Episode 33: Life by Design, Not Default | Dana Ramler | Product & Experience Designer

Inspiration & MotivationCareer DevelopmentEntrepreneurship
Written By Powerful Ladies

Dana Ramler has built a career by daring to ask for what she truly wants. A product and experience designer, artist, and world traveler, Dana has lived and worked around the globe, from Barcelona to Vancouver Island. Her story is a reminder that audacious dreams are worth pursuing, that mindset shapes everything, and that we have more agency in designing our lives than we think. We talk about navigating career pivots, overcoming imposter syndrome, embracing rest, and saying yes to opportunities that align with your vision. This episode will inspire you to get clear on what you want, ask for it, and take the bold steps to make it happen.

 
 
“He said, you should be an industrial designer. What’s an industrial designer? And he told me it was a product designer. It was the most precious gift anyone had given me up to that point. Someone had given me the name for what I was supposed to do.”
— Dana Ramler
 

 
 

  • Adeline Perez Bondu
    Opra    h
    Imp    oster Syndrome
    Can    ada
    Va    ncouver Island
    Strengthsf    inder
    Bar    celona
    Va    ncouver
    Germ    any
    Sp    ain
    Reebok
    Saskatchewan
    University of Victoria
    Emily Car    r University of Art & Design 
    Product Design
    In    dustrial Design
    B    ig Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
    Gap Ye    ar
    For    t Lauderdale
    Europe
    STCW95
    Venice
    Wanderlus    t Oahu
    Thoma    s Jefferson
    Fran    ce
    Brene Brown
    MIT
    Wanderlu    st Whistler
    The Moth Pod    cast
    How I Built This Podcast

  • Follow along using the Transcript

    Chapters:

    00:00 – Meet Dana Ramler

    04:12 – Life on Vancouver Island and early dreams

    08:23 – The value of rest and redefining “busy”

    14:23 – Choosing what fills your time

    20:45 – Discovering industrial design

    27:02 – The gift of naming your purpose

    33:08 – Asking for what you want

    42:16 – Career growth at Lululemon and beyond

    54:51 – What it takes to have what you want

    1:04:20 – Working abroad in Barcelona

    1:14:35 – Balancing ambition and well-being

    1:20:44 – Speaking at MIT and other milestones

    1:32:18 – Building a life that feels like yours

     you should be an industrial designer. And I said, what is an industrial designer? Yeah. And he told me it's like a product designer. And it was seriously the most precious gift anyone had ever given me up until that point in my life. It was the name for the thing that I was supposed to do.

    Yeah.

    And I didn't know what it was until that moment, and it was amazing.

    That's Dana Rambler and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.

    Hey guys, I'm your host, Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast where I invite my favorite humans, the awesome, the up to something, and the extraordinary to come and share their story. I hope that you'll be left, entertained, inspired, and moved to take action towards living your most powerful life.

    Dana is a product and experienced designer. She's a wife, a traveler, a dreamer, a doer, a lis maker, and an artist. She's returned to Vancouver Island, Canada after four years living and working in Barcelona. On this episode, we talk about how to make all of your dreams come true. Why dreaming audaciously is highly recommended, and why the magic movie moments in your life.

    Can be of your creation, all that, and so much more coming up. But first, hello beautiful listeners. Welcome back to The Powerful Ladies Podcast. We're so glad to have you here. Do you know the number one thing that you can do to keep this podcast going and to help us get more kudos out in the world and to have more people know about us?

    Go right now to your favorite place to listen to podcasts, apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify. Tune in, holy smokes. There's a million right now. But I need you to subscribe and I need you to rate us and I need you to leave a comment about how much you love it. Even if you just wanna talk about how much you love me or hashtag engineer Jordan, that works too.

    But it'll mean so much to us to share how you feel about it and to love us. By subscribing, liking, and rating. Thanks guys.

    Thank you so much for coming on The Powerful Ladies podcast. Thanks for having me. Of course. And you came by way of huge glowing, like hyperactive recommendation from Adeline. Great. I asked her who inspired her, and she's you need to meet my Canadian Oprah. And I'm like, Ooh. Yes, I do.

    That's a very very kind and generous thing of her to say.

    I hope I deal with it like imposter syndrome a lot. So I have no idea if I will actually live up to that, but

    I will try. I think you're gonna do great. Thanks. I think that's actually a big thing, right? The imposter syndrome. I know that I face it all the time where I'm like, I'm a total fraud.

    What am I doing? And every day. Yeah, every day. Me too. And it's wild because. If I sit back and take stock of what I'm actually doing and what is tangible things that are created, I'm like, oh no. Like I am allowed to have this on my resume. Like it's legit. Yeah. And it's wild.

    It is. And if you think, I always look at other people and think, assume that they have it all together and that they don't suffer from imposter syndrome, but almost everybody actually does.

    So

    yeah,

    it's just a nice thing to remind myself sometimes oh yeah, everybody feels this way. Nobody has any idea what they're doing, but everybody looks externally as if they've got it all figured out.

    And I think also we, it's either like you're on that scale of. You actually know more than you gave yourself credit, or maybe you're on the scale where you're still like we're faking it till we make it right now.

    Yeah. But I think most of us who actually feel that way, we're not giving ourselves enough credit. No, probably not. No. Nearly enough credit. Let's go back and let's introduce yourself to the audience, who you are and what you're up to.

    Oh, I my name is Dana and I'm in Canada right now.

    I'm a Canadian. I was living abroad for the last four years where I worked with Adeline, who you've spoken to. That's where we met and it just not just, but it feels like just moved home to Vancouver Island where I grew up, but it was actually a year ago, right around this time last year that there's a huge shift happening and I still feel like I'm just settling into my new life.

    Here though it has been a year. So that's something. I'm a designer of objects. And experiences I get. I was thinking about this question a lot. Because there's what I do that I get paid for, and then there are all the things that I do that are just as important to me that I don't get paid for.

    So I consider those part of what I'm up to. But me too. I get paid to design objects. But I'm also a designer of experiences and an aspiring writer. I, this is one area where I definitely have imposter syndrome. And I'm a dreamer, a maker of objects.

    I wear many hats. I think all the most interesting people do.

    So I think most people who are interesting and awesome and up to something and really out to create their best life, most often are doing a hundred different things. I don't, it just starts and all of a sudden it start designing and then you're like, oh, what else can I design? And, oh, I wanna do that.

    Especially if you're coming from a creative mindset like it, for me, I know like it doesn't stop. Like it's horrifying sometimes the list on my wall of ideas for companies or brands or we need this or how fun would that be?

    Yes. That I love that.

    Yeah. It's overwhelming. And that's what makes it horrifying to me is that it's overwhelming, but I actually see all of these things like existing

    Yeah.

    That they're going to be there at some point. It's just a matter of when.

    Yes. That is how I feel, and I am, I'm an achiever. I don't know if you've ever done your strength finders? Yes. Achiever is my top strength. I'm a very type, a goal oriented person. I love achieving things and creating goals and getting there, and I'm never, ever satisfied with how long that takes.

    Yes. And I am never satisfied with how much I'm doing. I feel like I'm constantly judging my own productivity, and I'm always reminding myself of there's no finish line, there's no arriving. This is the process. This is the whole thing. Just doing these things and exploring is the point.

    Yes. But I imagine that our strength partner would be almost identical based on what you've shared so far. Yeah. And for me, I'm always like, I'm so project driven. That I love checking things off the to-do list and then having it done and being like, cool, what's next? Yeah. I know, like I have to build that into powerful ladies itself, where look at all of it as projects.

    Like one month is a project, one episode is a project. And even creating phases, because if I do the same thing every day, every week, I'll lose my mind. Like I can't handle it. Yeah. In fact, I try and delegate anything like that to somebody else because it's the fastest way for me to be disinterested in something.

    Yes. And I forget that not everyone operates this way. Like I mentioned Be before we were starting about Jordan, thinking I was completely insane for recording five episodes in a weekend. And to me that was not insane at all. I was like, no, we can do this every day. She's you're of your mind.

    Yeah.

    I just had an interaction with my husband this morning where I realized oh. I'm a challenging person in, in, in that I, my favorite way of approaching a situation is like, why not? Why can't we? Why couldn't we, what's stopping us? And not everyone operates that way. And I have to be mindful of how I challenge things or people or situations so that it doesn't come across as like a steam roller because not everyone is like me.

    And I'm just trying to appreciate that. Yes, Jessie, my boyfriend reminds me regularly that not everything happens on car time or car pace. Ah, yeah. That's, I could take that and adjust that for myself. Yeah, that's a good reminder. I always ask why not? But yeah, accept it eventually. So you met Adeline when you were in Barcelona area.

    Is that where you were abroad? How long were you there?

    I was there for four years, so almost to the month, actually four years. It was an amazing experience. And actually thinking about that experience in the context of what we're just talking about in terms of pace and activity, it was a great experience for me to learn to slow down.

    Yeah.

    Nothing happens quickly in Spain and especially with government or administrative tasks, like things I am, I'm still waiting for my 2014 tax return.

    What?

    Yeah. So I may never get that money, but I, whatever happens next, I might haunt Ernst and Young Spain. I'm not sure. But I'm still waiting for that.

    So for someone who doesn't have a lot of patience or didn't have a lot of patience, there were so many aspects of living in Spain that were probably exactly what I needed for learning those lessons and slowing down. I. I lived in Vancouver for a long time, and it's a very active I would find perhaps it was the circle that I was running in.

    But I found that like the people that I was interacting with at work, my friends, all very active people in terms of what they're up to being physically healthy. So every weekend, you check in with people on Monday. What did you do this weekend? Oh, I went for a hike. We went to ikea, we did this project at home.

    We did this and this. That's how I operated for a really long time too. Yeah. And then I remember a couple months into my job in Spain and one of my colleagues asked me about my weekend, and it was something similar. And he looked at me with this look of not admiration, and it was disgust.

    I was like, what are you doing? You're, and he said to me something that is so pivotal in my life, he's weekends are for rest. You need to rest. And I thought, huh, that's a novel idea. I was rest. How do you do that? How do you do that? And it took me four years, but I actually started to adapt that I still i, I struggled with, I didn't want rest to become like laziness 'cause there's something there. I didn't wanna just be like idly spending time meaninglessly. Though I do know part of the creative process and part of being a creative person means having time where you're not doing something so that your brain can digest all the things you're absorbing in your life and turn that into something.

    So at first I was a bit resistant, but after four years I started coming to value it and really taking it on and I started noticing that nobody I knew there was busy. When you ask your friends like, how are you? And ah, so busy. I never heard that there ever in four years. And I thought that was really atory, like what is going on with where the culture of where I'm from.

