Maren sits down with Lisa Husseini to talk about why we all take things so personally, and how to let that all go.
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Transcript
(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 chat with Lisa Husseini, coach and author, about why we take things so personally… and how not to do that.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Hello. Thank you so much for pressing play. I’m glad to be back. Some of you may have noticed that I took a few weeks off this season. There’s been a lot going on, as stuff has been opening up. I’ve been getting more gigs, which is wonderful. I went to Montana with The Crossing, which is a choir that I sing in. It was such a wonderful experience, but I, and I think I talked about this last time, I really have been trying to find that balance now between all the work and all the things that I’ve really started during quarantine in my house and all the things that are outside of my house.
And if you’re listening to this in real time, you know that the Delta variant is starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger, and things are looking like there could be some more closures sometime in the future. So I’m really taking the time that I can, when I can be outside, to really be present and appreciate the time that I have.
And you know, who knows what’s going to happen in the future? But what I do know is that I really love podcasting. I really love talking to you like this, and I don’t think I’m going to stop, but it might evolve and that’s okay. Because everything changes. I’m going to keep this brief because I really want to get to the interview, but I just wanted to say that I’m so grateful to be here and talking with you.
Maren: I am super excited today to welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project Lisa Husseini. I have been really excited about this for a while, actually. Lisa Husseini is a professional coach who supports human beings in creating their version of extraordinary living. She has worked with a number of high powered executives, devoted parents, award winning entertainers, multimillion dollar business owners, and even the occasional Las Vegas performer. She has partnered with a variety of symphony orchestras, Ivy League schools, and service organizations to bring her work to their constituents and communities.
Before establishing her own business Lisa worked at and led a handful of arts organizations throughout the United States. She is a classically trained flutist, holds degrees from the Hartt School and my alma mater New England Conservatory, was named a Miami Leader, and has served on a variety of non-profit boards. Lisa, welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project.
Lisa: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Maren: I’m so happy to have you on, this is a real delight. For everybody out there, Lisa is my coach and so she gets to talk to me on a very regular basis. So I have the pleasure of getting her droplets of wisdom, like, a lot. So now I get to bring them to you and this is going to be great.
But let’s just dive in. Tell us a little bit about just about your background, like how you became a coach. You started off as a flutist. Like, what happened there?
Lisa: What happened there? It’s so interesting when people ask me this question because I feel like I just kind of fell into coaching, which is a really peculiar thing to say. I think especially now, where there’s a lot of people who are you know, even in the few years I’ve become a coach there has been a rise in its popularity. So there are people now who from their jobs or careers are looking at coaching and being like, “I want to do that,” and working towards it. And for me it was not that way.
So as you mentioned, I’m a trained flutist. I went quite quickly after my graduate degree. I realized that where I felt like I was making the most impact was going to be in arts administration, so I switched to arts administration. Fast forward about eight years or so, and I’m working at the New World Symphony, which is a symphony based in Miami. These two women come down to do a seminar. They lead this company called iCadenza. I had never heard of them before. I quite frankly didn’t even know that what they did existed in the world. And we ended up doing an arrangement where we worked together. First like five hours a week, and then over time eventually I became CEO of the company.
But before then, so iCadenza was and still is a coaching firm for musicians and artists and people in the arts. And when I met them they were really doing consulting for musicians. So this is how it made logical sense in my mind, right? I went from performer, towards administrator, to teaching others how to be the arts administrators in their own lives. And then around the time that I took over as CEO, myself and the two owners made a business decision based on their experience of coaching to just go fully coaching in the company.
So here I was leading a coaching company for musicians, and I really couldn’t have told you what a coach was. I came from a background of being like, “Life coaching, like what even is that?” I had a lot of judgments around the word coaching, so it was a really interesting position for me to be in, but I really wanted to succeed as a CEO.
So then I started getting trained and being a coach, ran that company for about a year and a half to two years, started coaching musicians and artists, started my own company where I continue to coach musicians, artists, but also just creatives and entrepreneurs. And now I’m just like your standard run of the mill professional coach for everyone. Not everyone, but every type of profession.
