Moving Beyond Self-Doubt and Imposter Syndrome to Find Happiness

Have you ever felt torn between dreaming big and staying realistic? Between trusting your instincts and wondering if fear is holding you back? In today’s conversation, we’re diving deep into what it truly means to reclaim your personal sovereignty—the ability to stand fully in your own power, free from self-doubt, external expectations, and the weight of comparison.

My guest today, Dr. Emma Seppälä, is a psychologist, researcher, and bestselling author dedicated to helping people cultivate happiness, resilience, and self-leadership. As a Yale lecturer and the Science Director at Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research, she’s spent years studying what actually helps us thrive—not just succeed.

Together, we explore:

• The social science behind self-doubt and imposter syndrome—and how to break free from it.
• The inner critic: where it comes from, why it keeps us small, and how to find inner quiet.
• The role of meditation and breathwork in rewiring our nervous systems for resilience.
• How comparison culture and social media impact our self-worth—and how to navigate them with sovereignty.
• Why we need to redefine success and self-worth in a world that constantly tells us who we should be.
• Daily practices to help you stay rooted in self-trust, confidence, and joy.

This conversation is full of powerful takeaways, practical tools, and a deeply personal look into how we all wrestle with self-doubt—even those of us who have spent decades doing this work. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re enough, struggled with self-judgment, or wanted to free yourself from limiting beliefs, this episode is for you.

Guest Bio: Dr. Emma Seppälä

Dr. Emma Seppälä is a psychologist, researcher, and author of The Happiness Track and Sovereign. She is the Science Director at Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and a lecturer at Yale. Her work focuses on resilience, happiness, and the power of the mind-body connection. Through her research and writing, she provides a science-backed roadmap to emotional freedom and self-leadership.

Resources & Mentions

• Dr. Seppälä’s website:and book Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Uncertainty, Distraction, and Chaos emma.seppala.com
• Sky Breath Meditation (A breathing technique discussed in the episode)
• The Reflective Best Self Exercise—a powerful tool to help uncover your strengths.

Join the Conversation

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who might need a reminder of their own power. And if you loved it, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it helps other women find this show!

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Moving Beyond Self-Doubt and Imposter Syndrome to Find Happiness with Emma Seppälä

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Aviva: When eighties movies did the bloopers. At the end of a good eighties movie, they'd show all the outtakes that were just hilarious. They were the flubs and the things that people said accidentally. And often the actors would find themselves in stitches laughing, and then we would laugh along with them. It's why I used to always love to stay until after the movie credits were rolling. I still tend to do that because you never know what magic is going to happen. Well, as I was getting ready to introduce my guest today, I had the same thing. I just had total blooper. I couldn't get the words out, the introduction wasn't flowing, and some really lovely magic happened with my guest, so I'm going to leave it at that and let the magic unfold so you can enjoy. But also, it's just a reminder that sometimes the beauty happens in the imperfections, in the letting go of control and in not trying so hard, which is a good reminder for what we're talking about in today's interview.

Do you ever find yourself torn between dreaming big and staying realistic between trusting your instincts and wondering if it's just fear holding you back? How do we know if the dreams that we're chasing or truly ours, or if we've just absorbed them from a world that constantly tells us who we should be or expectations that were laying on us before we even had a chance to think about it? Have you ever questioned whether you were good enough for the things you want or worried that maybe you're just an imposter? What does it take to truly be free of the inner critic, the self-judgment and the fear? So many of us wrestle with these questions. My guest today has not only asked these questions, she spent her career uncovering the science behind the answers. Emma is aa PhD psychologist, researcher, and bestselling author who's dedicated her work to helping people find happiness, resilience, and true self-leadership.

As a Yale lecturer and the science director at Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism research, she's studied exactly what makes us actually thrive, not just succeed. Her books, the Happiness Track and Sovereign, bring together cutting edge psychology, neuroscience and timeless wisdom to help people break free from stress, self-doubt, and external expectations. Today we'll be diving into what it really means to reclaim our personal sovereignty. We'll talk about self-belief and fear and how to unlearn the conditioning that keeps us emotionally bound and small. If you've ever wondered whether you're enough, wondered, if your dreams are truly your own or struggled with self-doubt, this conversation is for you. Let's dive in. Emma, welcome. You know what? I don't know what is going on. Give me one second. I feel like I need to just kind of reboot my energy a little bit. Is that okay?

Emma: Do you want to do a breathing exercise?

Aviva: Yeah. I've had a very funky sleep last night, and this has never happened where I've done this before.

Emma: Don't worry, Aviva. I had a funky sleep too. Do you want to do a breathing exercise together before? Yeah, let's do that. And then I'm going to start again. Let's go ahead and close our eyes and just settling, breathing through the nose. Breathe in for a count of 1, 2, 3, 4, hold and breathe out. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Breathe in. 2, 3, 4, fill your lungs, hold at the top and breathe out. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 through the nose, breathe in. 2, 3, 4. Hold hands around the lap, arms facing up and breathe out. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Keep your eyes closed. Relax the breath. Notice how you feel and bring your awareness to your heart and focus all that love

Emma: On yourself. You're amazing. You're beautiful, you're incredible. Take that in, be breathy and breathe out. When you're ready, you can open your eyes.

Aviva: So that was not the planned introduction to this interview, but I want to just be transparent and say You're book and the reach out that I had to have you on the podcast was really synchronous timing as the universe kind of works always. Anyway, I've learned in a lot of years of paying attention to the universe and it comes at a time where I'm actually wrestling with incredible self-doubt and it's not what people would usually expect of me, right? I am who I am and people know that, and I try to always be open about my vulnerability. But this level of self, self-doubt and compare and despair has really started for me in this past year, coupled with some changes that I've gone through in late menopause and sleep and anxiety that I didn't have before or I had it, it was almost like a high functioning anxiety, but it was more motivating and kind of just a companion of mine, but not something that got in my way or became overwhelming.

And right now it's like if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm able to go back to sleep fine. But what I'm having to wrestle during those wee hours, it's just like your social media is not big enough and good enough. You're working on a book. How are you going to make sure that you reach the right audience? These sort of what almost feel like external, superficial, cultural phenomena that have seeped into my consciousness. And at the same time, when we do create, of course, we want the world to receive it. We want to feel like we have value and important. So all of these things are kind of what I showed up with this morning, and you're a psychologist that what we show up with is important and affects a lot. So I want to just honor that I am here with a lot of thoughts and experiences around the topics that we're going to talk about and intuition and upper limiting.

