speaker-0: Because it's a core belief. It's something that we believe in our society as Americans. A lot of other Western societies believe it as well. You don't have an unhappy journey to a happy place. How you build it is where it will be. Does it look like me constantly fighting myself? I've forced myself to do a lot of things.

speaker-1: Today's guest is Roberta Ravella. Roberta is the founder of The Joy Experiment and the author of Open for Business How to Build Build a Business You Love Without the Hustle and Grind. Her work focuses on helping people build businesses in a way that they can actually sustain. And all of her teaching is rooted in her own personal experience of overcoming the hustle grind culture that we are thought to believe is required to achieve the things that we want in our In our conversation, we talk about why success can feel so hard, how the belief that struggle is required can shape the way that we work, and how to build around what actually gives us energy instead of constantly forcing ourselves through the process. This is a conversation that really resonated with me. It's one of my favorites that I've had so far on the podcast. And if you get value from it, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Roberta Ravella. Roberta, thank you so much for being here.

speaker-0: Thank you for having me, Ian.

speaker-1: Absolutely. Excited for our conversation. So Roberta, I and I would imagine many others have always associated success with effort, right? Doing more, pushing harder, just figuring it out as we go along. But no matter what, just kind of keep pushing, just keep taking action, just keep keep the throttle down, right? But your work and the conversations that I've heard you have on other podcasts kind of pushes against that belief. So why for us does success feel so hard?

speaker-0: because it's a core belief. It's something that we believe in our society as Americans. a lot of other Western societies believe it as well. If someone said to you, Ian, how did you start your business? You must have worked really hard. And you said, actually, I didn't. I listened to my intuition. I took naps when I needed to, took breaks, I do stuff I love, they kind of think you were being a jackass, right? So We've bought into this that it has to be really hard, that you have to struggle, that you have to work many, many hours and you have to be willing to do all these crazy things in order to be successful. And so we don't even have that ease and flow type of thing. It's not even on the table.

speaker-1: Yeah. So we kind of just pick it up subconsciously through a lot of the stories that our society and our culture really celebrates. That entrepreneur that doesn't sleep, that works eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, just kind of burns all the boats, goes all in, right? That's kind of the idea, right, that's celebrated. And it's an idea that I consumed a lot of, right? Like I've been a big fan of biographies and a podcast called Founders where they just tell the stories of other, you know, really successful entrepreneurs. So it's just something that we just kinda pick up through the stories that are really celebrated?

speaker-0: Definitely. And it's not like it doesn't work. You're looking at people for whom it did work. One of my favorite sayings is you don't you don't have an unhappy journey to a happy place. How you build it is where it will be. So if you build it in struggle in the fact that you were constantly ignoring your body, your intuition, your instincts, if you build it that way, then you'll have to continue that way. Which is why a lot of people when they get to that big success and they've done all these really difficult, hard things, they can't stop. And it also feels so unsatisfying.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, in all of the biographies and the stories that I've read, like there's a very small few that are happy, right? Like in their lives, right? They have, you know, a happy family, a great relationship with their kids, their spouse, like they have like a life, right? They have the external success, they have the big business, they have a ton of money. That hit really deep, right? You don't have an unhappy journey to a happy place. So when I hear that it almost sounds like You need to find the things that are gonna make you happy. Like you need to almost be happy in the pursuit of whatever it is that you're striving for. Like I guess maybe if we could unpack that idea of like, okay, you don't have an unhappy journey to a happy place. What is that like so we have a happy journey? Cause I think that again just kinda like breaks my my brain a little bit because it's like this idea of, you know, sacrifice just kind of Two years, five years, ten years, whatever, just kinda go all in. Just don't worry about feeling good. Don't worry about being happy. Just kinda sacrifice and then on the other side of it you'll be happy. But it sounds like you're going against the grain on that idea.