And I think for me, I get asked a lot by people, “How did you transition from coaching musicians to coaching a wider range of people?” And there’s a lot of assumption that people have that the reason I made that switch was because there’s more money, or supposed to be, I’m doing air quotes, “more money,” in coaching non-musicians. That’s actually not true. I have a lot of peers, and colleagues, and friends who coach only musicians and make significant amounts of money. But for me it was always kind of written in the stars. Like, as soon as I started coaching I never felt quite at home with only musicians, and I felt more at home in a broader sense, in a broader definition of the type of person I coached. So that’s how I ended up doing what I’m doing.
Maren: That’s so interesting that you know, a lot of times you hear these like marketing gurus say, “Look, oh, you got to niche down, you got to niche down, you got to.” Like, and actually sometimes it’s perfectly fine to just be like, “No, I coach. I coach.” That’s fine. Like, it’s just as fine as saying, “I sing.” You know, I find that in like cocktail hour situations, if you’re at like a cocktail party or something, and somebody says like, “What do you do,” it’s so much easier for me to say, “I’m an opera singer,” than even saying, “I’m a singer,” just because they then get like, a very specific image in their mind. But I then have to qualify that by saying, “Well, you know, but I also do new music and pretty much any other stuff.” And then it just sort of gets watered down and then they just sort of get that glazed look on their faces. So I really feel like for situations like that maybe you say a niche thing, but like for general as you’re moving through the world, you could totally just be yourself and, you know, coach anybody or sing anything.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s interesting cause the bio you read is right now the most, the second most niched down version of what I do. Like, typically when people ask me I’m just like, “Oh, I’m a coach.” And they’re like, “What does that mean?” And I think part of my personal brand is I enjoy confusing people. I enjoy like seeing people be like, “What?” So usually when people ask me like, “What does that mean?” I’ll be like, “Oh I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s something.” Or I’ll ask them about themselves. You know, I like to make light of things. I like for things to be a little funny because it kind of is funny. Like, everything is funny. Being a singer is a funny thing. Like being a flutist is a funny thing. Like what fun it is to just talk to people all day as a coach.
So yeah, but I will say too that as my practice has grown I’ve found myself niching down in ways that are harder to describe but are actually very tangible. So for example, on my website I talk a lot about this part of our lives where we’ve been achieving or creating excellence in certain areas, but there’s always one area that seems to be forsaken. And when we make the leap from achieving through the drive, willpower, hustle culture to fostering a success that can spread to all areas equally, it can be a really tough leap to make.
So right now a lot of the clients who I bring on tend to be people like that. So people who have built a really successful business but are struggling in their personal lives, or who have built a really beautiful, conscious family and are struggling to have confidence in their work, whatever it is. And to me, that, it’s very tangible. Like, there are people who I do speak to who I know I’m not the best coach for them. But it has nothing to do with their profession or how they identify necessarily.
Maren: Got it, interesting. So you have a book and it’s coming out very soon, August 1st. I am not sure that this will be airing on August 1st, it might be a little bit later. But by then it’ll be out and available for people. Can you talk a little bit about it?
Lisa: Yeah. So, it’s so wild. I wrote this book, It’s Nothing Personal. It releases on August 1st, but it’s been on presale for a while now. And it wasn’t until the moment that I hit send to the printer, like hit the button ‘send’, where I realized suddenly that I had written a book. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I was like texting all my friends. I was like, “I wrote a book!” And they were like, “Yeah Lisa, this has occurred already.” I’m like, “Yeah, it didn’t hit me.” So if I seem a little flustered it’s cause I’m still in the process this month I think of digesting that I wrote a book. But, the title of it is It’s Nothing Personal and the subtitle situation is, A Book on the Art of Letting Go.
And it is modeled very much on my own journey with this subject. It is a, it’s written in the style that my blog is written in, which is really the way I write everything, which is a narrative type of writing. So it is hopefully an easy read because I like to write in that style. And it’s a combination of my own personal stories, stories of my clients, analogies. I’m a big analogy, metaphor person. And it walks through this process of why we take things personally, what taking things personally really looks like both inside and outside, and how we can go about taking things less personally.