But I'm also here kind of as a young grasshopper because I am in a new stage of sorting these things out. And I feel like part of what happens in life is we do go in these spirals, right? It's like good spirals. We learn a lesson and then we move forward on our path, but then we learn a different lesson or we learn that same lesson again in a new way. So welcome to the show. Thank you for settling me. And before we dive into sort of the heart and me of some of these topics, I'd love to hear about you. Who is Emma? Tell everyone who you are.

Emma: I guess I want to just respond to also what you shared when you were doing the intro and then you were having a hard time and we closed our eyes and breathed, which is a technique that I've researched, a number of breathing practices with veterans trauma and students, the mental health issues and so forth. We that breathing. And then at the end, I just felt in my heart, this thing, just tell her she's amazing. Tell her she's beautiful. I could feel yourself doubt in my own heart. And the message coming through for you was just like, you're like a goddess. You have been a goddess for a long time. You've helped women for a long time, and there are these parameters in society now. It's like, well, if you don't have 7 million followers on Instagram, it's not necessary. You have this beautiful message. You're supporting women in a very unique way that they, they're not finding elsewhere, and you're just so special.

And it's interesting because it kind of ties into this idea of intuition that you were talking about before. We know that when we are in resonance with another person, which means when we're face-to-face or here we are online with each other, but we resonate with one another when we're connecting with one another, when you're present with another person, your body, your physiology resonates with that person. If you're present. And this is a time in age when people are not very present, but when you're actually present, if you smile, it activates the micro muscles for smiling in my face. If we have a heart to heart, literally our heart rate synchronize, our breathing synchronizes, and even at the level of the brain, the brain activation synchronizes. So when we show up present and loving for one another, we can also really feel what's going on with the other person and show up for them in the way that they need. And it's just a beautiful, I love how we started this, and thank you for inviting me into your world and expressing verbally what you're feeling because it's what I was sensing. And then we could dance together and be here now. So

Aviva: Yes, one thing for me is that I really don't mind being vulnerable, actually. It's not even a choice for me. I don't feel comfortable in my life when I'm not aligned with who I really am. And so part of, I think the struggle that I've been going through, and I'd love to hear how you walk through this and work through this, there is a world out there that kind of, I feel like in some ways has, how do I say it? As much as we feel like we have freedom and autonomy and self creative expression, it is also I feel like within a narrow parameter of what people have been programmed and trained to want and see. So being very performance oriented or meu on internet, on social media or showing up in certain ways or the way the bro pack of some of the podcasters, it's very aggressive science and data.

And I love science and I love data, but I'm also a midwife, right? I'm like with woman, with human person. Many years ago, 12 years ago, I was on an interview and it's called The Good Life Podcast. And the interviewer, my dear friend now, Jonathan Fields, said, what to you is a good life? And this was before presence was a popular thing to talk about. And that's what I said was being present to me. That's when I feel most aligned in myself when I can just fully present and fully myself without a script and trust that human connection, trust the story that unfolds without having to have it so planned out or hit certain talking points. You're also, you're out in the world. You're teaching. You're a public figure. How do you balance or how do you stay in your fully authentic place? And what does that mean to you? And I think that ties into sovereignty, right? So let's talk about what that means also.

Emma: So in terms of authenticity, I mean, I am fortunate. I get to study ways in which we can be happier, in which we can address anxiety and trauma and things like that. That's what I do as a research scientist, and I've been really privileged to be able to be in that domain. But it's interesting, when I was in grad school, I had an advisor say to me, you don't want to be labeled like a meditation researcher. And now it's like, well, people are making their careers on this now. But at the time it was really kind of fringy. But I think there's just been a bigger demand right now. We're looking for answers. Almost everybody's looking for answers to their burnout, to their anxiety, to their depression, to the angst. And two, how do I be resilient in a chaotic world that is unpredictable and that seemingly is becoming more unpredictable?

And a lot of people are struggling right now, and the question is, well, how do we manage? And I think to me, that is what sovereignty is. And that's why my first book was called The Happiness Track, and it was about signs of happiness. And I would say it was where I was at that time. But now, 10 years later, I realize there's something we're not talking about in psychology, and that is how to have that inner freedom to be fully yourself, but in a fully empowered way so you can show up with all your gifts for this time, this moment without boxing yourself, without being controlled by things like, I'm not good enough, which 80% of millennials endorse with regard to every area of their life, which is shocking when you think about it. So there was no term for that in psychology.

So I wanted to use the term sovereignty, and that's how I wrote my second book. And it's really for right now, right here, right now, and that's what the subtitle is, reclaim your freedom, energy and power in a time of uncertainty, distraction and chaos. So it's pretty much these times, but my wish is I have two little boys, and my wish is for everyone, every child, but every person to be able to show up fully, authentically, but also fully empowered in their potential. And because our planet needs that right now, we need everyone shining in their full gift. That is who they are. Everybody is a gift. Everyone has gift is a gift, especially if they're able to take care of their mind, take care of their nervous system so that they can be resilient in these times.

Aviva: I want to unpack a number of things here. So one is we are all gifts. We are all beautiful, amazing organisms that without doing anything more than just being in our lives, that in and of itself is the gift that we bring. We're each unique, we're irreplaceable, all these truths about being human. And also, I think a lot of us also, and you can search on the internet, there's all these articles, things about finding your purpose, finding your gifts, and for some people that can feel actually confusing and a lot of pressure when you talk about finding your gifts and bringing your gifts to the world. Can you elaborate more on first what you mean about that? Are we talking about specific skill sets following kind of our own journey and path, tangible things that we're bringing to the world, and for people who are trying to figure that out, what thoughts do you have?

Emma: I would say it's two things. One, figure out what you are not. And that's where I think practices, contemplative practices like meditation or breath work are kind of a non-negotiable. Because if we know, we take in over 60,000 gigabytes of information every single day, which is enough to crash small computer in a week, and that's what we take in days. I

Aviva: Know. I feel like my brain is doing that sometimes. Yeah, no, but really, and if you're all our media,

Emma: It's too much. It's too much. And if you're also taking in the news and you're also, and plus Lynn, you're dealing with your present. Maybe you're taking care of loved ones maybe. And then you've got your past and past traumas and what you got to wonder how we even function with all that stuff in our head. It's a time that is moving so fast, so there's so much coming at us. It's like you need to find, but to find out what you are and what you bring, you need to be able to clear your mind. So it's sitting and closing your eyes and meditating is such a radical act, a strange act. But we live in such a radically strange time of way too much input, way too much speed, way too much stress that it's a non-negotiable.

Aviva: I feel like it's why so many of us feel like we either need to veg out or shut down, right? And so many people are in this stage of just exhaustion and overwhelm. I hear every woman that comes to me, it's pretty much the theme.

