Hello and welcome to Women’s Radio Station. I’m Dr Annette Greenwood, life coach and author. And on today’s show, Dr Annette talks, I’m diving into a conversation about recovery from stress.

Stress can come in many ways. So if you’ve ever suffered and thought, will things ever change? Can I get out of this situation? Then let me introduce my wonderful guest who did just that. My guest today is Ingella Johansson.

The wonderful Ingella is a fine artist, author and founder of Zen Art, with a purpose to teach a process of self-discovery through the transformative power of creativity and meditation guided by intuitive curiosity. Welcome, welcome, the wonderful Ingella. How are you today? Wow, thank you, Annette, for that presentation.

I’m feeling really good. Thank you. And I’m so excited to talk to you about this wake up call.

There is so much that we can cover about recovery from stress. But there was a starting point to this, wasn’t there? And that starting point, I believe, was the effects of your marriage. Would you be happy to share some of that with our audience? Yes, Annette, I would be happy to share.

And I’m sure it was a lot about the marriage. But that’s really not where my, let’s say, wake up call started. Or let me just take you through it.

So at this time of me and my family, we were living in Southeast Asia and we had been living in a few different countries at this point. And I was trying to make it as an artist and entrepreneur working in art events and workshops. And my husband was working in a field of where he was, well, basically never at home, so to speak.

And I was going through this really unconscious feeling, you know, because I was always busy. And I think this thing about being always super busy, you know, we’re taking care of our kids, our home, and then also trying to really make it as an entrepreneur at the same time and supporting a very stressed out partner on the other end as well. And in a new country.

So there were like, you know, there was always something to do. And I think that’s sometimes when we don’t see patterns that are that we’re kind of allowing to happen to us is because we’re too busy. I think if we go a generation back, like my friend who is now 87, he takes time every day just to be.

And I noticed that people are asking him, like, what are you doing? It’s like, well, I’m just being. And it’s like, that’s not really something we do anymore, because if we have time over, we kind of go to a screen or we, you know, scroll on our phones or we do something. And I think this this is when you’re not doing something is when you can start to listen in.

Start to listen to your intuition, your curiosity or, you know, your better self or whatever you want to call it. And I consciously started to meditate. And after meditation, I made a simple drawing painting, and then I wrote a reflection.

And it was in the process of this. That I had this wake up call because I made this painting and it was like the scene of water. And then you had the big sky.

And in the sky, I had written my voice, my voice like 20 times. And when I looked at it, it was like something connected with me. Like, you know, if I’m not making a decision, that is also making a decision, you know, allowing for me to be so always flexible, always saying yes, always changing my things.

Not only after my husband, but also after my children or everyone else needs first. That was a decision. So I think it was like, you know, that was like, wow, I need to get out of this situation.

And the first step is always becoming aware of that you’re in it right and not hiding behind it anymore. And the more I’ve been doing workshops in, you know, eight different countries so far and listening to to other people talking about their careers and feeling lost. I hear the same kind of responses, you know, that you have lost somewhere along the line, the time to listen into yourself.

And the more you talk and the deeper you go, you’re often touched on that there’s a dream deeply hidden in a sea of fears. Just how you describe that brings up so many things for me. And I would imagine lots of other not just women, but men.

But if we hone in on women for a moment, I was at a Pilates class last night and at the end of it, we do five minutes meditation. And one lady who shared that she’d got cancer stood up and said, oh, when was the last time I took five minutes for myself? And just listening to you talking about this man who’s saying he’s in his eighties, he just bees now for you, you meditate, I meditate. And that is that just being where, yes, there might be thoughts bouncing about in your head, but you are focusing on the body and on the breath.

And as a result of that stresses, I’m not saying they go away in gala, am I? I’m not saying that, but those stresses are not foremost. You seem to find the peace, the solitude and the solutions to some situations. Is that how you would describe it for you? Yeah, I think that’s a really good way of describing it.

Another client that was starting because creative meditation is short five minutes because I want people to have the time to do it, you know. So it’s short altogether. It’s 20 minutes.

So five minute meditation and then you create and then you reflect. So another client, she was moving at the time, you know, that’s usually a stressful time, right? When you move house and there’s a lot of things to be done. And she said like, well, meditation doesn’t change what happens in your life, but it does change how you react to it.

You know, like she was saying that she used to get really upset with the movers, but now after meditation, she could just, you know, control the situation from a different standpoint because she wasn’t stressed. You know what I mean? Absolutely, absolutely. And that the meditation, excuse me, I’ve been meditating for many, many years now.

