Life will never be easy, but EASE is possible. Andrea interviews Janelle about how she finds ease on the reg, including letting go of expectations, resistance and the need to know-----and that last one is a doozy. Being in ease takes a shit ton of practice, but you can take this journey! There’s a nod to Dan Harris and Marth Beck. You’ll hear:
--Five steps to finding ease in everyday life
--How to increase our capacity for discomfort--not pain
--Janelle’s visceral details of DISease and how she noticed them
--Why planning can cause so much anxiety
--How Janelle released the need to know at Africa Burn
TRANSCRIPT:
Janelle Orion 0:01
Andrea, hi friend, hi friend. And to the brave hearts listening out there. Welcome to permission to be human. I'm Andrea and I'm Janelle.
Andrea Enright 0:08
Get ready for some real time relationship. Woo and wisdom from the front lines with occasional tantrums and tears about how breaking rules, blurring boundaries and tossing tradition can be catalysts for finding your truth.
Janelle Orion 0:20
Let's debunk the fairy tales we were told as children and create a new map for life. Yes, Disney can go fuck itself if you're seeking permission to choose your own path. Freedom is the new F word. People and want to feel less alone along the way,
Andrea Enright 0:34
we got you. Please note, this is our side of the story. Our partners and metamours have their own individual experiences, and we do not speak for them.
Janelle Orion 0:50
Hey, Andrea, Hi,
Andrea Enright 0:52
Hi, friend. How's it going?
Janelle Orion 0:54
It's good.
Andrea Enright 0:55
Are you in ease today? Yes,
Janelle Orion 0:57
yeah, okay, I'm noticing where, oh, here's an opportunity. There's wherever, there's an opportunity for me not to be in ease. I pay attention. And I had an opportunity to not be in ease today, and I was like, I'm gonna choose ease. Wow.
Andrea Enright 1:10
Okay, it's a choice. Welcome to permission to be human. Brave hearts. Today we are talking about ease, being in ease. Janelle has been in deep ease, no in deep practice of following ease for the past year, and somewhere along the way, she was exposed to the idea of ease being a sign of the Divine. It's one of the quotes in a spoken word poem that one of her teachers wrote and sings. And I think I have to ask, What do you mean when you say the divine, right here,
Janelle Orion 1:48
the Divine is can be synonymous with God. It can be universe, source, whatever word you want to use that is something bigger than yourself.
Andrea Enright 2:00
Okay, awesome. And what we're really asking today and digging into, what does it mean to live that way? What does it mean to live in ease? We're going to cover five steps that can be taken to be an ease. We'll talk about releasing the resistance, releasing expectations, releasing the need to know, the idea that ease doesn't mean easy, and finally, allowing surprise and delight. Yum. So let's find out. Janelle, how do you explain one more time following ease?
Janelle Orion 2:38
It's the idea of sensing energetically where there is resistance and where there is flow and where there is flow, I feel that I am in the flow of the universe, flow of the Divine, and I am, yeah, in ease, in that way, like it might seem like a lofty thing, and in the big picture, I suppose it is. I mean, I do see it as a spiritual practice. And
Andrea Enright 3:08
let's define spiritual practice here, for brave hearts, a spiritual
Janelle Orion 3:12
practice is an activity or action that is performed regularly that can help people move towards a feeling of connection with God. I describe it as a feeling of ease, which we're going to talk about today. Martha Beck describes it as a feeling of warmth in your body. Where is the warmth there? And move in the direction of the warmth. Either way, the idea is moving towards that feeling. I attempt to apply this practice to every decision in every moment, including the most mundane.
Andrea Enright 3:50
Okay, so maybe give us an example of that.
