Phoenix Jackson explores the importance of invoking growth in oneself, overcoming compassion fatigue, and making the courageous decision to step into one’s authenticity.

In this edition of the NEW You podcast, Christy Belz engages in a conversation with Phoenix Jackson, a multi-faceted individual. Phoenix is the creator of Fly with Phoenix, the founder of Phoenix Affect, and the driving force behind PR University. She’s an accomplished impact entrepreneur, life coach, investor, speaker, and author. Her mission centers on empowering individuals to discover their potential and create a positive impact through self-discovery and entrepreneurship.

In their conversation, Phoenix and Christy explore personal growth and the universal importance of wisdom regardless of age or background. Phoenix shares her life journey, including parenthood and a spiritual awakening at 14 influenced by ancestral wisdom. They discuss “compassion fatigue” and the importance of setting boundaries when caring for others. Phoenix encourages self-improvement and discusses her transition from the Phoenix Effect to focus on her personal brand and spiritual teachings. She offers practical advice, such as writing letters, seeking spiritual guidance through prayer, and taking actionable steps to address concerns while letting go of what can’t be controlled.

Come along as Phoenix imparts her wisdom and personal growth journey, discovering how to embrace your authenticity and empower yourself. Prepare to feel uplifted and inspired.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

  • Wisdom and Age: Perception that wisdom comes from older or more educated individuals, Meeting remarkable women and gaining wisdom from their experiences and Appreciating the wisdom of younger individuals
  • Personal Journey:  Introduction to Phoenix Jackson as an entrepreneur and spiritual teacher, Friendship with the host and mutual support, Transition from Denver to Houston, Texas and 25 years in Denver, involvement with the University of Denver and the nonprofit sector
  • Importance of Centering and Mindfulness: Starting courses with a moment of silence to be present in the moment, Taking deep breaths and finding center and Appreciating the beauty of being present
  • Early Life and Wisdom: Impact of not having competent parenting, Becoming the environment we grow up in, Learning to mother oneself and protect oneself, Marrying young and seeking protection from others and Realizing the need to release the need for self-protection and trust in spirit guides
  • Compassion Fatigue: Definition of compassion fatigue as the cost of caring for others’ emotional pain, Absorbing others’ pain and taking responsibility for their well-being, Learning to set boundaries and allow others to go through their own journey and Healing compassion fatigue and focusing on self-growth and strength
  • Transition and Authenticity: Making the decision to transition and disassociate from the Phoenix Effect business, Focusing on personal growth and authenticity, Invoking growth and asking spirit for guidance in personal transformation and Releasing worries and focusing on what can be changed

Visit Phoenix Jackson’s social media pages:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenix_jackson_/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Phoenix_Jackson
Website: https://phoenixjackson.com/
Fly with Me: https://hy.page/phoenixjackson

Learn more about Christy Belz Social Communications:
Website: https://christybelz.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristyBelzCoach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christybelzcoach/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christybelz

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:07 Christy: Welcome to NEW You, Network for Empowering Women Podcast. I’m your host, Christy Belz. Enjoy our array of talented, open hearted guests and their willingness and courage to share their stories of second chances, life. Changing choices, and new perspectives. We’re here to uplift and empower you and your journey.

00:00:39 Christy: We sometimes think that wisdom comes only from people that are older than us or more educated than us. At least I always thought that. But on my life’s journey, I have met some of the most remarkable women. As I’ve grown older. Obviously, people are getting younger in my world, but I can’t even believe the wisdom that I get to hear and share with these phenomenal women. 

00:01:06 Christy: Phoenix Jackson is an entrepreneur. She’s a spiritual teacher. She’s a bright, bright light on the planet. And I am so blessed to call her friend and to share her wisdom with you on this episode of NEW You, Network for Empowering Women Podcast. 

00:01:23 Christy: All right, let’s just give ourselves permission to pause. I always start my course with just a moment of silence. Just to get here, be here. Into the moment. Yeah, it only takes a moment just to take that deep breath, find your center, get yourself in the present moment. How beautiful. Awesome. Well, I can’t even tell you how excited I am to be sharing this next time with the amazing Phoenix Jackson. 

