Maren chats with ontological coach Jenn Shull about being bold, loving yourself, and slowing down to speed up.
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- on Instagram: @supermaren
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Follow Jenn:
- Metamorphosis Program
- on Instagram: @theboldthing
Purchase Maren’s debut book, Pandemic Passion: A COVID-19 novella on Kindle.
(orchestra tuning)
Hello and welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project, an exploration of sexuality, feminism, and the journey to self-empowerment through the lens of a vulnerable artist.
I’m Maren Montalbano, opera singer, coach, and writer.
In this episode, you’ll hear me sit down with ontological coach Jenn Shull about being bold, loving yourself, and slowing down to speed up.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Welcome back. Thank you so much for pressing play. As I mentioned before, I’m batch recording a couple of these episodes at a time, so I don’t have material that is very time sensitive, but I will tell you that I’m speaking to you from inside my brand new sound booth.
I’m so excited about this, you guys! I have been recording this, um, actually over the course of this entire podcast, it’s been from being in my office in front of my computer, talking into a Blue Yeti USB microphone, which has been fine. Um, but what I’ve done is I’ve had to put a blanket over my head and try to, you know, keep out all of the sound. And there’s a lot of editing that goes on to make sure that the sound is much, much nicer and pleasant to the ears. Now, so I went from my Blue Yeti mic at my desk to my new Audio Technica mic in my closet. And for a while, I was in my closet, speaking to you, surrounded by my diva gowns, but really with very little room to move around in, I would just kind of like open the door to the closet and like, you know, and just stand very straight and try not to move at all so that I didn’t, you couldn’t hear me brushing up against my gowns. Finally, I decided to go ahead and make the investment and purchase some acoustic panels. So I turned my closet into a sound booth.
I took out the closet parts of the closet. I took out my gowns. They’re all in a different closet now. I also did some Marie Kondo-ing, so I’m actually very, that was really good for me. And now this room is so pleasant to record in. I can gesture I can move around. I feel very comfortable, and I love the way that I sound in here.
I also can sing, , without feeling like the sound is going to bounce back too much in my ears. And it’s certainly a lot easier to manipulate the sound that is going into the microphone, so that in case I want to turn it into a professional recording, slap some reverb on it, make it sound really nice, I can. So I’m really excited about all of the opportunities that the sound booth presents. And of course I am excited about it because I get to speak to you from it.
In other news, I am recording a couple of new albums with The Crossing right now. And, um, I’m working on a few new solo projects for next year. So there’s a lot of music coming in, as well as my writing, my coaching. And I feel so grateful for all of the work that has been coming my way, even through the pandemic.
And I know that a lot of this has less to do with luck and more to do with just me continuing to put one foot in front of the other. But I think that it’s really, really important to continue to stay in this place of gratitude because it’s a helpful feeling to have as I move forward, and so that I don’t feel overwhelmed with all of the stuff that I have to do, and I can really focus on how I want to be while I’m doing all of these things.
So that right there is the perfect segue to talk about this interview that I’m bringing to today. Jenn really talks a lot about the importance of being versus doing and how that can actually help you get to your goals a lot faster.
So without further ado, here is my interview.
Interview
Maren: I am so excited to welcome to the show Jenn Shull. She is a professional ontological coach and certified yoga teacher. She wholeheartedly believes in the power of the human mind in order to achieve the seemingly impossible in a sustainable way. You must shift your mindset, find your flow and align yourself with your heart, mind, soul, and ultimately your bold vision.
I love this, Jenn, by the way.
You have the power necessary to accomplish your wildest dreams. You just need help to access it. Jenn takes her years of experience of behavioral psychology, neuroscience, counseling, and therapy, yoga leadership, and puts them into action. You’ll learn how to dig deep. Going not just into the mind, but also the heart and eliminating obstacles that are holding you back from your vision.
And if you work with Jenn, you’ll learn how to strengthen the most important relationship you can have in your life with yourself. So thank you so much for joining us, Jenn.
Jenn: Oh, thank you. And that’s kind of a newer bio. I was doing so much work rebranding. It’s nice to get to hear it out loud.
Maren: It’s very, you know, so very you, and I’ve only gotten to know you for a short time. We met in the middle of the pandemic, only online, but there is so much of your core, self that comes out in this bio. And I love it. I’m definitely here for it.
Jenn: I love that. And it’s actually the first one that I haven’t written myself I bet that’s why I come out even more. It’s challenging to do that stuff. When it’s, when you’re doing it for yourself.