Janelle Orion 3:54
The one that came up yesterday is that I got in the mail that my taxes are due in full, and I had requested a payment plan, oh, and so my like, initial Right? Like anyone getting a tax bill, which is like, oh, right, painful, and in that moment, was like, Oh, I can collapse into this. It's like, oh my gosh. How am I going to pay this and figure this out? Or I could collapse in the Oh my gosh. I wasn't expecting to have to do this. And instead, I chose big okay, this is what's this is what's come in the mail. And I got the, you know, like, here's how you can call them and apply. So I'm doing that later today. But I was like, I'm not going to let the impact of this piece of mail impact the fact that you and I are recording today, impact the fact that we've got a whole bunch of other stuff that we're doing today. I'm like, I'm gonna just be in the ease of this, like, of this very moment, instead of letting it run my life. Life before the fact of it is actually happening. So you're
Andrea Enright 5:04
choosing not to carry it with you. Yes,
Janelle Orion 5:07
until, until I actually need to. Yeah, okay, okay,
Andrea Enright 5:12
so I think that brings us to this first step right, which is you'd said, is notice and let go of the resistance.
Janelle Orion 5:20
Yes, and resistance is when something occurs that prevents the thing I was doing or wanted to do from happening. Hmm, in the example I just gave of your taxes, right? Like, I could be like, fuck, like a, I don't want to pay taxes. I don't want to pay taxes today. There's a there's a number of responses I could write, right? But the reality of me being annoyed at taxes or having to pay taxes is not the reality that I have chosen to live in. I've chosen to live in a culture and we have taxes, so to be resistant, yeah, is actually taking away energy from me. And if I was to, like, hold on to that, to the resistance of like, oh, I have to do something I don't want to do, yeah, then I am, the way that I see it is wasting energy.
Andrea Enright 6:15
Yeah, beautiful. So think you have some more examples too. Yes,
Janelle Orion 6:19
yeah. So another example is I'm trying to be more efficient with my work right now, but I'm also wanting to be in joy when I'm working. And I decided to take a bath in the middle of the day. This is last week sometime I'm in work from there, but when I drew the bath, the plug didn't stay down, and when I checked on it, and it only filled halfway with water, and it was all cold. So I actually took that as a sign of resistance, because it wasn't in ease, like I had this idea, oh, I'm gonna take a bath, I'm gonna be more full, more joyful as I'm working on my computer. And then suddenly, like, actually drawing the bath became kind of a problem. Of there was, like, some resistance there. So there's nothing profound about the bath example, except that my goal was to work in joy, and I would have had to work through figuring out why the water had run cold or spend energy being annoyed the stopper hadn't stayed down. And so instead, I just took that as a sign I was not supposed to take a bath. And instead, I got dressed and sat at my table to do my work, and just chose to be in joy at the table, instead of saying, Oh, joy can only come if I'm in the bathtub. Now, yeah,
Andrea Enright 7:31
you said you chose, you chose to be in joy at work at the table. Yes.
Janelle Orion 7:35
So my goal is, how quickly can I feel the resistance or notice the resistance and then find the path that has less resistance.