You find that you’re not always aware of it, that you don’t respond and react to situations that were stressful or difficult in the same way that you would have. And I’m imagining when you move to this new country with your husband as it was at the time, you must have felt isolated and alone as well. Trying to deal with always busy kids home, your husband’s got.

So how on earth were you coping with that at that time? Oh, gosh. And of course, I mean, none of us were feeling well, I would say, you know, at some parts, my daughter was feeling really well at school. My son, well, wasn’t, you know, so like there was stress on so many levels.

And I think that, you know, stress like of having a lot to do is quite manageable and it’s also quite good for you. You just need to prioritize. I think it’s that like emotional stress of knowing that, you know, not one member in this family is really, you know, not under stress.

Both with how much we have to do, but also the emotional stress. And I think it’s when it becomes really long, that’s when it takes, you know, to not only on our mental but also physical well being. You know, you get to see it in your in your back pain, your neck pain, your stomach, like all of these things.

They’re definitely well connected. At least that’s how it was for me. And that’s how it manifests, isn’t it? And yes, I don’t know whether you agree or disagree, and you might have a different stance on this.

But I do feel that here in the West, in the UK, stress is still not dealt within the way that it really needs to be. You know, you’re talking about their people going to the GP, and they are talking about the back pain, the headache. And yes, some of it might be related to other things going on.

But a big part of it are those stresses in everybody’s lives. So dealing with it in the way that you are through, I say something like finding yourself through art. And is it just another way of being able to find yourself to cope and to be able to pursue your passions and your visions? Yeah, it’s, I would say it is getting a full picture, because let me just say we think about roughly, they say 40,000 thoughts a day.

And at least 95%, at least are the same as the thoughts we had, you know, every day. So if we’re not in love with the life that we are living, we need to think about how can I at least get a few more new thoughts every day, if we want to change, right? And I think the beauty of using meditation is that we can let go a bit of stress for that time. Because stress makes us about 40% less smart as well, when we’re in it.

So we need to get out of that space to meet, you know, the smarter version of ourselves. And in creativity, we can use our curiosity, so we will have new things showing up. And as we are painting, usually, we can also connect to our emotions.

And I think that is a game changer, not only being in our analytical mind, but also taking into account emotions. And as we go through the reflection, we start to write about what happened to me during meditation, creativity. And can I connect that with what is going on in my life right now? And then we can start to cover the subconscious patterns that we are actually, you know, unconsciously choosing every day.

And that’s what happened to me, just, you know, when you finally see it, and you start to understand, wow, I’m doing this, so I can actually also change it. It’s not a quick change. It’s not like from one day to another.

It can be for some people, but it’s much more common that it’s a very slow process, which I believe can be good for you. Because you need this time to figure out what is going on and why it has been going on. Because when you find the emotional roots to it, or your subconscious patterns, and why you are doing what you’re doing, you can change it for good on that.

And that is so empowering. And it must have been a huge, aha moment for you, because I’ve had those myself in my life when I’ve seen myself doing something. And I’ve thought, just a minute, I can’t expect this other person to change.

This isn’t going to happen. It’s going to have to come from me. And what you’re saying there is through the discovery of the art and tapping into the emotions, which I’m so fascinated to find out how that works.

People then can find out about the patterns. Now, I’ve never experienced this sort of art, so how does it work? In practice, how does that happen? Yes, how does the magic happen? Yes, yes. So honestly, I think the magic doesn’t happen every day.

Sometimes you will just get a bit more relaxed. But some days, if you manage to get out of your analytical mind in meditation, it actually opens the door for creativity from your emotions. And your subconscious patterns.

And I tell my students to close their eyes in the beginning when they start painting, just to get out of, you know, I’m not painting this or that. I’m just painting. I’m just going to move my hand with the brush or the pen and see what comes.

So it’s a very, you know, it doesn’t create paintings that you want to hang on your wall. It creates paintings where your intuition has the possibility to show up when you manage to move away from thinking. And the more free you can get, the more easily this process starts to happen.

So it sounds easy, but it can be really tricky. So I do have like this exercise where you put on a favorite song, you close your eyes and you have your eyes closed throughout the song and you just move your hand to the music. So it’s a moving meditation.

