Blossom Your Awesome

Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Episode #123 High On Being With Michael Grimes

May 02, 2023 Sue Dhillon Season 1 Episode 123
Blossom Your Awesome
Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Episode #123 High On Being With Michael Grimes
Show Notes Transcript

Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Episode #123 High On Being With Michael Grimes

Light Sherpa Michael Grimes joins us. Michael helps facilitate moments of revelation and joy.

He is the author of High On Being: A Trail Guide To Living Fully Alive 

To get in touch with Michael check out his instagram. 

To see more of my work  - blossomyourawesome.com

My YouTube

https://blossomyourawesome.com/mindfulness-1

Where I write and cover mindfulness and other things to help you Blossom Your Awesome.

Or follow me on instagram where I post fairly regularly and ask an inquisitive question or two weekly in hopes of getting you thinking about your life and going deeper with it.

My Instagram - i_go_by_skd

To support my work - my Patreon 

Hi there, today on the show, light Sherpa, Michael Grimes is here with us. I am so excited. Michael, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Michael Grimes (00:17.802)
Thanks for having me, Sue. It's a pleasure to see you and get to talk.

Sue Dhillon (00:21.458)
Oh, I'm so excited to have you here. Get into your story, the work you do. Talk about your book, High on Being, A Trail Guide to Living Fully Alive. I love this. Give us the back story here, how you got into this line of work.

Michael Grimes (00:40.39)
Oh, this line of work has been lifelong. I guess the backstory would go back, well, you can go back to childhood, right? But I guess it really started in my early 20s. I had a year of really intense growth where I was doing my college thesis on the downfall of the US public school system. I was playing college sports. I tore my MCL and had to have reconstructive knee surgery. I found out that one of my best friends was fooling around with my girlfriend at the time.

and my younger brother committed suicide. So that all happened within about nine months. So it just really put me deeply onto a path of self-discovery, self-work, and trying to heal all the flaws and struggles that I was experiencing. And it really got me to dive deep into my spiritual practice and my commitment to serve and support others through their struggles.

So from there, I moved into my work in education. I started working to revolutionize our education system and just supporting our ascension and our evolution, however I best could. And that willingness to serve brought me down a variety of different paths. I ended up opening the first self-discovery-based charter school in the country. I started publishing books along these lines.

and working with people of all ages. And I thought I had done all my work and was doing great and was learning and was thriving in life. I got married to an amazing woman and had two precious daughters and I'm living on the beach in my dream home and running my perfect school and doing all these great things in our community. I started a men's group that was meeting twice a month, doing incredibly deep work. I was really thriving by most measures.

And then I was essentially forced to walk away from the charter school I started. My dad was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and my marriage started to really struggle. And my wife and I ended up separating. My dad died of cancer and I left the school that I started all within a few months of each other. And so that really like thrusted me back into that work and into

Michael Grimes (03:04.87)
rediscovering myself, just going deeper into weights I was holding, experiences that I never integrated, aspects that I never fully healed, and I got brought to a new all-time low. But I had been there before in my early 20s when I experienced that first round of struggles that I explained. And so this time I knew that I had the tools and skills to rebuild.

I knew that I had been through this and I had been studying these concepts for almost 20 years by this point. And so this time, as I started to rebuild, I decided to capture the process and to just try to put it into words the best I could to help other people to go through some of these steps to really get back to that place of living fully alive. And there's a lot that goes into living fully alive. It's a complex concept.

But that was what I was trying to capture in this new book, was the steps of the healing and integration process that I went through to bring myself back to full life, where I could show up fully and serve in the ways that I'm best able to and help us to ascend and do this beautiful work and enjoy this life to its fullest ability.

Sue Dhillon (04:29.594)
that Michael. I mean I commend you for the work you're doing and what you've overcome and being this you know carrying the light for people. So talk to us about this. I mean do you feel called to do this work you're now doing?

Michael Grimes (04:50.61)
it's why like I don't I can't do things I'm not called to do. I think when you start to learn to listen to yourself you know what you're called to do and what's right and what's in alignment for you and what's not. And so now I just stay listening to what I'm called to do and there's projects and opportunities that present themselves all the time and you sit with it and ask yourself is this a project I should take on right now?

Is this a way that's meant for me to be serving? And sometimes it's a no, but whenever something is a yes, then I lean into it. And I, yeah, so I get to serve in a variety of different ways now. And I think they're all in full alignment with who I am and my skills and my passions and in ways that are serving me while serving and supporting others.