Andrea Enright 7:46
So I think my biggest question is coming up is, how do you discern, like resistance from things are hard? Like you shouldn't just stop doing something because you're getting resistance, or else, I've never run a marathon, that's for fucking sure. For example, yes. And so the discernment seems really important. This is, this feels dangerous, yes. Almost
Janelle Orion 8:08
like, well, that's actually getting us to another point that's down here, which is, ease does not mean easy. I'm actually not saying, Oh, I'm gonna go through life only making easy decisions, uh huh. So for example, the easy decision would have been to say, like, Oh, I just don't want to work right, right? But what I was saying was, I want to work in joy, and where can I do that, right? And I was looking for the ease of that. So I think that's the discernment really is coming through, right? I 100% agree there are things that we have to do that are hard, that take effort, but is it the right kind of effort, the right moment? Uh, huh. Okay. And so for me, what resistance feels like is it can feel like a brick wall, but it can also feel like a thin veil, and it can also feel like I'm in a river of water, but I'm stuck, like, in an eddy, you know, like when I when the water is swirling behind a rock, and, like, can't move anywhere. So I can try, like, forcing myself energetically, like, over the rock, or over the stick, and or I can just like, breathe and just let like, kind of release energetically and let myself glide around it
Andrea Enright 9:29
okay. And I think I'm just processing too that this takes me back to a you can just see a picture of me I took walking in a red tank top along the Washington Monument in DC, right before I went to the Peace Corps, and then having left for the Peace Corps in Turkey, writing in this journal and being like, how do I reconcile Buddhism with ambition? Mm. And this is really the same, it seems, in a similar track, because, like, I want to, I want to have a goal, oh, but I'm supposed to just, like, let things be and let things flow and, like, be in the present moment. I'm like, Okay, well, how am I supposed to, like, get a job or, or run a marathon, if, if I have to be all that but, and my conclusion at the time, this is 25 years ago was that, oh, I can still have a goal, but I can be flexible on the path to that goal. Yes, great. So that's Yeah, okay. So that reminds me of Dan Harris, who wrote 10% happier, yeah. And I remember in the book, he's talking about his boss at one point kind of implied to him that he'd lost his edge,
Janelle Orion 10:43
and what he'd figured out because he's like, Oh, I'm just gonna go with the flow. I'm just gonna let things Yeah,
Andrea Enright 10:49
like happen reading this story, yeah? And what
Janelle Orion 10:52
I remember about the story is that he ended up switching from being, from recognizing, oh, meditating and being, like, centered and grounded did not need to be in conflict with having an ambition and having a career path and goal. I remember
Andrea Enright 11:09
this too. He can't. He can still have his edge and still come back to the present moment. Yes, yeah, interesting. Okay, so you mean this applies to everything, big things and small things, yes. And I think you had said it pertains to the very present moment, like whatever you're doing, whatever, however, like, completely trivial, yes, or, you know, quite tragic and dramatic. Okay, okay, so it brings us to two, the second step in following ease, we have to notice and let go of expectations. Oh, this is, this is a doozy, yes. And expectations are what I thought was going to happen, yeah. So I think I hear being attached to outcome here, right? Which is Yes, pretty key Yes.
Janelle Orion 11:55
And so again, the question is, how quickly can I let go of those expectations, right? Because sometimes, like, I might think, Oh, I don't have expectations, and then suddenly realize I do, right? So I'm not actually judging myself for having expectations, right? My goal is to discern when do I have them, and then how quickly can I let them go? Another way I say that is, how quickly can I come back to center? So back to the bath example. I could have gotten annoyed I really wanted to take a bath. But instead of wasting the energy on that of like, oh, I had this expectation of what my day was gonna look like, I remember that my goal was actually to work. So the longer I was annoyed about that the bathtub not fail having failed and the longer it was going to take me to actually do the thing that I said was more important. Okay, so my goal was to work in joy, and I tell myself, Oh, okay, great, I'm gonna work and I'm gonna work in the bathtub, right? But when the bathtub didn't happen, if I had allowed myself to sulk versus pivot to, okay, well, where is there another place I can work with joy? I may have actually missed the window of time that I actually had to work.
Andrea Enright 13:07
So she said, another energy leak. So I think you said above there, like, like, how quickly can I let go of those expectations? And that puts some kind of pressure, so it, like, makes me feel panicky. And she's like, Okay, I have to let go, let go, let go. And so if I can take the quickly out of it, I'm just like, Okay, how can I come back to center? Like, what's really important right now? And, I mean, if you don't know how to come back to center, or don't have a practice for coming back to center, or if you have one, and you're just not that good at it, like, that's the crux of it. Like, I mean, I feel like I've been working on that forever, and I'm still struggling to come back to the center in the moment of crisis, small or big. Yes,
Janelle Orion 13:48
I think that's a great point again. Back to why this is a spiritual practice, is that it's trying to discern what's actually really important. So for example, right, like in a fight with someone, right with a partner is the goal. I just had heard this yesterday as a reminder, right? Is the goal to be right, or is the goal to be in love and connection? And so it's like, oh, what's happening here? I'm feeling something, but is that in service to actually what I'm saying that I want? And so my expectation is, oh, we shouldn't be in a fight. But then how can I come back to the center then, okay, so that I can be in love and connection, which is actually what I want? Yeah?