And I heard from students that are undergoing, you know, deep depression or a lot of anxiety that this is really helpful because it gives them enough to do, you know, to actually move into the space. Sitting still and meditating is too difficult at that point. I actually feel quite relaxed, just listening to how you’re describing that and about how getting out of the busy mind and picking up the brush and not thinking about what you’re actually doing is the thing that helps you to tap into the intuitive creative side.

It is, it is. And then if you look at what you’ve done and it’s something there that, you know, sometimes it hits you straight away when you see it, you go, wow. But sometimes you actually need a few days to think about it and then you might start.

But if it’s something that surprises you, you should, you know, go back and take another look, so to say. But I mean, it’s I think it’s more, I think it was for me at least starting to understand that transformation, I always thought it was like, you know, these big changes that you made and that would change your whole life. But again, like when I had this first beautiful painting with my voice, my voice, my voice, I noticed I had done it on a very cheap, bad paper.

Instead of, you know, what I do today, like a good handcrafted thick watercolor paper and these things. Notice these things because they are about how you value yourself. I would not have chosen that paper for my children nor for my then husband.

So that said a lot about, you know, how I took care of myself. That’s interesting. So again, as women, and I’m using women as this example because of the work I’ve done with women over the years, there is that thing about the always the bottom of the list.

And you’re talking there about valuing yourself as not just as a woman, as a human being. So the paper itself, although that might sound insignificant, it’s not, is it? No, no. Yeah.

No, no. The keys to look for are in the small daily things. Like if you step on a train, how do you, you know, how does everyone take their seat? And what’s your, you know, cue to what’s your seat? Is it always like the worst seat? Do you like those small kind of things? If you go on a trip for yourself, would you book a different kind of a hotel or is it the same kind of hotel? Like all of those things, it matters.

And it’s also about if you made a promise to yourself, say you said you were going to Pilates. Okay. And something comes up and someone calls you from your family needing your help.

Would you think about canceling your Pilates class? Or would you go? Yeah. So that’s a quite, that could be a moral dilemma, couldn’t it? Depending on? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Depending on what, of course, if it’s something super important, you would cancel your class. But it’s about, do you do it very easily or when you really need to? Do you know what I mean? So I started to automate important habits for myself, like I train Tabata and I decided when and where and I allow these things to become automated into my life.

So I don’t really need to write them in my calendar anymore because I know I’m doing them Tuesday morning, Friday morning. So they’re small things, but they are telling me that I can trust myself. If I make a decision to myself, it will take a lot before I move that because it’s important.

So to start, you know, with small things like making your bed or putting a lemon in your glass of water because, you know, it’s a bit nicer or actually lighting a candle, even if you’re alone, like all of these things are important. And the second step was actually to start to celebrate my own wins. So I decided like if I had automated this Tabata and I knew it was working, then I could celebrate.

So I did something like, you know, buying flowers for myself or really taking time out to see my friends or going out for dinner with myself. I still remember having this first glass of champagne after a big job in Singapore and how it felt sitting in the bar drinking it. I started to feel like this person that showed up for myself.

And I started to feel that the more I treated myself as I would treat my best friend, my inner trust actually grew. And then came the other win in it. And that was when my husband said, you’re not being nice anymore.

And he was, you know, I remember that as a great compliment. It meant that I was actually moving towards reclaiming my own agency. And I mean, of course, more people than him around me still wanted me to choose them first and they didn’t like it.

But the important people, of course, did like it. Yeah. And I love so many things that you’re saying.

And the fact, you know, when you mentioned there about the Pilates, I wouldn’t have done years ago, but I would definitely put the Pilates first now. I would definitely put my body and my needs first. And to some people and a lot of women, correct me if I’m wrong in your experience, they find it selfish when they do things for themselves because there’s always something else needing the retention.

Yeah. And to me, this is a warning signal today for myself. If I’m doing that, it’s a warning signal that I need to check in with myself and see what’s going on.

But that’s for me because it’s, you know, it’s this old thing that you always hear about the plane, right? That you have to put the mask on yourself first before you lean and help others. It’s the same thing because health is number one now on my list. My health is actually number one.

I would agree 100 percent. And there was something you mentioned there, you know, when you said about going onto the train, just using that as an example. So if the listeners, you know, women listening or men for that matter are thinking, all right, I like this idea.

I’d love to get on a train and maybe go to first class rather than second class. But actually, finances, because there’s been so many things going on with the cost of living, how can I manage that? How can I manifest that, for example, if my salary doesn’t allow that? And I want to do, you know, I want to travel first class. I want to go and sit in a bar somewhere and order myself the best champagne and really spoil myself.