speaker-0: Yeah, I am. And for a couple of reasons. First of all, your nervous system's gonna be fried. You're not gonna know how to relax when you try. And second of all, you will be so far from yourself. And I think this is the the part that really for me was hard learned. Everything I did to build my my first career, which was a successful mortgage sales business, was self abandoning. And so when I was tired, when I didn't want to take a client because I knew it wasn't the right person for me, when somebody was crossing my boundaries, when I was crossing boundaries as far as what I considered my integrity. And I just kept telling myself, and other people kept telling me, Hey, that's what we all do. That's just what it looks like, man. That's just what you gotta do. Right. Until I couldn't do it anymore. And then I was at a place where I had abandoned myself for so long. The journey then was just trying to find myself. I mean, as corny as it sounds, right? For a middle-aged person to go have to find themselves. But if you think about how many things were like your body's going, I need sleep. I can't look at this anymore. Your stomach hurts because you're eating crappy food or you're constantly getting delivery, or you need to go outside, even. Like your body's like, Will you please just Take me outside. Can we go to the park? Can I see another human or or something along those lines? And you keep saying no. You are telling yourself no. The other thing that happens there from that nervous system breakdown, the physical breakdown, you come to an emotional and a spiritual breakdown because you're telling yourself, I don't trust you. Right? If you and I were friends. Then you kept saying to me, Roberta, what you're doing to me is hurting me. And I kept saying, get over it, you'll be fine. How long would you put up with that for me? Unfortunately, some of us would put up with it for a while because that's how we were raised, right? To be nice, just steal, whatever. But if you think about the way that we're taught to talk to ourselves, the things that we're taught to just abandon in ourselves, if anybody else treated you like that, you'd be out.

speaker-1: Right. So what I'm hearing is that the common belief in what it is required to be successful, right? The external success that we're chasing, which is just, you know, a lot of money, which we could have a whole other conversation of like, what does success actually look like? Like what is the measure of success? Because I think we've all just kind of adopted subconsciously metrics to measure whether or not we're successful in life, like money, right? from other places. But it sounds like In the journey, you need to listen to yourself or like you need to you call it a finding yourself, but it's almost like not just saying no, right? It's it's almost saying yes to the things that you intuitively feel that you hear yourself calling for. Is that kind of right?

speaker-0: Thousand percent.

speaker-1: Hmm. So I can imagine, and I've felt this in certain moments, but it's like like a small example would be okay, when I graduated from college, I had all my friends from school, I started a business and I knew that, you know, I wanted to do this, like I wanted to work on the business, build the business, but then that meant saying no to like going out, you know, kind of being at everything, being super involved. But it can be hard and really uncomfortable, right? To Say no to those things. And maybe that's not the best example, but like when saying yes to what you want. Yeah. When you when saying yes to what you want. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah. So it's a great example because at some say it's a you're at a certain age, right? You're out of school, you say, I want this business, and this is really important to me. But it feels like if I don't go out with my friends, I don't stay out late, you know, consume whatever, then I'm letting them down. But you may be letting yourself down. So if this is what you really want, this business, and to be able to focus well on it, then you can't stay up till two AM. drink whatever, get up in the morning and be thoughtful and focused. Right. I mean, you're you you don't necessarily have to choose one or the other, but you may have to plan. I still do it now and I'm I'm fifty-two years old. I there are times where I tell my friend my girlfriends, I know you want to go out. It's Thursday night, but I can't tomorrow I have to do podcast recordings. I want to write. I need to do content. And that is my priority. So I'm choosing myself in that moment.

speaker-1: Yeah. And then ideally you get to the like you build a community, you build a group of friends that support that and respect that. And they're not gonna, you know, think ill of you or kind of goat you into pulling you out and dragging you out and kind of guilt trip you into like, come on, man, like you never you've you've changed, man, like all that stuff for sure, which is just a part of the evolution. And think navigating that journey of, you know, the change. Of who you are. Like it can like when you start going against the grain other of what other people expect of you, is it other people's expectations that can really get in the way of you finding yourself? And I guess it's also your own expectations of yourself, right? That can get in the way of you changing.

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. So when you're when you're choosing yourself, you're choosing what you prioritize and what's good for you. And that can be both of those things, right? One day it may be choosing to stay home for the night and just relax, you know, binge some Netflix, go to bed early, eat well, get your rest. So you're ready for what you want to do the next day. Sometimes it might be working a little later because you're already ta thinking and the juices are flowing and you're like, my gosh, I want to keep doing this right now. Right. And other times it might be putting everything down and going out and partying with your friends. So when you start to get in that habit of listening to yourself, you'll know the difference.

speaker-1: Yeah. So is listening to yourself, this might be a really simple and basic question, but is listening to yourself really just following what you want? Because I feel like there's a there's part of me, right, that would just want to on a Friday morning, it's like, okay, I wanna sleep in, right? I wanna sleep in. I don't wanna wake up right now. I wanna sleep in and then maybe just go play golf or I don't know. But like it feels like for me, if I just followed only what I wanted, I probably wouldn't get much done. So is that the idea or is is finding yourself and listening to yourself different than just following what you want?