Maren: Absolutely. Yeah. I think everybody has that problem. I certainly know that when I’m working on, like, my website copy and all of that kind of stuff, I have to sit down and literally journal out thoughts, and then take some of those thoughts and take a step back and look at it as, as if I’m like an editor, and then go, okay. Well, like if I was speaking about somebody else, how would I write this?
So look, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into coaching? What’s an ontological coach, first?
Jenn: I love all these questions. So, um, well, one, an ontological coach, it’s funny. I actually took that name out of my title before, and then I put it back cause it’s a great conversation starter. So an ontological coach we know granted, I pulled from a lot of different things, but the premise of the ontological piece is, it’s really saying, hey, don’t worry. We’re going to talk about the doing and the action, but hey, guess what? We’re really focused on that already. And when we actually focus on the being prior to all of that, you know, even with a background in behavioral psychology, the fastest way I have found to shift anything is to work on the being in which we show up.
And the reason why in ontological coaching we want to do that first is, very often the actions that you take, or even the dreams that you have, they might shift when you maybe have a breakthrough in authenticity, in leadership, in love, and creation. And it’s very, you know, philosophical very Aristotle-ish.
So we’re working on the being, and, cool thing, when I started my training, and, as you read my bio, my background’s neuroscience, I started really noticing okay, my experience in neuroscience was more with the eye and the brain, cause I was a low vision therapist.
But when I started coaching, was like, I feel like there’s something happening in the brain. And I want to learn what’s happening. Cause I think there’s some similarities in what I was doing in this, and I just need to figure it out. And when I was studying that, the woman who’s no longer with us she’s passed away, but Dr. Judith Glaser, she had some really cool percentages that proved when you focus on the being first, the ROI of what you’re working on goes up by 30, 40% or so.
Maren: Wow. That’s really amazing. You know, this is something that I talk with my clients about as well. Like, how are you going to show up in order for this to happen? Who do you need to be so that other people can react to you, to that energy? Yeah.
Jenn: And an ontological is, you could also look at the ontology of language. So probably similar to how you work as well. Very focused on, what is the language my client is using and what is the language my client is not using?
Maren: Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing.
Jenn: I got onto this wild ride very unexpectedly. I actually was, I’m raising my hand. You all know you can’t see me, but I’m raising my hand. I was one of the humans who sought out coaching. Now I use coaching more just to keep me in integrity, keep me going. But then when I began, it was because I was stuck and I had been stuck for a while. And it was starting to spill into my relationships. I was making trouble in my life, causing trouble, causing drama. The background you know, in the eye, I was in a non-profit as a low vision therapist and a vision rehabilitation therapist. Probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a pretty niche field.
So after getting all that continuing Master’s degrees for it, I was, like, this isn’t for me. I don’t want to be in the government. I don’t want to be in the state. I don’t know what else to do with this niche. And so spent a lot of time not asking for help, mad about it.
And I met my first coach, and I was really in enamored with her, cause I had heard about it before, but I was like, that’s a joke. That’s not a real field. And so I met her in a workshop and we got together, and she reflected, “I don’t think you’re here to hire me. I think you’re here to be a coach.”
Eight days later, I had enrolled in a program that took place in Chicago. I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The program was half of my yearly salary and I was going to have to travel one time a month up there, and of course it was circumstance. And I’ll never forget, and why ultimately decided to go into coaching, having all the other background and skill sets I have.
I just pummeled her with my circumstances of why I couldn’t make it happen. And I’ll never forget. She didn’t get enrolled in any of my story. And I was like, what’s happening right now? And she just kept coming back with other ways to view it. And she offered me another opportunity to meet with her and do an exercise.
And we’ll just say, long story short, the exercise, allowed me to see myself in a way that I had never seen myself. She had me calling friends and family, and it literally left me with, if this is who these people think I am, how I can make this happen. And so I just said “look, give me the night to relate to me as these things and see what happens.”
And I reached out the next day and I was like, I registered, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the flights, the hotels, the program, but going to find a way. And not only Maren, and listeners did I find a way to do it for the year, but I went to Chicago every month for two more years, as a mentor coach. Four sessions with my coach they gave me in the program. One month in, I quit that job I was stuck in–
Maren: Wow.
Jenn: –and of course I was like, “why didn’t they ask for help sooner? I spent years, years being miserable” and all it took, was a couple of sessions, a couple of people where I was like, I am not doing this to myself anymore. This is bananas.