How can I do that if I don’t have those finances? OK, first of all, I should tell you I was not rich when I had that kind of campaign at all. But I had one glass and I had planned for it. And for the train example, it wouldn’t necessarily be going in first class.

It would be who has the best view. You know, it’s more like the subtle choices or how does your partner act or if you’re looking for a new partner. Does he care about if you get the best view? So it’s not necessarily about having the finances.

It’s more about starting to realize, how do I choose for myself? It can be the view. It can be that it’s less crowded. You know, there’s so many other things.

It doesn’t have to have anything to do with, you know, money or finances at all. And that’s a brilliant way to describe that, because I know a lot of people I work with, they say things like, well, I don’t have that money. I can’t go to the best places and dress and I can’t do this.

But it’s always about looking at what you can do, isn’t it? And maybe buying that little piece of jewelry, that just makes you feel that little bit better. Well, yeah. But I think it can be much smaller things like fresh berries.

Yeah. Yes. Even better.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s you know, if it’s something that makes you feel really good, so you have to, you know, when you’re deciding your wins, it can also be time because a lot of us are so busy and we kind of easily cancel, you know, the lunch with friends when we’re too busy.

And I do the opposite thing because a lunch with a friend would make me less stressed, give me energy because I have those kind of friends. You know, I would get back from that lunch having so, you know, working with more focus faster. So to me, I would not cancel, even if I know I have a lot of deadlines that day.

So I think it’s all about also allowing yourself to listen to new kind of music that you haven’t listened to before. Try to read something online with a, you know, an article about a subject you never read about before, because it’s also about giving you new thoughts, new ideas. And those are the things that can give you ideas to actually, in the end, transform your finances as well.

But it has to start with a shift in how you’re feeling. Because today I live a life and I always talk about that. I live a very abundant life.

And if you look at my bank account, maybe people would disagree with me, but I live exactly the life that I want to live. I’m close to nature. I go riding in the forest.

I have a wonderful dog. I have supportive friends that I love. I reconnected to my family back home.

I love the seasons, the nature. I paint and I work with helping people to, you know, to find their self-trust and move into creativity. So it’s a very purposeful work that I do as well.

So I worked last night and I met this group of women and they hadn’t, I mean, there were two sisters, a couple of them were friends, but then, you know, as they came together to a group, there were also women coming alone. And they started to paint, having a glass of wine. And then for some reason, they quickly started to help each other with their paintings in a really good way.

And at the end of two hours, they gave each other career advice and they were like having really deep discussions. And I was like, wow, they have bounded a group. It’s like you think about those things of, you know, just meeting and drinking some wine and painting.

What could it lead to? But for one of these women, it actually led to her shifting from where she wanted to apply for her next job because she learned so much from free of the other women that had actually worked there. So, I mean, there’s so many things that happens when you play with curiosity and creativity. And just shifting your mindset from judgment to curiosity, I think that would, just that, if you could do that, that can definitely change your life.

And again, just listening to you talking about you live an abundant life, you go riding, you’re next to nature, all those things that create peace and calm in your life. And actually, the point there, you said about people would disagree if they looked at your bank balance because it’s not always about money. Yes, money is a tool.

It’s an energy, isn’t it? It buys us things and we can do so many things with it. We maybe wouldn’t be taking the trips we take, but it’s not just about that. And I do wish people would understand and learn that because, and I’m sure I’ve done it, probably who did it, right? If I’ve got the money, I can do this, I can do this, and I can go there.

Actually, if you change your mindset and look at, I mean, I’m sat in my office now overlooking our garden and I can see a beautiful tree with birds in it, that gives me feelings of peace. Money isn’t going to give me that. And this thing you talk about curiosity and intuition, I’d love to find out more about that, how you feel that the intuition plays such an important role in our lives.

But I want you to just say something about what you were talking about earlier about being busy, busy, busy. I find, and tell me your experience, that before I was working for a charity, doing all sorts of hours and doing all sorts of things and doing them all times of the hours, you know, the night and the day. Yes, I’m doing a lot of things for myself and I’m still doing things for an organisation, but what I have found is if I follow my passion and my purpose, if I am doing things that I love, yes, it’s busy, but it’s a really fun thing.

Busy and excited, busy, it’s not a, oh no, it’s not this again, busy. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yes, but then my friend who’s 87, he would tell you, dear, you can also get burned out by things you love. True, true.

