Erin: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following, we break those rules, and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more self expressed. I'm your host, Erin Keating. What did you think of last week's episode with Tracy T from Moms on Mushrooms? I'm dying to get your feedback.
Go to Instagram and DM us @hotterthaneverpod or leave a comment or your feedback on one of the posts about that episode. Want to start a conversation about the things we're talking about here. Let's get into it.
Today, I want to talk about what I like to refer to as. And by [00:01:00] woo, I mean all of these contemporary notions of spirituality and paths to faith and things that replace the conventional world of religion that used to provide answers to the mysteries of life, insights into how to manage your day to day life.
The 'Woo' includes things like astrology, human design, crystals, manifestation, intention setting, mantras, altars, everything happens for a reason. I bet you have a visceral response to that expression. It's about It's about the difference between making things happen and allowing things to happen. It's about the difference between forcing things and ease.
So when things show up in your life and they feel [00:02:00] easy, the Woo would indicate that that is the path to take. And I want the benefits of faith, a spiritual life, but there is so much bullshit to sort through in this contemporary interpretation of all of these And mystical things, then I just want to talk through it because I think we need this stuff as human beings, but there is a pendulum that swings between the head and rationality and then this more mystical, more flowing.
Approach to how to live life and I want you to be able to choose the tools that are going to lift you up and Support you without making you feel like you're a fucking idiot. I'll speak for myself I'll speak for myself. Let's start with astrology. I'm a Virgo. [00:03:00] I Inhabit a lot of the traits of a Virgo. I like it I wish I was a Leo, I wish I was more outgoing, but I do see the loyalty, the sense of order, the person who can sort through chaos. That is me, and that is the Virgo. And when I feel like my life is out of control, I lean into astrology.
It's embarrassing to say this. It is embarrassing to admit this, that I am this person who. prizes her intellect and her ability to think through things and that I read my horoscope. And I don't read all the horoscopes, but I have a range of horoscopes that I read. And if I'm feeling desperate, I will read the monthly horoscope and the weekly horoscope and the daily horoscope.
And then I will cross reference them against each other because I am looking for answers in a time of fog in my life. Astrology, a phrase, a sentence, [00:04:00] something, an idea for a moment, because I can never hold on to it, for a moment can make me feel like, okay, I've got a pathway through the fog. I can see my feet. I know where I'm going. I can't hold on to it. It doesn't sink into me, but for a moment, it gives me some kind of relief. And I'll take that.
I think a lot about manifestation and intention setting. I think when you're trying to change your life, you have to spend time thinking about what exactly it is that you want next and writing about it and envisioning it and making vision boards. My favorite thing. I love a collage. Who doesn't love a collage to make vision boards that depict what your life is going to look like if all of your dreams come true.
And for me, I always find language in a magazine that I think, Oh, [00:05:00] that speaks to me. I'm going to put that on the vision board. This ad, this quote, this something from a fashion spread, these things speak to me. And because they speak to me, they're going to go on my vision board. I think there's something to that, to spending time. In this place of what do I want, what do I want my life to be, what does it look like, what does it feel like, and writing down some intentions for the next month, the next six months, the outcome of a project, the course of a new relationship, I think there's something powerful about getting it out of the muck and swirl of your mind.
And putting it into a more concrete form. And I know people in business who start meetings with an intention. I walk into a room having set an intention. My intention is to have the outcome of this meeting be [00:06:00] XYZ. And for me to show up as this version of myself that I think will do the job the best. I love that. I feel like whatever can bring you to where you are in the most present and mindful way possible, fantastic. Do it. Sometimes a mantra can help repeating a sentence over and over again. In the mirror or in front of your homemade altar that contains all the objects that you find have some spiritual significance.
I mean, it's so silly to me in some ways. The rational right brain, right brain, left brain, whatever the side of your brain that is supposedly really rational, that side of the brain looks at the altar in my bedroom with candles and incense. And a little Ganesh from a trip I took to India and a little painting of [00:07:00] clouds that my daughter did and a little plaque that says Shalom from my Irish Catholic grandmother because she loved Jews so much and was so proud to have a Jewish granddaughter.
All of these things hold some kind of totemic significance for me. And so when I spend time lighting candles, repeating a mantra, setting an intention for the day, I think it's really... I don't know. No harm done. I guess that's how I feel. No harm done and it makes me feel better when I bring the presence of mind to that experience.