Sue Dhillon (05:42.434)
I love that. Now, Michael, so your definition, give us your definition of fully alive. Like, what does that mean to you?

Michael Grimes (05:53.254)
Yeah, there's so much to it and I could go through different aspects of it, but I think it would start in order to live fully alive. There has to be an element of peace with the past when we're carrying weights and burdens and struggles around with us. That's heavy. And if you're feeling those stresses, those anxieties, fears that weighs you down. So it's really hard to be fully alive when we're carrying a lot of excess weight. And so I think

One of those first elements would be clearing. I think there's an element in living fully alive of being in integrity with your passions, with your purpose of doing things that you're called to as you were just referencing. And then enjoyment and play and laughter and smiling and doing things that fill your cup. And once we get filled, filled with our self love, and that's another huge piece of it is that.

ability to truly love ourselves, fill our cup first. And once we start overflowing, then we're able to love and support others and this incredible planet that we live on. And we're able to start doing those things that allow us to thrive, where we feel most alive, where we're most excited, engaged. Engaged, I think is a good word for it, aware and presence when we're fully present, when we're fully aware.

in order to be fully present and fully aware, fully engaged, you're not worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow. You're not upset about what happened yesterday. You're there in the present. And in that place, we're incredibly powerful. And there's so much that we can bring. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are carrying weight of the past and anxiety of tomorrow. And so it's not as prevalent in today's society as it could be.

to be fully aware, fully present, fully alive right now. But I think that's a nice goal for us to strive towards.

Sue Dhillon (07:58.614)
Mm-hmm. And now Michael, you know, as you know, so many people struggle with this, right, and being fully present and not carrying burdens from the past. What do you attribute for yourself being able to live in this space of heightened awareness and be more present? What do you attribute that to for yourself personally?

Michael Grimes (08:24.739)
Um, for me it started with doing my personal work.

Sitting in honest reflection with myself and getting in touch with those aspects that were holding me back, that were carrying weight or frustration or anger, and going through those steps of integration, of finding peace and understanding a why, and looking at and owning the aspects of it that were my responsibility and what I can change.

and what I can do differently. And so I think that self-work, that going into yourself, being honest with yourself, and then not just being honest and seeing those parts, but having that willingness and that dedication to then address it and do that hard work to change it as opposed to just staying in it.

Sue Dhillon (09:25.814)
Oh, I love that. And, you know, I feel, and I'm sure you'll affirm this for me, but, you know, we all have struggles and challenges in life, but you had a series of like really, really hard things, like very traumatic things. And that generally is the catalyst on many occasions that leads someone like yourself, right, on this inward, deep, self-explorative journey. So,

Sue Dhillon (09:55.598)
Talk to us about that. Like kind of, you know, after trauma and how you decided to kind of start going deeper. I'm sure there was a lot of fear and uncertainty.

Michael Grimes (10:09.558)
I think there was more fear for me in staying in that status quo and continuing to experience these pains and these struggles and these sufferings. I knew that I did not want to continue experiencing that kind of pain. And I knew that, or I accepted that I have control over my reality, that my thoughts, my beliefs, the energy that I hold, the energy that I show up in the world with creates my reality.

And if there's aspects of my reality that are not feeling fully alive, that aren't feeling fully aligned, that don't feel like they're supporting me to thrive the way I want to, then I have the ability to change those aspects. And so for me, it starts there with my mindset, with my beliefs, with my, like I said, all those pieces of the past I was holding.

and working through those. And there's a physical release that often needs to happen of crying. If you look at the animal kingdom, when animals experience a trauma, they shake after, and they physically, viscerally shake that energy off themselves. Humans don't so much do that shaking things that animals do, but we naturally cry and purge, and we have other ways of releasing. And so I think there's like a physical release aspect.

that I went through, there's an emotional release aspect that you go through. And then there's like mental reprogramming, re-changing the way that we think and the beliefs that we hold. And it's a combination of all these aspects of ourself that come together. And so I feel like sometimes people have a tendency to focus on just shifting one aspect of themselves or just focusing on changing the physical or just focusing on changing the mental or emotional.

And for me, they're all really tied together and I work on all of them. I go into all those different aspects of the self in this new book. And I think, yeah, in order to be fully alive, we need to address each of them. And there's different layers we can go through mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, to keep shifting ourself to experience these upgrades.