So you have to say no somewhere as well, don’t you? You have to say no. Yeah, I think you need to decide on how much time are you allowing this to take, because for me it took too much time, so I had to cut back a bit, because even if I’m not rich, I still need to have a stable economy, so it’s not that money is not important, you still need to have your stable ground. I’m just comparing it to the, you know, well, someone that I used to live with where money was, you know, it was all about how many millions you could earn.

That was the only important thing and I’m not there anymore and I realised that life is so much better. I can just hear that in your laughter, I can hear that. Yeah, yeah, but of course, yeah, you need to sustain yourself, of course, yeah.

I’m just saying I’m not a billionaire, you know, I’m more like a regular person economy. But a very happy, regular person economy. A very peaceful and doing what you love and making a wonderful living, doing it, and that’s healthy, isn’t it? Yeah, it is, and I put a lot of value in that actually, yes.

How many hours would you say you work a week? You know, I know it’s difficult because you are doing, you know, you do your art and you’ve got your groups and things like that, but would you say stepping back and looking at the things like your 87-year-old friend says, doing all the things you love can cause burnout as well, looking at the things that give you the most value, the most joy, and that you’ve been paid for, is that about taking a step back and tuning into your intuition, do you think, or is that about being curious about what the next step is, or where would you go with that? Oh, the one thing you’re into. To me, I believe more and more that it’s life should be easy. It should actually flow easy.

So if it’s constantly, you know, and then of course you have to sometimes, you know, work on it a bit. It’s not going to be always a smooth ride, but if it’s for a very long time being really difficult, maybe you should look at it again. Is it worth it? Is it still what you want? Because sometimes in our life, what, you know, our dreams and our purpose actually change.

And I think that’s why it’s so good when you do these creative meditations where you also have your drawings and your reflections. And when you end your month, you will go through them again. And then like after six months, you can read through them again because it’s usually there, you can start to see, maybe this is not my big goal anymore.

Maybe this is where I’m supposed to go. It’s like we have systems for basically every single thing in our life, but not really for checking in with ourselves. And I find that quite strange.

So what you’re saying there is if somebody’s had a goal and that is, that is a thing they’ve been working towards for a long time. And actually, if they check in, that goal, that dream might not be relevant anymore because they’ve changed and they want to do something different. And that’s okay, isn’t it? Yes.

Yeah, a big question. And I’m sure lots of people want to know this is people have got, they’ve got dreams, they’ve got aspirations and they’re already working in a job, a regular job or they’ve got a business. They want to make a change to follow that dream and passion.

But the fears, the fears of, can I make it? What about money? Am I going to be on my own? All those normally natural fears come up. So how, how do you work with that with what you’re doing in your workshop? I’ve done it. I know the fear.

I know it well. I would say start small. Again, transformation is in small things.

I don’t think you should quit your job tomorrow and live your dream. Start building small. Start taking, you know, one hour a week to work on your dream.

I think we neglect doing small steps often. There is a shift in small steps. And that also goes for daring to move towards your dream.

Try it out in small ways. There is, you know, maybe there’s a course that you want to do, like an evening course. Maybe it’s an online course.

Maybe it’s learning more about the subject. Maybe it’s daring to call someone to ask for advice. Like taking all those small steps and then you start to write them down.

Every single one that you’ve done. And again, you put in, okay, when I’ve done 10, I can have a win. So how am I going to celebrate? Today, I reached a milestone on how many online courses I’ve sold.

I’m going to celebrate tonight. Because me as well, I had a lot of like extra jobs in project management and things like that when I first came back from Asia. But then I came to a point where I was like, okay, either I go up full time and do that or I actually try this dream.

But it wasn’t trying the dream from day one. It was actually building up to it. Because fear decreases when you start to, you know, take it into smaller chunks.

It becomes less fearful. So I don’t think you should forget your dream or not dare to. I think you should start in small ways and build.

But make sure that you’re building so you’re not just doing the same small steps the whole time. Yes. So adjust.

Yeah. Yes. So the fear then becomes less, doesn’t it? Because the transformation, as you say, is in the small steps.

And then you actually look back and say, oh, wow, I am that bit closer. Yes. Because we don’t see it, or at least I don’t see it.

I actually need to write it down and read it again and go, oh, wow, I’ve done that. It’s funny how much I tend to forget. Yeah, not going to understand that.

And the idea of a celebration. So you’re going to celebrate tonight. And can we ask what is celebration is going to be? Yes, I’m going out to a big motorsport event for women here.