I am more grounded in what it is that I want, the outcomes that I want, the results that I want, the state of mind that I want to be in, which is one that celebrates ease and flow and That doesn't ever have to force things or jam things that isn't about making it happen. I'm going to make it happen. [00:08:00] I spent a lot of my life in that mindset.
And what that mindset comes with for me is a tremendous amount of stress and a tremendous amount of anxiety and a big, giant, pulsing, aggressive, unhappy, frustrated feeling that if only I accomplish X, Y, and Z, that feeling will go away. When in fact it may be the process of holding on so tight and being so intense about things that causes that nervy jumble to really gain power and strength in my mind.
And in my 50s and beyond, what I want in my life is to go towards the things that just show up with ease, that just Seemed to be presented to me by what [00:09:00] we like to call the universe. What is the universe? I think at some point saying the word God got too freighted with conventional Judeo Christian ideas.
So people started to say the universe and look, it's as good a phrase as any, right? And people started to say things like, if it's meant to be, it will happen. And if it's not meant to be. It won't. And that is a way to look at life and say, I'm in acceptance. I'm not going to push against things in order to make them happen.
Now that doesn't mean you can't have goals and drive and ambition, which I have a lot of ambition. I have a lot of big dreams and goals, and I know that you do too. But at this point in my life, I feel a lot of conviction around the idea that I can get those goals. without force, [00:10:00] that I can get those goals through ease and flow through allowing instead of controlling.
And I think it's so fascinating to think about that as like a dimension of the Woo, a dimension of the spiritual universe that you can call Into being that you can summon for yourself the difference between letting things happen and making things happen. And that doesn't have to be a passive stance, right?
We're always in action. We're always in action towards our goals. We're always working towards something we want or something we want to fix or something we want to change. But there's more ease and flow in trusting the universe. And I've heard people say. I'm excited for what the universe has in store for me.
The universe only wants what's good for me. This is a [00:11:00] choice to believe this, right? And you may be saying to yourself, Jesus, Erin, I did not think you were this kind of person. Or maybe that's my inner monologue that's critiquing my outer monologue right now because it sounds dumb, right? It sounds unintellectual.
And yet at the same time, it feels. Better for me, but when I moved from New York to Los Angeles, all I kept saying was, I just want an easy landing. I just want a smooth landing. I just want to ride down a slide into my new life. And with that visualization in mind, I allowed things to happen. Now, of course, did I stress about finding a place to live and a preschool for my children and adjusting to my new job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Of course I did when I moved to Los Angeles 10 years course. But. That little bit of [00:12:00] intention setting. Around an abstract idea of a smooth landing really gave me so much ease and peace in a massive transition in my life. Moving is such a huge transition. Moving across the country with two little kids is a huge transition.
And all I wanted was like, can something feel easy? And because I went into it with that intention, there were so many things that felt so easy as part of the transition. And you could say, maybe that's just you. Maybe that's because that's how you're thinking about it. You're thinking it's going to be easy and therefore it's easy.
Well, then that is mind over matter. My friends. That is mind over matter. That is taking control of your mental state and causing a new state of being to be. I always say that in life, if you know what the what [00:13:00] is, the how is none of your business. How will take care of itself. So I knew I wanted to launch a podcast, for example, I wanted to launch a podcast.
I didn't know how to do it. I knew I had done things before I had made television shows before I had made media before. I basically understand the creative process when it comes to making a media product. And people showed up in my life because I put one foot in front of the next, like my amazing producer, Erica, and my associate producer, Lena, and my new associate producer, Melody, and My brother who wrote the theme song like all of the how figured itself out all of the how became clearer as I went, but because I knew what the what was.
And I set a deadline and I backed my way into it. [00:14:00] It made space for the how to reveal itself. You always think that there's two ways something can go in life. Well, it's either going to be this or that. I'm going to be divorced and single and miserable and just focus on my kids and focus on my career, or I'm going to be a big slut and sleeping.
I'm sorry. Am I telling my story? I'm going to be sleeping around with a whole bunch of guys, but I'll never find a relationship. I'm not going to be in a relationship. That's not in the cards for me. When What usually happens in life is the third path, the path that you would never have predicted, the path that you could never think of in your mind.