    And that's something, sorry I'm on a total tangent now, but like that No, it's perfect. Was a huge lesson that I got from there that it just in the context of how we kicked things off, it's so pertinent. I had a similar experience living in Germany. I was there also four years almost to the month.

    And interesting. I'm sure this's gonna keep happening on this entire conversation for everyone listening, like we've never talked before. We've had a few email exchanges and that's it. So I know almost nothing. I've done a little bit of research, but nothing really. But I love the fact that everything was closed on Sundays and it closed at 5:00 PM on Saturday.

    Because for the first time ever in my life, it forced me to have a whole day of rest on Sundays. Yeah. Now that didn't mean I, I was like Netflix and chilling all day 'cause I just can't do that. But it did mean that I was like spending like no urgency, social time with people or like just being outside with no agenda and just taking a moment to make, to check in and I miss it.

    I try really hard having, I've been back in the US now about seven years. And I still try really hard not to do any errands on Sunday. Yeah. And in fact, recording this podcast has been one of the first things I've scheduled in a very long time that's happening on a Sunday. 'Cause we have to and that's okay.

    Yeah. So I just take that day, another day, the week right now. But it's something I think that. I always made it a US thing, but it's probably a, but when we look at things that any family of any identity values, it's time together. It's time to take care of each other. It's time to take care of not just kids, but elderly.

    It's the ability to take a day to go see a kid's school event or to take care of them and just have a life. And I don't, it makes me so mad when we're talking about family values and I'm like, none of that is a family value that you're trying to argue about right now. It doesn't actually help any families have a better family life, so obviously get very heated.

    Amen.

    Yes. All of that. Yes. I think you touched on a lot of really important things and I was noticing that as well. What's the difference between my life here in Spain and what was going on in North America and why is that happening? And I did notice, I'm sure maybe. I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I guess like your experience in Germany was also challenging at times.

    For sure. Yeah, so Spain was also like an incredibly challenging time and there was a lot of things, language barrier aside, just culturally things happened very differently and there were times where that was a wonderful and delightful surprise, and there were times where it was really frustrating and I came to realize that like the source.

    Of what I loved and was really challenged by in Spain was coming from the same place. Like that relaxation and time spent together with families is like what created a non hussle environment, which was what was frustrating for me when I wanted to get some banking done or when I couldn't believe it would take three weeks to get your power turned back on after a clerical error. Like how could that be? But the source of it was from this like place I believe, a place of not being in a hurry and yeah. And it, I was sharing this with some friends when I moved back and they asked don't.

    I guess they just don't have anything to, they don't have the same demands on their schedules, and I thought that can't be true. They have friends, they have hobbies, they've got family. Everybody that I knew who was Spanish was spending an entire day with their families, might spend every third weekend or fourth weekend with my family. So they had even more demands in terms of their free time with family. They just, they found a way to fit it into their lives. And then they just didn't talk about being busy, which was so refreshing. I almost feel like in North America there's an el a an element of competition about it, yes. Were busy as a badge of honor and it means you're a productive person. And that's something that, someone asked me what would you say instead if you're not busy? And I said, my life is full. And that shift. Reminds me and shows me that I have a choice on how my, I fill my time.

    Yep. We all have the same 24 hours, so if my life is feeling really full, then I need to address what I'm filling it with.

    I think that's a great point, because the power of choice and choosing the life you have, whether you think you've made it yourself or not. Changes all of it. Like it can be such an overwhelming and scary mind shift because once you take responsibility, you realize that it's yours to own.

    Which could also mean that it's yours to fix or change or do whatever you need to do to it. But you can't, until you take responsibility for every element of you, of your life that you love or that you hate, or that you want to evolve, you can't do anything about it because if it's not yours, you're blaming somebody else.

    It's a great excuse to get you off the hook, but it's also the biggest barrier that we face. In living the life that we wanna live. It's, and people think it's not possible. And to me that's the gap between thinking it's possible and feeling that it's not the people who don't think it's possible.

    Don't realize how much that you are, not even how much you're in charge, that you are a hundred percent in charge of what is happening in your life.

    Yeah. You're the source. Yes. I always remind myself that life is happening for me. And because of me, not to me. That's a great point to make. Yeah.

    Everything that I, it's funny because I think I often I ask things of the universe. I think that's a theme I've heard on this podcast from the few episodes I listen to. And it's really interesting because I've I've always gotten what I've asked for. I'm learning now to be specific in what I ask for.

    Yes. Because I, I will declare things like. I wanna have, I wanna experience things that no one else has ever experienced, and then a really terrible, challenging, awful thing will happen. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's actually what I, that's the interpretation the universe made. Yeah. I should have said joyful things, or, yeah.

    I have to be really specific because everything I speak aloud come, comes into fruition eventually.

    Yes. This keeps happening to me, especially as I've been leaning in on a full entrepreneurial and freelance journey. It's almost like the universe hears you it's like the genie from Aladdin that is oh, really?

    That's what you wanna ask for? Okay. You sure? Because I'm gonna have fun with this. Are you sure that's what you want? Like it's very entertaining for the universe to watch us, have to figure it out after we ask for something.

    It must be. I declared when you're like, I wanna be masterful at communication.

    And I meant interpersonal communication in the workplace and in my relationships. And then I got a job in Spain where I couldn't speak the language to anyone and I was like, not the universe. Not what I meant.

    Someone's got jokes.

    Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which, that's, if we can acknowledge that, it just brings an element of lightness to it all.

    Yeah. And it shows us that we're part of I view it as like a game. And it's more fun that way, yeah. If we got exactly what we asked for, it might be a bit boring. Yes. There's no art without a bit of suffering.

    No. And that's, or it'd be really boring and life in general.

    Yeah. Yeah. So prior to you getting to Reebok can you give us a rundown of where, like you grew up in Vancouver Island and then what, how did you go from there to Spain?

    Oh, good question. I actually was born in the center of Canada in Saskatchewan in the Prairies. And I moved to the West Coast when I was a kid with my family.

    Which I'm very fortunate for all the time. Because I grew up on like the most beautiful coastline of the world, I think. And I appreciate it formed a part of my identity and appreciation for nature and the opportunities I had exposure to were vastly different than what I would've had, had I grown up in, in the Prairie.

    So that was a pivotal life moment, I think, without realizing it at the time. And then. I'll try to not go on too many tangents, but I think they're relevant because it's, when you ask people about how they got there, I wish I had heard more stories. Like mine of Unconventional Pathways.

    So if please do, if it's okay, I'll share. Yes. So I always wanted to be an artist. I thought I didn't really know in what capacity, but I just had this desire to create. And I had a conversation, I think, with a teacher, and I said I wanted to be an artist. And he said, yeah, me too, but look, now I teach grade 10 math.

    What? And he just seemed like a really, yeah. Yeah. And I looked up to the adults in my life. And it wasn't just him, but their, my parents too. I wanna be an artist. And there was some hesitation to support me because of the viewpoint that they had in life. And what they knew to be possible.

    And they loved me and they didn't want me to suffer. And they hadn't heard too many stories of artists who weren't suffering, so they didn't necessarily discourage it, but they weren't exactly super encouraging either. There was more of some hesitation there and there was a lot of suggestions like, why don't you be an art teacher?

    And at that time when I was approaching graduation of high school, there were, there was this whole thing that like all the teachers were gonna be retiring, so there's gonna be a teacher shortage. So it seemed like a really logical career move. So I went into to, I went to university to become a teacher.

    And in my second year, I had what I think was a nervous breakdown. Probably a nervous breakdown because I was on a path. I realized I was on a path to a life. I didn't want, I didn't wanna teach art to people. I wanted to make things.

    And how did your breakdown manifest?

    Oh my gosh. I remember it so vividly.

    I was home for the weekend. I lived in, at the university in the residence there, in a dorm. And I came home and I was working on a project and I was. I just remember I was trying to, I was drawing something 'cause it was for my art education class. So I was learning, I was doing art projects as if I was in high school or elementary school for learning how to teach those.

    And I was just like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And I don't know, I think like a pencil broke or something and something inside me snapped when that pencil broke. And I just lost it. And it was just the most sorrowful tears coming out of me and sobs and my mom looked at me like, what is wrong?

    Yeah. And and I think I also needed a good cry Yeah. If I need those every now and then. And I started looking at something inside me, stirred a little bit, and I started looking at this weekend, or no, it was like a three week art intensive. Course or whatever. And I thought, I'm gonna sign up for that.

    It's not gonna count towards my degree because it's not through this university. It was from a local art college. It's not gonna count towards my degree, but it'll count towards my profession. Oh, I remember part of the breakdown was that I wasn't learning, I felt like I wasn't learning the skills that I felt I needed to teach art.

    Like I was doing art projects, not learning about color theory or how to do things. So I felt like a failure already and I hadn't even started. And so I thought I need more knowledge. So I'm gonna go to this art course, a three week summer art course, and at the end of it. We had to do a little, we had this opportunity to show our work to the, I don't know, the dean of the school for feedback.

    And he looked at my stuff and he was like, congratulations, you've been accepted for our fall semester. Oh no I didn't apply. Like I'm not, I'm just here for the summer. And he was like that seems a bit foolish, don't you? Because this is clearly a path you're supposed to be on. And I was like, huh, there's something about that.

    And then wouldn't you know it, I went home that day to find the letter in the mail saying, you've been accepted to the teaching program at the University of Victoria. Congratulations. And I held these two opportunities in my hands on the same day, which would become a theme for my life many times over.

    And I called my mom and I told her like, I think I'm, I think I need to go to this art school. And she I, she said, I thought you might. Okay, that sounds like a great idea. And I think having that breakdown maybe. Shifted something in her perception of it all too. And she saw how important it was.

    'cause then she was on board in a new way, which made me feel really supported. So I went there and in the fall and I had a year and this drawing teacher of mine gave us assignments that were pretty vague, draw collection of objects. I can't remember what they were, but I kept drawing objects.

    Yeah.

    And he said to me once he looked at them and he like, why do you keep drawing these spoons and forks and vessels and bowls? And I was like, I dunno, I'm just attracted to these objects. And he was like, you should be an industrial designer. And I said, what is an industrial designer? And he told me it's like a product designer.

    And it was seriously the most precious gift anyone had ever given me up until that point in my life. It was the name for the thing that I was supposed to do. Yeah. And I didn't know what it was until that moment. And it was amazing. And if I look back on my life like. The way I played with Barbies, I was building furniture for them.

    I was using old things and making it wasn't the dolls, I was building them worlds and Yeah. And a watered made out of an old milk bag or like a Capri sun juice container. So it was like funny to look back on it all of course, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to do objects and make objects for humans.