And there will be champagne and dancing. That sounds amazing. Yeah.

So the intuition side of things, I’d like to talk more about this if I may, because that is one of the big things that I say to women is about. What does your gut tell you? When they’re in difficult situations, what are you listening to? And they’ll often say, well, I can feel it and I can hear it, but I tend to ignore it. And my answer to that is, exactly.

I’ve done that. And it cost me big time. And so I won’t do that again, I’ve learned.

And intuition is one of the most valuable things we’ve got. So how would you, to people listening, encourage people to listen to that more and not be afraid of that, that inner knowing that you need to do to do something? Well, again, it would be the same answer because if you actually have a routine where you sit down and listen to yourself, you would have written this down. That hunch, that feeling, that notion that you got, it would be on paper and you would find it a tad more difficult to ignore it because you would see it again.

And sometimes when it’s really important, I was at one stage about to maybe, maybe go back to my ex. And we were sitting in this restaurant and in front of me was this poster saying, you can’t build your future on your post. It was like the travel agency.

It was a trip to somewhere. It was about that. And I was like, OK, thank you, intuition, for showing up on a poster.

I’m also a graphic designer, so maybe it felt like, well, you’re never listening, so let’s just write it out maybe. That would help. I was going to ask you about that.

You actually beat me to it. So that’s that’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? How signs can show up in our lives. Yeah, they can show up at the most random places.

Mm hmm. And we I mean, depending on who we are and how we learn or how we work, we will see it in different ways. We might feel it in our.

I think we always feel it somewhere in our body. Mm hmm. And I think if we we could just take a breath and, you know, take some time to feel it and ask curious questions, how can this help me? Is this important? What could I do instead of, you know, instantly just brushing it aside? So what you’re saying there, let me just get myself clear on, this is the curiosity.

So if you’ve got a feeling of a gut feel in a situation, let’s say either a relationship because we’re talking about relationships or a job, for example, or something that you’re going to do. And you start to do a little bit of research and then your gut feel is, no, I’m not going to go there. It doesn’t feel right.

It doesn’t feel right on so many levels. That’s your intuition, really speaking to you, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. But on the other hand, if you are researching something, let’s just say somewhere to do some workshops from and it’s got a really good feel to it.

And your intuition saying inside, you can feel it. That’s the bit where you’re saying be curious, find out what is what’s my next step? What is it? What are you trying to tell me? That kind of thing. Is that how you would describe the curiosity? Yes, it is.

It is. And sometimes it can also be helpful to check in with yourself if it’s say you’re going to do like be on a radio interview and you could go, maybe my fear is trying to tell me that my intuition doesn’t want me to do it. Do you know what I mean? So you need to also check in sometimes.

Is it my fear talking or is it my curiosity? So there’s a good one, isn’t it? So how would somebody know the difference? How would somebody, you know, so you’re invited onto a radio show and the first initial reaction is, oh, wow, this is exciting. That’s intuition. When you go, oh, wow, then you already know you’re supposed to be doing it.

And then as the date creeps closer, you would start to feel, oh, why did I say yes to that? Oh, I really have quite a lot of things in my calendar this week. It’s not, you know, and then you have to start to check yourself. Hey, what are you afraid of? How dangerous can this be? What have you done before? And that’s why it’s so good to look back at your old wins.

And then I have this thing in my course where where you work on creating your own inner icon instead of your inner critic, which we have automatically installed by birth. Yes. Yeah.

So you can take out your inner icon because your inner icon would definitely show up for this radio interview and do it and do it well. And again, it’s quite good if a radio interview isn’t your first challenge. Start with smaller ones.

Transformation is really in the small things we do every day. So the small one would be talking to a friend about it, you know, and building slowly. And that is a message that you keep saying, isn’t it? Transformation is small steps.

And that is the thing that we need. People need to listen to and realize you don’t have to stand and look at a mountain and go, right, I want to be at the top of that. I wonder how we’re going to do it.

You just need to figure out the first step to get to the base of the mountain to make that journey, don’t you? It’s not about doing massive things. So if somebody wants to lose weight, for example, and they might be, I don’t know, five or six stones overweight. Start with one pound or one kilo or half a kilo, something as small as that.

And those significant, isn’t it? The transformation is significant then. I was really afraid of the scale. I wanted to lose weight as well.