00:01:56 Christy: I met Phoenix probably 20 years ago, probably I don’t know when, she and I were both working on the Carson J. Spencer Foundation Board of Directors. We had volunteered for the suicide awareness and prevention programs that they were championing for men. And she was just such a bright light. I fell in love with her instantly, and then we continued to work in each other’s fields. Phoenix helped me on some of the marketing, my early business days, and I supported Phoenix in some transitions that she was going through. And we just have fostered a beautiful friendship. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, my friend, but it’s great to be with you. 

00:02:35 Phoenix: Likewise. I mark everything from Simba, right? He’s 17, so it’s been about probably 15 years. 

00:02:48 Christy: Yeah, he was little. 

00:02:49 Phoenix: It’s a long time.

00:02:50 Christy: Long time. We both have boys. Simba is a gorgeous, absolutely stunning human being on the planet, as is my Charlie. And we used to get them together. For opportunities to hang out when we would get together to work or be together. And Phoenix was one of the contributors to the TEDx stage when we were curating. She was one of the first people that we got to share the year I gave my Talk in 2016. And I have to tell you, she blew me away, so much so that when I was writing my book, I asked her to contribute her TEDx Talk to the book based on Heart.

00:03:24 Christy: So I have a whole chapter based on Heart and Phoenix’s TED Talk. You have to find it and watch it because she is remarkable. And the way she did it was so creative and talented. So I always love the power of the stories, you know? So I really just want you to share with our listeners a little bit. About your journey, like where’d you come from, how’d you get here, what are you doing now?

00:03:51 Phoenix: Yes. Well, first off, thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. And I think I said to you earlier, I actually went back and listened to my TED Talk after, I think years of seeing it, because we did those talks back in 2016. And I was like, wow. I was definitely in the midst of that vortex of that energy. We had a lot of powerful feminine energy moving during that time. And then we had the men who were backing us up and sort of champion us through that time, too. So it was pretty awesome flow back then. 

00:04:29 Phoenix: I now am in a different state. I’m in Texas. I’m in Houston, Texas, right now after spending 25 years of my journey in Denver. And Denver was a place that was definitely good to me. I met people like you and moved to Denver from Arkansas in my childhood and came to Denver my teenage years. And went to school there, went to college there, ended up teaching at the same university that I went to college at, the University of Denver. And all the way around was always consistent in owning my business, Phoenix Affect. 

00:05:04 Phoenix: And I met even you, Christy, on the journey of that because Phoenix Affect, who was originally working with the nonprofit that we were on the board of back then– 

00:05:16 Christy: That’s right. You were doing the marketing. 

00:05:18 Phoenix: Yeah. So there was just so much that became intertwined. And one thing that I learned for sure is that entrepreneurship, if you’re doing it properly and evolving in it, and if you have a mission of trying to do right by other human beings in business, so not just seeing it as a capitalistic opportunity, but seeing it as an opportunity to change the trajectory of humankind, you come across good spirits like you. You know? So I can say that in this journey, one of the largest lessons I’ve learned has been to, as I talked about in the TED Talk, to pay attention to the spirit of the now. Pay attention to the things that are brought in front of me.

00:06:02 Phoenix: Because first of all, they’re probably not going to show themselves like that ever again. And you are going to potentially change the trajectory of a lot of things. When two people come together who are like-minded and like-intention, so much magic can happen from it. And if we feel it and we know it’s going to be something good coming out of it, I think we would do it a lot more. But a lot of people are afraid of those transitions. They’re afraid of jumping in and experiencing new souls and experiencing change or even being a part of championing change. 

00:06:37 Phoenix: And so it’s been a long journey of 18 years in business, 18 years in entrepreneurship, in some way, shape, or form, using my skill set to help champion change. And it’s been lovely.

00:06:51 Christy: Well, you have affected a lot of lives in those 18 years on all sorts of levels. So I want to go back to just a little bit about your personal story growing up, because you have such wisdom today, and we all come through that thing called life, right? So just bring us back to the early days of your life, and what were the seeds? What was it in the fertile soil of your youth that created this wisdom that you have now? 