    And so then the school that I was at did not have a program to support that. So I used my first year at that school as a way to build a portfolio to apply to the university that did have the program that I wanted. When I finally entered Emily Carr, which is a school here on the west coast of Canada I was already considered a mature student because I was few years into the game.

    But it was actually really wonderful as well because I had an appreciation like for what it was that I was up to. I, it wasn't just slacking off rolling through the motions of university I was really in it 'cause I knew exactly what I wanted outta it. Yeah. And yeah, that was a really convoluted, meandering path to where I was supposed to be.

    But I'm really glad I ended up there eventually.

    And I think it's to me talking about industrial design is important because I don't think enough people know it exists and how everything that we touch, as unimportant as it may seem, like right now, I'm staring at a Purell bottle. Somebody had to design that. Somebody spent Yeah. Probably a year trying to figure out how or more to right or more to make this bottle hit the price point, not look hideous, try and make it the best thing it can be for what it's going to be and function like. There's all this engineering and design work that went into it and no one ever acknowledges it.

    'cause we don't know, we don't talk enough about how things actually get made.

    Yeah.

    I'm glad we're starting to more, but thank you.

    There's a few categories within industrial design that are really sexy that get all the attention. Like electronics, I think a lot of students in my school thought they were gonna design the next iPhone, or wanted to.

    I was never interested in those things. In fact, I was continually drawn toward fabric. And I'd taken sewing lessons in high school. I wasn't an overly popular person, so that might have been linked. But I took sewing lessons on Wednesday nights for the whole five years with a bunch of menopausal ladies who complained about like how hot they were constantly.

    And I was always cold because the windows were always open. And I learned how to sew and I kept, anytime I had a chance to make a project in university outta fabric, I would take it partly because I was interested in sewing, and partly because. It's interesting how people impact our path. There was this like really grumpy dude who ran the workshop, the wood workshop. And I just couldn't stand him. He was, he spoke to me like I was an idiot. He wasn't very kind to women in general. And I just wanted nothing to do with that space. And there was always a lineup to use any of the tools.

    And I hated being at school when it was dark. I wanted to be in a cozy, warm space at home. So yeah, I just started making things out of fabric and I found myself in this world that's like a subcategory of product design, soft product design. And while I was in my fourth year there, one of the career advisors asked me, why don't you apply for this internship or co-op program opportunity at Lululemon?

    I'm like, what? Why would I do that? Don't they just make black stretchy pants? No, there's also like bags and soft product there. I'm like, oh, that sounds actually. Something I'd be interested in, so I applied for a job, I applied for that co-op and I ended up getting it. And I think I spent one or two days a week for my fourth year learning about the industry.

    And then by the time I graduated I was offered a full-time job there. So that was, I was very fortunate at one of very few people that I graduated with to have a job right away, because we also graduated during a bit of a recession. So it wasn't an easy time to be exiting art school and entering the real world.

    Yeah. I'm really grateful for that opportunity.

    And I think it speaks a little bit to the fact that you were the, in the place you're supposed to be, you were really focused, you weren't at university to get the university experience. You were there to get these critical skills for what you knew you needed on your path next.

    And I feel that. When you get to a point in life where it's you're hyper-focused and the momentum keeps going, and you just keep saying yes. Kinda like we talked earlier about how the universe has a sense of humor. I agree with the big magic book from Elizabeth Gilbert that it wants to play, like it wants to interact, like it wants you to play along.

    And every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings is what it says in the movie. And I always think that every time someone says, I can't, that the universe dies a little bit. Like it's sad, Yeah. It's heartbroken because it's like, what do you mean you can't no. Like we were playing and you were doing great.

    And so I feel like every time that someone says yes or okay, or even just a, I'll see for now and it moves the ball a bit forward that's when all the golden nuggets and other reinforcements start to show up because. If you're open and saying yes not that shitty things don't happen, but there's something about you playing along and following what you're meant to do that changes how the whole world shows up to you.

    Yeah. I agree. And I also would add to that, that I don't think we can get what we don't ask for. No. The universe can't read our minds. So when I whenever I've wanted something, I ask for it, and we've touched on that, but I think you have to ask for what you want. 'cause, and sometimes the things I ask for are audacious.

    They are, they should be. Those are the best ones. And I, and I'm gonna move to Spain and I'm gonna have a company relocate me there. And my friends are like, yeah, i'll tell you what that happened. Yeah. And I wanna work on a yacht and get paid to travel around the world That happened because I asked for it.

    Like we can't get what we don't ask for. So ask for audacious things. Because, and be specific if we've learned anything.

    If you, yes. So obviously everyone listening now wants to know what happened on the yacht. What is that story?

    That's a little bit of a detour because I did, oh.

    So I got into the program at Emily Carr. And then because I was a mature student, I was also feeling this pull all those kids who had gone on a gap year traveling. Like I had been really focused on studios for a long time and I was feeling the pull for an adventure and. I didn't feel like, I was a student, I was on student loans.

    I couldn't go on an adventure if I was paying for it. That would last very long. And I had spent the summers. I love being on the water. I grew up on a boat with my not living on a boat, but we always had a boat and days after school I'd go fishing with my dad or our weekends we'd go putting around the shoreline.

    So I was really connected to being on the water and level the life of boats. And while I was at university, before I went to Emily Carr, when I was at the university in Victoria, I had a summer job cleaning sailboats. And I loved it. I got to just splash around with my bare feet. No customer service really listening to music detail, things like clean things with Q-tips, which is oddly satisfying for me.

    People might think that's insane, but

    no, I'm the same type of person. There's no, there's something so rewarding that putting something back to its original best condition. Yes. And then there's a moment where you're like, you do all this hard work, you get, so to me it's a movie meditation as well.

    Yeah. You get fully sucked into it and then you step back and you're like, look what I did. It's done. It's beautiful again.

    And I do that three times a day and I loved it. I loved it. I had great bosses. And they were they were aware of my goals to travel and stuff. And one of my, one of the two, there was a team of two and one of them came up to me one time like, we love you and we would love if you came back next summer, but I gotta tell you, there are fancier toilets on fancier boats that you could be scrubbing and you get to travel the world.

    And I was like. Go on. All these yachts that the rich and famous travel around on, they all leave from Fort Lauderdale in the spring and then they go to Europe for the summer. And I was already hooked. Like I didn't need to know anything else. And he told me what he knew about it.

    You gotta get to Fort Lauderdale, you gotta go now, like April, may. That's when they start. Leaving. They've been in the Caribbean all all winter and now they're headed to Europe. So you gotta get to Fort Lauderdale. And there's a couple of agencies that you could register with who will help you find a job.

    And I think I, he introduced me to someone he knew and I had coffee with them and I asked him some questions and one of the tips was like, don't take hard luggage, you'll look like a noob if you have hard luggage. I was like, alright. So I bought a duffel bag and I packed it with, in hindsight the most ridiculous things that were not useful at all. And I thought, I'm gonna go and do this for four months. I have four months off before school starts again. And I bought a ticket to Fort Lauderdale and I thought if the worst thing that happens is I have to come home on this ticket. And I just live with my parents for the summer and I get a whatever job, but best case scenario, this works, and I get to go traveling for the summer.

    So I went down to Fort Lauderdale and I found out there's like hostiles for people, like what I was doing. There's hostels sort of thing. They call them crew houses. And I found one of those and I booked it and I arrived and I met with the people who were sharing like four to a house, I think. And it was a duplex, there was eight of us.

    And I was like, Hey, where do you guys, where, which agencies did you register with? What do I need to know? And one of the people that I was working with said I'm going down to a boat tomorrow that I know needs people. You should come with me in the morning. I have a car. And it was like literally the biggest boat in Fort Lauderdale at the time.

    So I essentially walked up to the biggest boat in the city, in the hall can I have a job? And they said, yeah, we need day workers. Come on up. We paid 12 bucks an hour and I, this is your task for the day. And I did that for two weeks on that boat. They had a lot of work. They were getting ready to go to Europe.

    And so they were prepping and they, I found out they had a position for a housekeeper. And so one day because I'm a keener and I like to do a really good job and I like to get, I believe in going the extra mile. Yeah. One day asked oh, we have a really crappy job. Someone needs to clean the engine room.

    Now. It was summer in Fort Lauderdale. It was hot. And I was gonna go into the engine room, which was even hotter. I was like, I'll do it like hand up, raised high, I'll clean the engine room. And I spent all day and they're like sweating, just soaked through a sweat. It's like a big room

    class. Yes.

    But you're like cleaning engine grease.

    And I remember the engineer was like, this room needs to look like the queen could come here and eat off of any surface. I'm like, this is where the engine is, but okay. That's what you need. And everything was going super well until I cut my foot on something and bled all over the engine room.

    Oh no. And fortunately for me, the chief engineer was like, oh, come over here. I got a first aid kit. And you're pretty, I noticed you're working pretty hard down here. My wife's the chief steward s and she's looking for a housekeeper, would you be interested? And I'm like, yes, I would be.

    And long story short, the, in three days I think I had that job and they said, we need, we can hire you, but in one condition you need to do this course called your STCW 95 where you need to learn about like c survival and first aid and stuff. So I did that and then I think 10 days later I was leaving for, no, I think it was like five days later, I was leaving Fort Lauderdale for Venice.

    I went, mom I'm gonna be on the ocean for two to three weeks without the ability to call you or anything. And I'll let you know when I get to Venice. And I think that must have just been the scariest thing for her to hear. Yeah, you're doing what? But yeah, so I crossed the Atlantic Ocean and ended up really enjoying my experience.

    So much so that I asked for a. Deferral for a year on my acceptance to the pro program that I had applied for. And I spent a year working on a couple of different boats and saving money and also having really amazing experiences and days off in a different country. Every weekend. And then I went traveling for a little bit at the end of all that.

    So I came back to school, like truly refreshed and ready to go. So it was a bit of a. Detour. But nonetheless, it's an example of I want this, and then it happened.

    Now I'm inspired to be like, maybe I need to abandon all of this and work on a boat.

    Like I'll say it sounds glamorous. I don't know if I could do it at this age anymore.

    It was a bit of a lonely experience in terms of I wasn't with like-minded Yeah. People. I found, like when we got to a new city, I wanted to go to an art gallery and everyone else wanted to go to the pub. Yeah. And so I would go to the art gallery by myself a lot.

    I

    shared a room, so I never had any privacy or quiet time to myself.

    I had to do ridiculous tasks like iron pillowcases and socks, which I didn't realize needed ironing. I think the most ridiculous task I ever had to do was make a miniature bed of a standard poodle. Oh. Who had a bed that was shrunk, like a uhhuh, just like all the guests, but his was shrunken to his size and.