Maren: I think a lot of times, we get in these ruts and I see this a lot, especially in the musical community, because just, like you said, you went and you got your Master’s degree, y et all of these degrees and you sort of feel like well now I’ve invested all of this time and energy, so I’ve got to make it work. And like there is a point at which you have to say yeah, but do I love what I’m doing?
Jenn: And like there were aspects that I loved and what I could see when I started my coaching program was, “oh, you weren’t loving it in that setting anymore”.
Because as a low vision therapist, for anyone who’s wondering, or a vision rehab therapist, we are introducing our consumers to devices, to techniques, to things that are going to help them.
Either one use the functional vision they still have, or two start to rely on other senses. I started noticing with a lot of my consumers, they’re not ready. They have started to believe the story of their disability and they need something else and I was trying to coach them.
I had a background in counseling and therapy, but I was noticing none of the stuff I was trained in was helping get them to a place of more readiness. And so when I was in my maybe a year after I graduate, I actually enrolled the veterans administration in sponsoring a grant. And I went in to coach five veterans with vision loss for a year.
What I supported these vets to do, through the lens of coaching Maren, one of them was traveling the east coast advocating for cane, he wouldn’t even use his cane before that
Maren: Wow.
Jenn: I mean stuff like this, and so I got to ultimately find a way to do that. Now when I get to use my coaching with anyone who is in that realm, it’s an extra special treat. Because it’s a way I can marry what I used to do, with what I do now.
Maren: Yeah, and also it’s not like any of that stuff is lost, I’m sure you use a lot of the things that you’ve learned throughout everything that you do.
Jenn: It’s funny that it happens like that because I actually have a client now that I’m doing just four sessions with because one of her friends gifted them to her. She is not that much older than me, probably only 10 years, and she had a stroke and some things like that, so she’s in assisted living right now. So because of my background and she’s got some low vision in one eye, I’m actually able to have conversations with her about activities of daily living and things where she’s like how do you know this? I’m like, we’re pulling from the past here, sister.
This is my old stomping grounds, but every now and again I will get people that say ‘I have a friend with a brain injury, you’re the only coach I know who knows about that.’ And so it’s cool how sometimes people will seek me out because of that.
Maren: I find just listening to you talk that, it sounds like there is a lot of integration for and you’re a yoga teacher. So there’s integration like mind, body, and spirit. And I know that, we can talk actually, maybe we should talk about this now, you have a program called metamorphosis.
I think that this is fascinating and I’m really curious how you came to the realization, that all of these things are connected. I grew up in California you know, with hippie parents, so I was already, pretty indoctrinated in the woo woo.
Jenn: Not me, it was not prevalent where I grew up at all.
Maren: So how did you get into it, like what made you feel like,’ this is it I’m good at this.’
Jenn: Funny you mentioned that because, when we were going back and forth before and, you were like, what’s a fun fact about you, this kind of plays in. And I said, I was a Yooper, and for anyone, who’s like ‘what?’, it’s Y O O P E R. But that’s what we, humans who lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are called.
And it’s very beautiful, and it’s also very rural. Not a lot of diversity, at all. And, I was definitely one of those beings who came out pretty forward thinking out of the womb.
I was trying to get my school to get rid of styrofoam lunch trays in elementary school, I went around with my petition. So I’m blessed because a lot of it is how I came in, because this was not nurtured in me.
This is more biology, right? This wasn’t what I saw, it wasn’t what I was modeled, so when I finally moved down states Michigan, and started getting more access to cities like Chicago, Detroit and just getting to see more people, I was like, ‘oh finally there’s more people who think differently, and this is great’, I really started getting into this kind of stuff more, when I got down to Charlotte, North Carolina. And even though it’s in the south, Charlotte is a very progressive city and there’s a lot of wellness here, lot of woo woo here.
And I was sharing with you, got into a pretty bad car accident, right when I moved here. For me, I didn’t take the sign right away, but about a year later, when I started having some issues from it, was like, ‘You need to make some big changes, sister.’
So part of that was going on a journey to find professionals to support me. It was a very disenchanting experience with Western, and I knew it was going to be. And I found one great Western person who made a referral, and got me into the world. And I love it. Cause one of the neuroscientists that I used to follow before she passed away, her tagline was, ‘it’s not woowoo, it’s neuroscience.’
