibe, that creates your life. So I have a definition of consciousness that I use that says, your consciousness is the vibratory pattern or your vibe that gets created by your beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and thoughts. Interesting. Beliefs, emotions, attitudes and thoughts. B-E-A-T. So it’s your inner world of belief, emotion, attitude, and thought that literally creates a vibratory pattern. We can go into the science of that if you want to or not. But take it from my word, that creates your outer circumstances. Colloquially, let me just say, very colloquially, we walk into a room, a party, somebody, a bunch of people we’ve never met before. We’re at a wedding reception, and you stand back and you look around the room, and you might be like, huh? I don’t know what it is about that guy. I just like his vibe. I just kind of like him, and you gravitate toward that person. Or you might look over there and be like, I don’t know what it is about that dude. I don’t like his vibe. Or maybe you’re at work and you walk into a meeting room, and there’s a couple of people in there, and you’re like, we use that phrase. I could have cut the tension with a knife. What does that mean? That’s the vibe. That person that you like automatically don’t even know anything about them, but you just kind of like them. That’s vibration, so we use it colloquially all the time. And now science is also filling that in. That the way that you think about money, how you believe about money, your feelings about money, literally create a vortex that you live in. When I believed it’s going to be tough, I don’t know, I’m just going to get by. I created that experience over and over and over again. Now I believe there’s money everywhere, and I just have the blessed opportunity to channel it into m my life.

Jonathan DeYoe: So this is the meat for me. Okay, my question is with social media, with comparison. I mean, hyper comparison of everything every day with everything. The news, the inequality that we see, the way news is reported both sides of the aisle with all this stuff, how is that affecting our vibe? I mean, doesn’t that make your work more difficult because it’s so negative out there all the time?

Jackie Woodside: It affects people according to their vibe. Right. So if you’re living in a level of consciousness that says, man, things never go my way, you will look across social media, and you will see things never go my way. See, look at that person. They’ve got that. Look at that gal. She got a new job. Look at that guy. He’s got the hot girl on his arm. Things never go my way. If you live in a consciousness that says things are going to be tough, but if I work hard, I’m going to be able to make it, I’m going to dig in, I’m going to work hard, and you’re going to look across social media, you’d be like, look at that guy. Look at his body. He works so hard. He goes into the gym all the time. I got to see that. I got to be like that. That’s awesome. You’re just going to see. There is no out there. There is. You projected outward, reflected back to you. So social media is just a mirror. So I kind of love my social media because it’s a reflection back. Know the high vibe. Beautiful things that I see in life. Now, I do have experiences. Just this week, there was a summit with all, like, Neil, Donald Walsh, and Deepak Chopra. And a couple of friends of mine were on it. And in fact, one of my friends was founding it, and I was looking at it like, damn, um, why didn’t she ask me to be on that? And then I scrolled down further on the list of speakers, and a friend of mine who isn’t on as many of the platforms as I’m on isn’t a. She was on it, and I was like, what the heck? So, look, I have it as much as everybody else does, but I have developed the capacity to see it, like, there I, um, am. So I texted her. It’s like, hey, how’d you get on that summit? And she’s friends with the organizer as well. And because of my own filter, I didn’t see that it was a summit about aging, which I do not speak about, and my friend does speak about. Right? So I can go through that whole experience kind of laughing at myself. So even though I have that same human reaction of, hey, what about me? Why am I not one of the good. The cool kids, one of the good kids on the platform? I can observe all of it. I don’t give it any meaning. I can just kind of laugh and enjoy and appreciate the whole human experience.

Jonathan DeYoe: So there’s this core there where you have the ability to be aware. The first item, you’re aware.

Jackie Woodside: I observe myself doing it.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: What do you think about the idea of that’s a privilege?

Jackie Woodside: Wow.

Jonathan DeYoe: The awareness is a privilege.

Jackie Woodside: That’s intense. Do you mean it? Privilege, as in, because of my race and social class?

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, all that.

Jackie Woodside: Wow. That’s intense. That’s one of the most profound questions I think I’ve ever been asked. And honestly, I don’t think I’ve thought of it that way. And I think you’re 100% right. I was raised super poor by a single mother who was widowed and blah, blah, blah. But for whatever reason, I worked hard, I was resilient, and I got a good education. And without my education and what that affords me. Right. Not just the education, but then the type of people that you get exposed to through that type of education. That then led me to the summer. Between my two years of graduate school, I traveled in Europe for six weeks on super low budget, eating bread and yogurt with just a backpack and hostels. But I had six weeks of traveling in Europe. Why did I do that? Because I was in grad school. What happened in grad? School, I met other people that wanted to travel in Europe for weeks on end in the summertime. So not just the education itself, but all that affords you. And then, of course, that leads to the career choices I’ve had. So, yeah, I guess I’ve never thought of it that way. And I’m super glad you said it, because I am super privileged with the education I have now with the economic status that I have. I was not raised this way with this economic status, but, yeah, I am highly privileged.

Jonathan DeYoe: So what I don’t mean by saying that is that we should all feel guilty for being successful or getting there, because I.