Emma: Overwhelmed. I know, and it's heartbreaking and we're busy. It's like, oh, well, a lot of people are like, well, I don't have time to meditate. What are you talking about? Or I'm too anxious to meditate and my kids get up at five 30 and go to bed nine. I have limited time. But it's, think about how much time we spend wasting every day. It's like, well, how about we take a little bit of that time and use it to nurture ourselves? What would happen that contemplative moments or shutting your phone off, shutting it all off? Meditating. Use an app. I have a favorite app called Sattva, S-A-T-T-V-A that I love. I use it twice a day. And it's like, I find that moments, but you're finding your way back to yourself and you're clearing out of your mind that which you are not the fear, you're not the anxiety, you're not the news, you're not everything coming at you, you're not your partner's anger, none of that.

You're connecting to yourself. So that's one thing. And that is then the more aligned you are with yourself, the more your self-expression becomes clear and authentic and sensitive and all the things. But the other aspect, there's a beautiful exercise that I actually talk about in my book about that I teach executives at Yale because my day job is teaching in the executive education department at Yale. It's called the reflective best self. It's one in which reach out to people in your community from your past, from your present, could be your work people, family, community, friends, even from your childhood. And you send out an email saying, I'm doing this exercise. And if it helps, you could be like, oh, blame it on this Yale professor, whatever. I'm doing this exercise when I, I'm collecting. Could you please write three kind of stories of when I showed up at my best self, right? And what happens is people feel really embarrassed to send this out. They feel like, oh my God, I'm going to impose on people. But of course, people who write the letters are so happy that they get to do this. They're like honored.

Aviva: It's funny that you say that just because I had an executive coach as a gift at a job many years ago who asked me to do this. He didn't call it by that name, but he said, pick a half a dozen people that you really trust and ask them to tell you three things about yourself that they really appreciate. And I never did it because I had that same feeling. It felt so awkward to me to do it. I was fishing for a compliment or something like that.

Emma: It does feel awkward, and that's part of this programming that we're in, especially women, but truly everyone. Almost everyone is under this programming that it's not okay to be celebrated to ask for praise. But it is okay to ask for some critical feedback. You kind of wonder, and this is what I asked the executives I teach, I'm like, ask yourself why? Why is that okay? Why is it not okay? Right. Well, you would feel just fine praising someone else, just like people are very self-critical with themselves, and it beat themselves up when they make a mistake. But they would never do that with someone they love or a friend. It's like, what's the difference between you and your friend? The only difference is you live in different bodies. When we are programmed social conditioning, you could call it whatever, and it doesn't matter where does it come from?

It usually anyways, perhaps your parents had it, their parents had it, who knows where it came from? And that doesn't matter. What matters is when you can look at the program in the face and be like, why is it not okay to treat myself the way I would treat a friend? But what happens is when you are harshly self-critical and beat yourself up and all those things, you're guaranteed to stay small. And sometimes people will feel like, oh, but it helps me get ahead. Yes. And you are going to burn out because you're literally activating your fight or flight. You're activating your sympathetic nervous system when you are beating yourself up. That is just what happens. Just like if someone else were in the room and were saying, you're such an idiot, why did you do that? You always do that. You're a failure, blah, blah, blah.

You don't belong, blah, blah, blah. If someone were to say that to you, you would feel so bad. But if you're saying that to yourself, it's almost worse. It's almost worse. And it's something that a lot of us trained into. I actually want to share a story here that I share in the book as well, because being around Yale undergrads a lot and high performing students, one of my colleagues ran a study asking them, how do you generally feel? And you would think they feel elated and proud, and they said, anxious and stressed and tired. And then when you asked them, how do you want to feel? They said, loved, loved. To me, it's just like, wow. So many people in so many places burning themselves out in order to be loved, yet no amount of achievement, no amount of perfection, no amount of anything is going to make up for the whole in your heart, that's due to a lack of friendship from yourself.

That is why we see a lot of highly successful people, very wealthy, very famous, very, very, that very miserable. And that relationship with ourselves is key, absolutely key to sovereignty. And I tell you, I lead these cohorts of women leaders that come through a program, and when I ask who's self-critical, maybe 80 or 90% raise their hand. And the couple, one or two women who don't are so sovereign, they're so powerful, they're the leaders in the room. And you're like, wow, I can see that you don't have it. You don't have a toxic relationship with yourself. You have a life supportive one that's sovereignty.

Aviva: Okay, I want to hear so much more about this. So we read a lot now about toxic relationships, and there's so many internet psychologists now, and especially during covid, this just kind of blew up. And people have their gazillion million followers and they're doling out all this information about getting out of toxic relationships. You are the first person who I've heard use the term a toxic relationship with yourself. And it's so interesting because in my life I have amazing long-term and they're healthy and they're nourishing, and I'm around people who are really nourishing to my spirit. I was reading it. I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have a toxic relationship with my friends. I have a toxic relationship with myself. I mean, it's not constant. I'm fairly self-actualize and there are lots of aspects of myself that I do really appreciate and love, but I do have this inner critic.

And so a couple of things around this. So for me, when I think about my own inner critic, one of the terms that I learned from a therapist who's a colleague and a friend and who I also worked with is the concept of interjects or interjects. So they're like, if you grew up in a household, for example, where I'll just use my own real life self, my mom had me very, very young. She had me in what would've been her first year of college, and she spent a lot of her twenties and thirties verbalizing, not like anything like, oh, I shouldn't have had you, and if I hadn't had you, I would be, but a lot of projected sense of failure in herself. She hadn't accomplished something and a lot of overlay on me when I did accomplish things. And it has set a pattern for my life.

I'm very cognizant of. I can remember the actual thing. So part of what, for me, my toxic relationship with myself really has to do with these internalized external messages. And I know you talk about that in the book and I wonder if you can help unpack that because I think I went to a large event and a colleague of mine was giving a talk. There were hundreds and hundreds of women in the room, and she asked everyone to raise their hand if they had a negative self-critical voice regularly every day. And pretty much I think every hand pretty much in the room went up. It was like a yoga and kind of spiritual retreat, and it was a friend giving it. So she asked me to come and hang out. And then when people were just asked, shout out where that voice came from, you could hear the resounding in the room, my mom, and nobody was blaming their mom. It's just these things that we pick up. So can you talk about more about this internal inner critic? You have a story about your son saying something critical that he heard you saying, share with us more. I

Emma: Think most mothers, the generations from which we've sprung have all had that intense self-criticism passed down to them. And many of that generation and of our generation, I still hold that, but it's kind of our time to see through and question and reprogram so we don't pass it on. I had a really hard time after having kids. I had a lot of postpartum things happening, and I remember having my three-year-old and then a baby and one day saying something like, I just can't do this. I can't do this. Some kind of words like that around my despair around the of it. My three-year-old was there present, and then a week or so later, he had a problem. He couldn't figure something out, and he used the same words for himself. And I realized, wow, the buck has to stop here.