It all happened when I walked into a practitioner’s office, and he saw into the core of me. And I knew immediately, my soul said you moved to Charlotte for this.
Even when I quit my job, like I shared, didn’t know how I was going to make a living cause it was not planned y’all, it was spontaneous. And about a week or so after that, I, he enrolled me to working for his chiropractic office to be one of his assistants for a year.
Maren: Wow.
Jenn: So it, it was how I found all of that. And once I kinda got in through there, everything opened up. It’s when I met the coach who got me into this, that’s when I started yoga teacher training. So it was the work I was doing with him that reconnected me to my soul in a bigger way.
Maren: And now, with this Metamorphosis program, what are you offering?
Jenn: It’s really great because I didn’t think of Metamorphosis. My branding and marketing person did. I started talking to her because, traditionally what I was known for and what I did was coaching. It was pretty much all just one-on-one coaching.
I would do some workshops here in Charlotte, maybe quarterly. I would teach a little bit of yoga, but not a lot. Like all the yoga and stuff, I was doing more through the lens of, ‘if we’re going to coach you, you need to settle your nervous system. I cannot get into your brain if you’re keyed up like that.’
And so, in the fall, I started waking up at 3:00 AM every morning. And I used to be an insomniac, I started learning was, ‘oh my God girl. That’s when your messengers are coming to you with info, why have you been fighting this?’
And so I started getting up and I started writing and, Maren, and you’ve been to some of my full moon visualizations where it’s a little bit of context, it’s breath work, it’s music, it’s guided visualization. I bring in a lot of my neuroscience with that, then it’s space. And so that, that’s one of the events. That’s kinda how it started, I did a full moon event with a colleague back in November and it went so well. I was like more of this.
And so, I told my person, I said, ‘shell, lets do one more December event and let’s see what people are doing.’
I told her, I said, I work with the nervous system. When we get the full moon, the yin of her, comes down upon us and it does settle the parasympathetic. So I said, this is really in alignment with what I do.
And also Maren, the clients I had been coaching for years, I keep people around for a long time. They were in a place where they said, ‘Jenn, we get what you’ve been preaching to us for the past however many years. We’re ready to breathe, we’re ready to meditate, we’re ready for more.’ And so I said, okay, I’m cooking up some stuff for you.
Even though they’re centered around the moon, people don’t have to be a moon lover to do them. It’s just a fun theme, that I’m drawing from. And so, when I told shell was like, ‘oh my gosh, what about the people who want to talk about that theme and not just embody it?’
She was like, ‘we could call it moon sparks, a sparking conversation.’ So then as we were doing it, she was like, what’s really get clear on what is this. She was like, for some reason, I’m holding your yoga as separate. And so we got clear that the metamorphosis was really going to be more stuff that might be built around the moon.
Because that is our yin. I mean we are ruled by it water right, moon cycle, but it also encompasses things that would be the sun, that’s our day to day, we’re ruled by the sun. We wake up, we go to sleep by the sun, it’s also really around the seasonal stuff. And I was really gung ho and doing like of that and equinoxes and the solstices, but I had to back up and say, Okay, maybe I’m not in a space to do all of them and promote all of them.
So those I’m rolling with, but and this is going to be launched soon. And I think I was telling you about this. But we’re also going to be doing something called the metamorphosis collective. The reason why this is slower is, I decided I wanted to make the lowest tier of the online community free, for anybody who just wants that sacred space.
And so now we’re working on some tiers for all of it, but it’s really a space for people to say, you know what, maybe I’m getting a lot of coaching and therapy and other stuff, and I want this other stuff to fuel that, or maybe I haven’t done that yet, and I’m not ready for that, but I want this other stuff.
And so that’s what it’s morphed into. People that want a structure, that’s really going to work with the nervous system, it’s going to be community oriented, and could morph in another year, who knows, but that’s where we landed today. Because she sees me so well, she was able to bring a lot of ideas to the table that I don’t know if I would have saw it, how to come together so cohesively.
Maren: That is amazing, and this reminds me a lot of just the way that I’m an artist, right. I put together projects, I’ve had a one woman show I just did last year and I constantly have these different creative ideas. I know that my listeners do as well, my clients too.
They’re the ones who are, forging their own path, instead of trying to, be a cog in the classical music machinery. They’re off doing. Creating their own albums and starting their own groups and doing their own programing. And this sounds a lot like that, it’s the creative process, isn’t it? Just listening to yourself.