00:07:19 Phoenix: Well, I think the biggest thing that impacted me, to be honest, was not having competent parenting. They say that children become their environment. Those who do not have necessary the strength and fortitude to fight against that environment, they just become it. If you see your parents smoking cigarettes. You start smoking cigarettes. 

00:07:44 Christy: I did. Sure did. Yes, I did.

00:07:46 Phoenix: I remember a time my grandmother would send us to the store with a note to get the cigarettes, right? But when you see abuse and you see things growing up, you tend to become it. And I think what matured me faster than some of the other children around me was because I did not have a consistent mother. She was out of my life at the age of eight, even though I had my father around, he was battling in his 30s, battling with PTSD, battling with his own addictions, battling with his own emotional upheaval.

00:08:24 Phoenix: And so when you have one parent who’s not there and you have another parent who’s there but not there, you learn how to mother yourself, right? So very early on, I intuitively, and I still remember this. It’s like, the years pass, but our core self is the same. I remember being, like, five and looking at my mother and realizing she’s young. I was a five year old. I remember thinking that. I remember being eight, looking at my father like, oh, he’s, like, physically the strongest man, but he’s young too, right? He’s not like that dad over there who’s got gray hair. And you could tell it’s, like, older. And so I just learned how to protect myself. I learned how to try to cover myself because I had no one else necessarily protecting me.

00:09:15 Phoenix: And because of that, though, you make life decisions always with those seeds planted, of protecting yourself, covering yourself. I grew up into a young lady who married very young, because I still had that. I think I grew tired of always protecting self and so I married an older man. But who also didn’t properly know how to protect me, right? And so I had to learn through trial and error and even to release the need for self protection and to just allow spirit guides to preserve my energy and preserve myself and know that through karma and hopefully just good energy, I will not attract any reason to be protected, but just knowing that I’m going to be okay. And it took me years to sort of know and understand and not make decisions based off of the fear of not being okay.

00:10:07 Christy: Yeah. What was the awakening for you? When you say spirit guides, you’ve got a very deep, I would say root system, like courses uproot, right? Your roots go very deep, not only in the depths of what we’d call the Earth, but I feel like your lineage, you have a lineage that is with you. When did you have that awareness of how much wisdom you had around you that you could access?

00:10:34 Phoenix: I think I was 14. So when I was 14, I don’t know what was going on energetically around me, but that’s when I started to dream, or I should say, become aware of my dreams. And that’s when I would get spiritual visits from ancestors. Some names I knew, some that I did not. That’s when I first had a dream about my son Simba. I dreamt that he was shoulder height and I was pregnant with another son. I knew my two sons would be many years apart, which ended up happening. But you remember, my second son didn’t make it across, but I always knew that they would be many years apart. And so 14 was when I started to question the outside reality, because my internal reality was different from what I was hearing in the church or hearing what the other adults around.

00:11:24 Phoenix: No one could make sense out of how I knew something would happen two days before it happened. I had a dream about it or why I was so attracted to tarot cards and spiritual systems. And I wanted to study anything that had anything to do with spirit. I wanted to make sense out of, why are we in this world? Like, what is this experience that we are having as human beings? That started around the age of 14, and that was my sort of safe space. Again, it was back to safety. I felt safe studying outside worlds, in a sense, the occult and spirit and other dimensional thought because the physical around me was so unhealthy.

00:12:07 Phoenix: There has to be something more than this.Has to be. But then I realized I started having a conversation with my parents and realized that my mother’s grandmother was a sage. Her energy was so powerful that everyone in the town came to her for spiritual readings, clearings if you had cancer. All the way to just whatever you had going on with you. She knew how to heal. And you can walk in her house three times, and she knew your past, present and future. She was very spiritually aware, psychically aware. My mother was telling me stories, but I was like, this sounds like it’s fake, right? 

00:12:48 Phoenix: So I went to my dad, who knew her as well, because she passed away when I was two. And my dad had spent the last years of his young adulthood in high school living in that household with my mom and her grandmother. And he was like, oh, yeah, all that stuff is real. As a matter of fact, did your mom tell you about the time the ghost was tickling my feet or the time all the things that were going on in the house?

00:13:09 Phoenix: And I was like, no. And he really explained to me that basically it was okay that I had certain gifts because you got it on. It’s like this woman in your life was very connected to source. 