Even though he's so young now, he's 10. And I definitely, my relationship with myself very much has changed and has become so much more life supportive. I know that for him, I may have passed that on at that early age, and that's something I need to work with him on. My second one does not have this problem. It was not passed on to him. In fact, at night when we say goodnight with the kids, we always say what we're grateful for, and he'll say, I'm grateful for Mama and Dadda and Michael, and I'm grateful for

Aviva: My second daughter used to go to bed every night and she'd say, I love you, mama. I love you, daddy. I love you. To her older brother. And then she would hug herself and say, I love you, Mima. It was such a powerful example of that same beautiful new way of being. And why not?

Emma: Why not? I think we need to question why not see through the program and not let it control us. It will keep you small, it will keep you unhappy. You can have everything in the world, but if you don't have that, you don't have wealth because you don't have inner wealth, you don't have that. You have inner poverty, and it's a place of suffering. And we really all deserve to live in amazement at who we are. We didn't create ourselves, how come, come I'm like this. How come I have this sense of humor? How come I have this? I don't know. But it's a privilege to be alive in this form and with these thoughts and creativity and whatever else I have, let me celebrate it.

Aviva: So Emma, we started out the episode with you walking me through a breathing exercise. And here's the thing. I do practice meditation. In fact, I woke up early in the morning and I did a 40 minute yoga nidra with breathing and deep, deep relaxation. But even in that moment of anxiety starting the podcast, it was so helpful to have you remind me because hearing your voice, walking me through cuts through my own inner chatter and voice, we did a breathing practice and you shared that you use Sattva, which I have not explored. I've used Insight Timer when I want some external support with guided meditation or visualization. And we've talked about the exercise of asking folks to give us three things about ourselves. And with that exercise, do you have people just save those and look at them when they're having a moment of inner crisis?

Emma: Yes, and the instruction, and in fact, you can find it on my website that with my book – iamsov.com/. If you go to the chapter tools or the members portal, both, they're free. Yeah, there's the instructions for the reflect, the best self-exercise. And I definitely, what I always like to do is I have them all printed out right before the executives show up and they read it the night before. But many people report crying when they read it because it's kind of like your obituary. This is the only time that we ever really praise others or hear is about when they're gone. It's like how many people are walking around this planet feeling terrible about themselves. They always focus on the negative feedback on my partner says, I'm too this. My children say I'm to this. My workplace says I'm to this. I guess I'm just like this work in progress with so many things I need to fix. We don't hear the opposite so much. And research shows that when you do this exercise, you're more resilient. One, you're out. When you're out, you're resilient, you're less emotionally exhausted. Amazing. Because you realize, oh, okay, this is who I am. This is how I show up, this is what I bring.

Aviva: Let me bring it. Let's go. All right, this is great. I'm doing this today. I'm writing to, I know exactly who, and I encourage everyone, let's all do this together. And when I was thinking about negativity bias, I hear so many people who are authors or who go out in the world and do things or just even regular everyday human beings who come to me for their medical care or whatever. Let's say you're an author, you could get a thousand positive reviews on your book, but then you read the one critical and you're like, that's the one our brains fix onto that negativity bias. How can we rewire our brains maybe to have a little bit more of the ability to internalize those positive things and speak those kind words to ourselves rather than seizing on those negative voices or words?

Emma: Just so the key to sovereignty is awareness. That's it. Once you see something, you can't unsee it. And so, once you see, oh, look, the programming at work again, it just doesn't have the same control. I talk in my book about one of the executives that came through a program. Star was a black woman lawyer working with the government, and she came into the class and she was the leader of the class with the moment she opened her mouth. You could just tell around her, she's so amazing. And here she was, and she would tell me, I'm struggling. I'm struggling with this idea, with this program really, that I need to stay safe, and I need to stay in my government job. But she had all these ambitions, and she should, because she's just this extraordinary lawyer. She could do so much more than she was doing.

Not extraordinary lawyer, I'm sure she's an extraordinary lawyer, but also leader. She's clearly a leader. And she's like, I'm in a reprogramming battle with myself. But she had seen that she was staying in a safe place, kind of what she learned. And as a black woman, she had felt like that was how she needed to live. And that was also the message she was receiving from her community about just play it safe. And here she was, but there was another part of her that was roaring, I have more to do, to give, to achieve whatever. And finally, she did. She was like, that's it. She started applying for jobs. She got this amazing job and in the corporate world, and she was even given the option to want to do the lawyer legal job or this other job that would've stretched her boundaries more. And she chose the other job.

She just went for it. So anyways, there is a time when the cage is just too small, and you've got to get out of there. And that is what it is when we are starting to feel really uncomfortable with the feeling small, the self-criticism, all that. And once you see it, that's what she would say. Star says so beautifully, she says, got to stare that thing in the face. You stare it down. But meditation and or breathing exercise, which we could talk about that separately because that's really good for anxiety in particular because with high anxiety, sometimes meditation's a hard first step. But with meditation, you raise that awareness. I want to share an example with you, and this also has to do a little bit with what you were asking earlier about handling our emotions and so forth. So, when I was in college, I had an eating disorder where I would binge every time I was feeling down.

And it was just something that was a compulsion. I almost think it was an addiction. There's no way out. You're just in it. When I was feeling bad, I would binge and I would feel terrible, and then I would cry. And it was just a cycle. I was 17 or 18 years old. And then one day I went to a meditation, and meditation was weird. It was considered weird at the time; this was mid-nineties. It was just nobody on campus meditated except for a couple weirdos. I had a crush on one of them. So, I was like, let me just go to this thing. I had never meditated before. And I sat and I felt like it was a horrific experience because here I was staring at the carpet for an hour, no instruction. It was like strict Zen, Korean Zen, and it was just very, for an 18-year-old, it was just doing meditation for the first time.

It was intense, an hour staring at the floor, no instruction, don't move, kind of thing. And I was like, I'm never doing this again. I thought my legs were falling asleep and everything. So anyway, I left that session and the next day I wanted to, I felt bad again. So, I wanted to binge, and there was a pizza that even looked really gross in our room, and I was like, oh, I'm going to binge on that. And then this light bulb went off in my head and the light bulb that went off was, hey, you always cry after you binge. Why don't you cry first? That's it. That glimmer of awareness that came in thanks to the meditation practice before, because I've never had that before. And boom, the next day, hey, you always cry after when. And I was like, okay, deal. I could do that.