Jenn: And just one thing that I’ve been doing since COVID was, I, got so much coaching, training and coaching, like in the first chunk of my business as a new coach, it was really important to me. And, then I got to a point where I was like, yes, coaching is still here, but I want to start like getting some support in other realms.
So I’ve worked with a spiritual mentor now, who Is helping me like learn how to channel and work with guides, but ultimately it was really just noticing something is speaking to me and there’s no ignoring that I’m getting messages from something. And when the stuff happens, I’ve learned, get up, write about it, then you’ll go back to sleep. And if I don’t fulfill on what the voice is telling me, they don’t stop.
And they’re pretty succinct, right? It’ll be like meditation, or when I launched a Costa Rica retreat, it was Costa Rica. And it’s been really cool because I think even if I wouldn’t have done anything with it for business, it got me to say, ‘wow, we have gotten so far away from the calendar system given to us by nature.’
We start the year in January when the year really starts more in the spring and we don’t even follow the moon’s cycle, which is a full month.
And so I started getting back into those in my business and how I ran my business and scheduled. And I just thought, I love it maybe other people do too?
Maren: Yeah, it is interesting. Like I love it too. I’m still trying to figure out how that works with my own schedule. Especially, I also freelance it’s, if there’s a gig coming up, then I have to do the gig whenever it ends up being whether or not I’m at the highest peak of my energy or, I have to figure it out.
Jenn: Yep. The funny thing that I didn’t even think about Maren is, even though many of us get more energy towards the full moon we can also get pretty rocked around those. And so here I am doing my free new moon visualization, that’s a five to 10 minute one I offer online and my full moon ones.
And I’ve really had to learn how to be like, ‘oh my God, I’m super triggered I’m in my stuff. And I just show up and facilitate?’ Didn’t even think of that. As I tell clients, we do our best to flow with that ,because we do have to honor that we live in a society that doesn’t and we can’t just be like, ‘oh I take the whole week to not engage with anyone every month.’ Maybe some people can, I’m not in that place yet.
Maren: I wish I could, but.
Jenn: I just honor it as best as I can. And I think, just the awareness of knowing how my energy ebbs and flows with the energy around. I’m just able to support myself better and knowing plan for my rest before or after, plan for more downtime, and find a way to make it work.
Maren: Let’s talk about that for a second, because I think this is super important and this is something that I really learned very deeply during the pandemic, was the importance of rest.
Jenn: More people are talking about this, and I love it.
Maren: Yeah, I really, I was going, a hundred miles an hour before pandemic and then everything shut down. All of my gigs disappeared and I was I was left with just myself, and I started meditating and I’ve really slowed down, like really slow. And it was like it opened up so many things for me.
And now as we’re getting back into the swing of things, I’m trying to reintegrate that. Now rest is even more important to me and I want to prioritize it for myself. Like I, as I’m taking on gigs and stuff like that, I’m really taking a look at my schedule and thinking, do I have enough time for rest?
If I don’t, I need to say no to this. What would you suggest for people who are figuring that out for themselves? Like, how do you tune into yourself and listen, like you’ve got these voices that are very loud. My voices are very quiet and really, I couldn’t hear them until I slowed down.
Jenn: I love this topic. I actually, I canceled that this fall or retreat called slow down to speed up. After the mayhem of retreats being reorganized multiple times, I canceled it and said no more until I have a partner again, I’m not doing this alone. So you all just, notice what that brings up, slow down to speed up.
Let me say first and foremost, I’m a recovering busy body. How I started getting breakthroughs in this, was working with a particular coach that I had. In my coaching program, he started asking me questions what are you so afraid to be with if you slow down?
And so for most of us who are addicted to the busy, we haven’t dealt with things in our space, that bubble up to the surface when we slow. So we feel that when we slow, we freak out, we get busy. We don’t realize once we deal with it, we get lusciousness, but it’s a lot to be with.
Maren: Yeah.
Jenn: It’s a lot. So one, I was supported very heavily. I did not do it alone. Two for me, part of why it was so flipping hard to slow down was a lot of trauma. So I had to really get serious about my nervous system and really find a team of people to help me. Cause I would get locked into these patterns where I was like, I desperately want to slow down. I feel like I’m stuck in like a go mode. I can’t stop.
And it was almost like I was so scared of slowing down, that I wouldn’t start back up. I still get a lot of support y’all. I’m doing an oracle training and what it’s shown me is, you’ve come so far and stillness and being in slowing down and holy cow for this training. You need to get to even deeper places of that. It’s shown me my gaps.