speaker-0: It is following what you want, but it's allowing what you want to grow up. So we assume and we're told that if you just did whatever you wanted, you'd get up late on Friday and you'd just go play golf. And then you'd, you know, have a couple beers, you'd eat some cheeseburgers, and then that's it, right? The day's done, your diet's done, you didn't work out. Okay, fine. But if you did what you really wanted, maybe you do that once a month, once a quarter, whatever. But you're driven enough that you started a business right out of college. You've been an entrepreneur for entrepreneur for seven years. I don't think laying on the couch or just partying all the time or playing all the time or sleeping in all the time is what you really want.

speaker-1: Yeah. You're right. Like there's the difference between maybe like what I want now in this moment, like what the animal brain in me that's just like resisting the work and resisting the things that need to be done. Like that's not the part that you should listen to. Like what you want to like it's the common saying of, you know, what you want now versus what you want later. So it's tapping into doing the things now that I need to that are gonna help me to get the things that I say that I want later, right? It's the Definitely that kind of goes back to the idea again of You know, the sacrifice, right? It's the sacrificing this moment, doing the thing maybe that you don't necessarily want to do right now for the thing for the bigger thing that you want later. Right. So kinda how do you walk that balance of listening to yourself, listening to the things that you want and need.

speaker-0: Yeah, I'll give you a really I'll give you a great example. It is a high priority for me right now to build muscle. all the research shows that if I want to live healthfully after, you know, stage of perimenopause, menopause into a woman's what last 20 to 30 decades, I need to have muscle on my body. And so I work out three times a week. I do not like going to the gym very much. And I would not lift weights by myself. I tried it, didn't work. Okay. So I did the things that would make it easy for me and acceptable and enjoyable. For me, that was getting a trainer. We work out over Zoom. The appointments are set. I work out the same days a week. I work out the same time. He knows exactly what my goals are. He fits into them. We have fun chatting. And so something that I know I really want. But I don't like all the stuff to do it. I found a way to make it palatable and enjoyable for myself.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: And and sometimes that's giving in to the Friday when I don't feel like working out and my body says, I am tired. We're not working out today. And I say, Okay.

speaker-1: Yeah. So you've taken the intentional steps to okay, so you've listened to yourself, you recognize like I want to live a happier, healthier life. And one of the requirements of that is building muscle. And you know that in the journey of building muscle and doing the things that you need to do, right? Doing the ugly, maybe not so enjoyable things that you need to do, you've kind of built the system like around what's required to get that done to make it easier on yourself and make it harder to to not do it, I guess, or make it easier to do it. So you kind of intentionally design the system where you got the trainer, you got the accountability, you found the times during the week where you're going to be able to do this consistently and you just kind of installed that system. So that that I think could be applied to anything else. Right. It's like for me, maybe one of the things like I know that I want to do is writing. Right. And I've been trying now for a couple of months, just I have this little habit. tracker thing in my journal where like I track each day, like, okay, did I write for 15 minutes a day? I don't know if you can see it in this one, but it's completely blank so far this month. I have not done it. So for me with something like that, it's like, okay, why do I want to write? Right. I want to write because I think that people that write are the clearest thinkers, right? I've found that in the few times that I have spent writing, it helps me just kind of like digest my thoughts, think more clearly about whatever it is that I'm writing about. Right. And dig it spans across a whole bunch of different things. But like I want to build the skill of being a better writer. So then for s something like that for me, obviously I haven't been able to do it really on my own. So I would try and find some kind of system or way that I could create some accountability or something like that to make it easier for me to to follow through on the things that need to do to get to what I want to do.

speaker-0: Yes. And the first thing you said was really important. You said, I know I really want to do this. That is a really important question because often the reason you have a hard time doing something that you should do or you think will bring you forward or get you closer to your goals, you really don't want to. And that was something I had to learn myself. Like, do I really want this? Do I really want to build this business? And I shut down two businesses that were. Fine and I did well at them because at the end of the day, I did not really want to. Now you may not be in a position financially just to shut a business down, but something that you would ask yourself first, if I'm struggling to do this, do I really want to? You said yes, you really do want to. Okay, great. You also know clear writing is clear thinking. Clear thinking is clear writing. It's it's an amazing thing. I love it for that very reason myself. So what would keep you from doing something? That you want to do, you enjoy doing, and you have the time and ability to do. What would keep you from doing that? And that's a question you can ask yourself. Are you not prioritizing for some reason? Is there a limiting belief there? Is there something that's keeping you from just saying, Hey, all I have to do is