Sue Dhillon (12:30.242)
Mm, I love that. So something I wanna touch on here with you, Michael, is so I love that you're, and I hate to make this like a sexist thing, right? It's not like male versus female, but I love the fact that you as a man are able to be so expressive and open about crying and vulnerability and really getting in touch with that in order.

to go deeper and heal and come out the other side, right? In this powerful way. So was there in the beginning, because I feel like a lot of times there's stigma for men. So in the beginning, did you have resistance to really feeling that hurting part of yourself or what was that like for you? And then what is your guidance? We'll get into that in a moment, but what was that? Well, let's just start with that. What was that like for you?

Michael Grimes (13:27.826)
Again, at the beginning I said, you can go back to childhood. I was blessed to have incredible parents who are not like most parents. And so I was born into a family that had more connection to some of these maybe higher vibrational concepts. And we were very spiritually connected. And I talked to my angels from a young age. And so that was always more accepted than the norm in my house. So I never felt a...

shame around that. I played college sports and I was the guy on the college sports teams that didn't really fit in with the others because I was vulnerable and I would cry and be emotional. So that's been natural for me. That wasn't hard for me. There's this other layer to it that I would like to share though that I think does touch on what you're speaking to here.

I referenced earlier that I started a men's group during this phase. And that was about seven years ago now, I think, when we started it. And I put together this group of just really powerful, inspiring men. And for a lot of them, this was entirely new to be vulnerable and to explore the depths of ourselves and to open up with other men. But in

holding that container that we've been holding now for years, we've all had the opportunity to really go deep within together and support each other through that process. And that has been one of the most profound supporters for my personal work and on my journey is having that group of men to lean on, to talk to about things that other men don't often get to talk to men about. A lot of times I think

men feel isolated or like they have nobody to talk to about these things and and having that support group having other people there that you can lean on and can talk to and open up with and cry with and be vulnerable with and share the struggles and the beauties and our successes that's been just huge for me so I yeah I think that relates to what you're speaking to there.

Sue Dhillon (15:50.286)
Hmm, it does. Yeah, absolutely. And again, just, you know, commending you for starting a men's group and being open and vocal about this and the power of expressing vulnerability. I just think it's so awesome. So for those and, you know, sex aside, like male, female, anyone who's afraid of kind of, you know, being more vulnerable or letting it out.

What is your guidance to those people? How can they get more in touch with their deeper self?

Michael Grimes (16:28.57)
I think that so many modalities and pathways, I think the easiest, most universally accessible way is meditation. When we turn off our brain and sit with ourself in silence, we have the opportunity to feel things and experience aspects of ourselves that are otherwise maybe suppressed and hidden that we ignore or deny. But in that meditative silent place of stillness,

these feelings, these energies, these emotions that are within us have an opportunity to come to the surface. We can also meet those pieces through different modalities of therapy and like internal family services are, is that what it is? I did like a weekend retreat with that where they really bring you deep into this stuff. I work with plant medicine.

church and we do amazing work helping people to go into depths of themselves with plant medicine. And so I think we live in a world now where we have all different modalities that we can use to help us get more in touch with the stuff that's inside us. That it's always there, we're just not always aware of it. It's taking the time and the place and setting the intention to go in and to sit with those pieces.

and see them and greet them and understand them and feel them and then allow ourselves to start moving through them.

Sue Dhillon (18:05.774)
Hmm. Oh, that's beautiful. Now something I want to touch on about your story that I think is so cool, Michael, is that you and your wife had kind of, you know, we're up against some tough times and then you separated for a couple of years. And I just think this speaks volumes to your evolution, right? I talked to therapists and stuff on the show all the time. And a lot of times it's like people, couples go to therapy and it's like, oh, well he does this and she does that.

Right, so this speaks to this notion of being able to tap inward to really kind of work on you, fix you and then be able to come back powerfully together. Like there's gotta be some insight here for everyone out there struggling. Like spill the beans here, give us the secret. What did you do? What are people missing? What do they need to know? Ha ha.

Michael Grimes (18:57.682)
Ah, well it's really easy to blame other people for the struggles that we're experiencing in life, right? But that doesn't help anything. That doesn't change anything that you have responsibility of. So I think the more honest we can be with ourselves, the easier it is to make those changes. It kind of has to start with that self-responsibility and that ownership for the pieces that are yours.

So a lot of people I think struggle to get to that part where that like that that's I feel that basic entry level door is like oh this is as much mine as it is anybody else's and Once you open that door then you can start seeing well, which of these pieces are yours and what do you need to change? Where are you struggling? What needs to be shifted? What needs to be changed?