    There was like sod or fake grass on either side of the boat. There was two of those poodles and they each had their own little platform on which to do their business every day. I had to feed them Evian. I Evian water though. I drank tap water if I can confess something. I feel like it's been long enough.

    That dog actually only ever had one bottle of Evian and then I filled it with tap water all summer long. That was my stance, like Uhhuh, I just, this seems ridiculous. I don't think so. Simba, I think his name was well, and then he also needed ice cubes because it was hot, so those were to be made out Evian as well, which was ridiculous.

    He got tap water without anyone really realizing it and

    he was fine. Most dogs are fine. Yeah. If it's good enough for humans, I think it should be good enough for the dogs. I think so. I think so. And in, in the event that there would be some. Horrible situation that would happen because he was drinking tap water.

    I'm pretty sure that guest had enough money to pay for the whatever was needed.

    I heard a story from a colleague who said that a boat she worked on, the owner was really attached to his dog and had it cryogenically frozen. Doesn't surprise me. No. A lot of things don't surprise me anymore after that experience.

    No. And I keep kinda coming back to what it takes to live the life you want, right? Like when you make those declarations to the universe and you ask for things, sometimes I show up in ways you weren't expecting them to. Like you did not say, I wanna travel the world and feed dog dogs, Evie and ice cubes.

    That was not your request. But when things show up and it gives you everything you asked for, there's like this weird thing attached to it. You just go with the flow, you are not asking for a hundred percent perfect checklist. This is the only way I'm doing it. It's no, here's an opportunity.

    This is what it looks like. There's some things you probably don't wanna do, but it gives you that same result. Would you do it anyway? And I feel like there are moments I've seen lately and it might be more social media driven, where people aren't saying yes to these little opportunities that will allow them to get to the bigger Yes.

    That they're looking for because it doesn't, I don't know, they'll either say it doesn't feel right or it's missing this. There's all these reasons and excuses why to say no to something.

    Yeah.

    And it's not about the opportunity looking glamorous and romantic and beautiful and perfect.

    It's still there. Like it's gonna be what you created to be regardless of how it shows up.

    Yeah. Yeah. I love that you said that because I've been noticing connected to that there's a lot of desire amongst people I talk to. To wanna know like that this is gonna work out, right? I'll do it, but I need it to work.

    Whether or not, like they're approaching it with partners too, for oh yeah, we, I could get married, but I need to know what's gonna work out. Does anyone who gets divorced think that's gonna happen the day they say Yes? I don't think so. No, there's no, there are no guarantees.

    So I always say, why not? 'cause there are no guarantees. Who knows what could come outta this? And then it, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.

    One of my favorite quotes is, you must be willing to let go of the life you had planned to have the life that is waiting for you. And it always has spoken to me because we create these ideal lives in our heads and they are amazing, right?

    We created them. They're perfect. We've thought about it. We think about them over long periods of time sometimes. But the truth is that if you're willing to play the game, there's actually something so much bigger and amazing that you've never thought of. That's through that door. And when it literally, life can literally show up as if there's a bunch of doors and you have to choose.

    And I remember for a long time getting like panic stricken about which door to choose. Which is like a first world problem, of having the fact that there was choices for me to make. I feel really lucky from that perspective, but I would still get overwhelmed about which door to choose.

    And I just got over that one day 'cause I'm like, does it really matter? Like the truth is, whichever door I choose, I'm going to make an amazing experience. And if I go left right now to make a, right later to get back to where I wanted to go. Okay. Like I can always get back to something else if I need to.

    Just you know when I went to Europe and I'm like, I dunno if it's gonna work, but I'm certainly gonna try. What's the worst case scenario? I, like you said, move back home. All right. That's not that bad.

    I love that you mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert earlier 'cause she's a personal hero of mine, especially on, in terms of what she talks about in regards to creative living.

    I went, I attended an event of hers this year, I guess was February or March at Wanderlust Oahu. Okay. And she opened the session by talking about like her definition of creative living. And I have it written right here 'cause it's so important. She says that her definition of creative living, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's not about being someone who paints or draws or writes or dances.

    Creative Living is making decisions based on your curiosity rather than your fear. And that's something that I'm al I've been very passionate about for a very long time. Is making decisions, taking action based on curiosity rather than fear or a sense of deficiency or lacking, not enough.

    Yeah. And making sure that there's curiosity. And I find that opens so many new possibilities. And it's even helped, it's even served me in terms of conversations with people or difficult relationships. If I approach from a place of curiosity rather than fear. Yes. Everything shifts and yeah.

    There's that. And then the other thing I wanted to add, if I may, to what you were saying is I feel like there's an expectation we do all this work to create our vision. And we do all this work to achieve it and or to actualize it. And there's this expectation that we're gonna feel fulfilled.

    Entirely. Yeah. In one moment, and what I'm realizing is that we can have it all. But maybe not all at the same time. Yes. And I can expand on that a little. Like when I lived in Barcelona, I had the. Lifestyle that I wanted. In terms of living in a thriving city. And I had a really cool job and I got to travel a lot, but I didn't have access to nature and tranquility the way that I do now here in the woods where I live on Vancouver Island in the forest, where I can see eagles outside my window right now.

    And I was really missing that when I was there. And now that I'm here, I have that and my heart feels full in that regard. But then I'm missing other things about life in Barcelona or that lifestyle.

    Yeah.

    And I'm just like stepping back to appreciate that collectively. I've had my whole like heart's desire in terms of experiences.

    And it's just, if I shift it to realize that I'm don't necessarily have those things all in the same exact moment, then there's less resentment, there's less. Lack of satisfaction. I guess dissatisfaction. And there's just more appreciation for what is and then what could be. Yeah. Because this moment is not, nothing's permanent.

    So whatever's lacking right now, I might get to fill up in the future, but maybe something else will be lacking. And just this constant state of flux and learning to be comfortable with that creates a lot more content in my life than I used to have.

    I think that's huge. Yeah. I like there's so many things that came up for you as you were sharing that, because I think in addition to us putting a lot of pressure on an individual moment, we put a lot of pressure on individual people.

    Yes. People, right? Whether it's who we're in a relationship with romantically, that they're gonna check all these boxes off and you're like, hold on. Yeah. There's no no one in your life checks off every box of. Human interaction that fulfills you. Like it is not possible. Just even for myself I know that I can never deliver on all these things that jesse needs to live his best life because some of them I don't care about because I just don't care. I'm so glad that he has other people to talk about that stuff with.

    Yeah.

    And then there's just things I, I don't wanna talk about, I don't like to do. I don't have that same sense of humor.

    If he relied on me for all of the humor in his life would be so sad because I am like one of the worst joke tellers in the entire world. It would, he would be miserable. But I enjoy listening to other people tell jokes with him, right? Because I, I have a similar sense of humor, but I can't generate it the same way.

    Most of his humor at me is laughing at me, not like from a, me doing something silly perspective, not my, creativity with comedy. And so I agree with you and I, we moved so much growing up and we had this joke that my mother started that as soon as the house was decorated and the way my parents wanted it, it meant we were moving again.

    And I didn't think it was a big thing to get as a message as a kid, but it really was a big message in the sense of you have this dream, you're gonna work to fulfill it. And when the dream is complete. Like you, you're then moving on to the next one. There's this, the satisfaction of enjoying the completeness is usually very short.

    Yeah. If at all you

    better enjoy the process of making it

    right. Thomas Jefferson, he wrote to his son when he was first going to France, 'cause there was a lot of the French American connections at that time. And he writes in this letter on the eve of his leaving, talking about how he's so proud of him for taking the journey to go abroad and experience new cultures.

    And he goes, but I want you to know that you will never be a hundred percent content ever again. The second that you leave your bubble, like your whole universe is here right now. And the second you leave that bubble, your life is going to be 10 times more expanded, but you will never feel the peace of having your whole world in one place.

    And it is such a profound. Statement for me, because that's what I deal with all the time. I have friends all over the world. I have family all over the place. I have fa, my, one of my favorite restaurants is in Nuremberg, which, not the gastronomy capital of the world, but it's like, there's just something about that one place and what we experienced.

    And I'm like, yes, that place.

    Yeah.

    And I went to a friend's baby shower who is from here, grew up here, and she had a. Women from her whole life there. Her friends from high school, from college, from, being an adult, all of her family. And I drove ho I had a great time. And then I drove home bawling.

    Yeah. And I was like, what is wrong with me? And I'm like, oh, I'm mad. 'cause I'll never get that. Even if I had assuming I'm gonna get married someday, even at my wedding there, everyone will not be there because either people will no longer be with us. Yeah. Or they just can't come. And so there's that struggle of, I can't deny the wanderlust and the curiosity and what else is out there.

    And so it's balancing the acceptance of knowing that I could never stay in one place, even if I tried. And how do you keep moving and keep being curious and be present to the contentment and appreciation for all of that going on. Yes.

    Yes. I struggle with finding that too, and I completely agree.

    I've been thinking a lot about, especially today, actually this morning, like a conversation rose and I've been thinking a lot about what it takes to have what you want and you have to be willing to play or give something up or work hard or go out on a limb that it requires some action on your part, I think to have the things that you want, maybe not, maybe only if you're like expanding outside your comfort zone or if you want something bigger than what is like.

    Normal. And I don't really know what I mean by that, but I just, I get the sense that there, there are people whose lives they're not putting that demand on themselves. And that's okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. But when you want something that's a little unconventional maybe, or something that's not quite like normal or easily accessible.

    Then it requires something extra of you. And my husband and I have been creating this vision for what our life in Canada will be like. And we'll share it with people. One of the most common responses to various aspects of it is, oof. That's a lot of work. I heard it again from someone and I got really angry this morning about it because I was thinking like, what isn't a lot of work,

    what worth having isn't a lot of work. And if you're not working towards something, doesn't need to be a financial something. If you're not working, what are you doing all day?

    Yeah. And I, this idea of happiness being a destination that we arrive at, like I derive happiness from the work of moving towards that destination.

    Yes. And work could mean like discomfort or work could mean hard conversations or work could mean like actual physical toil and labor. But I'm game for all of that. And this morning it came up, I was feeling really protective of that vision. And it's hard enough to maintain a vision for an unconventional life.

    Yes. Anyways. Without everyone around you uninvited sharing that they're, oh, it's gonna be a lot of work. Be careful. Thank you, but no thank

    you. And people don't even realize that they're doing it.

    They don't. And so my husband and I had this conversation. He was like, why are you so upset by this?

    And I think, I was mentally preparing for our conversation and thinking about the kind of things that I wanted to share and you had prompted me with a few questions and I was thinking about. Those like really vulnerable moments in my life where I declared I wanted something.