Andrea Enright 14:35
Yeah, exactly. It's yeah, so tricky in the moment. I mean linearly, yeah, I don't just want to be right. And when there's emotions coming in, in a moment, in some kind of a conflict, it's hard to see that clarity, right? I would say that we just went from a mundane example, like the bathtub, right to then a harder one, where emotions are really, like, very. Be being activated or very alive in the presence of somebody else. Okay, so we've covered noticing your resistance and noticing your expectations and letting them both go. So that brings us to three, which is understanding that ease doesn't mean easy, which we did touch on before, right?
Janelle Orion 15:17
So another example here is for you and I. Launching this podcast. Permission to be human was not easy, right? It was a massive personal growth journey. It was a massive like learning of technology, of process, of mediums. It was super, super challenging, but we always had so much content. So while we had to learn to how to podcast and figure out what to say and what not to say, the content part was very in ease, yeah, so we were choosing, it's not that, oh, starting a podcast was so easy. It actually wasn't, yeah, but that we were acknowledging that, oh, there was ease in we just have so much to say. Let's do what it takes to figure out, yeah, what to say.
Andrea Enright 16:09
Yeah, that's a, it's a good ease to easy. And I think that could be, I could easily be confused, though, in the moment, right? Like, okay,
Janelle Orion 16:19
so I have another example of there was a whole group of us, 10 of us, who were looking to spend a week together in New York so we're trying to find an Airbnb for 10 people in New York City. Wow, already recognizing that that's a kind of a joke, right? And we were looking and like, there's lots of places really expensive, and nothing was feeling really great, but we were like, trying, trying, trying, like, Okay, let's keep searching. What are this? Yes, what about this? And then someone as like as the more people came. I think we actually started with seven people, just seemed kind of doable. And then we got up to 10 people, and then one person was like, You know what? I think I'm just gonna go to Philadelphia instead, and I'm just gonna bail on this whole thing. And when she said that, I said, You know what? Let me just look to see what's going on in Philadelphia. And the first Airbnb that popped up was for 10 people, was within our budget, and it was available for the dates. So while we had to change our destination city, right? Letting go of expectations, yes, letting go of expectations, acknowledging that there was resistance at staying in New York, yeah, letting go of the expectation that we would be in New York and saying, Okay, we still want to have all 10 of us together for this particular week. And we changed our city, and then everything moved with ease. Boom, ease. Yeah, yeah. So we had to let go also the form in that moment of what it looked like. But if we had kept going, Oh, it's got to be here in New York, it's going to be here. It's going to be here, when everything on our search results was telling us it's not there, then we were fighting okay, you're making something harder than it had to be,
Andrea Enright 18:02
okay? And I think something so something else now is coming up for me, is this is it's about trust, really, so much this is about trust, like, Oh, this isn't working out. I guess we're gonna go a different way. Oh, well, I have to trust that way. It's gonna work out. Because I thought we were gonna go to New York, and we were gonna do these things in New York. So me, I trust a lot more that, oh, things will work out well enough, I guess, but I still struggle in the moment. As you know, I'm going back to my old neural pathways of anxiety and panic and sometimes things don't work out. I mean, I think that, you know, that could be argued by basically, I can see a pessimist and an optimist saying, like, no, they didn't work out. Like, no, they didn't work out because all this shit happened and they didn't want it to right? You, being like, well, that's not true, because he's like, Oh my god, too fucking much for me. Sometimes, like, I'm just like, No, come on, just acknowledge this was kind of shitty. Like, this didn't go well, you know, right, which? And I've
Janelle Orion 18:59
learned a lot from you with that, with your fiery on that, but it's also what I hear is right, like, I'm not always like, Oh, yay. I mean, I'm in bliss when I am letting go of resistance, and I am letting go of expectations. And so I think it's really important what you're saying, acknowledging I did want something, I did have an expectation. This was really challenging to to get to where we got to. And yet I recognized that where we got to right my expectations had to let go, like I didn't like letting go of my expectations, right? And yet, the benefit was there when I let go of the expectations, yeah.