Well, I'm going to go look for a job and I'm either going to get this amazing job or that amazing job or this mediocre job or that mediocre job. And then all of a sudden some random other job shows up and you're like, Oh, actually. This is the one that's going to work the best. [00:15:00] And I did not force this, contrive this scheme for this. It just showed up. And that's a weird woo thing too, right? You think everything is black and white, but in reality, everything is gray. Everything is gray. And these notions of crystals having healing powers or altars being some physical manifestation of the spiritual, this idea of the universe, what? All of these things seem so cool.
Yeah. Silly when you talk about them, but human beings. And one thing I learned from the landmark forum, a thousand years ago, speaking of woo adjacent, I did some time in the landmark forum, which is a very intense self help program that has a lot of proselytizing involved. You have to sort of recruit people to come and be a part of it.
And one of [00:16:00] the things that I took away from the landmark forum is that human beings are meaning making machines. And what we want to do is imbue crystals. With healing powers, we want to make them mean something. We want to make the placement of the stars mean something about who we are and how our day is going to go and whether we're going to get that promotion or whether we're going to be in love in six months or prognosticate about our future.
There are some of these things that are rigorous practices that allow us to get in touch with ourselves and our own desires and our own wants and needs in the world. Any path will get you there. If you come to it with clarity and intention, any one of these tools, I have a couple of friends who are into this thing called human design, which is kind of a combination of chakras and astrology [00:17:00] and people who are into it are going to be mad at me because I'm not describing it correctly, but you are basically given certain archetypal attributes based on your date and time.
And location of birth. And some people believe that that interpretation of those pieces of data can tell them a lot of things about how to live their lives and where their strengths are, where their strengths are not. I had my human design read. And one of the things that was told to me was that I will succeed where other people fail now, whether that's true or not.
I like that. I like the sound of that. I'm going to take human design at its word and I'm going to say, yeah, you know what? Well, I'm designed to succeed where other people fail. I don't care where that information came from. If someone believes that's the interpretation that's appropriate, because I was born in a certain place in time.
I like the sound [00:18:00] of that. I'll put that in my little toolbox and remind myself of that on the days when I don't feel designed to succeed where other people fail. So why does any of this matter because I want you to have what you want in life and I want you to feel Agency, and I want you to feel like the things that show up easily for you your God given talents your luck that those are things that you were meant to have and That you were meant to build on and grow from I want you to be able to To put aside your rational, I've got to force this to happen here.
If I plan rigorously enough, and if I push hard enough, if I grind hard enough, then I'll get what I want in life, then I'll get through this hard time. Then in the future, something, something, something, because when you take that approach, what you're robbing [00:19:00] yourself of is the present. You're robbing yourself of enjoying the process of getting there. And the truth is that everything is the process of getting there, right? The only there is the very end, when the lights go out, and we go into the tunnel of light, or whatever it is you believe. That's the only end. That's the only guarantee, that's the only destination, so as much, especially in the back half of our lives, in the second half, in the second act of the play we are all in, as much as we can be present and enjoy it and feel ease and flow and allow wonderful things to happen in our lives and tell ourselves we deserve them and they're written in the stars for us.
We're going to enjoy our time here on this planet a whole hell of a lot more. So if it takes a crystal in your [00:20:00] bra or a mantra that you repeat or a box that you put your wishes in and then burn them, I don't know, like maybe that smoke is a metaphor that works for you that reaches up to the sky and communicates to the world that you want what you want.
You're dreaming the dreams you're dreaming. That's why I stay woo adjacent because I want to be reminded that I don't have all the answers and that life is a beautiful mystery and you never fucking know what's going to happen next and what the universe has in store for you.
Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you enjoyed this meditation on the woo, please tell your friends about it. Follow the show on whatever platform you're listening to and rate and review us. on Apple Podcasts. That really helps other people who may not have heard about Hotter Than Ever yet find the show. There's [00:21:00] so many women out there, and maybe some guys, who would get a lot out of these conversations.
I believe that in my bones. Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Girard and PodKit Productions. Our associate producer for the time being is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandez. Come back next week. We have such a sexy and fascinating conversation. You are going to love it.
God, have I told you lately? You're so fucking hot. Jesus, you're a smoke show.