    And the people I trusted dissuaded me with an offhand comment. Yeah. Or maybe just offered something from their experience that actually changed my path for a little while. And maybe I was detoured by years. By that comment. Or I held a belief for a really long time, someone in my life, I said, I'm gonna travel around the world.

    And they said, you better not have kids then because kids are expensive. And it wasn't until five years ago in a guided meditation that I I disconnected those things. And it, I'm passionate about this because I think when we give offhanded comments without thinking about it, we don't even know what kind of damage we could be causing when someone's being vulnerable and sharing their dream with us.

    We have to be careful with those things and we don't always realize those small moments happen. In like literally small exchanges of time and substance. And we don't, we are so often not responsible for what comes out of our mouth. Even me included with my sitter. Me too, with my sister sitting next to me.

    I know that she's been the victim of this many times as we've been growing up together especially as a bossy older sister. That there's something about just that golden rule of if you have nothing nice to say, just don't say anything like, just wish people well and step back. And if you still are stuck on something, like you're generally concerned for somebody for some reason, figure out a way to tell them that without stepping all over what they want to do.

    Yeah. Like it's and we don't realize it because I. One of the best things I've learned is that any concern or criticism always comes from a commitment. And there's always love and support under those things, even if they're very deep. And you have to get, go through a lot to find what it is that person's committed to for you.

    But whenever someone says things like going back to how we started about there's no money in art or there's always suffering in art, or you can't have kids if you wanna travel. Those are all people who are wanna make sure that you are so happy that you don't run into these roadblocks that someone somewhere has run into.

    But they also don't allow for the opportunity for you to create it completely differently. Yeah, exactly. It's like this singular thought of there's one way to do it. Yes. And the traveling and kids thing is a personal issue I have because it makes me crazy that it is also because I'm such a travel person.

    If I could spend all of my time traveling with, interspersed with seeing the people I love, I think that's how my whole life would end up. Which is why Traveling podcast is what's on the. On the vision board Jordan just put her head in her hands like, oh my Lord,

    I'm really not gonna have any free time anywhere.

    But but it makes me crazy because people travel all the time with families. And my parents are an example. We didn't, we weren't traveling the world for the sake of traveling. We were moving because of my dad's work. And everyone told them like, what are you doing to these kids? And Oh, like, all these we're fine.

    In fact, we're probably more fine than a lot of kids because you just, one kids are way smarter than adults. And two, you figure it out like it's fine. This is real life. You can't protect people in a bubble.

    And what you gained something you had to lose something to gain something. So you lost childhood home that you never moved out and maybe the same group of 10 friends throughout your whole childhood, but you gained resilience and the ability to make new friends easily. I'm guessing. Yes. And I think about that too because my husband and I have shared our vision with people. I'm like if you have kids, you have to slow down.

    Why though? I know people like i'm not, that's easy for me to say right here without kids so far. So I get it. I will I'm aware of the possibility that I could change my mind. But let's just have a conversation about it from a place of what if and why not first. Yes. Instead of telling me how it has to be from your life experience only, or your viewpoint only.

    I just had a client meeting this past week and we're, I'm helping them build their dream job, and so we're starting from zero, which is my favorite place because it really allows me to lay the foundation of. The vision and the dream and your commitments and what you care about as the platform to build everything else on, right?

    Like it's so awesome to start with The Clean Foundation. And we did all that work and now we're moving into the next phase of the journey and instantly the panic for this client set in of what if I don't make enough money and who's gonna hire me? And all the things, all the negative what ifs showed up.

    And I was like, okay, I'm gonna ask you to write down all the things you're concerned about on a piece of paper. And if it was me, I'd write 'em down and throw it away. Burn them, right? Potentially burn them. Definitely get rid of them. If you don't wanna go that far, just write 'em down, fold them up and go stick 'em somewhere.

    Go hide 'em under your underwear drawer or something. Because we're not gonna deal with that stuff for such a long time. You're still in the phase of creating the dream and we'll get there. Deal with that today. If there are no negative repercussions what would it look like?

    How many times a year do you wanna do this? How many clients do you want? Talk about all the big stuff because all the things that we stress out about are figureoutable. Like how do I find money? So many ways to find money? How do I get clients? There's so many ways. Let me tell you something.

    Yes ma'am. There have been multiple times where I have said to myself, I don't have the money for this and I dunno how it's gonna happen. And the, somehow the universe gives me the money for it. And it happens. Yep. And then the other thing, the most impactful thing that happened to me was from our seminar stuff.

    Like one of the exercises were. To say everything that you fear to someone and they repeat the same exact thing to you, and you realize how crazy you sound. To hear someone else say your fears and like thinking that I know I didn't mean it that way. No. They're like, I'm not good enough.

    I was like no. You are, you're great. You are good enough. And they're like that's what you just said. And I had to repeat it and I was like, oh, yeah, okay. This makes a difference.

    What if we talk to ourselves the way we spoke to our friends? What if, like the gremlin in my head says the most terrible heinous shit to me.

    Yes. I would never, ever say anything like that to anyone I love, or even a stranger on the street yet. How I speak to myself is just terrible. I'm working on that.

    I just say we just need to stop spending so much time listening to ourself like that. I.

    Yes.

    Can I offer like

    a new perspective on this, please?

    Elizabeth Gilbert seminar that I went to, seminar workshop, I don't know what to call it, in on Oahu. She, we had I don't know, a letter, an exercise where we wrote a letter to ourself. From the point of fear Enchantment permission, persistence. Were these all individual true and divinity.

    Yeah. Truth and in divinity. Okay. Yeah. I don't wanna give away her work, but that was the essence of it, Uhhuh. And she said, imagine sit down with fear and just for once listen to it. And I'm not saying you have to take anything it says on as truth. But just listen to it and what it has to say, because fear has a really important job.

    Yes. Fear. Fear is what keeps us alive. In some cases. Don't listen to it the way you think, like the way you have been where you're not really listening. Yeah. Like when you're fighting with someone and you're like, I'm listening, but you're just waiting to say your next point. Oh yeah. What, after all that happens and after everyone's yelled and cried and you're sitting down at the old oak table in the kitchen and you finally can.

    I just letting this happen, letting fear speak to me. It said Hey, you know what? I wish you'd listened to me more. I am here to keep you alive. Like I took on that part of what she was saying. And I don't appreciate you just, I know you don't like me, but I don't appreciate that you don't listen to me and you don't have to believe what I say, but I just wanna be heard.

    And I thought, oh, who doesn't want that?

    No, I love Who doesn't wanna be heard? No, I love that message because so often I feel like so many of the dramas that we deal with in life, especially with other people, are because people don't feel like they're being heard either. We don't feel like we're being heard, they don't feel like they're being heard.

    If everyone leaves a room or conversation feeling heard, there's no emptiness left. There's no bucket that needs to get filled up with something else, either lies or cocktails or you name it and so I actually love that because we don't think about whether it's fear or your mother or the boss that you think you hate.

    Again, it comes back to that behind everything is a commitment. Yeah. Like even fear, is there, because it's committed to your survival doesn't mean it's right. But Yeah. If you give it its time. How fast does it go away?

    Yeah. And if you, we all know that person where you like try to not hear them, they just start talking louder.

    Yes. They just raise the volume so better to just go. Okay. What is it really you're upset about here? Fear. What do you, what are you really worried about? I'm worried we're not gonna be able to pay the bills. Okay. I hear you. I'm worried about that too, but we'll figure out a way.

    Okay.

    Yes. And I, it's so funny 'cause in my head I'm visualizing this conversation as you're sharing it and I'm imagining how I handle people at work. And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, okay, fear. Yep. You said that. I'm gonna put it on the whiteboard so we can all come back to it later.

    Yeah.

    Because that's why of being heard and known and seen, right? I think there's. I don't wanna listen to the terrible things my fear says to me. But I do wanna acknowledge its place in my life and in the creative process. And the things that fear has saved me from falling off the edge of eclipse.

    And from getting into sketchy situations. So fear does deserve some credit.

    Yes. It's almost like it, it needs a high five or a hug even when it might be going a little bit. Yeah. Obsessive

    because it doesn't know, it doesn't have the ability to say, oh, this is a creative endeavor. It's just like anything new, this could kill us.

    Yeah. So we better not do it. New relationships, new experiences, new ways of thinking. This might kill us 'cause it's new fear doesn't like new things. No. There could be more value placed on resilience. I think that the notion of like jump, and I think Elizabeth Gilbert said this in her podcast, like the idea of jump in the net will catch you.

    She disagrees with that, as do I. I think we've talked a lot today about declare things and if you show up it will become available. But there's a lot of things that I've asked for that I haven't gotten probably for good reason because I wasn't meant to, or actually the desire that I spoke loud was coming from a place of scarcity or a diff a looking good.

    Yeah. Or many things. There's also things that I failed at catastrophically failed at. Oh yeah. And I learned resilience. And Brene Brown talks a lot about those face down moments and how you pick yourself up and our job as like parents and leaders is to, should be to encourage resilience and let people fail rather than protect them from failure.

    Because that's how you learn resilience and opportunities to experience things that teach you that I think are so valuable. And I don't know if. To add on to what you're saying, I think resilience should be part of that conversation because it's what we need.

    Yeah. There's been many people recently who are in their early twenties who have asked me like, they're stuck 'cause they don't know what to do.

    I'm like, just start. Yeah. And they're so hung up on it being the perfect choice. Yeah. I remember

    that feeling from when I was

    younger for sure. And I'm like, I don't, your life is gonna change, not 360 degrees, but whatever five or seven or 10 revolutions are going to create. So just start now because the fun part is that you're starting the momentum.

    Yeah.

    You might be in a job for two weeks, two months, two years, 20 We don't know yet. Go figure it out.

    I don't know what might be going on for those people particularly, but I felt that I have felt that feeling and I still sometimes feel it.

    And

    that experience of what should I do and what's the right thing?

    Yeah. And I've realized that part of that is because there is like a very popular narrative about the way that things are supposed to work and the order in which you're supposed to do them Yes. By when you're supposed to do them. And so I felt when I was younger, a lot of pressure, and I still do now at this is how old I am, so here's what I should have done and accomplished.

    Or here's where it's too late for that. And one resource that I recently discovered that has completely shaken that up for me was I like a online community called Ageist. Okay. And it's. Aimed at people. I don't know exactly what they've declared. I think it's a aimed at people like 50 and older or something like that.

    And it's sharing the stories of entrepreneurs, people who have done the same job for 35 years, and then the age of 67 decided to go back to school. And it just, it shifted something inside me when I discovered this network of oh yeah, there's so much time. There's also, simultaneously, there's two truths, always.