Jackie Woodside: No, but I think it needs to be acknowledged.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, exactly.

Jackie Woodside: I think it needs to be acknowledged.

Jonathan DeYoe: I work with, one of the things that worries me about the world is there’s this message out there that it’s difficult or it’s hard, or you can’t do it. And I think most people get that message, and then some of us speak about how you can raise your consciousness. You can do it. We believe in you. And if you don’t get that message as a kid and you don’t get that message until 25, 30, 35, 40, it’s very difficult. After 40 years of I can’t do it, I can’t become, I’m bad, I’m no good to then go, oh, sure. This person said, I just saw this podcast with Jackie Woodside. It was awesome. We talked about raising your consciousness, and I can’t do know, how do we become if we’ve never been told we can become?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah. So I’m so glad you’re asking me that. So, uh, a couple things I want to say about the privilege thing. So, I’m married to a woman, and we have an adopted son who’s not white, he’s guatemalan, and he had a couple of years of really difficult mental health challenges, and because of that, we ended up sending him to a wilderness therapy program. And long story short, he’s fine. He’s doing great. He also has neurological disabilities and learning disabilities, and we send him to a private school specifically designed to teach the way he needs to learn. And I thought between his learning disabilities and his psychological challenges that he had in, uh, puberty, 13 to 15, this kid, because he’s not white, would be in the juvenile detention system at 17. But because he’s been raised with educated white parents who have the means to pay for a very expensive treatment program and a very expensive private school, he’s going to be just fine. He’s on track to start college in a year and a half, and kids exactly like him who have emotional difficulties with emotional regulation or who have learning challenges because of neurological disabilities or any other ADHD or whatever their issues are, would end up in a very, very different track. One of the reasons I didn’t send him to public school was that, uh, kids of color who have ADHD end up in some kind of correctional. Not correctional facility, correctional track, educational correctional track. 70% higher than white kids. And I was just, like, not doing that. And because I have the privilege of. I mean, it has been a sacrifice, for God’s sake. My spouse and I look at the numbers sometimes and think, holy cow, what we could be doing if we didn’t have this going on. But we have the opportunity to do it, and we’re blessed to do that. So that’s the first thing I want to say, acknowledging that privilege that you’re talking about and how that’s actually playing out in my family and in my son’s life. The second thing I want to say is that, as a younger person, was diagnosed with depression, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety disorder, and was on a number of psychiatric medications. I had a therapist write an article about me because I was such a hot, freaking mess that she found my treatment quite fascinating. I was also diagnosed as a young person with borderline personality disorder. So I. And anyone who’s a clinician will raise their eyebrows and know what that means. That I was really, relationally, a hot mess. I’ve recovered from addictions, and I am no longer in any psychiatric care other than occasional family therapy meetings with my son and my spouse. I’m not on any psychiatric medications, and I have been sober for over ten years from addictive behavior. So wherever you are today, yes, I’m white. Yes, I’m well educated, but I’ve also been through the fire. So whatever it takes for you at one point, and I really want to emphasize this, at one point in my life, I was going to individual therapy, couples therapy, twelve step meetings three times a week, meeting with my sponsor at least once a week, and meeting with my minister once a week, and going to church once a week. So my recovery was nothing short of a part time job for many, many years to get me from the fire into this infinite flame of possibility that I live in today. So wherever you are. Me? M like, well, I can’t check it because I’m depressed. So was I. Oh, and did I mention I was also homeless? Really? I was a hot mess. So wherever you are, in your walk, if you have that willingness and grit and resiliency, and just know there’s something in you that wants to be birthed forth and you’re willing to do the work, you can transform your life.

Jonathan DeYoe: So I want to make this concrete for somebody who’s listening. If someone comes to you today, or someone’s listening and they connect with you somehow and they’re like, you know what, I’m going through this and this and this and this, but I’m really interested in igniting my potential. What’s the first thing that they should do? What’s that first step?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, reach out and ask. Exactly like you just said. The thing is, it really is about your vibration. And if you’re in that hot mess place like I was, you’ve really got to change the people that you’re around. Because the way they think, the way they live, the way they talk, the possibilities that they see are never going to support you in creating the experience that you want in life. So whether it’s an online group or going to a twelve step program, you have got to surround yourself with people who, how do you say it? High vibe thinkers, possibility thinkers, who see that life can be transformed. See, most people don’t even believe it. They don’t even think they can change the way they think and feel. Well, I can’t help, it’s just the way I think you can help it. We know that today neuroscience has proven through the magic of neuroplasticity, you can change the way that you think and feel. So reaching out, asking for help, being around different people. Twelve step programs are free. Find an addiction. Go sign up for one. Like we all are addicted to something, right? AcoA or uh, codependence. Anonymous. Go to something, some kind of a twelve step fellowship. Because it will expose you to different thinking, higher level thinking, higher order thinking.

Jonathan DeYoe: I was going to say. It’s so funny that finding it. Do you remember the movie? I don’t know, maybe you never saw this movie, the movie Fight Club, where that’s what one of the things they do is they go to different twelve step programs and they use that as a way to start feeling better about themselves. They go to different programs. Yeah, I guess that’s possible, right?