Because what I would constantly get frustrated by, and especially right before I started the actual productive journey of doing the work to take things less personally, is I felt like I was being bombarded by well-meaning advice from people, and books, and podcasts, and everything. But this advice that was like, “Don’t care what people think about you.” And I was like, “But, how?” That’s the question that I have. And so I realized that what most of the advice out there treats this whole thing of like, ‘taking things too personally’ as, is they treat it as kind of like the issue. Like the root cause. Like, okay, so you stop doing that, and then all the symptoms of that get better.
But from my experience in healing the stuff that then led me to take things less personally, I realized, oh no, when we’re taking things personally that’s actually a symptom of a lot of other root causes. So when we keep saying, “Oh, just stop caring. Just don’t care what people are saying or doing.” We can kind of keep it up for a while, but it’s like cutting a weed off without pulling it from the roots. It’s going to grow back pretty quickly. And then we can get really, as humans, can get really hard on ourselves, or make it mean something, and it just becomes really demoralizing really quickly. So, that’s what I endeavor to try to help solve in the book.
Maren: So I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy and I read through it. And one of the things that really struck me, and as you were talking this reminded me of that, is how when you were younger your mother used to say, “Get over it.” And when I was young my dad used to just tease me all the time, constantly tease me, and I hated it. I hated being teased, and PS I still hate being teased. But he kept telling me, you know, “I’m teasing you so that you’ll like develop a thick skin so that you can get so you won’t be so sensitive.” And, um, it didn’t work.
Lisa: Shocking. I’m shocked.
Maren: I was so struck by that when I read that in your book too because it was like, “Ah yes, of course it didn’t work,” you know? And it was, there was so much more stuff that was going on. So yeah, absolutely. I too, as you know, strive to not take things personally but it’s very difficult and it’s also something that I wasn’t even aware that it was an issue until recently, you know?
Lisa: Yeah.
Maren: And I do think that that’s like part of what coaching helps with, honestly. But that just to be able to have the awareness is just like a really good first step to understanding what’s going on, finding that root cause, and then actually addressing everything and healing yourself. So yeah.
There was something else that I wanted to ask, oh yeah. So when you decided to write a book like, what was going on in your head? Like, why did you decide to write a book?
Lisa: I wish I could answer that question easily. I will say this. So, and I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been like, “Wait, when did I actually decide to write the book?” I know for a while people around me were like, “You should write a book.” And I was like, “Never. That sounds like a lot of work.” Which it tends to be the precursor to most things in my life that I end up doing, when somebody says, You might consider this.” And whenever I’m like, “No, that’s a lot of work.” It usually means that eventually I’ll find a way to do it. Just I have to get past whatever assumptions I have about the level of work.
So, I think it was around this time last year. No, maybe like November of 2020, where I was taking my first week of vacation for the year. Because 2020 was like, what a year. It was the first year of my business. I started my business in January, January 1st. Then the pandemic hit, right, and then it was just such mayhem. So November I took my first week off and I was like, yeah, I think it’s time.
That year also I had started a blog, something else that I had said I was never going to do, cause it felt like too much work. And I think for me with writing, writing is something that I actually really fervently protect in my life. There are a lot of things I protect in my life, but my writing process is kind of a, “it’s not up for discussion,” area of my life. I’m not interested in doing it on some type of schedule. I’m not interested in trying to make it more appealing to the masses. I’m not interested in having a range of style. To me, I focus that type of energy on my coaching practice. But for me writing is really a creative process that I think surprisingly to me I enjoy. I never really considered myself a writer. But so my blog took shape where essentially, and still to this day when I write a blog post I wake up, I have an idea, I sit down, I write it. 40 minutes later there’s a blog post. I don’t wait. I don’t schedule it. And that’s very important to me.
So around November of 2020 I have this idea, “Okay, I think it’s time to write a book.” And I think after sitting alone in silence enough, which tends to be like my process, I was like, “Okay, I want to write a book about triggers.” Because for me this process, understanding triggers, understanding why I was taking things personally, understanding how to stop, transformed my life. And I think at that time I was watching a lot of people go through it. And so yeah, I kind of decided on it then.