    There is no time to waste. Yeah. But there also is time to figure things out. And the people in my profession, who I admire came into their own in their forties and in their fifties. I, why am I not there yet? Because nobody has ever been there yet at this point. Yeah. And the more I start to pay attention to that narrative as opposed to this other thing, the more peace I acquire about it all and, and patience and. I'm really not good at patients, but I'm learning You are preaching to the choir on that one. Holy smokes. Oh my. Yeah. So the people from Ageist, someone wrote me someone not wrote me personally, but one of, I think, 'cause I joined the community.

    At an early stage, they were sending out questionnaires like what feedback, why are you attracted to this? And I filled it out and then someone specifically wrote to me. We noticed your age is not in the age of people that normally are part of this community. Can you share why? And I just wrote this like pair multi-paragraph.

    Yeah. I. I feel like the things that are available for me to consume in my immediate vicinity are all the success stories, the linear stories, the thing of yeah, just do this and this will happen. And when you share the stories of real people who in their sixties talk about everything falling apart and building something new from nothing that encourages me.

    And it makes me realize, it shows me other narratives, and I'm so hungry for those other narratives that,

    yeah.

    I think they're really important to share.

    I think if anyone's telling their story fully, those things will come up. I find myself getting a little suspicious when it's all sunshine and rainbows.

    I'm like, yeah, what aren't you telling us? Or what, and maybe nothing externally happened dramatically, but what are the things that you're dealing with? Because being an entrepreneur is not smooth sailing. It is. Like until recently, I, you look at how people describe it and sure, there's tough times and yes, people work crazy hours and you worry about money, but I'm like, no.

    The thing that surprises me the most is how you can literally go hours or days of feeling like you're a 10 and feeling like you're a negative 10. Like it is. It is the craziest rollercoaster I've ever been on, to the point where I'm someone who I think most people would describe as very stable. Like I, I'm, I think that's just how people would describe me as a very stable, logical person.

    And I find myself in the past couple of months being like, maybe I'm bipolar. That's how much, like being an entrepreneur is like ridiculous. Like you, there are literally like manic phases where everything is awesome. You've had all these great conversations, everything's working. Look at what I got done today, and the next day something happens and you're like.

    I can't leave the couch. I have to watch all of the movies that make me feel better. I'll start again tomorrow.

    I would say, not to diminish the challenges of being an entrepreneur, 'cause that's this whole beast, but I have noticed, I haven't worn the entrepreneur hat for long time, long, extensive periods of time.

    But I've noticed that come up for me when I start living from a place of wanting to like self-examination and wanting to see like what's really going on. And self-reflection and self-actualization and there's a vulnerability in sharing that, but there's also a vulnerability I find in even being willing to look there.

    Yeah. To see what actually is. And that's another thing that, a theme, it's, funny how these things come up, because as soon as you start thinking about things, you keep finding people who are on the same wavelength or always same messages come up. But I've been noticing that there's a lot of people who like.

    Just wanna talk about the positive. Like what you think is valid. Sometimes people only share the positive, but I remember when I moved to Barcelona, I wanted to share the whole, I've always wanted to share my whole heart. Yeah. With everyone. And people would be like, ah, yeah, it's hard, but you're living your dream.

    This is what you wanted. And. And I wanna say all the time yes, that's true. And just because something is wonderful doesn't mean it can't, and what I asked for and what I wanted doesn't mean it can't also be excruciatingly painful and lonely sometimes. Things can be, and it can be wonderful and hard.

    It can be joyful and sorrowful. Yes. But I think we live in a really binary world where things are one or the other. And life is not like that actually. Everything is so complex. Yes. And we wanna oversimplify things to make them easier to digest. And it doesn't do anyone a service, it's a disservice.

    No. And it it doesn't give people credit for how complex they are as individuals or the universe are around them. Yeah. It's it's almost coming from a place of hoping It's simpler than it is. Yeah. Yeah. I just, wouldn't that be nice? Before we were talking, I was looking at your beautiful website.

    Thank you. And I saw all of the very fun projects that you've worked on. I was especially drawn to the water safety dress. Oh yeah. I was like, I want one of those. It looks amazing. And I just saw the picture of the woman wearing it, and for people who haven't seen it, it looks like she's, there's a picture of a woman in a swimming pool and it looks like instead of wearing an inner tube, she's wearing like a flower.

    'cause it's like coming up around her. And I was like, and then I just looked at more pictures and saw what it was intended to be versus what that picture showed. But in my head I went, I want to be able to sit in like a flower pedal and float. It looks amazing. Yeah. So we might need to create those and sell them on powerful ladies, because I think that would be a game changer.

    I'm just imagining everyone now at Coachella floating and flowers.

    That could be something that could be a powerful image.

    Yes. And there's so much, we can go down a whole world of what that symbolism would be as well, but we could, you've done so much different work and you've done so much work that has gotten press and praise and intrigued and inspired people.

    What does it feel like to be a designer that gets that recognition?

    Wow. That's very kind of you to say. Thank you. And I don't think something I'm working on 'cause I don't feel any of that, of what you just said. And I need to remind myself I'm working on. How to feel all of that and acknowledge what has been said and like the credit that and the validation of the work that I do, how to balance that within myself and how to, like confidence and creativity is something I've been really struggling with over the last four years. Of like, how to be confident without having an ego, how to be more confident. I think it's still a big mess in my head.

    I don't really know how to articulate it. But it is a place where I go back to when I need a little boost. Oh yeah, I did speak at MIT about something I made. That's a big deal. When I'm feeling small and low and not necessarily an expert on something, I do go back to that. But Elizabeth Gilbert made I know other people have brought it up on this podcast, there's a common thread that sos us all, stitches us all together, but she asked people creators, like, why do you do this?

    Like, why do you get up at four in the morning to write? Or why do you

    do

    all this? And she. Either said or people it revealed herself and she said it, it revealed it over the course of the podcast. And then she summarized at the end like, I do it. 'cause I have to like, yeah. And not in the way of obligation, but because it's what I like, I need to, I have to express it.

    I think that's that's something that I've when, when you notice that it's not for anything external, like I just I need to create it and it needs to come outta me. That's where like some pure expression and Liz happens, I think as well as when you're of service. Yes. Yeah. I love those.

    When you're in like the flow state. I just had to make this there's a lot of things on my website that are just questions I ask myself. What if our clothing could make us float? And that is not actually a product that exists in the real world, but it came from I just have to, I have to ask that question and entertain that thought for a little while.

    Yeah. And I wish we asked more of those questions as humanity. Me too. There's fun like. Whenever 8-year-old me is happy, then I'm doing the right thing and there's a lot more fun in that point of view.

    Yes. I love what you said too about like slowing down and what I heard for myself was I have spent a lot of time 'cause we share this commonality of being like achievers and list makers and I noticed it when you said here are some things that I noticed about your work and the accolade, and I don't really slow down to appreciate what is happening when it's happening either. And I should do more of that. Yeah. I have been more and more, but it takes effort. It doesn't come naturally.

    I had a really surreal experience the other day where my graphic designer was making like a one pager press kit to send out because I'm trying to get into other podcasts and do more speaking and she sent me this thing back and I'm like. This girl's a badass. Who is this? And I'm like, oh, that's me.

    Whoa. When did that happen? Wow. And I was like, this crazy moment of, wow. Huh? I think I like myself. This is interesting. Yeah. It was so weird. And it, yeah, it lasts for a second, then I'm onto the next thing. But it was this crazy moment of, huh, maybe I'm not making this all up. Interesting.

    Yeah. Maybe that little gremlin in my head isn't right all the time.

    Yeah. I had declared like many years ago, I attended Wanderlust in Whistler while I was working at Lululemon. We got to go and I was like, this festival is amazing. For anyone who doesn't know yoga, festival, music, art, all these things, my favorite things altogether. But it's not just the events.

    It's like the way that things shift in the community at that event that I love and what the teachers say and what comes up in my mind as I'm practicing. It's not about the physicality of yoga at all. While ago, and then I learned that it was, there was one that took place on Wahoo. I was like, I am going to that one day.

    And then I saw that Elizabeth Gilbert was gonna be speaking at Water Less Oahu, and I was like, this is the one, then I gotta go. And before I even knew how or if I had booked a ticket, at least to her speaking event. And then I needed to figure out the flight and hotel and all that.

    I'm not usually like that. I got there and I think that there was this moment we were practicing yoga in an open field. I had already done her workshop, and then I was there and I was like laying on my back and started to rain and the teacher was saying something wonderful and I just felt all the rain drops on my face.

    And then I looked over, like Elizabeth Gilbert was on a yoga mat next to me. My hero was doing a yoga class with me. And I just I just took stock of what I had created. And I was literally crying tears of joy at what I've created. And I think that I ought to do that more often because I do create really amazing things and there's no harm in acknowledging it.

    There's almost like a yes. That the universe might get pissed off if I don't acknowledge it because it's conspiring to help me. Yeah. In all of those efforts

    just a human, the ego, the universe has an ego, it has humor, it has impatience. It wants you to play along. Like it's, that's really what's going on, and I What an amazing, magical moment for you to have.

    Yeah. Like the whole experience, the rain the sense of awareness to have her right there next to you, like the, to me, those are like the movie moments that I love taking account of. I'm like, there's no way I could make this up. This is amazing. There's no way I could make

    this up. I love that. I know that there's some luck involved.

    I do believe there's some luck involved, but I also, people say to me sometimes oh, you're so lucky you got that job in Barcelona. I'm like, was it luck though? Because there was some luck involved, but I also like. Worked for years to make a badass portfolio. Yeah. I turned into an internet stalker and harassed every person that worked at that office.

    Until someone finally gave me an interview. It's not that I just said I wanna do this, and then before it happens, like I worry that I've maybe given that impression, there's a lot of hard work that after I declared this is what I want, that goes into making it happen. And a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of impatient tears and a lot of this is never gonna work.

    And oh my God. So I really just thought I should bring that up because it would be really unfair me to say it didn't. I'm dealing with an impatient, like last week I had a bit of a downward emotional spiral because I'm impatient about a certain dream that's just not coming true as fast as I want it to.

    And I just might have to wait longer and work harder.

    And. Yeah. There's sometimes things you want, you just, they don't show up always when you want them to. But then also,

    yeah, you never show up when you want them to in life. Usually not.

    Yeah. But sometimes as well, ibel, I also believe that the universe isn't gonna give you something that you haven't proven responsibility for.

    Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. And I use it often talking about money and the financial course I teach. But I think it applies to everything. If you haven't proven that you can do something magical with what you're being given. Doesn't mean that you have the pressure to like, make magic out everything you have, but if there's no chance, 'cause you haven't proven it somewhere else before, like you're not gonna get those next big things.