And so now, because I don’t have so much emotional healing in my life right now, if you do, you shouldn’t do so many daring things with fear. But I’m now at a better stage in my life. So I’ve challenged my fear in everything, which meant I was afraid of the scale.

I would go on it every day until I was not afraid of it anymore. And once you’ve, I’ll use the word come from today, but once you’ve faced the fear, once you’ve done those things, that is the thing that helps you to grow as your confidence grows, doesn’t it? And you feel much more able to tackle new things. Yeah, and funny enough, then the body will, you know, find the courage to lose weight as well.

Yeah, yeah, it’s an inside job also. In Geller, I’ve seen you, you’re beautiful, you don’t need to lose any weight at all. But you’ve got some new workshops coming up, haven’t you? So do you want to talk a little bit about those? Yes, yes.

So I do have a free month transformative journey online in creative meditation where you start to learn this process of checking in with yourself. And at the end, you actually build a ritual that, you know, you take the tools you learn that works for you. So you create your own system to continue.

And then it means like, whenever, you know, challenges shows up in your life, because they will. That’s what we all know. You have already in place tools on how to help you cope.

And those tools works excellent. Also, if you need other help, like counseling or therapy alongside, these tools will still help you, like ask the curious questions and help you in your process. So creative meditation online is the course.

And when is that available from? It’s available from 1st of December and it’s on my website, zenart.info. So I was about to ask you where people can contact you. Is the website the best place to go? Yes, I think it is. There is also a short video on how the process works and so on.

So I think that’s clarifying. Yeah, so people can begin this journey into 2024. Yes.

And that is when they can begin to make the changes. So you don’t have to be an experienced meditator. Can you be somebody who’s know? You don’t need to know anything about painting, meditating or reflecting.

And if you’re curious about what happened to other students, there’s also an exploratory study from Dr. Matilda Gautier. It’s titled How Creativity Increases Wellbeing. And there you have other students talking about how they actually grew their inner trust, how they feel more open towards trying new things, how they feel safer with themselves and more creative and, you know, those kind of stories as well.

So you can find them from there. Or you can start with the book, Creative Flow. And so this is really a practice, isn’t it, as well? Yes.

And if you are to just take, as you said earlier, an hour a week to just maybe meditate, do something creative. And this is just my experience. It isn’t where you’ve done the creative art.

Let’s say you’ve painted something, something beautiful has come. And then you think straight away, oh, this is the change I’m going to make. I find you wake up and you just know which step you need to take next.

You’re not having to think about it as much. It just seems the most natural progression. I mean, that’s wonderful if it works that easily for you.

I actually also need to write it down and I need to write it down in steps. But I do think that the key is not one of these tools on its own. It’s the three of them together and in the right order.

I think that’s the key. I mean, of course, you will feel better by doing one of them as well. But when you take all three and put them in, you know, a process, that’s when you start to see more of the whole picture.

You start to see what you have done, what you want to let go of, what you want more of. So it’s yeah, I think it’s a process of the whole thing, but you don’t need to have any experience to start it at all. No, that sounds it sounds valuable.

It sounds exciting. It sounds inspirational as well as you are. Thank you.

You are. It’s always amazing to talk to you. We could talk for hours.

We’ve probably got 10 minutes left, can you believe? But for women, again, who were listening, and there might be many women and men in this situation, just kind of going back to the beginning of this about how the relationship and the moving away from the stress. So if people are in difficult relationships where they know they need to make a change or they’re afraid to make a change or they still care or love their partners, but something’s got to change there because things are right. With this process, does it help them uncover their fears? Or would you say that’s just part of it and they may need to explore counseling or coaching or something as well? Oh, yes.

I mean, now you’re talking about many big questions here. Oh, I know. Sorry, big, big questions.

You know, the process would help you to become more aware of what you need to do and be stable on your journey. But you might need, depending on if you’re a really bad relationship, a lot of other different kind of support and help and tools along the way. But it’s a really good check in for you to keep healthy along the way.

But of course, you should take all the other help that you would need from anything from support groups to a good lawyer to therapy to, you know, we need help. And that’s also part of the journey to learn to be able to ask for help. And that can be a huge step.

It’s been for me a huge step. So it’s, you know, it’s it’s a helpful tool, but of course, it’s not the one tool that will, you know, it will help you dare to do the other steps, but alongside other help. And giving you the courage and the stress, the inner stress to when the intuition is showing up and saying, no, this is so this is wrong on so many levels.