I tell people, always meet yourself where you’re at. If you are a busy-busy-busy-busy-busy, there is a gift. And it’s enough to say, “I’m going to sit down for one minute with my eyes closed.” It’s enough.
Maren: Yeah.
Jenn: Part of the reason why I go to a lot of restorative yoga classes is even as a teacher, I need someone to hold the space for me to let go and let go in a bigger way.
So I do that as part of it, because it also helps my body with the car accident I had. But I also let the slowing down be, what if it’s a walk in nature where you’re focusing on smelling things, seeing things, hearing things. We don’t have to necessarily be like, I’m going to sit still with my eyes closed and sit with great posture and meditate, doesn’t work for all of us. It’s actually in the beginning.
Part of the reason why my offer the guided ones is, I was a new meditator. Guided and visualization is great because the mind is meant to be engaged. And so I did a lot of visualization in the beginning. Or if my mind is just really busy, I’ll still go back to that, because I didn’t have to be all still in quiet.
Maren: Exactly.
Jenn: I’ve had a lot of help with it, and any moment that I might’ve said, I’m going to go inward and really be still if I was afraid of what I would find, I would say, ‘Hey, can you be available in case I get into some gnarly stuff here so I can call you when I’m done? I don’t want to be left alone this.’
Maren: That’s great. You know what, I’m so glad that you are bringing up the fact that you’ve gotten support. This entire talk, you talk about how much you have gotten out of asking for help. And then when you do get it, then like amazing leaps are made.
Jenn: Why I talk about this a lot is, I was independent to the point of self-sabotage prior to. Said no to all help that was offered. I had a story that I was more powerful if I could do it alone and I was weak if I got help. What I found now is I’m a heck of a lot more independent by getting support.
Maren: That’s really powerful.
Jenn: And I spent, I probably didn’t seriously start allowing help, real help until my thirties, and in my forties now. Even in junior high, I have a history of depression, anxiety. My mom tried to get me to see a therapist in junior high. No, and I spent a lot of my high school suffering.Suffering.
And again, all the time I spent stuck and then I got my first coach and I was four sessions in and I quit my job. So after that I was like,I became an advocate in a big way for support. Because of what it’s opened up in my life. I am new levels of joy. My patterns that used to be comfortable aren’t anymore, and I wouldn’t have done it.
Let’s be clear, I was in my mid thirties. I wasn’t going to do that on my own. I tried a long time. What I play with now is remembering that my support can change. Not getting too stuck in no, it has to look like this. There’s a season for maybe more coaching, a season for maybe more therapy, a season for maybe more energetic work. And so now I just try to be open to all of it and watch the signs.
Maren: It sounds like for you, certainly this has been the case for me, that asking for support is actually a form of self-love.
Jenn: Yes. Yes. It’s a huge form of self love.
Maren: Yeah. Let’s talk about speaking of self-love, like that transition that I know that as a creative very difficult to express self-love. It’s so much easier to try to self-flagellate. It really is, especially as a classical musician, there’s so much perfectionism baked into what that means.
Jenn: Yeah. Yeah.
Maren: And this is part of the work that I do with my clients. But I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what self-love means to you.
Jenn: Yeah. I got my ass handed to me on a platter when it came to self-love because when I started my coaching and leadership training, in yoga teacher training, I was great at self-care. And I thought they were the same, so I’m glad we’re talking about this, cause they’re not. Self care is the doing-ness. And as an overachieving, perfectionist, I was great at doing-ness.
What my coaches started to reflect was, ‘awesome. Glad you had another monthly massage in this conversation. I just heard you beat the shit out of yourself over and over again. Why don’t we talk about that?’
And I was like, oh my goodness. I got to start seeing that self-love is the being and self care is the doing. And when we do love ourselves, the self care does just come. So I prefer to work on the self-love versus the self care, because when you work on that most people are going to get to the care anyway. But I also have I’m a recovering perfectionist and overachiever, I get that very much.
And for me, it’s funny because now I’m going to go back to where we just came from. A lot of the self-love for me, came from the slowing down and the stillness and being less busy. Because it was bringing up all the stuff that there was to love.
Maren: I love that.
Jenn: It was building a relation that’s also a premise of ontological coaching, building a relationship to all that stuff.
Maren: Yeah.