    It's, whether you're working on your corporate collateral of what jobs you had and like you said, like how hard you worked cleaning toilets to make one dream of traveling the world happened. Yeah. There's a lot of. Like Jedi Ninja Mastery that has to go into doing it over and over again and continuing to push because the curiosity and the manifesting and the dreaming about it, like all of that has to happen, but it doesn't happen in isolation.

    Floating through, through time and space. It happens. Grounded in the persistence and yes. I'm gonna do it no matter what. It's really, and sometimes it does just magically happen. You're like, I don't know if I deserve that right now, but I'm gonna take it. Yeah. And those are I consider those like a free pass you get, 'cause you're like, all right you deserve that from something else you've done.

    But

    usually use karma points or something.

    Yes. Yeah. I'm gonna am I cashing in for this? Okay. I'm gonna cash in. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I agree. You've talked about your husband a little bit. Were you guys married together before you went to Spain? Did you meet there? No. We met

    I think 11 years ago.

    Actually, funny that I brought up the yacht thing because while I was working on boats this was before I was part of Facebook or that there was like travel blogs. Back in those days, back in my day I had a friend, I was, I was traveling around the world and doing cool stuff.

    And I was emailing, like, when I had internet, emailing like three photos of an entire trip to my mom and spending like 45 minutes in an internet cafe trying to send those three pictures. And just like not having the time or patience to do that with more than just a select handful of people.

    And my my friend reached out to me and he said, Hey, I know you're on this trip. A buddy of mine just created a travel website or travel blog, so you can put all your trips there and you can put a little link on Google Earth and you can show your path and upload photos. And you should try it out.

    He is looking for beta testers or new members or something like that. That sounds cool. So I created an account and what I thought was like an automated computer message of hi, welcome, this is Brian. I thought that was just an autogenerated message, but it was actually him personally and apparently what I didn't know, and he hates that I tell this story this way because he's you make me sound like an internet stalker.

    But may have been true. We'll decide. Yeah. I was just one of the first people to really use his website the way that he intended and I was doing what he thought were interesting things. 'cause he was really passionate about travel and photography. Person traveling in an interesting way.

    And so he got to know me in a one sided way through me using his website and then, which normal Right? That's what everyone does today. Yeah. It's not Stalkery. Sorry, Brian. No.

    He was just ahead of his time in meeting people through the internet and it's crazy how you, there are people who I haven't met their children like, 'cause they're friends of mine and like they Yeah.

    We don't live. And then I meet them and I'm like, I knew everything about you. And they're like, you're weird. We've never met. Yeah. I'm like, shit, it's, I'm one of those people.

    It's hard not to right? With the way things are. Yes. So when I was traveling, he was like, when's this Dana girl coming back from her trip?

    And everybody was like, don't call her Dana. She hates that it's Dana. Don't make that mistake. Which is true. I give everyone three strikes. And then something really bad happens. I don't know what yet. I haven't had to enforce it. But. I guess when I did come back from my travels, that mutual friend arranged for us to meet and we've been together ever since.

    But when I first met him, hold on. Yeah. You just skipped through a whole lot of juicy good details. You went from he may have stalked me. I came home, he said my name and then we've been together ever since. I'm like no.

    There was an event where I was there and a Alan, our mutual friend, was like, you know everybody here.

    I was like, I don't Who's that guy? I was like, oh, that's Brian from the website. I was like, oh, it's a real person. That was the moment that I realized oh, it's a person that, it's not just like this internet, a personality that doesn't really exist. And unfortunately for him, he had a really ugly mustache at the moment because of some vember thing.

    Yeah. Or some weird event that was happening. So I was like, Ugh, that mustache gotta go. But the rest seems really awesome. The mustache was gone shortly thereafter. And then we went on a few dates. I wasn't really looking for a relationship at that time, which is how it goes. Always when you're not looking for something, it shows up. And fortunately for me, he was really persistent. I was in university and really focused. I was at art school then and head down really focused. And he'd be like, let's hang out now I'm busy. I have to do an all-nighter tonight for a project that's due.

    And then there'd be a knock at my door at 11 o'clock and like I opened the door, it was him and he had a little one pot coffee maker. He's I noticed you don't have a way of making coffee. How are you gonna stay up all night to do this project? And he's just the most, that's adorable, generous person that I know.

    And luckily he was persistent and and stuck it through at the beginning when I was a little bit scattered and continues to stick it out these days when I'm a little bit scattered.

    That's part of the reason why I wanted to hear the story of Brian, because I think when. I think it's important for people to talk about how they can create their best life and follow their personal path.

    And what that looks like when you have a partner. Yeah. Because it doesn't, your paths are not always going in the same direction and Yeah. So how do what does it look like for people who don't know to create visions together and goals together and the ebb and flow of maybe one person leading when an, and then another one leading at different phases?

    That's a great question. I love that you asked that because I think sometimes we don't, when we think about like successful relationships, I don't think we give enough credit to like chance in that you need to find someone who happens to be interested in the same things you are at that same time and be available emotionally or logistically, there is an element of chance, I believe, I think we're both very strategic people. So we both like, part of why I wanted to be designers because I had to create, but I also knew for a love of travel designers get to live internationally. Yeah. There's a lot of travel involved. So it was a very strategic choice on my part.

    And he is a very strategic person as well and he is a software developer and he knew that for him working as a contractor, a consultant for himself was what was gonna get him the lifestyle that he needed. He buckled down and spent a few years at the beginning investing time and effort so that later he could work for himself and struggled through that first few years of difficulty that there is of being an entrepreneur.

    It's always a struggle, but especially uncertain at the beginning. Yeah. So that, 'cause we had created like organically through conversations like, what if we did this and what if we did that? And then, okay, I love that. What would it take for us to be able to do that? If we wanna live in Europe, we wanted to live in another country together.

    If we wanna live in another country, we're gonna need a visa. That will come down to me because I will get the job somewhere. Because that's more likely than you who works on the internet. Meeting a visa somewhere. Okay. You work, you get your home stuff set up, you get your personal business set up, and then I'll start hustling for these jobs around the world.

    And then that's how we'll go. It was very strategic conversations and actions. And fortunately, I do feel like part of why we're a great team is because we want similar things. Not always, but in general, like our vision for life Yep. Is on the same, not the same path, but on a parallel path.

    Like we're headed in the same direction. Yep. Which I think is really important. And also. We're, we have different strengths. We're very different people. I think that's true for a lot of couples. But yeah. I'm the whimsy, he's the practical. I'm the like, what if, and he's the logistical person.

    We actually, like, when we go on a trip together, we have roles and responsibilities for creating that trip. I dream up something and find out like the coolest place to have a drink in the best area to see the sunset. And he books the flights and the hotel because he's really good at analyzing a bunch of options.

    That's his computer brain and how it works, Uhhuh. And so when we dream up something like, what would it look like for us to live in Hawaii for four months? How can we make that happen? He'll pass the ball to me. What, how would we do that? And then once I say what if this, and this?

    Came about. Then could we do it? And then he can put in the logical or the logistical aspects to bring that to fruition. So we did have this dream of like, why if we live in Hawaii for four months? And he challenged me like, if you can find a way for it to be rent neutral for us, I'm down.

    And then I went alright, challenge accepted. At least now we can do that. Yeah. And we ended up finding someone to sublet our place for the exact price of a place that I found on Airbnb in Hawaii for like one to one. So we just rent neutral. Life's more expensive in Hawaii.

    But yeah, like he, he is often said to me like, I admire how you dream stuff up. There's things that I didn't think of or know was possible. And I love that you challenge me and I love that he is game for all of that. 'cause I think there's. A lot of people who would be really uncomfortable with some of the things that I've cooked up.

    But I love the element of the challenges, right? Because I, to me, I am addicted to 30 day challenges, to playing games, to I like it when someone tells me it's not possible. Yeah. Because then I'm like, oh, it's happening. This is great. Yeah. Thank you for that message. And I love that because there are one of the, we have the nonprofit as well, and in the game with the nonprofit is always how to do it for free.

    How to get the entire event free, where no one needs to donate. It's like money. It's all donation based in kind giving, how do we make it happen? It's one of those boundaries, coming full circle to how we started the conversation of what people say makes something not possible.

    That's when you instantly can flip it around and be like, okay, what if that doesn't happen? Or if it does, what do we do to mitigate it or make it better? And that to me is the creative process of designing your life that is the most fun. Yeah. The most fun. I love it. I think I like that you said designing your life.

    'cause I was thinking, when I lived in Barcelona and my, I was meeting colleagues and friends and what does your husband do? Because for a lot of people I met their partners were in other countries and they weren't living in the same city. You're so lucky you got to live in the same city as your partner.

    And I thought, yeah. And it was by design. Yeah. Like we designed that. We're lucky that the design came to fruition, but it's not that we just like fell ass backwards into this situation. There's a lot of like years of intentional work to get to this situation.

    Yes. When you realize that most of life is a game that you just have to find the keys for.

    And find the door that the key matches and you can start really crafting whatever you want. That to me is what freedom really looks like. Yeah. Yeah. And I always come back to when I was in Germany and meeting like-minded people on paper we all looked the same, but we came from so many different parts of the world.

    And it was during the like the whole conversation of the 99 verse 1% on Wall Street. Because I moved there beginning, like very beginning of 2008 when all, when the recession was starting and I sat there, we were probably in some ridiculous place that makes us sound like total jerks of at a villa in Tuscany or something.

    Having a great time on a weekend. 'cause you could, and I'm sitting there with great people eating great food, drinking great wine. And we were by no means wealthy, we just happened to be in driving distance of this opportunity. Yes. And just sitting there and going, oh, people are talking about money.

    This has nothing to do with money. Like we are in the 0.001% because it's not a money game. It's a how do you make what you want to happen no matter what, and how do you say yes to an opportunity that you dunno what it's gonna look like and to sit, around a table with a bunch of people who were like-minded in the way of, why not?

    Whatever came up, why not? Oh, you want to do something that sounds totally insane. Stranger things have happened. We know people who can make it happen. Yes.

    I think it's important too to acknowledge that you and myself and those other like-minded individuals like we I'm really. Waking up to, like disclosing that, like I'm a, I have some privilege that a lot of people around the world don't.

    Yeah. In terms of like where I grew up and the country I live in. And the healthcare I'm provided and the support network that I have none of this happened in a vacuum. If I failed, I had someone who could take care of me. Yeah. When I dropped out of university and went to art school, if it all went sideways, I had shelter.

    Like in terms of, I think you've mentioned on another episode, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yes. All of this was made possible because almost all of those were met, it's not to say that this is available to anyone. There are people suffering all over the world and Sure.

    This sounds really nice. Just why not? You have to have a lot of different levels of necessity or needs met. Before you can start considering. Living in Europe for four years. So just to acknowledge that because it's not just in a vacuum, all these dreams, like we do have some privileges that should be talked about too.