00:13:26 Christy: Yeah. I don’t think most people know that everybody’s born with gifts, that we all have some sort of the claires, right? Clairvoyance, cognitive or sentience claire. Can’t think of the other two, but we all have our unique gifts. I’m very clear sentience. I see, sense, and feel. I don’t see. I’m not sighted as clairvoyant, right? But I definitely have the gift of clairaudient. I hear things drop in for me, and I sense. I really can pick up and sense energy around me. So those are the tools that I use, and we all have them. And I do think that they come through the DNA. I think they come through our genetic encoding, right? So really interesting that you had a sage grandmother, that some of those gifts were passed down to you. 

00:14:10 Phoenix: She was trained. So she went to schooling, and she had training to hone in her gifts and things you won’t hear about in my history books. And you’re right. Every human has their personal magic, and I think our senses are dulled by the things we eat, the toxic air that we’re breathing. Our society doesn’t support us being as aware. We’re too busy focused on survival versus focused on honing in and magnifying those personal experiences. We just are in those psychic experiences. But as I mentioned a second ago, about growing up in that household, I had a younger brother who grew up in that household with me, too, and he unfortunately went into the opposite direction.

00:15:02 Phoenix: He was one of those people like most humans, who become their environment. He became the worst parts of our environment. And I’m in the current space, we were talking about lessons. I’m in that current space with him and with other people in my life of reading my own self of compassion fatigue, learning not to empathically take on everyone else’s pain and traumas, learning to be okay with leaving people to their devices and leaving people to their journey. Because there’s no accumulation of growth and strength if you don’t go through the other side of your trauma and actually heal and maintain self-discipline, maintain self-structure. That’s a self-job. And I’m learning not to enable people as they get on that journey or allowing them to fall. And you don’t want to see people fall because it hurts you to watch them fall.

00:16:03 Christy: But it’s part of the journey. That’s why I made the book, Oh God of Second Chances, Here I Am Again, because I fell on my ass or my head or my– so many times, but I learned how to get back up, and that’s what built the resiliency to be able to be more of who I am in the world today, authentically. We have to take a break, but I want to come back and begin again with compassion fatigue because that just blew my brain wide open. All right, we’re going to be right back on NEW you, Network for Empowering Women with Phoenix Jackson. We’ll be right back.

00:16:38 Christy: Hey, it’s Christy Belz. Many of the people you meet on my podcast have participated in my course called Uproot. This 15-week course takes you through my transformational process of understanding your roots. What’s down there in the dirt you’re not looking at? Reviewing your path and collecting the tools for life success. I would love to help you on your journey. Learn more about the Uproot course, take my quiz and see where you might be stuck down there in the dirt and explore my transformational retreat opportunities at christybelz.com/uproot.

00:17:24 Christy: All right. Welcome back. All right, Phoenix, right before we went to break, you used this word, compassion fatigue. And I know it, well yes.

00:17:36 Phoenix: For those who don’t know, like compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others or for their emotional pain resulting from the desire to relieve the sufferings of other people. 

00:17:48 Christy: Would you repeat? Yes.

00:17:49 Phoenix: Yes. The cost of caring for others or for their emotional pain resulting from the desire to help relieve the suffering of others. So it is also known as secondary trauma. So basically, you are taking on other people’s trauma. Yeah, you want to keep them from suffering. So you jump in and try to save them because you have compassion and you want to be there for them. But in the meantime, you’re actually absorbing that pain, absorbing the energy that they’re emitting, absorbing their failures, because you’re trying to save them from them.

00:18:28 Phoenix: And that can be soulfully exhausting. And I’m realizing that I’m part of the things that I’m healing right now and aligning myself with, is disconnecting from the pains of other people. Humans have to learn how to, we have to learn how to contain our own stuff. And we have to learn how to, as I mentioned earlier, navigate through life and gather our own personal strength and we can’t do that if someone’s always there with compassion. Softening the landing for us, telling us it’s always going to be okay. We have to make sure it’s okay for ourselves.

00:19:03 Christy: That’s right. It’s an inside job. What’s the old joke? There’s your stuff, my stuff, and God’s stuff, and you don’t mess around with the other two, right?