I can go cry and then I can binge. After I went on my bed and I cried. I'll never forget that day. I remember the blanket. I was lying on everything. And when I was done crying, I sat up and I didn't want to binge anymore, and I never binged again. It was like that awareness that had crept in thanks to the meditation of like, hey, check out this pattern that you haven't seen before. Check out this program that's been running you. And it's like, oh, oh, I see it now. It has no more control. And it even came to the point where, so I never binged again, but I would still sometimes get a desire for let's say chocolate. That was my thing that I would like to eat when I was feeling bad. And then when the desire for chocolate would come up, I'd be like, oh, look, there's a desire for chocolate.

How do I feel? Oh, look, I'm feeling down until even the desire for chocolate stopped coming. It was just more like, oh, the awareness. Oh, this is my emotion. We've been trained to suppress our emotion and stuff it down, all that. Most people all over the world do this. I've asked audiences from all over the world. It's like, what do you do with your big bag? Negative emotions. Hold it down. No one knows what to do, and that's what we've learned. But if we actually allow ourselves to feel the emotion, ride the tears, whatever it is, you don't want to yell in someone's face, but if you allow yourself to feel the energy that is emotion, it's energy in motion, just like a child, they feel their emotion completely. They're free from it. That is another aspect of sovereignty, emotional sovereignty. So

Aviva: How do you recognize when something is programming? So, an example might be, for me right now, a little bit different, but similar to Star. I'm feeling like there are some things that I really want to still do, right? I'm 58, but it's like I feel like I'm in a whole new place of power and wisdom and freedom too. My kids are grown and there are these things that I would like to create and reinvent about my work and kind of manifest, if you will. And then there's another voice that comes in. It's like, well, I mean you've been doing this for so long and this is just how far you've gotten, so you're not going to get further. Or you're 58, what are you talking about? How much time do you have left to create? I mean, literally these things. I don't know where they're coming from.

And then there's the other piece of it where as women, I think we often don't feel like we're doing enough or achieving enough. So, then part of me is like, oh, that's just overachieving, that you want to do those things. Just be happy with what you have. And the truth is, I do. I am cultivating happiness with what I have regardless. I think that's an important place to start from is contentment. So how do we know when these voices are programming? And I guess that kind of touches on the concept of upper limiting. Can you address those different things, not meaning for this to be a therapy session, but hopefully other women who are listening or, yeah, I can really

Emma: Relate to all those things. It's programming when it's keeping you smaller than you want to be, when it's keeping happier than you want to be when it's keeping you, it's like the reins of a horse when you pull back, when the reins are pulling that horse back. I know exactly what you mean.

Aviva: Yeah.

Emma: It's creating some kind of unhappiness, right?

Aviva: Yeah.

Emma: Our human existence is, we're like a bubbling fountain of creativity and potential and inspiration and joy. That's actually who we are when we've uncovered the stresses, when we've uncovered the shoulds and the musts and the this and the that and the expectations. Look at children. They are bubbling fountains of creativity and joy, even if they have unhappiness for a few minutes or even if they're mad, but then they are at this spontaneous creativity, spontaneous joy, spontaneous happening, spontaneous presence filled with potential. That's what a child is at any moment, and we are too. It's just that we have layers upon layers of what's this, that the other. So, you have this bubbling inspiration, innovation, intuition, because to me, we can talk about this, about intuition, creativity, pretty much I think they're so close, they're almost identical, and you have that bubbling up in you and you are someone who has offered so much in your lifetime to women.

You are still doing that to say you won't do that for the rest of your life. Age is another concept that just keeps us, oh, well, at this age, this says who We all have this potential. And you could be 20 years old and have completely blocked your intuition and your innovation and your creativity. You could be 80 and still be incredibly creative because you have not blocked that. And so, what I feel is happening for you is that's coming up and you have more to offer and it's going to take a different form perhaps, and it's a little scary. It's not what you're used to, but it is asking you whether you want to do it or not. And I'll give you a personal example. When I wrote Sovereign, I literally felt like the book came to me and said, are you going to write me? Because if not, I'm moving to the next person. They didn't say that, but I'm thinking back on Elizabeth.

Aviva: I know Elizabeth Gilbert talks about that in Big Magic, right?

Emma: She does. Do you want me to share this story for the listeners or not?

Aviva: Please, please.

Emma: So, she was working on this book on a story set in South America that had to do with the dim and construction and the love story and all these details that were pretty specific. And then she abandoned the book, and she started doing other things and she went to conference and she hugged this other woman who was on a panel with her, and then she was at the conference whenever life goes on. And then at a year or so later, she met with this woman and the woman said, I'm working on a book. And it said, in South America, and there's a dam and there's a love story and it's in this country. And exactly what Elizabeth had been working on. And she talks about how innovation, intuition, these creative ideas are out there, and you capture them or not. And I definitely felt with Sovereign, it was like, this book is needed right now, right here for, and you want to write, I literally felt you want to write me.

And of course, I backed it with the science and the knowledge and the stories that I know that I'm very aware of, and it's all backed with that. But I honestly feel like it is a book for these times, and it's not my book it something I heard. It's even some of the sentences I heard them in my, and they're so poetic and there's poetry in there as well that people are like, why are you putting poetry in your book? I was like, I heard this poetry and it's beautiful and I got to put it in there. And you have these beautiful messages coming through you and you have such a unique, you're such a uniquely suited person for it, so it would be a shame not to express it as long as it brings you joy, right? Something that sometimes people are like, well, I should do X, Y, z, therefore, and then it's a source of suffering for them and they don't even really want to do it. That's a different situation.

Aviva: So, for you, some people write books because they need to do their own inner healing, and the book is part of that inner healing. What I'm hearing is that this joy and happiness and sovereignty is a way of life that you have really come to live. Do you ever feel self-doubt? I know a lot of really high achieving people to the extent that when I started my first week at med school, the dean of the medical school who's now retired, Nancy Angoff, she was an incredible woman. She was kind of like Mrs. McGonigal and Harry Potter. She kind of looked like that, and she was actually, we had a spoof of medical school, Harry Potter, and she played Mrs. McGonigal. That's how much she was like her. But anyway, she showed up first week of class to give us a talk and she said, I just want to tell all of you right now that probably at least half of you are wondering if you're here by mistake.

We just didn't mean to pick you, but then we couldn't tell you afterward because it would've been a problem. She's like, every one of you can let go of your imposter syndrome right now and trust that you were meant to be here and you were picked to be here. And it was just this moment of revelation of how much people and people who are also high achieving, people who have external validation of their accomplishment can feel like they have imposter syndrome. We know women experience it statistically more than men, and it's just this self-doubt that can keep people from expressing their creativity, expressing their selves in the world. How do we identify and address imposter syndrome? Where does that come from?