I’m really good at names. It’s like, one of my weird little superpowers, if somebody wants to name something they come to me. And it’s a ‘friend free of charge,’ quote unquote, service I offer. But so pretty soon after I was like, “Okay, the title is going to be either It’s Not Personal or It’s Nothing Personal.” I liked how nothing sounded better. And then I kind of started outlining, like there were certain stories. But the book itself I wrote over the course of a couple of months, but like hands to page probably like 25 to 30 hours of writing.
Especially, the book’s in three parts, the second part of the book just came out of me. I did spend a lot of time afterwards going back, and editing, and formatting, and like rearranging certain stories. But the writing of it was pretty much like my blog posts. So I was just like, “Okay, let’s go.”
Maren: That’s amazing. I’m really glad that you talked about this, or that you are talking about this, because one of the things that I’m trying to talk about during my podcasts is the creative process. Like, everybody that I’ve talked to has had some sort of like creative thing that they’re working on, and everybody’s process is really different. I think you’re the first person who’s really just, you wake up and it’s like coming right out of you. I know for me there’s a lot of just sort of little things here and there, and then I kind of like mash it together, and then that’s kind of a mess, and then I mash more things together and that’s sort of a mess too, you know? And then eventually it becomes a thing. And I think that this is really fascinating because you never know. You really never know.
As far as like, when you were like, “I think I want to write a book,” even after it was like, “oh, that’s too much work,” but then you’re like, “it’s time to do it.” Did you have this feeling like, actually I’m not going to put words into your mouth. What was the feeling that made you want to do it? What were you trying to achieve? Like why a book?
Lisa: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I know what I wasn’t trying to achieve. I wasn’t doing it to get on any type of like, list or promote my practice. You were actually one of the first people, and I asked you this pretty late on, it was right after I announced the release of my book. And after I announced that I was going to put my book on preorder, at that point I still had like 30% of the book to write. It was just like I knew at that point it was going to end.
I self-published, so I had that luxury, et cetera. But you were telling me, I had no idea the big world of, I call it like “the big world of the books game.” Self-publishing means so many things. And I have friends who have done it through companies to get their name out there more, to get reviews, to get things like that. Power to people who do that. I don’t have the patience for that type of a thing, so I wasn’t doing it for that.
I think for me, as soon as I started writing the book, a few things. It became very clear that this was going to be one of many books in my life. Like as soon as I started writing I was like, “Oh, this is easy.” Like, I think I had just given into this idea that writing a book is hard. I know that everybody has different processes. I know many people who’ve written many books. Some come quickly, some don’t. I also know that for me, I write in a very narrative style. So I’m not like doing backend research and footnotes and all of that, for this at least. But it was really quite easy for me. And so I was like, “Okay well, I’m going to have more books.” And then I was like, “Well, I think I just need to get this out there.”
Like with anything, with my coaching practice a lot of people ask me, clients and others, like how do you build a coaching practice to the level that you have it at? And I try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to really showcase how many shots I shot early on. Like how many, just putting it, whatever it is, out there. Messy stuff, awkward stuff. And so that was my goal.
Also, it was around the time that my business really kind of did a level up. All of my rates rose significantly. I was trying to start to think of like how to serve people who could no longer pay my rates. And I thought, “Okay well, a book might be a really great thing.” Like, if I can make it around a topic, and that’s also why I chose this topic, this process that had so much of an impact for me. If I can make it around something that’s really helpful then people who aren’t going to ever work with me, or aren’t ready to work with me or whatever it is, but still want to be served in some way, it’s like okay, I can have this two digit price point and it’s totally fine. So, I don’t know if I answered your question.