Jenn: It also took a lot of inner child work. A lot of family of origin work, but it’s really being able to say or, maybe a perfect example, earlier in the week, blow up at my partner, not who I’m committed to being, doesn’t happen often. I’ve done a lot of work, I do a lot of work, but I’m human.
And so a perfect example of what the evolution of self love for me looks. Oh, I’m going to forgive myself right away. I’m not going down a rabbit hole of self abuse because I screwed up, or shouldn’t be in a place where I still lose it sometimes. And saying, I’m not going to go down that pathway because we know what happens when we go down the rabbit hole of negative self-talk,
Maren: Yeah
Jenn: we trigger like every story we have and then we’re like, ‘what am I stuck in now? I’m in a ball of stories. Help.’
I love myself, enough not to do that, and I’m just going to apologize from my heart. Look at what caused this, and keep going. And before it would have been like, I’m not good enough, I really suck, I deserved to suffer for that. And just a tail spin of mess.
Maren: You know what I find this is so interesting because I too have been doing a lot of work. A lot of inner child work, that kind of stuff. And what I find is when that happens, because it does happen, it’s always going to happen. Like until, we all reached full enlightenment, that’s probably, we’re human.
But when that happens, I’m still in the place where I go down that rabbit hole a little bit, but each time it’s a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less. And that I think is a win, you know?
Jenn: Yes, it is a win, it is a win. What I tell everyone, as you’re working with your creative process and you’re working on the things that get in the way of that, like we’re talking about, whether it’s making money, whether it’s us creating, whether it’s us delegating, it’s always going to be these things that we can’t always see that are the culprit of what’s in the way.
So I tell everyone, some of the stuff is core, you’re not ever going to get rid of it. Okay.
Don’t set yourself up for that perfectionist. But what we do say is, all the client that says, ‘oh I am not doing good work right now, Jenn. haven’t been in that pattern for three months and I’m there.’ I’m like, ‘oh my God, can we celebrate it? You haven’t been in it for three months.’
Maren: Yeah.
Jenn: The thing is what you notice, what you’re noticing is, when we do revisit it, it’s oh, I see it. Then we see it faster and we get out of it faster. So you start to spot it, pull out and stay out for longer. And it can be sneaky because every time we might go in and really deep, it’s deeper and more painful maybe, but to get out of it fast, and then the highs are higher.
So, my like diagram, you all, you can’t see this cause we’re you’re on audio, but if you were to like, take your pen and draw a line and then like a circle up and then down and straight up and then down, we all know what that looks like. That’s transformation.
You think you’re going backward, but the ups and the downs, if you notice, but that kind of a picture you’re still moving forward.
Maren: Yeah. That’s exactly right. Oh, this is so great.
Jenn: We go up, we go down, we go back a little, but if you look at the trajectory of your line, it’s still going forward. And I think the thing a lot of us need to just realize is this work and perfectionist, I know, I’m a recovering one, we don’t like this, it’s not linear. So we can’t just have a straight line.
Maren: But if you look at it long range, it is a straight line. It’s just, you have to really take the long view.
Jenn: Yes, absolutely. Which I think, for a lot of people is why support is so key. When you’re doing deep internal work, we expect the results externally to be immediate, and very often it’s not.
Maren: Exactly.
Jenn: I’m doing some really deep inner work right now. It’s part of my businesses connected I’ll be very transparent. Some of the results that I want to see happen in my business, aren’t there yet. And so this is where I get support. To have the people around me say, of course it’s not there yet. You knew it wouldn’t be. I knew it wouldn’t be, we have to bolster this breakthrough, so it can actually come externally and it takes patience.
And I think it requires laughter as well. We have to laugh at these crazy things we do because all of us are doing something that is crazy.
Maren: Okay. I’m going to bring in an example. This is fantastic. I’m so glad we’re talking about this because I know this is something that especially musicians like really worry about. And that is like audience, people coming to my show, like that kind of thing, right?
Jenn: As a person who’s doing more events these days, I can relate to that.
Maren: Yeah, exactly. A lot of times, the question is what can I do? And again, where to here’s the, this is the question of doing what can I do, to get more people to show up at my event, which is in two weeks. And, honestly the larger, the best answer is, you get in a time machine, go back six months ago and then start your audience building from there.
But if you really want to build your audience, stop thinking about what you need to do immediately. Stop thinking about what marketing magic do you want to create. How many Facebook ads do you want to put out? Whatever, just show up as you, in full love of whatever it is that you’re doing.