Andrea Enright 19:42
I mean, basically, just because you changed your mood and your attitude, like, and then that shifts the whole thing, yeah, and it ultimately, then goes back to being, you know, unattached to that outcome. So I think we're kind of start, we circle back, kind of every time, into all three, like, releasing the expectations, releasing the attachment. To outcome. And ease doesn't mean easy, okay,
Janelle Orion 20:05
so I do want to give an example of something that's not mundane, which is like marriage, partnership, yeah, being in good idea relationship. And I would say like looking back on my relationship with my ex husband, that that relationship was not in ease. There was a lot of struggle. And as brave hearts, you've heard me say many times before, is that that relationship brought me home to myself, and so I'm so grateful for that relationship, and I need to acknowledge that. Gosh, that was fucking hard. Yeah. And what I acknowledge now is, in my next relationship, whatever that's gonna look like, I am definitely looking at ease as a pillar, yeah, and recognizing, oh, if, if, energetically, we're not in ease, maybe this isn't my life partner. It's not that we have to be the same, but I have. I am noticing where is my nervous system, being able to be in flow and be in ease, much more, that was never something that I had evaluated as a criteria for my relationships prior. No,
Andrea Enright 21:18
like even growing up all through my 20s, 30s, like, ease was not at the top,
Janelle Orion 21:24
not, not at all, right? Like, Oh, this guy's really cute. I want to be in relationship with him, right? And he has, like, he's doing all the things that I like to do, great. Or, you know,
Andrea Enright 21:32
I like, what are you just for a living? Or, right? You know, just all of these things,
Janelle Orion 21:37
yeah. And so, you know, ease is also, oh, in my nervous system, do I feel relaxed? And so it's funny actually, because my ex husband and I had a conversation the other day just about this, that both of us acknowledge that we're both looking for relationships that are more in ease. And I can say that the gift of him, like the gift of coming home to myself, was a painful journey, as I've said, yeah, so I don't regret that it happened. I don't wish it hadn't happened, but in this moment, I can say, oh, but what am I going to choose the next time? That
Speaker 1 22:12
brings us to four, letting go of the urge to know, and as an Enneagram six, I definitely want to know what's going to happen. Like, really have that kind of urge to feel in certainty, like, even if it's happening next week, or just to not be surprised, right? That urge to know. So how do you like, how do you overcome that?
Janelle Orion 22:33
So what I recognize is that there's, like, I'm also a planner, even though I'm an Enneagram seven. But what I realize is that there's things that I can plan and there's things that I can't plan, and what is the difference? And where am I holding on to like tightly, with a tight grip of, oh, I want to know what this is going to look like. So for example, in 2021 when things were challenging with my relationship, I wanted to know what was gonna happen, right? Were we gonna stay married? Were we gonna get divorced? At the temple, at Burning Man, you leave something, either a memory of a loved one or something about yourself that no longer serves you. And two years in a row, while my husband and I were navigating these challenges, I realized how much I was causing my own suffering by spending so much time thinking about the future and what might happen. Were we gonna stay together? Was he gonna meet someone else? Were we gonna be unhappy forever? Were we going to make it through this and be okay? I spent so much time thinking, worrying, stressing about a future that I finally recognized I was not in the present, which was the only thing I could control. Yeah, I see. So I took a permanent marker at the temple at Burning Man, and wrote on one of the wooden boards that made up the temple. And I was at Africa burn in South Africa. I release the need to know. And in that moment, I had to do it again, next Burning Man that I was trying to free myself from myself.