Maren: Yeah, it’s interesting. Like you definitely said you didn’t want it to be like a sort of funnel, basically. And yet I think it sounds like what you really did want it to be is a way to serve people, just a way to serve people. I’m thinking like for myself, how I get into these creative projects. Like, why do I do the things that I do? Usually I have either some kind of epiphany, or often I will be like, “I want to do a thing.” And then I spend months researching various things. And then one thing kind of like pops up. And then I’m like, “What’s so important about that thing that I want to do it?” You know? And then I come up with these sort of larger reasons, you know the larger why, for creating something and bringing it into the world. And it sounds like the larger why for you is you just want to help people.
Lisa: Yeah, I think so. I mean, for me that’s my constant why. I also think, you know that I’m very much also into Human Design, and that this is also a corner of my business that’s expanding. But around the time I started thinking about the book was around the time I really started exploring like how to live into my type, which for anybody who’s listening who’s familiar with human design, I’m a manifestor. And the manifestor’s impetus, or their way of living in their design, is to initiate. And I really had a hard time with it at first, because I was taught from a lot of really great marketers, a lot of my own training, to always look outside. To say like, “Okay, what’s the audience I’m trying to serve. How do I appeal to them?” Which is, it can be very valuable for certain people, but it never quite worked for me. And I found it very frustrating that it never quite worked for me. And so this book, I think, was one of the first times where I was like, “Okay well, I have something to say. I want to say it. So I’m just going to say it.”
I remember at the beginning like my coaches, I have a really trusted friend who’s also my energy healer and does like energetic coaching with me. All these people were like, “Your book is really important. It’s a really important thing.” And I was like, “Uh, okay.” Like because I think for me I didn’t yet see the value of me being like, “I want to do something, so I’m just going to do it.” And then it could possibly have value to it. But I think that for me that that’s kind of what has occurred.
Yeah, baseline, I’m always like, “How can I help people? How can I serve people?” I just want people to, you know, if this book helps one person go through my journey with like 5% less pain, it will be worth it, totally. Like, to have written the book. But I think for me really listening to that voice that was like, “Okay, you know what? I want to do this now,” and just doing it because I wanted to.
Maren: That’s cool. I want to touch on something that you said, which was that you hadn’t quite understood your own value.
Lisa: Yes.
Maren: And I think that that’s really important for people to hear, because I know I have a hard time, you know that I have a hard time understanding my own value. And I guess it’s not understanding it but recognizing it. And I think that, why don’t you talk a little bit more about that and like, especially with the clients that you have, do you have a lot of people who come to you and they are struggling with recognizing their own value? And what do you tell them?
Lisa: Well, literally everybody. Everybody. I think everybody struggles with recognizing their own value. I still do. Just the other day I had an experience where I was wrapping up a group program and the participants in the group were sharing with me the experience they had. Thank God I recorded it, cause I almost went into an internal shock, and I probably absorbed like a tenth of the words, cause I was like, “What do you mean that they had this value?” And I think that’s so normal.
So all of my clients at some point in time question their own worth and value. Sometimes it’s broad across the board. Sometimes it’s in a very specific part of their life. I think that that also comes from like the whole idea of achiever mentality. So many people who achieve a lot in this lifetime do so as a way to like prove their worth. To prove their worth to their parents who didn’t express unconditional love, or whatever the reason. I think the more high the achiever typically, unless they’ve done a lot of the inner work, the more that they’re constantly questioning their own value.
It depends on the person what I say, but if I could just unfiltered say to anybody what I want to say rather than meeting people where they’re at I would say like, it’s going to sound so silly but I actually use this, whatever it is where the letters stand for a word, YOLO.
Maren: Acronym.
Lisa: Yeah an acronym. YOLO, like “you only live once.” Like really, we’re on this earth, and when we really slow down and think about it, if not us, then who? If not us, then who? Like, time is so short. Best case scenario we’re getting about a hundred years here, 80 years in our adult life.
I see life, I see like the human chain as this extended game of a relay race. It’s like we pick up the baton, we run as far as we can with it, or we decorate it a certain way, or we leave little chiseled notes on it. And then when we die, which we’re all going to, it is passed to somebody else. It’s passed to the rest of humanity, the next generations. And it’s like, if not us, then who? And not in a self-important way of like, nobody else is capable of writing a book on not taking things personally, but what’s even the point of life?