    Completely. Completely. And it's funny as a, as you're talking about who can live in Europe and I think of just all the refugees who are like, yeah, we're gonna live in Europe. And you're like, yeah. Oh how they're gonna do it any way they can. So when I think about we have so much privilege and I am so thankful and blessed for everything that I do have and the people that are in my life and the other opportunities.

    And I look at the people who you would say on paper don't have those opportunities and it further gives me a kick in the ass to say, look at what they're doing with none of the. Points that they have. Yeah. If, again, going back to the game analogy, if you're playing a monopoly and you have an entire street, someone can still win the whole game that has Yeah.

    That's in jail has nothing. Yeah. And it's such an opportunity to know that, what do you do without, and what do you do when you take what should be requirements for success and throw it out the window. Yeah. It's is that scary? Is it freeing? I think it really depends on where we do both.

    Yes. And usually at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So we ask everybody on the show where they put themselves on the powerful lady scale. Zero average, everyday human, 10. Super powerful lady. How do you feel today? How do you feel on average?

    I would say last week I felt like a one, and today I'm feeling I'm like seven, eight, I'm climbing up.

    This may be tipped me closer to 10, this conversation. So thank you for that.

    You're welcome. That's my favorite reason to have these conversations. Yeah. When you look at people in your life who have been critical in where you're at today in your life?

    I would say like my immediate network, my family and my friends.

    I have amazing friends who are like family. I count them all, when I say family, like that whole network of people. There I have people who. When you were talking about your boyfriend and how you can't be one, you can't be everything to one person. I have this amazing network of people who fill up all the parts of my soul and and hold me up.

    So I'm really grateful to all of those people and especially like my mom and my husband who put up with my crazy wacky dreams and my impatient type A achiever personality. A lot of the time what I know, it's not easy for them because I can be in frustration or impatience a lot of the time because of that.

    The patience that they show me is an inspiration and like all the, I guess all the like incidental interactions have led me to where I am. So like that. Jerk of a technician at the wood shop. Like I wouldn't be a soft product designer, maybe without him being a jerk, Uhhuh and just acknowledge all of those things.

    Every story I've heard has shaped me in, not every story probably, but a lot of stories of people I've heard of, people I know, and people I don't know. Have shaped me a little bit and given me new perspective. And all of those things are a combination of to where I am in this point in time, in this world.

    And I'm grateful for every, each and every single one of those because I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. Yeah. Without all of that.

    And what are you creating for 2019? What's on your to-do list this year?

    To-do list. Great question. There is one, right? We really wanna find a home and buy a home and build.

    And it's not about the house, it's about the word home I use really specifically, it's about the feeling and the lifestyle that we're trying to build. And that's just, I don't get to control how fast that happens. It means looking at a lot of places, and of course I have something really specific in mind.

    And it has to look and feel a certain way. And not to say that I'm being picky. Like I, I also want to like, renovate something. I wanna get my hands dirty. I wanna build something from nothing or from a shamble version of some somebody else's, dream to what I and husband are dreaming about.

    So there's that. I have a lot of goals around writing that I've been putting off for various reasons that are back in the forefront in 2019. And then there's a lot of like fun to be had this year and a lot of adventures to go on locally. I am back in the Wonder Nature Wonderland that I grew up in and there's like whales to see this summer and hikes to do and kayak trips and all of those things.

    So I think maybe this year has got the fewest but biggest items on the to-do list

    Yeah.

    Than in recent years.

    And we started this conversation by Adeline declaring that you're her Canadian Oprah.

    Oh.

    Where, why would she think that for people who don't know how you guys have interacted and where do those accolades come from?

    Oh, that's

    a great

    question.

    That's. Probably comes from our conversations and the interactions we had where everyday moments, like through the way that her and I can have a conversation everyday moments can be like reexamined from a new point of view. And she plays just as much a role in that dynamic as I do.

    So I'm not like the source of it either, but we had such, we have such different perspectives. And so there's like a riff on her asking a question or presenting like this thing that she was challenged within me saying, look, what about this of, through all the various things that I've learned and all the different wise people who've taught me things and my own experiences, I get to bring that perspective to the table and then it riffs with hers and. And there's there's like a playful dynamic that is special that maybe is why she's talking about that. A combination of, I should acknowledge for myself, even though a culmination of 10 years probably spent in the work of self reflection and self involvement and actualization, like reading a lot of books. Talking to counselors, attending workshops like that is, it's not that just by happenstance all these things have come to me. I've worked really hard to find them and unearth them and I like to share them with people who are interested in talking about that kind of stuff.

    I hear that. Yes. I think too when what I got from Adeline's Cher, and I think it's also how, what shows up in her, our relationship, like ours being Adeline's and mine when I really believe in the phrase of namas stay. And if you see the light in someone else and they see it back in you, it creates space for a whole new richness of relationship dynamic to come up because it gives you the space that if you think somebody knows you're awesome already, that no matter what you share or say isn't going to take that away from you.

    There's this vulnerability on top of a foundation of trust and love that allows the magical moments to happen. Yes. Because so often the good juicy stuff you don't share right away because you're more concerned about the security of that relationship. And you know when that's when you don't need to worry about that.

    Maybe the most important of the hierarchy of needs. There's just something there where you really get to contribute to each other in a whole higher. Playing. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think there's like maybe other hard to name things, circumstances that were at play as well, like perhaps, I know during that time that I met her that I was struggling with like feeling confident and out of place.

    And other I was different than a lot of people and probably for cultural reasons, but probably for, because of what I'm interested in and the work that I do. And just to find someone who was like on a similar wavelength allowed that vulnerability to open up right away.

    And, had we met in a different circumstance when I wasn't necessarily like as challenged by my life. Perhaps I wouldn't have been that. Like it could have gone so many different ways, but I'm so glad that I met her and yes, a gift from the universe. A balm for my soul.

    Some days I think that we were that for each other, we felt, I think, I'm not trying to put words in her mouth, but I think sometimes we felt a little bit lonely in that community in terms of not many people were, at least they weren't sharing it if they were Yeah. Thinking about these kind of things or talking about these kind of things.

    So there was some solidarity in that, that I'm was really needing.

    And I also wanna point out to everyone listening that with both of you being feeling. Maybe not powerful. You actually were able to be really powerful for each other.

    Yeah.

    There's a reoccurring myth of, being powerful or being a powerful lady means you have your shit together.

    You've achieved your goals. It's like what we talked about before, about being at the end of the story instead of in it. Yeah. And I think that your power is actually like being in it. Being in it, and still doing it anyway. That's the power. Yeah. And to see that you can be in it and dealing with things and provide such a bright light to somebody else while you're in it and talking about it and help each other along the way.

    That's what's awesome about being human. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I like that. I haven't thought of it that way. You're welcome. So as we wrap up, what else do you want the audience to know about you? Or what would you like people to be left with if they wanna know? They don't feel powerful, they're not feeling empowered.

    What's one thing that they can do or handful to start now to, go ahead and go after where you've been after. Like, how to figure out how to travel, how to figure out how to find their path and to be excited about it,

    I would say, because I can only base this on personal experience. Not necessarily from this omnipotent point of wisdom.

    But go out and if you don't see the narrative that you want for yourself. In your vicinity, go seek it. Like it's out there somewhere. A similar narrative. Read books Get outside of the world that you're used to as well. I had this like really useless professor at university, but he had this one nugget that stuck with me and I actually, it pains me to even admit that.

    Because apart from that, he was like completely useless. But he was like, if you're gonna design a chair, don't look at other chairs. Go to the opera, walk a different route home from work, cook a meal you've never cooked before, but don't please don't look at other chairs if you wanna make a chair.

    Because you're only gonna be informed by what you already know. And so I would say be hungry for other points of view and be hungry for other stories. I love listening to The Moth, a podcast. Yep. People sharing stories. I love reading memoirs. I love re listening to the podcast, how I built This, one of my favorites.

    You're favorites. Feeling stuck in like how to get from here to there. Like that. I love that podcast because it's everybody who's like a mogul in their world who's yeah, there was times when I felt flat on my face and we didn't know how to feed ourselves. Like for me, gathering those other stories of people who seem to have similar goals and ideas as me, and knowing that's one way it could go, but not the only way really fueled me as opposed to just looking at like the viewpoint that I had from my childhood.

    And my immediate family, which is like a beautiful family, but just not like that enriched in terms of all the other ways that life can go. And so yeah, be hungry for the other ways of doing things and seek out examples, just if nothing. Other than to bolster your confidence that there are other ways of doing it.

    I think that's great advice and a perfect way to wrap up our first podcast. Really thank you so much for being a Yes. Based on a random email that you got from a stranger. Awesome. So thank you for being one of those people and for being a. Thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity and for your time and

    this space.

    This has been wonderful.

    I can now see why Adeline referred to Danna as her Canadian Oprah. Her wisdom, personal journey and self-awareness is a motivating reminder of how much our mindset, our asks, and our focus is so important. I'm left remembering to be courageous in my dreams and the design of my own life. We often get afraid to dream what we really want and to take actions towards what we really want as well, because we're worried it won't actually happen.

    This episode is a great reminder to be brave and dream big and create bigger. Thank you, Danna, for a great conversation and for who you are in the world. To connect, support and follow Danna, you can follow her on Instagram at Danna rambl. You can visit her website, dan rambler.com. Remember to see our show notes for all correct spellings and all of the notes about this episode.

    If you'd like to support the work that we're doing here at Powerful Ladies, there's a couple of ways you can do that. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere you listen to podcast. Leave a review on any of these platforms. Share the show with all the powerful ladies and gentlemen in your life.

    Join our Patreon account. Check out the website, the powerful ladies.com. To hear more inspiring stories. Get practical tools to be your most powerful. Get 15% off your first order in The Powerful Ladies Shop, or donate to the Powerful Ladies one Day of Giving campaign. And of course, follow us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies for show notes and to get the links to the books, podcasts, and people we talk about, go to the powerful ladies.com.

    I'd like to thank our producer, composer, and audio engineer Jordan Duffy. She's one of the first female audio engineers in the podcasting world, if not the first. And she also happens to be the best. We're very lucky to have her. She's a powerful lady in her own right, in addition to taking over the podcasting world.

    She's a singer songwriter working on our next album, and she's one of my sisters, so it's amazing to be creating this with her, and I'm so thankful that she finds time in her crazy busy schedule to make this happen. It's a testament to her belief in what we're creating through Powerful Ladies, and I'm honored that she shares my vision.

    Thank you all so much for listening. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. I can't wait for you to hear it. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.

 
 

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Follow her on Instagram @dana_ramler

Vist her Website: www.danaramler.com

Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud

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