Emma: It's just comparison, right? You're asking me do I feel like, I mean, sovereignty is a journey. I think we're all on. I definitely feel so much more sovereign than I ever have before writing the book, and there's so much joy in that. And I have to say it's definitely rooted in my practices and just always coming back to myself, what's not serving me? Do I have self-doubt that come in my mind? Sure. I mean, I think they're in the air. I do too. It's rooted in comparison and it's like if I don't compare myself, then there's no problem. There's no problem. As long as I feel I know, I feel I can show up with authenticity, and then as long as I don't compare, comparison is the root of all most problems. I think with regard to that. And if there's just this understanding that I have worth, I have things to share and also an understanding of how finite life is.

Aviva: Covid kind of did that. Don't you think? Covid was a big cultural, let me actually look at what's important to me and what I value and lean into that more because we just don't know.

Emma: And I think that could also give a lightness to things, a lightness like, I'm here, I'm going to dance while I'm here. I'm going to love, I'm going to learn. I'm going to embrace people. I'm going to embrace myself. I'm going to give what I can if I don't have wisdom and nothing to guide my life. And it's like that reminder of those South Asian, east Asian traditions, that constant reminder of like, this is life is finite. How are you going to show up with compassion if you can meditate and become self-aware and then just let's go and enjoy it, right? Enjoy the process. Even though it can be very challenging. Yeah. But I would say one basic thing is look of comparison. And before that, if it means don't look at other people's profiles and be aware when you're with someone and you're comparing yourself to them, just be aware, look, there's my mind doing its thing. I have value, I have intrinsic value.

Aviva: But I think for so many moms, for example, social media or just women in general, social media has become a place where a lot of information is democratized. Moms can go on there and find information about baby sleep and breastfeeding. We can go and find information about positive birthing. We can go and find information about menopause, about anxiety, all the things. But then also social media has this kind of pervasive negative side where it really does to some extent, I think breed comparison. And I think for me, being in the social media world is part of what has led to some of this self-doubt. How do you feel folks can get the best of social media without that internal comparison being

Emma: Triggered? Well, one is boundaries. I don't have social media on my phone. That's one thing. But two is only follow people who inspire you, not just because, but the other thing, it's interesting with Instagram is that they keep suggesting things to you.

Aviva: They do.

Emma: If you don't want to see the suggestions and go on Instagram on your web browser, it's clunkier. But if you can be like, look, and the other thing is rather than scrolling, just select be like, I like to go to Dr. Aviva's profile because I'm learning something new. You can have even a list. These are the that I want to go to because it is very, very toxic in that sense of comparison. Everybody, everybody suddenly has to be an entertainer. Everybody suddenly has to be funnier or this or that or the other. And it's like you said, performative. So, for me, I know there's a couple accounts I go to specifically I'm interested to see what they say. Same on YouTube, but I really try not to do the scrolling.

Aviva: I'm the same.

Emma: Yeah, because again, giving other people real estate over your own mind really, do we need to do that? What a great way to put it.

Aviva: Your practice has really been a deep part of your life for a long time. Can you talk more about what your daily practice is, both the meditation and breathing as well as the wisdom practices that you talk about?

Emma: Real quick background, I grew up in Paris, which sounds really romantic and everything, and it was very nice culturally, very profound, but also just very negative, the philosophy on the streets of complaint and criticism. And as a kid, you just always feel like you're definitely not good enough and nothing's ever going to work out. That's what you feel. Then I came to the US for college, and it was like, oh, you could do anything. People are more positive, and I really love that. But then I also saw people believe they are what they do, and they suffer from that feeling of accomplishment or achievement has to be source of my identity. And then I lived in China after college for a couple of years, and I saw people who had nothing and were grateful for everything or were so resilient or so positive. And I saw people in Tibet who even though they were being, they had been invaded and weren't allowed to practice their bait were so resilient and see these little old grandmothers in the rain prostrating around the temple that they'd traveled to for 40 days to get there on a caravan and then prostrating in the mud 108 times around these temples.

And just looking at, wow, look at the sovereign spirit. What I learned in China and Tibet and also India, is this idea of here we have everything, but we're grateful for nothing. We have external wealth and comfort, but inside we're not wealthy or comfortable. And in some of these other places, they have nothing on the outside. They don't even have their own personal toilet, they don't nothing. But on the inside there is so much wealth, there is so much joy and sovereignty. And so I was seeing that and it really made me think, gosh, what? There's something they have here and it's precious. There's a precious treasure that is internal and it can be cultivated. And so I did a master's in East Asian studies at Columbia with this idea of, let me go deeper into that. I need to understand this. And that's when nine 11 happened and I was on my roof and I could see that the second plane hidden after that day, I just had this massive amount of anxiety that my body would just shake every morning.

And I tried a lot of different things excluding medication. I didn't want to do medication, but I thought there must be a way for me to help myself. But meditation was not a first step for me because when you meditate and you have trauma or high anxiety, you're basically aware of your trauma and high anxiety, and it could be a stifling just impossible to do. So I walked into a breathing class called Art of Living, which was started in India 40 years ago or something like that. And I didn't know what it was. My classmates had organized it, and I went into the class thinking, what is this? And it was a breathing practice and I thought, this is never going to work for me. But the instructors are like, do this for 40 days. And I was like, fine, I'll do it scientifically minded.

And I wanted to prove this is not going to work well anyways, 20 years later, I'm still doing it every day. I mean, it really helped regulate my nervous system. And then I was able to get into a top psychology graduate for grad school. I went to do my PhD at Stanford, and I had this feeling like, oh, I really want to do research on these practices. So I did research on meditation, like loving kindness meditation, Buddhist type of meditations for my PhD. And then 10 years after nine 11, here I am sitting at the University of Wisconsin Madison doing a postdoc and working with veterans with trauma. And I was like, wow. The medication, many of them did not want it. They didn't like the side effects or it wasn't working for them. They didn't want the therapy again, they didn't like to have to share about their trauma over and over and all the stuff that was happening at that time.

Those were the approaches. And so I thought so many of them are falling through the cracks and also committing suicide. I thought there's got to be a better way. And women, by the way, women veterans are the fastest growing homeless population. And the whole thing was just so heartbreaking, and I thought, let's just do research on breathing. It worked for me. Maybe it'll work for them. So we did it, ran a study, and we showed that after one week compared to the control group, after one week, the veterans no longer showed post-traumatic stress at a pathological level. It's their anxiety normalized. And one month and one year later, it was still normalized. It's like there's something to this that helps reprogram the nervous system to a place of normality. So we actually run several studies since then with the Palo Alto VA and also at Yale with undergrads looking at mental health.