How are you not being an integrity? How are you not being who you are striving to be? And so that awareness, self-awareness is such a huge starting point, but that's just a starting point is then doing the work to make these changes. And so that happens in a lot of different ways. Again, mentally, I think you have these different levels of it where it's sometimes stored in your emotional, physical body. Sometimes it's mental stuff.

Sometimes it's trauma from other parts of ourselves that we've hidden away. And so the more we can go inward into these different aspects of ourself, to address, to sit with, and greet these flawed pieces, the more we can see them and understand them, the more we can start making conscious action to change them in our present life now. And...

And so for me, it's like any single time I get triggered, I know that trigger is a pathway down a piece of unintegrated energy. There's something that's still I'm holding onto that's causing me to get triggered by what my wife says, or the way that she did this, or the way that my daughter does this. Whatever that trigger is, is something in me, it's not something they're doing that is wrong or bad or flawed.

Michael Grimes (21:22.95)
It's my response, my reaction to it is where something's off. And so I really keep, um, like heightened antennas out for that feeling of being triggered and I see them all as a pathway, a trail for us to then walk down and explore until we get to the end of that trail and find what it is that's causing that, that trigger. Um,

And then hopefully we get eventually to a point one day where we've walked down all those trails and we've found what's laying at the end of each of them. And we integrate it into our life so that we can eliminate them. I haven't got to that point yet, but there's far less of them now than there was in the past. And the big ones that continued to show up and cause problems. I've been able to get to the roots of some of them and understand what was causing them and what lied at.

again in those roots and work through it so that those don't come up anymore. So I had stuff from childhood that I held on to. I had traumas and these different pieces of the past that would just flare up. And often people have these things that continue to show up and they continue to mess up their life and they continue to cause problems, but they're not owning it as a piece of themselves that can be worked on and improved.

And so I think it's gaining the awareness of them. It's having a desire and a willingness to shift them. And then in ownership, this isn't my wife's problem. This isn't her fault. This is me. This is my work. This is my stuff that I need to work on. And it takes two people. If I was willing to do that work and she wasn't, then we'd come back together and still have these issues.

But I think in taking separation in space, it allowed us both to really see the pieces that were ours, that we were struggling with. And then it allowed us to come back together in a new energetic space with a new sense of like, re-found love and passion and connection and understanding and new goals and...

Michael Grimes (23:45.214)
Yeah, I think when you're in it, sometimes in those struggles, in this dynamic that's not working, it's really hard sometimes to make a shift. Sometimes you need to change, change something in order to start making bigger changes internally. And, um, and so for me and for my wife, us separating, um, was the best thing. It was the scariest thing. It was, uh, there was a lot of like.

fear around that and I didn't know if it was going to work out at times. And I'm grateful that we went down that path and we're able to take that space and come back together in the new way that we have. Our relationship's been better than it's ever, than it had ever been. And I think it's due to the personal work we've done and the ability to come back together in a new fresh space.

Sue Dhillon (24:41.07)
Wow, that is so powerful, Michael. I just, I think that's so amazing. And you're just shedding so much light for people with these insights, right? Because not everyone, like you say, it's just a series of like the having the awareness, taking the space, doing the work, and then, you know, reinvigorating it for something better. And it's just got you really are what you preach.

Michael Grimes (25:10.57)
Try.

Sue Dhillon (25:10.75)
You embody it. That's amazing. I love that. So now, what about some practical guidance for people who are stuck? Because what I'm gaining from you, and I believe this to be true, and you're a living example of this, is that there is always room for improvement. We really do have the potential to change. I hate it when I hear people say, oh, people can't change. I believe that we're so capable. And...

We can change, right? So what is your practical guidance for someone who's stuck and needs to change or needs to do better?

Michael Grimes (25:51.134)
Well, as I said before, I think it has to come from a desire to. You need to have that intrinsic motivation because changing isn't easy. Doing personal work isn't hard. Going in and confronting your demons is not for the lighthearted. There's a intensity and a difficulty in doing that deep personal work. And so if you're, if you don't see how it's

showing up in your life, creating discord and disharmony, you aren't gonna want to, and you're not gonna be able to or be willing to. So I think that first element there is see, like have a vision and a dream of what your life could be. And then truthfully and honestly look at if the life you're living is the life that you dream of living.

and the life that you want to be living. And if not, what do you have the ability to change? How can you make shifts and upgrades to move more toward living that life that you dream of? And so that desire, that personal intrinsic motivation, I think is so paramount for doing this work.