It’s the thing you said earlier as well about not making a decision, is still making a decision so you can stay in that situation for however long and ignore the signs, the signals, the intuition your body is telling you. But over time, that surely is going to affect people’s mental health. Oh, yes.

Yes. And I’ve tracked down to my childhood why I did it, of course, as well. That’s also part of the oh, yeah.

But that’s the longer conversation. There’s always a longer conversation. Yeah, because I mean, at some point, you also need to forgive yourself for for doing it, you know, you go through different phases.

You have because you can only do things from what you know, for sure, and what you’ve seen. But again, don’t be afraid, because this is not happening from one day to another. It’s a slow process and you’re in control.

And you can take it for as slow as you need to. And depending on how many pressures there are in your life, you might need it to be very slow. But you’re always in control because it’s no one else here telling you to act on certain things.

No, no. And nobody is forcing you to do anything, are they? No, no, no, no, no, no. And I mean, I’ve tried a lot of things to turn my relationship around.

And maybe I tried a few too many things, but I know I tried every single thing. And that also makes it easier to finally get a closure instead of staying in that I’m mad at myself for staying that long. I can also say I really tried.

Yeah. Yeah. And there’s something about that in Geller, isn’t there, about that? Yes.

Getting to that point where you’re saying, well, I have tried everything. I’ve done as much as I can physically do. And so either something changes and we work together or I have to move on.

And I think what would be useful is for women again and men out there to know that I forget to the point where they’ve decided that it’s time to move on from the relationship. And they’re worried about how will they manage financially, because there’s always that big issue underneath isn’t about the finances. How would they manage financially? And oh, am I better off to stay here just for that? As difficult as it may sound, that’s not the right reason to stay, is it? No, no, no, it’s not.

It’s not. It’s not. And sometimes not for the children as well, because you’re feeling the way you’re feeling.

They are usually not feeling well either. So, of course, it’s difficult, but it’s a way of working yourself out in the other end as well. No, finance will be sorted again.

It will take some time usually before everything is settled. But it does and it can. And the first step is, as you were saying before, finding that forgiveness.

And it’s not necessarily forgiveness for sustain, it’s forgiveness for just because this is where you’re at and you don’t know which step to take next. And please don’t be hard on yourself. Please don’t beat yourself up.

And one of the things that you and I know about is about energy, isn’t it, as well? And if it’s taking away your energy, if you’re not feeling, if in the rest of your life you’re happy, you’re happy with your career, your family, you’re happy with yourself. And there’s this one element that is still not working, then you really need to wake up to that, don’t you, and honor it and do something about it. Yeah.

And that wake up call can be a bit rough. Yes. Yes.

But you will get to the other end and that can be so much more beautiful. And I think in the end for all parties, even if it feels different when you start that journey, I think in the end it will be good for everyone in it. Yes, the outcome.

Yeah. And sometimes it’s the kindest thing, isn’t it? It’s not about pointing the finger. It’s about recognizing that maybe you’re both grown, you’re both different.

And for you, it was quite controlling. So once you found yourself or started to find yourself and the reeling gala underneath all this, that’s when transformation came for you. Yes.

Yes. And in terms of energy, so I’ve found through meditation that my energy levels, that and qigong and tai chi and all the other things that I love to do, you can feel your energy changing, can’t you? I mean, is that your experience through what you do in your workshops? It can’t not have an impact there, can it? Of course, of course. And again, I don’t think we should neglect having fun.

Yes. I think we so easily brushed that off as, you know, not being super important. That’s why I was talking about these women yesterday in the wine and paint.

You know, having fun is often the key to daring to start to have the deep conversations. It’s like having fun together builds trust. Even with strangers.

Yes. Yes. And that letting go.

Yes. You’re letting go of a fear together and you’re playing with color and you start to communicate and all of a sudden you’re really quickly into a deep conversation. And that is quite amazing.

So I don’t think we should. We should be very careful to not take out the plans in our calendar that are about having fun, even during these times like before Christmas when all work needs to get done. You know, it’s like everything would end if it’s not done before Christmas, even during those times.

We need the breaks in between for recovery. That is super important. It is.

And we’re about to now to be our full hour. And I would like to thank the wonderful Ingella Johansson to be my guest. Please check us out at women’s radio station.

Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and keep close to your heart. Everything that Ingella said today. And click on her website and find out more about how she can help you.

Because by doing this, you can find yourself and be fully yourself and live fully in the moment. Sending my blessings to everyone until we speak again. Much love.