Andrea Enright 24:14
Yeah, and I feel like the so I really recognize that deep knowing, and the deep knowing that you need to release, the need to know, I think the only way I I've gotten better at that, or been able to see my way through some of that, is having gone through it, and seeing what happened on the other on the other side of something, and knowing that, oh, like, you know, it worked out okay. Like, it worked out different than I thought it was gonna going to. All these things worked out different than I thought they were going to. But I am still here, and I still moved on, and this brought this great thing, and so now I feel like I do do a lot less futurizing. Like, I'm just like, oh, I. Definitely don't know exactly what's gonna happen in the next 20 years, like or the next five, but I know that there'll be some there'll be some transformation, there'll be some hurt, there'll be some love, yeah, it'll all be jumbled together. And yeah, that's all I can really like. It's just so pointless to kind of paint a very specific picture. And
Janelle Orion 25:22
I can say, like, I witnessed you release this right? Like, this is a journey that I have seen you go on of having a very specific idea of what the future was supposed to look like, and then little by little, letting that go and and watching a how painful that was, yeah, and seeing the ease that you feel like you're in on this side. Not that it's easy, yeah, but that releasing that I will also say that what you're saying is that, of course, like anyone listening here, this isn't like, oh, well, Janelle Andrea said that this is what I need to be doing. This is absolutely a lived experience that you have to try for yourself. I got to all these places of this recognition of through trial and error, on my own, and I don't even know trial and error, but just like, Oh, here's my experience, this is what happened, this is what I learned. Here's my experience. This is what happened, this is what I learned. And so this is definitely a try it at home. Try it for yourself. Do try this at home. Yes, because everyone's journey is different, and all we're trying to do here is to give you an idea that someone else here's one way to look at the world we've navigated for ourselves, and it made us both feel more centered, more grounded, more connected, More in ease. And we want that for anybody. But it doesn't have to look any certain way. This is just the way that it's worked for me.
Andrea Enright 26:47
Yeah. And so I think really, in a sense, I had said, like, you know, what are the tips for doing this? Like, you know, asking for a friend, like, like, but ultimately, there are a few tips. We've come we've talked about some of them right now, but you just, you can't get good at it until you do it a few times more than anything else, and more than a few times, yeah, I mean, but you can't even, like, understand what the muscle is until you do it a few times and you're like, oh, that's what was happening there,
Janelle Orion 27:15
right? But, and I would also say this is what my sense is of what's going on in the world, in the self help world, let me put it that way, we're all fucking saying the same thing. Yeah, but some people are going to hear me. Some people are going to hear Oprah. Some people are going to hear Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, like Elizabeth Gilbert, yep, it's all the same. And I was at a birthday party this past weekend of a woman who is a lawyer. She's a good friend of mine, really incredible woman. And she was like, she was speaking about like, why it felt so joyful to be there, how she learned how to live in life and like, like, not hold things lightly. And I was like, Oh, I actually could have said that exact same thing that she said, but her path was a totally different path in mind. She's a mother of 220 year olds. Has gone bankrupt before all the stuff has happened. She ended up in the same spot that I did with some of the recognition and the realizations. So this is like, I don't know one person might hear this episode and be like, Oh, I just heard something a little bit differently than I've heard 10 other people say
Andrea Enright 28:23
it for sure, yeah, and you may hear it now, and you may hear it in five years, and it may land completely differently for you
Janelle Orion 28:30