From there, concrete steps. I think meditation, we hear so much about it, but for me, that's the biggest. And having a consistent practice with it benefits us in so many aspects of our life. And so I feel like that's a really nice starting point that is universally accessible for anybody and everybody.

Michael Grimes (27:49.59)
From there, then it's like you start getting into all these other modalities and so for me like having that men's group has been huge and we've been helping other men start groups with these similar pillars and And it's becoming more of a thing like men's groups are starting to become popular women's groups have been around for I feel like forever Women have been doing that but men are starting to acknowledge that they need to be doing this as well

This isn't just for females and women to be doing this work. And so like having a support network, having other people to be moving through your journey with to lean on and talk to and share, and that can be incredibly helpful. I've seen incredible benefits in some of the plant teachers and they can help us address and access

parts that can be really hard to find on our own. And so I think there's incredible teaching and wisdom in some of our plants. I think that there's different forms of therapy and counseling that can be so helpful. And not all of those therapy or counseling modalities will resonate with everybody, but finding one that does work for you and resonate with you.

I used to think that, because I had been reading all the spiritual texts for 20, 30 years now, and had been doing this work for a while, that I had really understood all the concepts, and I didn't need somebody else. I didn't need a master teacher or somebody to help me. I didn't need a counselor or a therapist. And as I started working with different people, I realized that they're able to reflect and...

ask you questions to bring you into parts of yourself that we just have sometimes a blind spot to. And so I think the answer to that for me is that there isn't one correct path for everybody. Everybody needs to find the path that works for them and use the modalities that work for them. And we're blessed to be in this world now where there is such a variety of these healing modalities of these options that we can lean into. And

Michael Grimes (30:12.454)
I think I encourage people to try things. And I like to try everything. I dabble and I've tried, I think, everything that's out there. I've done electric stim work, and I've done like the ice bath, breath work things, and I've done intensive weekends and all the different plants. And there's just such a variety of options we have today. And they each have the potential to tap us in to different parts of ourself.

and to see different aspects of this diverse, dynamic world that we live in. And it feels like the more of the modalities we try, the more different pieces of ourselves we can start to work through. And if you piece enough of those different chunks together, you start to fill this puzzle in and it all starts to make a little bit more sense for you.

Sue Dhillon (31:04.978)
Oh, I love that. That is such awesome practical guidance. I just, and again, Michael, I can just sense and know that you're doing this work and you have, and this idea of like kind of, you know, with therapy or something where we don't see certain parts of ourselves, but having someone kind of help bring that to the fore in an objective way, right? Where it's kind of like we see

see it and can introspect on that. So that's amazing. Now, you know, so one of your ideas here is this notion and I hear this a lot and then I'm always and I get excited about it, but then I'm like, I get less excited because then I see other stuff. But this idea of this massive like shift in consciousness, I mean, is this really happening? Like, what are your thoughts on this?

Michael Grimes (32:03.686)
Oh, I like that question. I published my first book 18 years ago. It was called America's Awakening. And it was shortly after that first round of difficulty I went through in life. And I started driving across the country, looking for groups of people and looking for signs that this awakening was happening. I ended up settling into post-Katrina, New Orleans. I got there right after Hurricane Katrina.

And so it was just a blank slate. Everything was wiped out. And people were showing up with these new progressive concepts and ideas of these new ways that the city could be rebuilt and this new level of consciousness that can be brought to it. And I started to see like, yeah, this is happening. There is a shift happening. I tried to quantify it. I was like, how could we measure this? How could we prove?

that there is an awakening happening. And so the two metrics that I came up with at the time were daily yoga and meditation practice and like some type of conscious eating, plant-based diet. And I was like, those are slightly quantifiable. And so if you look at the data in those, there's now over, it's like up to 13, almost 14%.

of Americans have a daily yoga and meditation practice, and we're up to like 12% are eating plant-based. That was a year or two ago was the last I looked. So it might even be higher now. And in like the early 2000s, those numbers are down around 4%. And so if there is any type of direct correlation between a daily yoga meditation practice and a plant-based diet, which I don't know if there is a correlation between those two metrics.

in an awakening happening. But based on those two metrics, we can see that there is growth happening. It's more a felt sense of these types of conversations that I've been having for 20 years. I couldn't find people to have these conversations with 20 years ago. Now you walk down the street and they're happening. And I overhear these nuggets of wisdom that people are sharing. Or you open up your...