And so this is what I tell myself when I can really get into that place of you know, “Who am I to? What if it’s not good enough?” First of all I want to look at why am I really even trying to do it. So sometimes I’ll want to do things not because I want to, but because the seed was planted in my mind that that would get me to a certain point.
So, I’m not really big on like creating courses online. I think all my clients know this about me. There’s a billion reasons. It just doesn’t really jive with me, at least yet. But sometimes when I think about like having a financially successful business, there’s a lot of language out there that tells you the only way to have a financially successful business is to create online courses, which is not true. If you want to do that, cool. But if you don’t, you don’t have to. And I know this, but every once in a while, I’ll find myself being like, “Maybe I should start an online course.”
And so the first thing I want to do is I want to sit with myself and be like, “Why am I wanting to do something?” And if the answer is not because I want to do it so badly, if it’s like oh, because I think it’s going to lead me here, I want to stop there. That’s like a whole other thing. But if I am like, “No, I want to do it so badly,” within me, and from that place I’m starting to question, “What if it’s not good enough?” Or you know, “What if people say stuff?” It’s like well, what if it’s not good enough for who? If I want to do it, it’s my life. I only get one shot. I only get a limited amount of time. Like, let’s just do it. So I can’t just like say that to every client because I mean, I can’t even hear that some days. There’s a billion different ways to put it, but at the end of the day it’s like, what’s the alternative?
Maren: That’s really beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah. I’m thinking about like all of the really cool and weird projects that people have out there, you know? And there’s a ton of people who are like, why? Well here’s the other thing, you get judgment from everybody. Like it doesn’t matter, right? So you could be a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and put something out there and people will be like, “well that sucked,” you know? And you just have to be totally fine with that, and willing to have people say, “that sucked,” because you know that for you it didn’t. For you it’s the most important thing for you to say. So yeah, I’m so glad you said that, thank you. Can we talk a little bit more about Human Design? Because I, um…
Lisa: Always, always.
Maren: I’ve had a bunch of different interviews with various different woo-woo people. We’ve had some talk about witchcraft. We’ve had some talk about manifestation. But Human Design is a little bit different. It’s like, sort of astrology, plus I Ching, plus Kabbalah, right? Um…
Lisa: Yeah and energetic alignment.
Maren: Yeah. And so it’s like, it’s a little bit woo-woo but it’s also kind of, there is some energetic basis for what’s going on. And I personally have found it very interesting and helpful as I move through the world. Part of the things that they talk about right away, like when you first get introduced into Human Design, is deconditioning. Because you have to kind of look at the world now with these other ideas of like your strategy, and your authority, and what that means, and how we’ve been conditioned as humans to go about, and like how does that work with who you were designed to be. Without going too much into the complete woo-woo cause I don’t want to confuse everybody, you know, let’s talk a little bit about what it’s like to just sort of realize the kinds of conditioning that we’ve grown up with and how it doesn’t serve us and what to do when we realize that.
Lisa: Yeah, I think it’s a really great question. And just to rewind a little bit, the same way that when I was younger I was like, “Life coaching? What a crock.” Like, if it’s not scientifically proven, how can it be valid? Which is so funny because most of the things in my life that have brought me pain are things from like, doctors who have given me just bad advice. Because they’re human beings too, and as much as we try we can’t be like perfectly controlled robots on this earth.
So the same way I was at with coaching, I also up until about my mid twenties was like a staunch atheist. Like, there is no higher anything, very adamant, and that’s great. There are a lot of things I think about any religion and about atheism that we can all take. I am now like a very woo-woo, as everybody in my life knows, very spiritual person, very into a higher power and all of that. But when I look at things like Astrology and Human Design I primarily always want to be approaching those systems from the place of archetypes, and what speaks to us. Because at the very least even if we get to the end of this life, go into the afterlife, find out that none of it was real, any and all of these systems if they speak to us can be learning tools for us to really give pause and reconsider. Like, “Okay, am I giving myself permission to experiment and find how life works for me?”