speaker-1: I think for me it's like the reason that I haven't it's just I have these other habits. Like it just find I find myself maybe at the end of the day, just kind of falling back into watching podcasts or watching YouTube or watching just other stuff, just kind of more passive things that don't you know. I kind of get to the end of the day and I'm I guess kind of tired and I just fall into the more negative habits that I would like to replace with this activity of writing. But also I would probably think as we're talking about this out loud, writing is something that Does take energy, right? It does take energy. It does take focus, which by the end of the day, by nine thirty PM, ten PM, I'm pretty tapped up. So

speaker-0: Depleting.

speaker-1: so maybe it's something that I need to like carve out fifteen minutes just like in the morning to do. So maybe it's just yeah, that's maybe what's getting in the way of it. So it's just really just kind of going through that process of just thinking through what is getting in the way of me doing this thing, even though I know that I really want to do it. And then you can yeah, find a more productive solution.

speaker-0: Yeah, and then just doing it first thing in the morning. I write every morning and I gotta tell you, none of that stuff happens after about three o'clock in the afternoon. I struggle with it at that point. Around three or four, I'm with you. My energy's low. Those are all low priority tasks at that point in the day. So it could be something as simple as your journal and your pens are on top of your laptop.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: And your laptop doesn't open until you've done your fifteen minutes.

speaker-1: Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I like it. So that's kind of like the atomic habits idea of like habit stacking or kind of creating some just making it as easy as possible for you to get started and do the thing that you need to do. But I'd love to dive into the idea of you finding that you didn't want to build the business, right? So what did you see or what did you hear from yourself that indicated like or how did you find out that you didn't want to build those businesses? Like what did that look like?

speaker-0: Yeah. So in mortgage sales, it looked like me constantly fighting myself. I've forced myself to do a lot of things. And I don't mean bad things or whatever. I mean it was just it was so stressful. And mind you, I also could have built this differently, right? I built it the most stressful way possible. And so it was hard. but I believed it had to be hard. I believe I had to work long hours. I believed that, you know, this is just what you did. And everyone around me corroborated that belief. So I often would be like, you know, I don't want to do this anymore, but what am I what else am I going to do? You know, I'm making great money. I have to do this no matter where I am. At least I know these people. So whatever, right? And then when that belief started breaking down, basically because I was burning out, I gave myself the opportunity to do some other things. And I think that for most of us, we have the opportunity to try different things to see if we like them. And also to like something and do it right now, and then it morph into something else, and then it becomes something else. I mean, some people are built for for long careers. Like my husband had the same career for 32 years, which is kind of crazy in this day and age. But the more things are changing and growing, the more flexibility do you have to say, okay, I was video editing two years ago and that was great. And then I really got interested in podcasting. And now I'm podcast podcasting and publishing and gosh, I started writing and now I'm a digital writer. Like you have all that opportunity. No one's to say. So there's that thing. Give yourself permission to say, I tried this, it worked, or didn't work, or I liked it for this period of time. And now I want to do something else. I want to try something else. There's that. Just pure permission to be honest with it. And once I got there, I got pretty good at knowing, like. After the mortgage business, I did coaching for a little bit and that morphed into marketing coaching in strategy. And I could tell, right? Like I could run an agency, but that's not, I could do it. But it was, I was right back in that morning time where I'm like, I really don't want to go to work today. Like, it's my own business, right? Like, what do you mean? So, what here is really bringing me joy and bringing me energy. And the thing that We're told is it doesn't matter, but it does. Because if you're doing something you love and you're good at, that energy becomes self-sustaining. And then the extra hours you may need to put in or that extra push you may need to make your business successful, it comes from inside of you because you're gaining energy through the business itself and what you're doing and how you're experiencing it instead of it draining you. And then you have to stop. Take a minute, go rest. Go on vacation, whatever, right? Like, I'm sure you've you've been in some sort of activity where you're like, I could do this all day. Whatever that may be. So if your business is made up of something congruent with that or that thing, whatever, I mean, not to name draw, but one of my favorite things that Taylor Swift has said recently was that people ask her why she wrote that album, why she wrote Life of a Showgirl while she was already on tour. Isn't she tired? my God, you're such a hard worker. And she said, No, I'm not a hard worker. It was in me and it had to come out. And it actually gives me energy for the tour that I was on. Which seems crazy, but if you're doing something that you love, say just say for for instance, and you get into this writing and you really find it drives you, and then you start building a business around it, it's gonna just bring energy to you in such a different way than when you're constantly going, Okay, it's Monday morning. I'm an entrepreneur, let's go eighty hours. Yeah. Right? It's like a whole other way of being.