And again, the breathing, it's called sky breath meditation's offered by Art of Living, and it's this technique that's about 20 minutes, and that really helps with creating that sort of internal resilience. So the kind of exercise, it's interesting because like I said, everyone's a breathwork master. All of a sudden it's like this new fad. And I would just always say, be careful because what you learn on YouTube could be breathwork has been long practiced in India, China, Tibet, all these places for millennia, but there's also an understanding that there's certain breathing techniques that were given to you to get you fired up to go to war. So it's like what are you learning? If you're anxious and you're learning that it may not help you actually at that moment. So I always say learn it from a proper instructor. But yeah, so the practices that I personally practice are the sky breath meditation that again, I learned through Art of Living and then a mantra-based meditation.

But I also learned through Art of Living. So that became my spiritual path just because it's really what worked for me. I practice that in the morning, so plus some awesomeness too. So probably about 50 minutes or an hour in the morning, and then in the evening, again, 20 minutes, I do a meditation, which I know sounds a lot. And some people might be like, I don't have an hour and a half, I don't have an hour and a half. But what I do know is that when I do those practices, everything gets done faster, better. I show up as my best self as opposed to then regretting how I've showed up. I'm not a nervous wreck, and the return on investment is so great.

Aviva: It's like why? It's a Netflix episode. It's the 15 minutes in bed that you're lying there trying to go to sleep when you could be doing this instead. So I do believe also we can fit it in, and even when we have children, we can find ways to either weave our children in, it may not be the quiet meditation or do it in those moments in between. I mean, honestly, I have, when my kids were little, I have sat on the floor of the shower and just done some breathing, just relax. I never have had a consistent specific practice until now. I've just kind of incorporated breathing into my life. But more recently have been doing intentional meditation in the morning and then or yoga, and I find that it really does transform my experience of the day. I would say that for me, I don't know if I love the term emotional regulation. I'd love to hear what you think of that term, but that's the term that comes to mind, that it gives me a little bit more time to pause when I need to.

Emma: Yeah, a psychologist use these clunky terms seriously. Sometimes you're really, why did you have to use that term? Thinking back on you Aviva, and this load of creative impulse that's bubbling up inside of you when we meditate, when we take those times to unplug is when those ideas can really land.

And I just think it's so wonderful that you're doing that because, I dunno for myself, I know I birthed my books on hikes in meditation. Yes. Oh, same everything, right? It's when, so I just want to share the science of this for people because whenever I ask people like, okay, when did you get your best ideas? People are like, oh, well it's in the shower. Or when I'm driving or walking my dog. Or it's like, well, why in the shower you can't take your phone with you. Right? But it's not that it has to do with the phone, but what neuroscientists have found is that when are we at our greatest innovative potential? It's when our brain is in alpha wave mode. So it's not highly focused right now, maybe if you're listening really intently, the frequencies is faster in your brain, or if you've just had five beers and you're in this delta wave mode you're about to pass out, you're so tired.

But that's not what I'm talking about. But the alpha wave is that place in between this intense focus and this sort of really deep relaxation where you are awake and alert, but you're not highly focused. Could think of it as this time when your mind wandering or the meditative state of mind. And that is when neuroscientists have found, we're most likely to come up with their aha insights and ideas and solutions to problems. So oftentimes when they're looking for a solution to a problem, it'll come to us out of the blue and we're like, oh my gosh, it came out to me. Or when you're like, ah, I've got to remember what this person's name is. I can't remember. I can't remember

Aviva: Exactly. I was just thinking that,

Emma: Right? You got to have to go to the bathroom. You're like, oh, there. It's

Aviva: Exactly.

Emma: All of us are these incredible, innovative agents in the world, but we live in a time where it's been robbed from us. Because if the first thing you do when you roll out of bed is to grab your phone and get highly focused and you're listening and watching stuff all day, you're robbing yourself from that innovative potential you had as a child and you still have. And by taking those sovereign moments to unplug and to plug in to myself or to your whatever you want to think you're plugging into when you're meditating, that is when you're most likely to come up with those aha insights and intuitions, and that's what research shows is also when, so for me, it's just imperative also, especially with regard to resilience. If people are feeling kind of out of control or overwhelmed or I don't know what my next steps are, I don't know what to do, I've got these issues. It's like, well, those solutions are going to come to you when your mind is at rest. So just rest,

Aviva: Emma. We're living in really complex times right now, and for different people that means different things. I do hear a lot of people saying that they almost feel guilty experiencing happiness and joy when there is so much going on in the world right now. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about happiness and joy in and guilt surrounding that, and how can we have both compassion and cultivate awareness, but still retain that sovereign right to be happy too, and the importance of being happy for our wellbeing.

Emma: A lot of people think, okay, that's selfish for me to think about my wellbeing. But even if you're a mom, for example, how do you show up for your child when you're burnt out and you're tired and you're miserable? You show up in ways that you later regret and feel sad about. So that's just the most blatant one is like, how do I show up for my child with patience and understanding and compassion and proper boundaries, but with love? And how do I do that? How do I show up as my best self? It's when I've rested enough, when I've taken care of myself, which again can seem like, oh my gosh, I don't have time. But even if it's those micro moments, I talk about this woman, Stephanie in my book who has a son with autism who's quite a challenge for her to handle, and she went through so much hardship even before having him, and he likes to wrestle with her, and she's about five foot and he's very tall and very strong, and it's very overwhelming for her.

And yet she shows up with, she says, even if I just have five minutes in the mirror, I look at myself and I say, I love you. I got you. You know what I mean? Those little, if I have five minutes to breathe, five minutes to meditate, whatever it is, helps her then show up with that resilience. But anyway, going back to your question, research also shows that when you're happier, it impacts three degrees of separation away from you. So when you are happier, your child's teacher's partners happier. When you're happier, your husbands or partners best friends, employers happier, it has this ripple effect that these are some really great studies by sociologists, Nicholas Christ and his colleagues, and we, again, that's programming, right? Oh, you should be happy. Oh, you shouldn't. It's like, well, research shows when you are feeling better, you have better mental resources, you're more emotionally intelligent, you have better memory, you have better focus, you have better attention, you have better even physical resources, cardiovascular health, and we have better social resources too. You're better able to connect with people, communicate with them and lead and all those things. So this is another area. We've got a question because our wellbeing is actually primordial for us to be able to show up at our best and make a difference.

Aviva: I'm hearing a theme throughout our conversation. The theme is really about getting quiet more often, getting still more often, not even listening inwardly more often, but letting go of some of the noise altogether. Whether it's listening to our own inner chatter or listening to internalized voices or listening to external voices. It's just creating space intentionally through the day to get quiet. And then in those moments where we are feeling activated or overwhelmed to choose to get quiet, does that resonate with you?