exactly, exactly the practice for me, right about being in ease is not easy has also resulted In that, which means that it's actually uncomfortable not knowing what's going to happen. What I want bravehearts to hear is that in being in ease, another way to look at that is that I have increased my capacity to hold discomfort in my body, right? The desire of like, oh, I want to know what's going to happen feels a certain way in my body. And so now I'm saying, Okay, I'm going to let go of that need, well, that also feels a certain way in my body, and that feels actually uncomfortable to let go of that. And so what I have spent time on is, Oh, I feel uncomfortable. I don't know what's gonna happen in this moment. I want to know what's gonna happen. I don't know what's gonna happen. I feel a certain way, and can I just breathe through the feeling in my body? Because in the present moment, the future hasn't happened right? Like, I don't know if I'm getting divorced in that moment. I don't know if we're gonna staying together in that moment. Staying together in that moment. My body feels uncomfortable. It wants to know that. And can I just breathe through that feeling of discomfort? Because what I also know is that that the path that feeling passes, yeah, when I don't hold on tightly to that feeling, everything's
Andrea Enright 29:58
impermanent. Especially feelings you can't even keep them. They just float away anyway, even if you wanted to keep them right. And
Janelle Orion 30:06
the feeling in my feeling in my body, oftentimes of discomfort for me, expresses itself in a contraction of my throat. There's a certain flavor to that contraction that I can be, oh, that's gonna bring tears. It can actually almost feel like I have a sore throat sometimes. Yeah, it can feel my chest. Can feel really heavy. And it's so interesting, there's like, a painful feeling to it. But then when I really, like, try to go into it, it's like, oh, it's not pain. It's just uncomfortable, right? It's not like I feel like, oh, like, a sharp pain, sharp pain, yeah, it's just, Oh, this feels uncomfortable. And the combination of all those things makes me want to lash out and react in a way, to this, to the person I'm talking to, could be my ex husband, of like, oh, I don't want to feel this anymore, right? So meaning, tell me, I want to know, I want to know what the future is, so I can get rid of this pain, the discomfort is in my body right now, and so what I I'm working on then, is to breathe through the discomfort without reacting, knowing that this is just my response to what someone said they didn't, yeah, make this happen In my body. This is just my body being in reaction, so the more that I can breathe through it, stay centered and not react in anger or frustration or like the AKA, don't make me feel this way. Yeah, yeah, you're owning your emotions. Yes. Then That, to me is staying centered, staying
Andrea Enright 31:41
in ease, staying at ease. Oh, my God, okay, I'm gonna end on a little up note. That's the fifth one. The fifth step in being an ease is being surprised and delighted at the unexpected.
Janelle Orion 31:57
Yes, so letting go of outcome and expectations, right? Means that something totally different has happened, right? Right, right? And so there's the part of me that can feel uncomfortable that's like, Oh, I really wanted this thing to happen, right? Yeah. So now I'm saying to myself, Okay, I don't know what's gonna happen. Can I invite surprise and delight at what does happen, and I started practicing this when, about 10 years ago, I was in my midlife crisis of what the fuck when I was realized that I was unhappy at my job and I did not know what I was going to do with my life. I was 40 years old. I had been at this job for 15 years. Thought I was going to be there forever. I quit my job, did a cash out refi on my house, and I went traveling. I decided to be gone for at least six months, and I had a very detailed itinerary for the first six weeks. And the first six weeks I was going to India. I was planning to go do this like trip around the world of sorts, but I was starting in India and Bhutan, and then I was going to go to Uganda and Africa, and then move on from there. And so I planned out a very detailed itinerary for the first six weeks. I actually worked with some different organizations. And after a couple of months, like two months, I got more and more comfortable of not having everything planned out, and instead was could recognize the magic of each moment. Who was the person I was meeting, who was like, that was going to give me an idea. Yeah, and I remember being on safari in Kenya, and talking to this woman who was also traveling the world, and she was like, oh, one of my favorite places that I saw was to do a night time, like, like telescope, like looking At the stars in northern Chile, because it's the darkest place in the world. And I actually had no plans to go to Chile on my trip. On this I got to know where I was going to end up, but I logged that away, and I was like, maybe that's the magic that's going to happen. And it did. Four months later, I found myself doing an experience under the night sky, this dark, dark night sky, looking at Saturn and Jupiter through a telescope, and I could not have planned that out before I left on my trip, because I didn't even know that that existed. So it's allowing the magic to unfold in