speaker-1: Yeah. And that just sounds just so much more sustainable. Exactly. Yeah. If you're operating from a place and you're doing something that gives you energy, it's gonna be really easy to find the energy to continue doing it and doing it really well. And you're gonna be able to pour yourself more into it. Right. Like one of those things that I have found that does give me energy is doing this podcast. Like I love talking to people. I love getting better at it. I love trying to get better at it. I love, you know. Just working to improve. so yeah, so it's just those things that do give you energy and finding a way to do more of those things is definitely the the aspirational path, right? Like once you kind of have tried the other things and tried forcing the things that you think, this is what will make me the most amount of money, but it's just absolutely killing me inside and I have to complete I have to drag myself, which sounds like was the symptoms that you recognize when you realize that you needed to make a change was like, I really have to force myself to do this thing, and I am dreading going and doing this thing. So that can be one of those telltale symptoms that you yeah, you need to make a change. So then and I think one other thing that you mentioned is like giving yourself permission to experiment is really important in the process of helping you to find those things that give you energy. Right. Because Paul Graham wrote about this idea of like how to find what you love. And he just said, just follow your curiosity, follow your interests. But I feel like in order to pursue those curiosities and those interests, you have to give yourself permission to just experiment. And one of the things that got in the way of me starting this podcast was this idea that, like, this expectation that it needed to be successful, I needed to be great at it right away. So just how do you kind of advise people to get over that idea of just placing so much emphasis on being perfect right out of the gates? Like, how do you build that? permission to experiment within yourself to follow those curiosities and interests.

speaker-0: Yeah. It can be tough because we get a lot of pressure to be really good at something, right? And I think your you guys around your age have it even worse because you see so many people on Instagram and all that stuff faking it, right? But the pressure comes from it's such an external thing. So when you're you're like, Okay, I know I want to do this, I know I love doing it, and I'm gonna experiment with this. So an experiment is a scientific thing that we all know the process, the You know, the scientific method. You ask a question. I really like this podcast thing. I think I could be great at it. I think it can make me really good money. Let me see. It's an experiment. Now, if you've got your rents to pay and you got to feed yourself and all that good stuff, you got your student loans, you're gonna have to take into account while you're doing all of this that somewhere the money has to come from somewhere. So the quicker you can get that money to come from what you're doing, the better. But there is, I won't call it a sacrifice per se. I mean, sometimes it's just the things that we do, right? But if you're doing something that's sucking you dry to pay that rent. That creativity and that cre curiosity is going to be killed. Yeah. Bit. So if you can at least get yourself somewhere where you're like, I I have energy left over, or I have energy in the morning before I go to this job or I do whatever it is I need to do, you know, to sustain yourself until you can get that business going, then that's really

speaker-1: And I would imagine that the act of following your intuition and exercising your intuition and acting on your intuition, does that feed and grow that spark and that energy and those creative juices?

speaker-0: Yes. And not only does it do that, it starts to make things happen around you. That's kind of weird, right? Like I don't know if you've heard, I think it was Hawthorne that said, you know, the universe will conspire with you once you've made these decisions. And part of that is listening to your intuition and acting on it and trusting it. And then things will start to show up, right? I did a practice a couple months ago. I had a lady on my podcast who the whole thing was about intuition. That's what she does. She teaches people how to quiet, listen, and trust their intuition. So I did the practice just over the weekend. And it wasn't a big deal. I think it's like five to ten minutes a day. You know, you do this, just be quiet, listen, set the intention. This is what I'm curious about. This is what I want to know. And then in a couple of days, like I had this lady ping me on LinkedIn. From the mortgage business that I hadn't talked to in 10 years. And she's like, Let's meet up. I think you should be on my podcast. I'm like, okay, great. And she's introduced me to five other women. I've just met with two of them this week that have been on my podcast that are exactly who I wanted in my world. Like it's opened up so many doors for me. I went to New Jersey to this training thing that I was invited to by one of them. Like, absolutely crazy. The outlet that it was just for a weekend of me listening to myself.