00:19:13 Phoenix: I’ve never heard that. But that’s real. I’ve never heard that. 

00:19:18 Christy: There’s your stuff, right? And that’s what you’re responsible for. 

00:19:21 Phoenix: Yeah, and I got a lot of my own stuff. A lot of my own stuff. I think it’s proper to carry your children’s stuff up to a certain point. But I think anyone outside of that, anyone outside of our womb fruit, like hey, we’re not responsible emotionally to carry their weight. 

00:19:45 Christy: At 23, I almost feel like I am better serving of Charlie by letting him carry his own stuff. I mean, I’ll always be mom, right? And Mama Bear, probably. But I really trust him to live out his life fully now. And even when he’s going to fall down, because he is, right? I’m going to be here, but I’m not going to take responsibility for his falling down, right? That’s his job now.

00:20:12 Phoenix: So you’re saying that, and I’m smiling in my heart because I’m like, I am so far away from that. He’s still 17.

00:20:20 Christy: 17, he’s still your baby, still in your house. He’s like, wait till he goes to college, and he’s been gone for four years and then moves to another state and gets a big job. And you’re like what? Where’s my baby?

00:20:33 Phoenix: Where’s my baby? Yeah, I gave him a hug yesterday. Because I just could feel he was down. The world is such a place right now, so interesting. And I’m concerned about him as a young black man in the world, for obvious reasons. I have to get to that place of strength that you have, where you’re confident in his ability to navigate the world. So I’ll probably be calling you in like, I need some guidance– 

00:21:01 Christy: Anytime. Yeah. So one of the things that I really admire and I think all of us women that are trying to make a difference in the world through our jobs and relationships, where is it in our lives that you kind of throw-in the towel, like, you’re kind of like, yeah, no more. This isn’t working. Yeah, this isn’t working. And how do you know that? Because you’ve made a few transitions in the years that I’ve known you. 

00:21:31 Phoenix: Yes. So the major transition that I’m currently going through, and I had to make a decision, a conscious decision to make a leap. So I have been in my business for the past 17 plus years, 17, 18 years. And 10% of the company is still alive. The other 90%, I had to make a decision to let it go. I had to make a decision to disassociate my business identity from myself for a while to get free to create. I realized that we are either in consumption mode, contemplation mode, or creation mode. And my work always kept me in creation mode. I never had time to contemplate and really think on, what I wanted to do just for me, right?

00:22:19 Phoenix: When I think about some of the speeches I’ve had and even the TED Talk, even the book that I wrote, it was always around spirit. Literally would have the word spirit in it. But my work was always keeping me from that alignment. My work was keeping me always just in the business, light business, business. And so I had to make a decision with the reduction of salary. All the things that came with the decision. I had to make a decision that it was time to throw in the tile.

00:22:46 Phoenix: It was time to disconnect Phoenix Jackson from the Phoenix Affect. Time to start feeding my own spirit more and also to put out the wisdom and the knowledge I have in the best way that I knew how. For years, people have been telling me to start a YouTube channel. For years, folks have been saying, hey, do you do (inaudible) consulting where we can talk and you can help me through this or help me through that or help me, my business get through this and that?

00:23:16 Phoenix: And I never took the time to just focus on my brand. I was busy helping other people build from individual solopreneurs to corporations and nonprofits. So last year, I was so burnt out in work that I told myself and my team, I said, guys, by December of 2023, we’re shutting down the majority of this business and we’re just going to have a pinch of consulting. But that’s it, like strategy consulting. If people need me to help them leap over in business or figure out what their next steps are in their company for growth or whatever, we’ll do that. Everything else, we’re scratching it, we’re putting it in a box, we’re putting it on a shelf, 

00:23:58 Phoenix: And they’re like, but you’re doing this. Everybody knows you. I said, I don’t care. Well, I beat that goal. In August of this year, I had the last client in the company. And I never took it as a sign of failure. I never took it as a sign of, I lost something. I took it as, it was time. And if I’m ever going to be my ultimate dream for myself, which is to be, I would say, a young black (inaudible), I cannot continue building for everybody else. I have to start somewhere, even if I only have 300 subscribers on my YouTube channel, right? By the way, shameless plug, Phoenix Jackson. 