Michael Grimes (34:23.838)
Instagram reels and people are speaking this profound wisdom that we used to only have a handful of books that spoke that wisely. And so just from a subjective level of just living in this world, it is now so much more abundant than it was. These are common dialogues now. These are conversations that people are having.

there is a curiosity. More people are asking me questions about this stuff. They're like, hey dude, 20 years ago, you sounded kind of weird, but now I'm really curious about the stuff you've been talking about. And so I think we can feel it, right? We feel this shift that's happening. We see it, there's more awareness. At the same time, like you said, it feels just as much sometimes, I'm like, what are we doing? How do we not see this?

Sue Dhillon (35:15.587)
Thank you.

Michael Grimes (35:17.086)
What is going on people? And so I think sometimes like I used to really push for this shift to happen. I wanted to expedite the process. I wanna just like throw everybody in the wagon and be like, let's go guys, we're going to the light. And it was hard for me to accept that change is slow and that things happen in their own divine timing. And we can't force it.

Sue Dhillon (35:32.718)
Thank you.

Michael Grimes (35:46.234)
But we can continue to do our part. And we can continue to share our message, to shine our light, and to show up and support however we can. And in doing that, I'm seeing it happening more and more and more in my life, in the life of my friends, and in the world around me. There definitely is a shift happening. Is it as fast as I would have liked? No, it's been slow, but it is starting to grow more rapidly, it feels. It feels like the past

year or two, there has been some exponential growth that I'm really excited for. And there's still plenty of things that have me shaking my head, and I'm still amazed at how much it feels we're stuck in the past sometimes. But I think from the way that we see ourselves, the way that we see our interactions and our relationship to others, and to the way that we see ourselves in relation to the world around us, there is a shift in our consciousness and our awareness that's happening.

And I'm really encouraged and inspired for where this is gonna bring us in the next few years.

Sue Dhillon (36:50.402)
Oh, I love that. That makes me feel better. I'm going to keep believing that, but you're so right. And I so I see it as well. And again, I think like you, it's probably like, I want it to be bigger and faster than it is, but it is definitely happening. And it's so amazing that there are people like you helping facilitate it and kind of, you know, in your own little world doing your

Michael Grimes (36:54.931)
Yeah.

Sue Dhillon (37:17.654)
and leading others to the light. So a couple of things, Michael. So first of all, you have been so awesome and so amazing and have had so many just incredible insights. And I just wanna thank you so much for your time today.

Michael Grimes (37:34.442)
Thank you. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Sue Dhillon (37:37.386)
Oh, Yassie, well, you've been awesome. And I know people are going to have so many great takeaways. Now, in closing, if there were one message, your hope for everyone, what is that closing message you'd like to leave us with?

Michael Grimes (37:58.477)
I think it's what we were just talking about. I used to think that...

Michael Grimes (38:06.538)
I had this drive to help everybody to do this work, to make these shifts, to live fully alive. And as I tried to force it upon others when I was younger, I realized how true the old stereotype is of be the change and how powerful our energy is.

and how much it really is about us doing our work to be the change. And I can't yell at the government and blame them or anybody else I wanna blame. When my wife and I are struggling, I could try to blame her, that isn't gonna change it. Blaming the government isn't gonna change it and blaming the pharmaceutical industry isn't gonna change it and blaming the Federal Reserve isn't gonna change it.

but I can change things within me that do change the world around me. And my energy does vibrate into the world. And the more we can raise our vibration individually, the more it raises collectively because it is all tied. And I think the message is that, like we really are the change.

and it's doing our own personal work to be that change and to be that light and to shine it for others. I can't force anybody else to do anything, but I can show up with as much love and light as possible. And that is going to have an effect on other people and on the world around me. And I think that goes for every single one of us. So it's like if we wanna change something, we literally all just change it and then it's changed.

And if everybody made that change, then that change is made collectively. But the only one of that collective that we have any control over is our own vessel, ourself. So I think that's really where it lies. That's where the beauty is, and that's where our real work is.

Sue Dhillon (40:16.327)
That was beautiful. That was such a powerful close. Michael, you've been so awesome. Thank you so much.

Michael Grimes (40:24.278)
Thank you, Sue. It was a pleasure.

Sue Dhillon (40:26.614)
Thank you.