So in Human Design there are these four types and each of them exhibit this different type of archetypal energy: the manifestor, the generator or manifesting generator, the projector and the reflector. And when we talk about conditioning in Human Design we talk about, so when we come into the world we’re in the Human Design system based on our birth time and birth place et cetera, our type is predetermined. Our energetic type is predetermined. And there’s a way, just like different plants, there’s a way for each type to thrive in everything, from the internal, from the external. But conditioning points occur when the authorities in our upbringing, basically ages 0 to like 18, tell us that we should be a different way or punish us for the ways in which we’re thriving. Which again, happens outside of the Human Design system too.
But so for example, I’m a manifestor. Manifestor sounds like the most fun type, but it’s just like a cool name. I promise you there are drawbacks.
Maren: I’m a projector, and that sounds like a terrible name, honestly.
Lisa: And projectors are great. Like all the coaches I know for the most part are projectors. It’s such a coaching type of type. Manifestors, the only good sounding thing is the name because basically the first thing manifestors learn about their type is that they repel people, that their aura is inherently repelling, which is such a great thing to digest.
But manifestors, without again going into too much detail, for the most part are the energetic lone wolves of the Human Design system. It doesn’t mean that they’re lone wolves in terms of actual socialization, but energetically they don’t need the energy of others the same way that all the other types do. And so for this reason manifestors have really hard time understanding why others care so much about what they’re doing. Because they’re not used to feeling out the energy as a form of how to decide what they do.
So what you get a lot with manifestor children is, “Oh, I want to go to the store down the street.” And so you’ll have like a five-year-old manifestor child who will just walk out the door and start going to the store down the street. And of course their parents freak out because like, that’s not great. How the manifestor child receives that oftentimes is like, ” I can’t do what I want. If people know what I’m doing they’re going to try to trap me. Nobody understands me.” And that’s just a small example, but manifestors essentially grow up typically conditioned to try to fit in with everybody, because it seems to a manifestor like no matter what they do they can’t just be left alone to do whatever they want. It seems like somebody cares and is trying to control them.
So a big part of the journey for a manifestor, and actually this is kind of like my book, a lot of my thing of taking things personally for most of my life was trying to figure out how to just be so that people would like leave me alone. I even write about this in a paragraph, how a lot of people chase power. They chase power to get like financial success or notoriety. I was chasing power for most of my adult life because I was like, “If I just get to a high enough place, people will leave me alone. I won’t have to answer to anybody and I can just stop trying to fit in.” And that’s conditioning. And in that I couldn’t find peace because I was looking outside.
So part of the deconditioning process is teaching an adult manifestor okay, here’s how you inform people what you’re doing without opening it up for their input. Here’s how to stop searching outwards and start looking inwards. And so that’s what the deconditioning process is like. And each type has their different conditioning and deconditioning processes. But I find it really interesting and helpful. I know a lot of people do too.
Maren: Yeah, I do too. There’s definitely like some nerdiness going on there, so yeah. Okay, I’m taking a look at the time, I want to make sure that we get this under an hour. So I’m going to ask you the question that I ask everybody, which is when I talk about bodice rippers I use the bodice as like a metaphor. So it’s something that’s restricting us that we want to rip off, that we let our true selves out. And obviously for me that’s in a very romantic way because I am a very romantic person. But what’s the metaphorical bodice that you feel like has been restricting you, that you’re now ripping off?
Lisa: Yeah, this is a really great question. So for me I think it has to do with my capacity as a human and my comfort around exposure. So I wrote a note here in preparation for this question. I decided that what I wrote down, which is true, is that for me it’s not really hard to be vulnerable about stories that have happened to me. Like I’m somebody who it’s like, somebody wants to hear the most embarrassing client story I have like, okay. It’s whatever, it’s happened. But it is really difficult for me, and it has been up until this point, hopefully less and less in the future, to be very present and vulnerable in my own expansion.
In all areas of my life but you know, the book has occurred within the business portion. And even in my business portion it’s like, there is a part of me that goes to a place where it’s like, let’s just keep the status quo. It’s kind of that whole thing with being left alone. Like, let’s just keep the status quo. Like, things are going pretty good. You don’t ever have to be seen by a lot of people. You don’t have to open yourself up to that kind of scrutiny. Just stay small.