00:24:41 Christy: Yeah, we’re going to give you an opportunity to plug away girl, because I want everybody to know you. So I think that’s really interesting and in my Uproot course… you haven’t taken my Uproot course, have you? Anyway, in my Uproot course, I love acronyms and I use them a lot, but my acronym for me is my essence. So I take me time every day and I teach me time. Like, you have to take me time. You have to take time to tap into your essence. You have to take time to listen. You’re a meditator. I know you meditate and you are very grounded in your spiritual– 

00:25:13 Phoenix: You would be surprised how far I got away from it through the years.

00:25:16 Christy: Yeah. Because we get caught up in the doing. Yeah. We get caught up in the doing and we forget that we are spiritual beings and that we need to be tapping into the spirit to be able to fulfill what it is that’s coming through us, right? So me time. Well, I’m really proud of you, Phoenix. Because I know how difficult that is to step aside. And as a single woman and a mother and looking at resources and all of that, sometimes it’s really damn scary to think, I just need a time out, I’m going to take it. 

00:25:44 Christy: But what a blessing and what an honor. And you will come out on the other side, like so much more vibrant, and so much more creative. You’ll be blown away what comes your way just because you decided to pull the plug. 

00:25:57 Phoenix: You know what? I feel that. Thank you for validating that because I’ve always known that you were always aware and psychic. Because there’s not many times, by the way, audience listening, there’s not many times Christy has said something that was going to happen that didn’t happen. She’s always on point.

00:26:12 Phoenix: But it’s like I agree with you and I think so, as well. I think that with the shift of identity, too, just a little bit, and it’s not even a shift of identity. It’s not a shift of inner identity, but it’s a shift of how I am expressing myself to the public. It is time to express my authentic self, which means integrating the spiritual side of me as I express to the public consistently, not always being business Phoenix Jackson. And it was a scary process to implement, but I know that greatness is going to come from the other side of it, and I would rather do what I want to do. And what I feel like is going to feed my soul and other people’s soul than to do what I have to do just because I’m good at it. 

00:26:57 Christy: Yeah. Love it. Great awareness, love. Great awareness. Listeners, listen to this wise woman. Speaking of wisdom, our time’s going to, as usual, go way too quickly. But because you have so many beautiful and so much wisdom, Phoenix, if you just pull for me your life experience and you share a couple nuggets with our listeners about, you know the network is Network for Empowering Women? What are some tips or ideas or experiences that you’d share with the listeners about how they can step more fully into their authenticity, more fully into their empowered selves? 

00:27:35 Phoenix: So I want all the ladies here to consciously invoke growth. So what that mean is when you guys go to bed tonight, if you can, get a little notepad and really sit and just write down a quick couple of sentences out to spirit saying, or you can pray it out loud. I like to write because it’s a physical action pen-to-paper. But I’m choosing to invoke growth in myself, spirit or God or whatever your personal language is. What do I need to change and shift in myself that will invoke growth so that I can leap forward exponentially? 

00:28:18 Phoenix: Spirit, what do I need to invoke in myself and what change do I need to make so that I can grow exponentially? And however you want to word it, that works right for you. It’s your language. This is my language. But I want you to use your language so that you can start downloading in your dreams and in your everyday life. Do this for three days and you’ll start downloading and it will start coming forward. Those things in you, the fear, the anger, the sadness, the joy, everything that’s in you that needs to catapult out so that you can grow, will start to surface up. 

00:28:51 Phoenix: You’re going to start to feel uncomfortable, but it’ll start to seep out of you. When we invoke growth in ourself, we’re basically not waiting for the next lesson to be learned for us to grow. We are saying, I want something to occur now to help me catapult. Because you may have something you want to birth, you may have ideas that you want to get out, but maybe there’s some things stopping you, maybe there’s some resistance somewhere. So there’s some growth that needs to happen so you can get past that resistance.

00:29:20 Phoenix: So you’re invoking spirit to show you something in your dreams, show you some signs in your everyday life, or to show you and alarm you with your body and how your own spirit responds to this invoking of growth. Where do you need to grow? And with that your spirit is going to release some things. So, I would tell people to do that exercise. And also there’s a lot of heavy energy that’s happening right now. You have strikes that are going on in different industries. You have the financial systems that are a little shaky. You have people who are worried about their livelihood. 