speaker-1: Yeah. When you start to walk on the way, the way appears. Or, you know, I I've heard that similar quote of the idea that the universe is conspiring to make you, you know, a success or whatever. The the universe is conspiring behind you to help you to find why you were brought here. Right. And I think the clearest signal to find that reason for being is that curiosity, is that intuition, is those natural interests that just kind of You could you get lost into you find yourself just exploring and thinking about it's there, right? It's there, it's speaking to us, but we just kind of refuse to listen to it oftentimes because of these external expectations that have been put upon us and the way that our society has been structured and going out, going to college, getting a good job, making good money, you know, working your way up the ladder, or just, you know, starting a business, you gotta work 90 hours a week, you gotta gotta go, go, go, go, go. And don't think about that stuff, right? Because that stuff doesn't matter. That stuff's Pushy feely, right? We don't have feelings, emotions, right? We're stoic warriors that are just gonna march through the work that we need to do, right? but if you could, so this idea of exercising your intuition and letting your imagination just kind of go and follow that signal. Like what did you what was that practice that the woman shared with you?

speaker-0: Yeah, so I do a morning routine pretty much I say routine loosely, right? So when I get up in the morning, it's pretty quiet and I grab my journal, get my coffee. I usually have some form of book and I just started listening to sound balls in the morning. I love that. There's some really good ones on YouTube. They're so relaxing and just put yourself into a peaceful state first thing in the morning. And if you're new to this, I think the best way to do journaling in that type of practice is just to start writing a few things that you appreciate about the morning, you appreciate it about yesterday. So, say you want this podcast to become really successful and this to be your main business. If you can see one or two things that happened yesterday that put you further down that road, right? You met somebody, you were introduced to somebody, you learned a new skill in your clip. Maker, whatever is there, right? Just to acknowledge it and appreciate it. And then with your intention to to whatever it is that you're looking for, right? You want your intuition to guide you more in the podcast. And you want to be open and curious about it. And that's just what you say. You can say it on write it on the paper, you can say it out loud to the walls or to the universe or God, what whatever you you find. But I was just writing in my journal very intentionally, this is what I'm looking for. This is what I'm looking for. And I'm open saying to myself, I'm open to this. I'm open to this.

speaker-1: Wow. Okay. So it's just almost like the intentionally setting the intention of I'm open to this happening. This is what I want.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah.

speaker-1: And I'm curious about, yeah, what what this would look like in me pursuing this path? I love it. And is there anything that you would add to the idea? Because obviously preceding that, right? Proceed like you have to kind of know, have an idea of what it is that you want. Is there anything that you would add to the idea of how do you find the things that you want, right? How do you hear that intuition? Is there anything that you would add to the idea of your curiosity, your interests? Anything that you would add to the idea of how do you hear your intuition or What your intuition sounds like.

speaker-0: usually quiet. It's not it's not a chatty Kathy, right? It's not gonna say a whole bunch of stuff. It's usually quiet, usually clear. And like, have you ever gone to make a decision and you just knew what the right one was? Whether you did it or not, you just knew what the right one was. For some people, it's that very intense knowing. Like you get an idea, maybe I should start a group around my podcast. And it's just an idea and you're like, huh, that's interesting. That's curious. Okay. And then you get an idea. Maybe I should start a group around my podcast and it feels like from your gut. And it feels really good. And then a lot of times it will feel more intense and more ideas will come.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: And then people start showing up, which is kinda funny.

speaker-1: It is spooky. It is weird. Like even for me in the last few months since, you know, one of those things being starting this podcast, but you mentioned God and the universe and setting intentions and all that stuff, you know, as a young guy, right? That sounds very woo-woo and you know, not doesn't fit with the persona that I project to the world. But have definitely opened myself up more to these ideas since I read this book, A Return to Love, by Marion Williamson, and I feel like I bring it up on every podcast now. earlier this year from a recommendation from a previous podcast guest and that talks a lot about the ideas of, you know, the universe, God. It uses a lot of traditional Christian language without projecting the Christian theology just because we can recognize the concepts of of God and, you know, the will and things like that. And I've allowed myself to try and open up to that and, you know, pray and like set an intention and it has been pretty wild. Things that have happened in in the last couple of months. And one of the ideas from the book is that when you open yourself up, well, there's a first first idea is that God gave us free will because it's the greatest extension of his creativity. He won't enter our lives or the universe won't enter our lives and help us and support us and kind of shine a light on our path because we have free will, unless we intentionally ask for it and we set the intention right. One way to do that is through prayer. But then when you ask God or the universe to enter your life. You know, maybe one would expect that everything just starts magically going right. But what the book argues or explains is that when you ask for God or the universe to enter your life, he's gonna shine a light on all of the things that result in you kind of steering away from love or this idea from love, or just kind of the things that frustrate you. So it's not gonna be a smooth, easy, comfortable path necessarily. Is that something that you experience for yourself, like when you set that intention, when you open yourself up to the universe kind of helping you on this journey, was it smooth sailing or was it a little bit of a bumpy ride?