And that’s the being part. And what, if 10 people show up to your concert, and this is what happened to me actually. So I did this, kind of thing, I had an event right before pandemic started. It was actually literally a week before everything shut down. So people were already a little hesitant to go out.
I did a blitz of marketing, it was very last minute. And I think there was a total of six people in the audience. So it was a small location, so six people actually wasn’t so bad, but still, I was like, I was hoping for 20, and there was like a part of me that was pretty disappointed. But then the other part of me said what everybody really had a great time.
Jenn: Yeah. Yeah.
Maren: What was the intention of having the concert of doing, putting all of this stuff? It was time to give people this wonderful artistic experience. Did you accomplish that? Yes.
So that’s the being part. So it’s really a matter of doing that consistently and, being aware of it and having intention every single day.
Jenn: Yeah, like what I used to do, when my events were big, I do yoga and stuff, but those three studios pit pretty much, and the full moons are like the real, like first, like really regular events that I’ve had going. And, some of them will have, I think, the smallest one was 10. The biggest one was like 35. They’re all over the place.
And and so I used to go into like frantic hustle which I’m not about. So of course it didn’t work a couple of days before, I quit doing that because it got in my way of showing up to lead the event the way I wanted.
Maren: Yeah.
Jenn: And I do now is, if I have a little bit of time and I’m like, who can I be? I can be really excited and just see whose name comes to me in meditation on walks. I’m just throwing this out there, might be a smaller crowd, dropped the ball on this, but if it aligns for you, I would still love it if you’re in the audience.
Where I got this mentality actually was music. All of my friends have always been DJs or club owners. And so I was a big part of promo. And so it was just, “Hey. We’re having a party. If you can come, the more the merrier. If not, come to the next one, come to none. Don’t care. I just want you to know, I would love it if your energy is there with mine and that’s all I wanted to say.”
And then people get a lot of engagement that way, cause it’s authentic for me. At the end of the day, like you, I really just have to remember I’ve had some workshops before, and they were intended to be pipeline builders for coaching. I’ve had some of the biggest magic and gotten some of the most people in with a five person workshop.
Maren: Yeah. It’s the being, not the doing.
Jenn: And, where the ontological piece comes in and to piggyback off what you said. This is why, if I’m going to declare a number that I want to see, it’s in tandem with the experience I want to create. So if I want to create this experience, how many people do I want to share it with without being attached, right? Then I’ll ask spirit and let it go from there.
Maren: That’s great. That’s fantastic. I think that’s all the time we have. So this is really wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. If people want to take part in the metamorphosis program, how can they find out more information?
Jenn: I love that. It’s a bunch of stuff within the program. My website is theboldthing, bold like B O L D. Y’all, I’ve got everything on there. There is a special tab for Metamorphosis, it breaks down what it is. It breaks down anything that’s coming under it, and there’s always new stuff being added.
But if anyone is more of social media I have a link on my Instagram and I’m also @theboldthing there too. And I’ve got links to all that stuff on there too. And I’m pretty easy to connect with, reach out if you’ve got any questions, if there’s anything you’d like to see there.
But, it’s interesting now that things are opening back up, so I’m like, oh, do I want to do some like, in-Charlotte Metamorphosis, and bring in the virtual people? So, I am just rolling with it, who knows what will be on that page by the time any of you look.
Maren: I love it. I love it. All right. Thank you so much, Jenn, for joining us and, I hope you have a wonderful day.
Jenn: Thank you so much, Maren. This was amazing. I’m so honored.
And I will leave it there. Join me next episode, in which I interview Melissa Baker.
The more I’ve started to write, specifically in 2020 and 2021, the more I’ve tried to be inclusive of characters that don’t necessarily represent me, just to make it more normal. Like I have characters that are non-binary, and I have characters that are Black and I have characters that are other stripes of queer, or that have polyamorous relationships. And that’s the thing that I’m kind of realizing I want to normalize, while not necessarily being entirely part of those cultures.
We get to talk about the Renaissance Faire. And, you know that it’s been some time since I’ve talked to you about the Renaissance Faire, but it is a big part of my life and a big part of my heart. So I’m very excited to share this with you.
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The Bodice Ripper Project is a production of Compassionate Creative, and was conceived and written by me, Maren Montalbano. It was edited by me and Jessy Dorsett. The theme music was also written by yours truly. If you liked what you heard, I invite you to give this podcast a 5-star rating – you think it doesn’t make a difference, but it does! – and I’ll see you next time.