00:29:56 Phoenix: And I would suggest that, you just take a moment to make a list of everything that’s worrying you. I don’t want you to journal because that’s too formal. I just want you to do like a bullet point list of, these are the things that are bothering me right now. I’m just going to make up something. My cat needs surgery. I need new windows on the house because my house is drafty. Whatever those things are, put them on the list. And then I want you to look at this list.

00:30:35 Phoenix: Under each bullet point, put two to three steps of actually what you can do to fix it. And the things that you can’t do, the things that you can’t fix. I need you to release those things into the ethers. You have to free up mental and emotional space so that you can actually shine and create and move. But the more that you sit around and contemplate on those things that you cannot change, you’re going to continue to invite more things into your life. 

00:31:03 Christy: That’s right. Change. When you focus on the negative, right? You just keep getting what you’re currently getting, when you can focus on what you do want. Just like you said, that moves us in the trajectory of our higher good. So beautiful. And I love those tips so much. And I’m an avid journaler, so yeah, sometimes in the morning, just get out pen and paper and just I call it, puke on paper. Let it all out, right? And that way you don’t have to carry around with you all day.

00:31:29 Phoenix: Yeah, seriously. And just hand those worries over and know that you’re not alone. That our society is not built for everyone to thrive. Our society is not built for everyone to feel good. Actually, I think our society goes around, around, and consumerism goes around, around based off fear. If you’re uncomfortable, you’re going to go by. So just know that you’re not alone. And you’re not the only one that’s suffering. As a matter of fact, there’s more people that are in the emotional state than you are than not. But also know that you have the strength to cross over. 

00:32:05 Christy: Beautiful. All right, baby. Tell our listeners how they can get a hold of you, where they can learn more about you, get your book, all that stuff. 

00:32:14 Phoenix: Well, speaking of book, my second book called, Keep Betting on Yourself, will be out in the fall of 2024. And I’m extremely excited about that. So I think the easiest way to get in contact with me is on YouTube. I just launched a new YouTube channel. I will leave the link for Christy in the byline, but it’s just @Phoenix_Jackson.

00:32:37 Phoenix: And just find me. And videos come out every Thursday that are about what me and Christy are talking about right here. Uplifting practical tools and tips. Sometimes I’m yelling at you to motivate you across the other side. But it’s good stuff. You’ll like it. And I would love for you to grow with me there. And there I’ll always have tips and I’ll be giving out free ebooks and other things. So you can either go to phoenixjackson.com as well, sign up for our newsletter. We have a Facebook group that has 7500 people in it already or you can find me on YouTube. Like I said, I would love for you to join me. 

00:33:18 Christy: And please fill the spirit. Please fill the spirit of Phoenix. Like her beautiful face and her essence, she just exudes it. All right, thank you. We’ll make sure all that gets in the show notes of people that are following us. My love, I love you. I adore you. I just think you are awesome sauce. So thanks for being here with me today. I miss you and I hope we’ll stay in touch a little bit better. 

00:33:43 Phoenix: We will. I will be back there soon. I’ll be back there in November, and I will definitely come and see you. So don’t be surprised when I call you the day before, I was like, hey, I’m coming to the house. 

00:33:53 Christy: Right on. Hopefully I’ll be in town. All right, so this completes the eight week series of women contributing to my book, Oh God of Second Chances, and those that transformed lives on the TEDx stage. I’m so delighted to share these wonderful women with you. 

00:34:10 Christy: Please join me in my next segment, what we call, Sage Advice from the Wise Women, where I’ll be talking to older women to get their take on life experiences, aging and living a full, authentic life. Can’t wait to see you next time. Blessings.

00:34:31 Christy: It is my joy to showcase the voices, choices and stories of women and the messy details of life’s journey. As you’ve experienced, my guests are thriving with purpose and authenticity, but that does not mean that their life is easy and without challenges. I’ve dedicated my life to you and your journey. Thank you for listening to NEW You, Network for Empowering Women Podcast. Please subscribe and learn more at christybelz.com/newpodcast.