speaker-0: You know what I call it? releasing the resistance, right? So if you think about it as you you put your canoe in the water and you're going down, you know, with with the with the stream or whatever, and you come across things that res that are resistance. I don't know why this has always been my imagery, but just like rocks in the water. We used to canoe a lot in in the Shenandoah River, probably is why. But I just imagine those things that are there that I want to get around or are holding me back. And so when you have these intentions and you start listening to your intuition, those things are going to come forward because you're asking to move, you're asking to flow. And so what's holding me back is going to come up. That's what's keeping you from doing so. Right. And it could be as much as like choosing, okay, these friends that were my college friends, we're probably not going to be friends anymore. Or it could just be like, I need to tell them this where I'm at now. Or it could be that you believe being a successful podcaster is available to you outside of hard work, outside of struggle, outside of self-abandonment. You know, you don't have to do all those things unless you choose them. You can choose to do the other way. Those can be the things that you just need to release. And I feel like that's why they come up. And it's always been my experience. Every time I'm trying to go the further place or I get curious or want to follow something. The things that would cause me resistance or would dry cause me to draw back come up. And so you address them in however they are. Some of them are habits, right? Like your habit in the morning that's keeping you from journaling. That's a simple habit change. You just put your put your, you know, journal on your laptop and don't do it in the afternoon. Okay. Pretty easy to remove that resistance, right? Which is a real resistance. You're tired. You don't have it in you to think anymore, right? Or it could be other things. Like if you can't let go of the idea that building a business has to be hard and has to be struggle, and you have to tell everyone how hard you're working and look like you're working really hard, it will hold you back and keep you in that space. You will have to release that in order to build a business that doesn't require it. So it will keep coming up because you're asking your intuition, you're asking the universe. you're asking consciousness, source, energy, whatever you want to call it, or do or if you're a complete atheist, God bless you, you're just asking yourself. So it's going to come up and be presented because you need to let it go. Get

speaker-1: Mm.

speaker-0: what you're asking for.

speaker-1: Yeah. So what I'm hearing is the idea that the things that get in the way of the path or of us on this journey oftentimes are the things that we just manufacture, right? We create ourselves. We create these blocks. Like we are the these blocks, these things that get in our in the way originate not anywhere o outside of us, but it's it's within us and a lot of times it's beliefs, it's thoughts, it's things that we've held on to and your prescription. For kind of getting through them, getting over them, getting past them is just letting them go.