Emma: Absolutely. It's a lifeline. It's like you're plugging in to yourself and in so doing, you're recharging and you're realigning with yourself. This is a world that can come out of alignment really quickly with everything coming at us, but when you align with yourself, you become very powerful and also very much happier. You show up as your best.

Aviva: I love that. What's one small practice today that listeners can start to step into greater sovereignty?

Emma: Another anchor, and I'm just remembering this from when I had the baby and the toddler and we were living in this house that was just, I'm not going to go into details, but it was kind of a horrific experience living there, and I was having issues. Our marriage was having issues and all this was happening, and I would just look out the window and there was a lake, and I would look at the lake and be like, I'm grateful for this lake. Grateful. I'm grateful for, and I know there's a lot that's been said. Okay, do gratitude list you'll be happy about. It sounds so trite, and I know it's been shared a lot, but it is an anchor in this moment right here, right now. I am breathing right here, right now. I had lunch today. This is good. Whatever. What you're doing is you're crawling out of the hole of despair, if that's all you have, right?

Definitely breathe, definitely meditate, definitely spend time in nature if you can. That's another one we haven't talked about. It's very powerful for our wellbeing and our nervous system, but in this one moment, you need to crawl out of this despair. Just pinpoint, I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful for the sun outside. I'm grateful for it is going to pull you out even if it's just a little bit, it's an anchor and it's so profoundly powerful, and it's something that again, with our negativity bias and the negativity of the world, it gets shrouded, and yet that's another sovereignty anchor right there.

Aviva: I'm hearing two things here that I think are really important to highlight, which is that pulling ourselves out of despair with a moment of gratitude, a reminder to ourselves in the mirror that we love ourselves. I love you. I've got you. The gratitude over the lake. This is different than toxic positivity. This is different than fake it till you make it.

Emma: Yes, for sure. Because toxic positivity is like, everything's fine. Nothing's going on over here. That's suppression either of yourself or of others because sometimes there is suffering in yourself and sometimes there is suffering or someone else around you, and in that moment acknowledging this is what's happening right now, it's really hard. And embracing that with your heart, whether it's embracing another person or embracing yourself, acknowledging what is right now. So everything we've been talking about, whether it's breathing or meditation or any of these things are not about escaping or not about suppressing. We don't want to be suppressing more. We've spent our whole life suppressing and it's not serving us. I go into the science of that, but it's not serving us, but being with what is and then just helping us. There are these tools we can have to help us be stronger in the moment, pull ourselves out when we can, and sometimes we can't. Sometimes we cry on our vets on the blanket.

Aviva: I was just thinking that's a piece of this too. It's also not about being in our heads with the breathing. It's about really dropping into our bodies and feeling the feelings and then breathing through to find that sort of moment where the clouds part and being in that moment where the clouds part.

Emma: I love that.

Aviva: Another piece that has come up that I wanted to highlight is just in this conversation that we've had about sovereignty and finding that freedom is really just to acknowledge how many people of us, our listeners are experiencing despair and anxiety and depression and overwhelm and fatigue on the other side of overwhelm, almost like paralyzing fatigue at sometimes feelings of giving up. We can start to feel like we're really broken, that we're feeling despair, we're feeling anxiety, we're feeling depression. And it's also easy to forget that we live in a culture. I was just reading The Psychology of Money, and there was an entire chapter on how feeling we don't have enough things, enough money, enough security, and for many people they don't, but for many people who do, there's still that feeling and that is a culturally, economically manufactured reality that our culture is driving these feelings of overwhelm, of anxiety, of despair, of depression, of fatigue. So I just really want to remind listeners that if you're feeling those feelings not to not honor that these are happening within you, but to also acknowledge that this is a massive cultural phenomenon happening right now, and that you're really not alone and that you are not broken, that you are not doing something wrong, you're not breathing well enough or meditating hard enough. There are a lot of big factors that are bearing down on people right now.

Emma: Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that. And one thing also that can help sometimes is when you look back on your past and remember hard things you've been through, sometimes that can be a reminder of that valor that you had going through that remembering, I have this valor. I sometimes in the hardest moments of my life, oftentimes actually times when in situations with men where they have taken advantage in some manner, whether it was professionally or personally, whatever. And there are times when I had to pull up this warrior spirit in myself to say, no, you know what I mean? This is not okay. And I remember I always was proceeded by despair. Here I am. This is happening. I went into that victim mode of what and then flipping it maybe a day later, maybe a week later, whenever to this warrior thing of like, no way. This is not happening right now, and I just want to remind listeners of the valor that they have. You have valor, you have been through hard times and you can get through this, and you have that valor, and sometimes our society doesn't remind us of that, that we have that warrior spirit, and it's so powerful. It really is.

Aviva: I have this image of a wonder woman or an Amazon woman with her shield spinning and really pop. I've had to pull that up too many times, particularly as a midwife or a mother in advocating for patience. It's a powerful feeling to have within, and you can do it without feeling like you're in a battle. It's not like you're fighting against, you're actually pulling up the power from within yourself. It's a pretty incredible feeling.

Emma: Yeah. I think some people would even say, you're pulling it up from your womb.

Aviva: Yes, your womb from the earth. I feel it coming from through the ground sometimes. Emma, what's lighting you up right now? What are you onto thinking about working on, reading about?

Emma: I am like you. I feel possibility inside me. I feel creativity, and I also see what's happening in the world right now, and I am thinking, I feeling grateful for, I've had some health issues in the past. I'm feeling grateful that I'm rising out of those at the moment, and I'm feeling that. I'm feeling excited about the possibility of just showing up for what's needed in whatever way, whatever way that takes. And I often have this intention or prayer that's just like make me an instrument of what's needed, of what people need right now. That's always been my prayer in my heart since I was a little kid, and I just feel like that's it. I want to be there in whatever. Of course, I have my family and my husband, my kids, that's for sure primary, but in terms of what I bring to the world, I just want to be an instrument of what's needed.

Aviva: That's my deepest wish as well. It was a meditation that, or kind of almost a, it's not really a mantra, but it is. That was kind of what I internalized when I was becoming a midwife and doing this healing work is just kind of to make me an instrument, a hollow bamboo, let this what's needed come through me, and I try to reflect on that before each patient as well. Like, okay, let me just be open to what's needed and serve in the ways I can. So I love that we have that alignment. It's so beautiful. Emma, thank you so much for reaching out to me for creating this gift of this new relationship, which I am so thrilled to have with you now and for not just the wisdom you shared today, but a really deep bringing of peace and calm and self love reminder to every listener. Yeah. Good pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining me, and I'll see you next time.

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