Jackie Woodside: Absolutely. It was essential. I do not go any longer and I do depart from the twelve steps a little bit. I say I am recovered because I am is the most powerful, two most powerful words that you can use to describe yourself. So in twelve step they will say, hi, m, I’m Jackie, I’m an addict or whatever. I don’t say that about myself any longer. I say I am recovered. So even if I were still going to meetings, that’s how I would introduce myself. But being in a group, you can introduce yourself any way you want to. But being in a group of people that are committed to growth, committed to transforming their lives and are thinking at a higher level, debunking their own thinking, it’s called metacognition. Thinking about how I’m thinking. It is a way of starting to transform your inner world.

Jonathan DeYoe: So we gave the person who came to you struggling with this and this and this and this and saying, what do I do? What’s the next step? Right? We gave them the next step. What is something that they’re thinking that they should be doing or that other people are telling them they should do, that they should just ignore? Don’t worry about that. That’ll take care of itself.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, probably the, oh, just feel better.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

Jackie Woodside: Uh, I don’t know what you’re so upset about. Why don’t you just feel better? So that’s one you’re not going to quote, just feel better. You’ve got to put in the time. There’s nothing that you can learn, there’s no skill that you can develop without putting in. So that’s number one. And then the second is the geographic cure. Moving to a new location, a new job, or a new relationship is not going to be the answer. Now, look, if you’re in some kind of a battering relationship, again, I don’t remember if I mentioned this. I was also a domestic violence survivor and have amazing stories about getting to the other side of that. So I promise you, no matter where you are in life, I was there. So if you’re a domestic violence survivor, the geographic cure is fine. Get yourself out of that situation and out of that relationship. But short of that, people think, well, I’m not happy at this job, so I should go to this job and then I’ll be happier. I’m not happy in this city or this town, so I should go here. No, the geographic cure. Changing your outer circumstances is not the answer. It’s really not. You’re probably going to have to try it a dozen times before you recognize that. But changing your outer circumstances does not create inner change. Look to yourself, to how you think, what you believe, what you are parroting, what’s coming out of your mouth. Notice what you write in emails and text messages, because that’s a little slower when you start recognizing that your own kind of embedded negativity, fear anxiety, frustration, criticism is a big part of the problem. That’s where you go to work. And one of the best places to do that for free is being able to go to twelveth step. Now, if you’ve got some money and some financial resources, hey, dive in, hire a coach, take one of my programs, get in touch with me. Work with somebody who’s really a consciousness expert that can help you in a much more rapid, transformational way. But no matter where you are, there are resources. I highly recommend unity or new thought spiritual movement. You can do a, uh, unity church service online for free at any time of the day or night. By going to YouTube and looking up unity churches I’ve got on my own YouTube channel. You will find tons of talks that I’ve delivered at unity churches. Go listen to them. Listen to my thinking. I had a whole classroom of students once, um, transformational coaching students show up one Saturday afternoon for our classes with WWJD bracelets on. And if you’re not familiar with that, it’s, what would Jesus do? But my students showed up and said, this is how they think. Now, what would Jackie say about that? What would Jackie do? Borrow my mind, borrow my consciousness. Because I promise you, I think differently about life’s challenges than most people.

Jonathan DeYoe: You said, you just sort of talked about the, uh, new program you’re working on that launches, I think you said, in January. Tell us about that program and how do people connect to you?

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, thank you for asking. So, my website is jackiewoodside.com. The program is called living in the domain of miracles. And it is a six month coaching program that I will walk people through how to answer these important questions of who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What are my values? What’s my mission? What’s my vision, and how am I going to get there? And then after we’ve done that, I will help you raise your consciousness so that you not only have good ideas, but you have a vibratory pattern that will allow that to come into your life.

Jonathan DeYoe: Beautiful. That’s definitely going in. Show notes for sure. One last question. Oftentimes we have a Persona of ourselves or a thought of ourselves that maybe people don’t know, and we want people to know. So is there anything that people don’t know about you that you really wish that they knew?

Jackie Woodside: Oh, I thought you were going to say that. I didn’t want them to know. Maybe that I’m the happiest married person that I know.

Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, wow. That’s very good. Congratulations. That’s beautiful.

Jackie Woodside: Incredibly happily married. I love, love my spouse. We’ve been together for 22 years. I don’t know if I mentioned in this. I’ve done a bunch of interviews today. I’m fluent in sign.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, you mentioned.

Jackie Woodside: Yeah, I did mention that. Okay. Sorry. I’ve done like three interviews back to back, so I apologize. So the deaf community is a big part of my life. My spouse is deaf. And, uh, if for no other reason, raise your vibe so you can be as happily married as I am.

Jonathan DeYoe: I think we all want to be happily married. So I’m happily married for 19 years. Almost 20. Yeah. So a couple more years, I’ll catch up with you. But it’s beautiful.

Jackie Woodside: There you go. That’s right.

Jonathan DeYoe: Jackie, thanks so much for coming on. I’ll make sure all those things are in the show notes, and I very much appreciate your time.

Jackie Woodside: It’s so great to be here with you.