speaker-0: Yeah, and that, and that can sound really simplistic. It may be more than just saying, I let this go, right? You may need to do some things. It depends on how deep it is. I wrote a book myself. It's called Open for Business, How to Build a Business You Love Without the Hustle and Grind. And one of the things that we do in the book is there's a practice there that helps you see this thing that's holding you back and test it, right? Is this a habit? Is this just something we say? I mean, I have friends that if you ask them how they're doing, they will say, everything's great and they have really good lives. And then they will say, But you know, life is hard. You know it's hard everywhere because it's a habit. It's something that we are told is just the truth. And so do they believe it? I don't even know. It's just a habit. Right. It may be a habit for you to say to yourself, It's the end of the day and I'm tired. Maybe you are, maybe you're not. If it's true, then fine. It could just be a habit. It could be a habit to be angry. It can be a habit to say, yeah, I want to go party on Friday night. Do you? Or is this just something you do? Like every one of those things, question it. The night it could be an emotional pattern that's brought by a belief, right? If you get past habit, you can see, okay, this is not a habit. This is something that really brings up an emotion for me and I really believe this. And maybe it's that everything has to be hard to work. Maybe your life has shown you, you know, your parents had a hard time in their jobs and their businesses and they're good people. And you're like, This is just the way this goes. Okay. If you look for the evidence for life being hard, you will, you will find it. Not hard to, you know, it's out there, right? So can you get past that belief? And there are many ways to do that. Some of it's like affirmations, journaling, some of it's looking for evidence outside of you. Can I find somebody for whom this was not hard? The answer to that is always yes. And then you can start picking that belief apart and then unpracticing it. And when those emotions come up, just question them again until you can get them to go away. A lot of that goes with nervous system regulation as well. So if you're doing a bit of a morning routine where you're doing breath work or any sort of meditation or even just moving your body in the morning to where you can quiet your mind, that will help you become more clear and you can see these things very clearly. The next level of that is if you have a really ingrained belief. You'll notice this if your emotion about something is extreme. So you probably have a friend or maybe even done this yourself. When it comes to a particular item, they're not only, it doesn't just bother them, right? Like the stories around it are outrageous. They make no sense. It lasts for months. They can't let it go. Then you have a deeper problem. It could be trauma that needs to be released. Recommend professionals for that. It could be a deep-seated belief that you need to allow to heal. But you can kind of tell a tears here, right? Like every time you leave your house, you're like, traffic's gonna suck today. Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't. And it's just a habit that you say that that you can stop saying. If you are so furious every morning when you get in your car, we got a bigger issue. So if you can compare that to your business being easier hard. Some of that stuff's habits. Some of it's just emotions because we believe these things that we can stop believing. We started believing them, we can stop believing them. But if you find yourself in a really deep seated place where you cannot get past the emotion, then it's time to go beyond just reading a book or doing some practicing and seek out some help from someone who can help you release that trauma or that really deep end belief.

speaker-1: Hmm. Amazing. Yeah. Roberta, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you. And there's a lot more that we would I would love to explore with you. So we'd love to have you back on the podcast another time. Cause I think this topic is becoming more and more relevant today, right? With all for a lot of different reasons, right? The idea that we're picking up more subconsciously than we ever have before with social media, within st like we're just Subconsciously adopting all these beliefs, these things that we need to do, like a lot of need ideas are getting picked up. And then also the idea of it's becoming more available than ever for anybody to just do whatever they want to do, right? And just become the best at the world and being them and doing whatever it is that they want to do. So would love to have you back on. But before we get to my final question, which is a recurring question, I ask every guest, how can people find you?

speaker-0: Yes, you can find me at my website, which is thejoyxperiment.live. On my YouTube channel is either my name, Roberta Ravella, or The Joy Experiment Live. And those are the best two places to find me. I'm also on TikTok and LinkedIn. I'm somewhere on Meta, but I don't really participate there anymore.

speaker-1: Sure. Sure. Amazing. We'll have the the links to all of your socials, your website, the link to purchase your book, which is a very compelling title. I'm gonna pick up a copy myself. open for business. I love that. so we'll have the links of all that in the description. If anything we talked about resonated here today, go check out more of Roberta's content. the joy experiment dot live. I love that. So everything's in the description. Go check that out. Roberta, my final question for you is a recurring question I ask every guest. If you had a giant billboard. That everyone in the world could see for ten seconds with one message to the world. What would it say and why?

speaker-0: Trust yourself.

speaker-1: Trust yourself. I love it. Yeah. And that's one of those ideas that I'd love to dive deeper into, like kind of how to build that trust in yourself. Cause I think that's absolutely key. But we'll save that for next time. Roberta, thank you so much for the time.

speaker-0: Thank you, Ian. This was great.

speaker-1: Thank you for listening. My main takeaway from this conversation is that the way I build a business or build a thing matters just as much as whether or not it succeeds. And honestly, it's probably like one of the leading indicators in whether or not it's going to be a success, right? The way and the energy in which I'm build in which I'm building something. Yeah. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about the results that I want in my life and what I need to do to get there and kind of almost dehumanizing myself in this process. It's like, okay, I need to just have all of this machine like behavior. Shut it down, lock it down for like three years, and then then I'll be a success and then I'll be able to enjoy that. And what I had not thought so much about is whether I'm building it in a way that I actually want to keep living once it all works out. Right. Because if I spend three years sacrificing my humanity to build something, I feel like it's probably not really gonna be able to turn that off. Right. So if the process depends on constant stress, long hours or forcing myself, gritting my teeth through the work, success isn't just gonna make all of that go away. So thank you for that, Roberta. If you want to get connected with Roberta Ravella, you can find her links in the description of this episode, including her website and link to her book and all of her tremendous work. And if you're an author or a coach and you want to make it easier for your clients to get results and engage with your ideas, I put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support in your program without adding more to your plate. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.