I met today’s guest, Emily Nolan, back in High School, and feel both proud and privileged to feature her as today's guest. Emily is the voice of MyKindOfLife.com, a professional model and the founder of #BePrettyBrave (formerly TOPLESS Yoga). It is a bras on, bellies out self-confidence event used as a tool for self-love, and it is about exposing vulnerabilities by practicing radical self-acceptance.
My Kind of Life started four years ago as a vegan lifestyle blog – very different from what it is now. Slowly, she started sharing more stories about modeling, and eventually eating disorders. Things started to take off. Emily started to connect with her audience, and she started to share more broadly about issues relating to body image.
“I’ve been a size 0, I’ve been a size 16. You talk about happiness, and I realized that happiness never came, ever, from a size. Happiness was always a permission that I gave myself, and I could have that at any size.”
One of the more talked about moments from Emily's career, was a photoshoot she did for Curves. Curves is an art magazine featuring a number of celebrities that write and speak about self-love. The shoot involved Emily shedding her clothes, and taking photos in a variety of different yoga poses (this was right after finishing her yoga teacher training), and Emily went on to write about the experience in a popular mindbodygreen post. From there it was picked up by more than 25 online publications, including Cosmopolitan magazine.
“I want to show people that my body is a vehicle. My suit is just a vehicle for physical experience.”
Now she's spending her time leading women's retreats to empower women to #BePrettyBrave. She takes small groups of women all over the world to participate in events that transform the way we think about our relationships with our own bodies. In the past she has hosted one-day immersion events sponsored by Lululemon, and the success of these events led her to create extended experiences in the jungles of Costa Rica and the mountains of Idaho.
“#BePrettyBrave is the permission to believe that bravery is the token to what you’ve been searching for.”
Emily is a goddess when it comes to walking her walk. She is a champion of radical self-acceptance, and shares her story vulnerably and openly on My Kind of Life. I thrilled to be participating in one of Emily’s upcoming #BePrettyBrave retreats. Be sure to follow Emily's story below and share this episode with your friends!
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Today we’re going to Awaken With JP. That’s right, I’m talking to YouTube star, comedian and real-life emotional healing coach JP Sears. He is also currently working on a book titled How to Be Ultra Spiritual, which is coming out March 7th and currently available for pre-order on Amazon.
“The way I coach is really all about vulnerability. It’s helping people help themselves connect to emotions, feelings, memories and experiences that are essentially stuck in their emotional digestive system.”
For the past 15 years, JP has run an emotional healingand coaching practice where he works with people all over the world via Skype. In the past he has also led retreats around the world on different healing and personal empowerment themes for like-minded and like-hearted people to come together to learn, grow, and heal.
On the AwakenWithJP YouTube channel, JP creates videos that help people help themselves. This includes the ultra hilarious, Ultra Spiritual Life video series, which uses humor to share messages about health, wellness, and spirituality. One of JP’s favorite videos to make, How to Take Yoga Photos for Instagram - Ultra Spiritual Life 34, features JP posing precariously in Australia to teach us… well, probably not how to take yoga photos for Instagram. “How do you create a successful yoga photoshoot? I’ve got two words for you: man-bulge and man-bun.”
His willingness to teach, knows no bounds...
“True art gives people what they need, not necessarily what they want, and I think what we need is a deeper connection with yourself.”
JP also uses the comedy of Ultra Spiritual Life to tackle very serious concerns. In his fifth video, Using Ayahuasca, JP uses comedy to shine a light on the questionable use of a spiritual and sacred psychedelic by party goers.
“I was just really called to break the spell of the secret, voice what was not being voiced, shine the light on a shadow that a lot of people can see but nobody is talking about.”
I had SO MUCH fun talking to JP about his journey from life coach, to youtube star, , how he uses comedy in his videos to help others on their spiritual journey, and how he manages to stay grounded through it all..
If you’re not already subscribed, go to YouTube NOW and check out AwakenWithJP then head over to Amazon to pre-order How to Be Ultra Spiritual. Your spiritual fate depends on it.
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Amy Jo Martin is the author of New York Times bestseller Renegades Write the Rules, a keynote speaker, an angel investor, a podcast host and an innovation advocate. She has worked closely with world-renowned brands such as Hilton Worldwide, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal to successfully humanize their presence.
“Innovation is being redefined by one primary force today: social media. It is irrational, even irresponsible, to start a business, launch a podcast, raise awareness, or build a brand today without including a social media strategy.”