Andrea Enright 34:39
Yeah, especially when you're traveling. I mean, it's so great to just let go of, well, you
Janelle Orion 34:44
know what, when you say especially when you're traveling, I agree with that, and I think that's where I learned it, where I learned it. And so I'm applying those skills to my everyday life, instead of thinking, Oh, they can only happen when I'm traveling, yeah,
Andrea Enright 34:56
yeah, for sure. Mean, yeah. Yeah, they found a lot more when I'm traveling, because I don't have, you know, I need to pick up my child, I need to get to work like it's a great place to practice it, because you have more flexibility with your schedule and just be open, and you're seeing new and alive pieces all the time. It's, I think, another skill to transfer that to the modernity of the street outside your house, right? And to be, yeah, open and invite, to invite the surprise and delight to happen down the street,
Janelle Orion 35:34
okay? What you just brought up, though, is something I do want to call out, which is, I agree when I'm traveling, if I don't have a very detailed itinerary, and that's allowing the spaciousness for the surprise and delight to happen, right? So what I have started, I used to have my very planned out life here, and of course, we all have, there's kids and things like, but I now say no to so many things, right? Like, I mean, I used to, like, just for example, I used to socialize pretty much seven days a week, right? I would go out. I was single. All my friends were partnered. And I was like, I'm just, I'm going either going out to see my friends and or whatever it was. I was like, Oh, I didn't want to have any free time, because that felt to me than I was, but I was supposed to be doing, yeah, and over the last number of years, now, I have make really very few plans until the thing that feels really alive comes up, so that I have a lot more spaciousness in any given day to allow The magic of the moment to happen, but that really required me actually setting boundaries on my schedule, on myself, and saying no to a lot of things so that I could have free time in a day. Yeah,
Andrea Enright 36:51
I definitely seen this change in you, too, just like keeping things spacious and then knowing when something's a fuck yes when it comes up, yes. Mm hmm.
Janelle Orion 37:02
So that's how I would say, like, that's the transition that I brought back from traveling, was, Oh, when I don't have it all planned out, then magic is here. So of course, there's shit I have to plan out in my life here, but in my planning, are there things that I'm planning that I don't have to be planning?
Andrea Enright 37:19
Mm hmm,
Janelle Orion 37:19
I let go of those or I don't have to plan them in this exact moment. Yeah,
Andrea Enright 37:24
I definitely just become less committal. Basically, like, not sure if I can go, we'll see that week. Like, remember when that change came and it's like, oh, I don't know if I feel like doing that right now? Just tough, because I think there are a lot of people who value a commitment to like, Yes, I'm coming. I'll be there Saturday. And then Saturday comes and I'm just like, oh, that doesn't sound right. Doesn't feel right, yeah. And then knowing the surprise and delight of that night could be that I get to stay home. So I think this gets back to letting go of form, which we talked about many times, like surprise and delight could make can look many different ways. Yes, yeah, being an ease, it's not easy. But this has been a, you know, a beautiful description of how you have really embraced that and just come into every day that way, like, you know, just finding it somehow, finding the ease in the small things, the big things. And one of
Janelle Orion 38:24
the things I do when I wake up in the morning is I say, okay, universe, how are you going to surprise and delight me today? Nice. How are you going to surprise and delight me today? So brave hearts, we have an exciting thing to share, which is that one I'm happy holidays because we know that this is the time of the year at the end of December, but Andrea and I are taking the next two weeks off, and we are coming back in the new year with season three. Yeah, of permission to be human. We have a new format, new layout coming, which we're really excited about. We're going to have series about how to be brave in relationships. So changes are coming. We're really excited, and we're wishing you lots of love and ease and grace and surprise and delight. Holiday Season into the new year, okay? Thank you for listening.
Andrea Enright 39:17
We love you brave hearts.
Janelle Orion 39:21
Do you need permission to be human? You got it? Listen, subscribe and review on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, learn more about us at permission to be human. Dot live you.