And again like, if that’s what I really wanted that would be a different story. But I know where that voice comes from and it’s not from a place of like, I want this. It’s from a place of, it’s a scary world and it’s overwhelming to expand your capacity. It’s impossible to expand your capacity. You’re going to have to do it like this person, this person, look at what this person went through. And so for me the figurative bodice that I’m ripping off, I think this book was a big step and I’m still continuing to do this, is the part of me that says that I can’t expand my capacity. I can’t expand my exposure because it’s too dangerous. Yeah.
Maren: It’s like the thing that is trying to keep us safe. It’s just that part of us that we all have that is just fearful of change because things are fine now. You’re surviving, it’s okay. Why do you have to expand anymore? Like everything’s fine.
Lisa: Yeah.
Maren: But if we didn’t move outside of that we really wouldn’t get any further. We wouldn’t be able to pass that torch on, you know? Columbus would not have been able to sail the ocean and then murder all those Indians. And so you know then…
Lisa: Hey, conditioning. Right?
Maren: Right, exactly.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah, and I think too for me in my own practice, I think it’s really important for me and for any coach, and for any service provider, to be a walking example. So the second that I stop engaging the part of me that feels most vulnerable and scary it’s like, well what’s the energetic message that’s sending to my clients when I’m trying to help them where they’re at? Like, there is no level. It’s just wherever we’re at constantly showing up and trying to be more real and face the scary stuff. That’s what it’s about. So it’s very important to me.
Maren: Yeah, awesome. Is there anything else you want to talk about or tell my audience at all?
Lisa: No, except for I just, I feel like I have to say this to somebody and I haven’t found anybody since to you sent me the intake survey for this whole experience, so I’m going to tell it to the entire audience. Which is in the process without this interview I would have never had realized. So, when you sent me you know, just to get my information, my bio, my headshot, there’s this thing that asks one to spell out their name phonetically if they want.
Maren: Yeah.
Lisa: And I realized in that for the first time that my name makes an incoherent yet delightful sentence of: “Lease A Who,” like W-H-O, “Say,” S-A-Y, “Knee,” like the body part. And I just, I can’t stop thinking about that, and I just want to thank you for giving me that opportunity that made that realization.
Maren: You are very welcome. When I saw that I was like, wow.
Lisa: Yeah, I think it’s going to have to make an appearance now on all of my official materials cause I just, I love it so much. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to realize that and now to share it with your audience.
Maren: You’re very welcome. Okay well so, Lisa it has been a pleasure to have you here. If people want to buy your book how do they do that? And how like, what if they want to work with you or just follow you on social media or whatever?
Lisa: Yes. So everything for me is at my website, Lisa Husseini, not the phonetic spelling but, Lisa Husseini as is in this podcast, H-U-S-S-E-I-N-I .com. That’s where my book is being sold. It’s not being sold through any other distributor. That’s where all of my information about everything is, and all of the links to my social media. You can also just Google me because there’s like two Lisa Husseinis in America.
Maren: Great, awesome, perfect.
Lisa: Very easy.
Maren: Wonderful. Well Lisa, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Lisa: Thank you for having me.
And I will leave it there.
Join me next episode, in which I speak with singer and author Abigail Wright.
That idea of letting go of each moment, that in fact, all that actually is, is this moment, and this moment, and this moment, and this moment. The past, the future, they do not exist. And that it’s literally just this continuous moment of creation that life is. As a singer, if you’re not setting up the next pitch perfectly, if you’re not judging the thing you just sang, if you are not creating in the moment, you are not creating.
We talk about all sorts of things in that episode, including a discussion about tripping on psychedelics. You’re not going to want to miss it.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter at bodiceripperproject.com. And I love hearing from you. So, if you have any comments about this episode or any other episode, go ahead and slide on into my DMs. I am on Instagram @supermaren.
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 Andrew Carlson. 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 – it actually does make a difference! So I’ll see you next time.