– Amy Jo Martin, Renegades Write the Rules
The above quote from Amy Jo’s book was true when it was published in 2012, and it’s just as true now. However, with so many different options on social media, it can be difficult for people to decide which social media strategy is right for them.
“It really comes down to humanizing the brand, in my opinion. Whether it’s a big, huge company or a small company, it’s about exposing who the people are behind the logo and why they’re doing what they’re doing. People connect with people, not logos.”
If you are an individual or small group who has just started a company, Amy Jo has a few simple systems and processes that will help you engage with followers while maintaining a life and time to work.
“Listen more than you talk, and when you do that you start to see where you can blend in and where you can add value versus trying to create a new island of value from scratch. It’s leveraging what already exists and that momentum around a certain topic, a certain conversation, in a certain community.”
Amy Jo continues to pursue her passion and learn more about social communication. She is taking a new course and, over the past year, Amy Jo has researched the relationship between the virtual world and the physical world, and how our behavior online affects our behavior offline. Specifically how acts of kindness shared via social media can have a ripple effect and generate more kindness in the real world.
These days Amy Jo is inspiring people all over the world to take action on things that they’ve otherwise been too scared to pursue. Her new podcast “Why Not Now?” features professional “Why notters” (as she calls them) who have mastered the art of starting before their ready. They provide examples for what is possible when you eliminate excuses and follow your interests in spite of fear, and in spite of insecurity. Some of her latest interviews include Mark Cuban, Troy Aikman, Sophia Amorusa, and Lewis Howes.
I’m so grateful to have connected with Amy Jo at the World Domination Summit this past August. She is an incredibly accomplished person who has managed to remain so down to earth and continues to inspire me all the time.. Be sure to check out her awesome new show, Why Not Now? with Amy Jo Martin, and pick up your own copy of Renegades Write the Rules.
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Srinivas Rao (or “Srini” as he’s often called) is the founder of Unmistakable Media, host of The Unmistakable Creative podcast and author of multiple books, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Art of Being Unmistakable. Srini’s most recent book is Unmistakable: Why Only is Better Than Best.
So when it comes to being not just recognizable, but undeniable, memorable and ultimately unmistakable...well, he literally wrote the book on it.
In his podcast, Srini has conducted over 600 interviews (!) with thought leaders and people from all walks of life. This has cultivated an incredibly distinctive view on branding, storytelling, and marketing with so many great sources to draw from.
Since so much of the creative process includes elements that are outside our control, Srini believes we have to fall in love with the process of what we do, and be less concerned with external feedback. While it’s important for your business to track sales, and measure engagement, you have to decide, will you base your joy off of these numbers? One tip? Pick things that you’d choose to create even if you weren’t getting paid, even if there was no way for people to “like” it or upvote it in some way.
“When you’re no longer concerned with all of these things you can’t control, that really is a place of freedom.”
When you let go of this need to manufacture some sort of result, when you can let go of those outcomes and focus on the process, all of the anxiety and energy that were put into outcomes are now translated into the process.
Srini believes, the enemy of process is distraction. It’s ally is a concept called Deep Work, introduced by Cal Newport, which is the ability to go into a cognitively demanding task for a long period of time. The more you do that, the more that you build what Srini calls Creative Momentum, the more you start to get into a state of Flow.
“If you can actually resist the temptation for distraction, you will build your ability to go into deeper states of Flow, and not only that but you will sustain the ability to go into deeper states of flow for longer periods of time, and as a result things will actually get better.”
Srini’s book, Unmistakable: Why Only is Better Than Best, illustrates that anyone is capable of standing out from the crowd, being authentic, and avoiding the alluring trap of mimicking those that have come before them.
How do you avoid succumbing to the tempting mimicry epidemic?
“We’re trying to boil down something that has no formula into a formula.”
Srini is a passionate surfer, and his experience with the ocean has shifted not only the way he shows up in business, but also the way he shows up in relationships. For example
“What you learn by being in the ocean is that the conditions are always changing. It’s always dynamic, it’s always interesting, and your job is to keep adjusting to what the conditions are. There are days where the conditions are perfect, but if you’re just standing around waiting for the conditions to be perfect you’ll never do anything, you’ll never take any risks.”
Srini is a wonderful guest and, indeed, unmistakable guest. He shares a lot of great tools and tips to improve our productivity, break free of distractions and become unmistakable. I greatly appreciate him stopping by, and you should go check out The Unmistakable Creative to hear more from Srini.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters