Real Change with Whitney Freya

george grombacher 0:00
Come on

What do I put? This is George G and the time is right. welcome today’s guests strong, powerful Whitney Freya. Welcome back Whitney. Hey, George, how are you? I am doing awesome. Winnie is an inspired living expert. She’s speaker and artist and an author helping women discover their personal magic. Her newest book is 30 days to unstoppable. Would he tell us a little about your personal life some more about your work and why you do what you do?

Whitney Freya 0:41
Well, I live out in the wild west in northeast Oregon, surrounded by mountains and canyons and

I go backcountry skiing, paragliding. Like if I’m not painting in the studio, or, you know, taking care of business, I am out in it, which I love. I grew up in Chicago. So it’s kind of a dream come true to be out here living in such beautiful natural surroundings. So that is a huge passion of mine. I started teaching online in 2009 when I knew I was moving from Nashville, Tennessee, to a county of 7000 people. So So that’s been interesting, because you know, back in the day, painting classes, were just step by step photos.

And so that’s been a beautiful evolution. And I have three kids who are all out of the house as of this September, so I’m enjoying the empty nester stage. And, you know, just watching the kids make their way in the world. And, you know, probably most parents can identify they I was like the crazy mom, I remember my son telling me, Mom, what you do isn’t real. And now they get it. And how fun is that? Right?

Unknown Speaker 1:57
Well, there

george grombacher 1:57
were they referred to and they said, what you do isn’t real?

Whitney Freya 2:02
Well, I think, I mean, I didn’t ask him to elaborate too much cuz I kind of wanted to

smack him. Yeah, you know, big tall kid. Right? So, anyway, but I think it was, you know, because I’m talking about self awareness and consciousness and spirituality and in the subtle, invisible realms, and, you know, really, his comment is reflective of how, for a lot of us and our culture and society, it’s, it’s not validated, to spend time and money on self care. You know, if you said in a lot of groups, like, Oh, I think I’m going to stay home and just be quiet with myself and, you know, meditate or, you know, just reflect on the week set some intentions, you know, most people would be like, okay, yeah, whatever, you know, woowoo, or, you know, all that. And the reality is, you know, our sense of personal well, being our level of, you know, where we are on the happiness to depress scale is, is everything. And I think we know that and, and, of course, the last couple years, we’ve seen all of that really become more amplified people that have struggled emotionally, you know, it’s just gotten more intense. So, I love having this conversation with people and and I have the conversation through the painting. So the painting practice is the modality we use, it’s where you go to have the experience where you get to develop your own ability to witness yourself and to observe, like, wow, I’m being really critical of myself, or my perfectionist is not letting me just enjoy the painting, which, logically they understand. It doesn’t really matter, right? Like no one I work with is an artist, quote, unquote, you know, most of them painted in junior high or used to paint or have never painted. But when you do something that you’ve never done before, especially when you’ve told yourself, I can’t do it, I’m not good at that. It’s incredibly transformative. And the way our brain our brain works is our unconscious mind chunks information. So as soon as you prove to yourself that you can do something you’ve been telling yourself, you can’t do, you automatically start reevaluating all the other things that you’ve told yourself, you can’t do so people end up making some powerful life changes that often are very subtle, you know, but lead to huge changes in their quality of life because things aren’t stressing them out as much. They’re much more in a state of allowance, you know, allowing other people’s opinions, allowing, you know, news that disrupts their routine, whether it’s I got to find a new doctor or I twist my ankle or lost my job. You know, they’re immediately because that creative mind is engaged. They’re immediately looking for the possibilities.

which is what our creative brain does, we all have it, you know, creativity is actually more like our life force our prana. And it’s been relegated to, you know, the Martha Stewart’s and the little kids and, you know, don’t do it unless you can make enough money because you’re not going to get benefits doing your art, you know, stuff like that. So. So I love what I do, I love having this conversation and then giving people an experience they can very easily have on their own at home, and get the same kind of benefits as meditation,

or a deep spiritual practice something like that. I love it. So I am super happy the way things have worked out over the year.

george grombacher 5:44
Well, the next time you talk to the kid that said, what you do isn’t real, you tell him that, that he or she is wrong. That is real.

Whitney Freya 5:52
Oh, now at school, he’s like, if you can’t talk to my mom, you want to talk to me? So he’s, he’s fully embraced. Nice. He loves it. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

george grombacher 6:03
So I was I was just I just thought about and wrote about this morning. Well, I remembered and wrote down the quote, that majority of human beings problems are based on their inability to sit quietly in a room by by ourselves. And it’s kind of what what you’re talking about. And I said, you know, I’m asserting that we all need to be able to start doing that, and to push back a little bit or pull back and figure out what’s what’s most important to us. And stop letting so much in. Because it’s all making us crazy.

Whitney Freya 6:38
Exactly. And you think about where we are right now, this pandemic was a big, huge global, everyone, go to your rooms, be quiet, and be yourself and figure things out, because you know, this world is screaming for transformation, and a new way of perceiving and being and doing in this world. And that’s the best way to do it. So, you know, from one perspective, the pandemic has been some really powerful medicine, that clearly, you know, runs the full spectrum and sensitive to people that have suffered tremendously. But the world has needed its big timeout. And we’ll see, I don’t think we’ve got it quite yet. Hopefully, soon, we’ll get the message. How

george grombacher 7:23
funny what a great way to think about it, that everybody got sent back to their room to think about everything. But I think unfortunately, Whitney is that too many of us, brought our phones with us to our rooms. So we weren’t doing necessarily the work. We were just alone. But, you know, a weapon of mass destruction was still pumping information to us. So yes, so let’s let’s let’s talk about or maybe give people some practical tools, on on what we can be doing when we are in our room, by ourselves quietly?

Whitney Freya 8:00
Absolutely. Yeah. So in 2019, I literally received the inspiration for my next book that’s out now 30 days to unstoppable be the dream made visible. And I created an online program for it, to hold me accountable, which is a great way to get a book written. And so I started teaching it in January 2020. And I told people I go this is the gonna be the new like, 401k like, how do you feel safe, secure and loved in this new world? And when the external world, you know, is throwing you curveballs? How do you stay? Not only happy, but how do you stay centered? How do you stay empowered. So we’re having this conversation as the pandemic breaks onto the scene, and we all just looked at each other, like, holy cow. So for me, I tap into new paradigm teachings like that’s where my mind is constantly going, like, there’s got to be another way. It’s as if we’re operating internally on a old operating system. Like imagine pulling a computer out from 10 years ago, and trying to do what you do on a computer. Now, it would not work, right? So that’s where we are emotionally, spiritually, energetically. For many of us, we are still operating from what was talked about around the dinner table when we were kids and what everybody else was, you know, how the school system program does, you know, just fill in the right answer, and then you get the grade and then you, you know, get to the good college or the job and then you’ll be fine, right? And that’s not the world we live in anymore. So this book was given to me to share a new way of caring for ourselves as vibrational beings is energy. And from a scientific perspective, you know, any physicist will tell you we’re all energy everything is energy, and energy exists before matter. Energy exists before matter. So to care for for ourselves the most proactively, we want to care for the energy that is within us around us what we’re tapping into, you know, imagine that you have all these like outlets coming out of you. And the socket, you plug into the juice you’re drawing from determines your frequency determines your power determines your level of vibration. And we all know, you know, you plug into the news headlines and go, ah, you know, vibration just goes down, down, down. And disease you know, physical disease is widely documented to be the final manifestation of dis ease or discordance that’s been in your life, causing you stress causing you to feel, you know, like you’re not in the right place, or not doing the right thing, or you’ve been trying to, you know, live up to daddy’s expectations, or your mom’s or your grandma’s or whatever, and taking things off the list. But meanwhile, it’s not fulfilling yourself. And so it will finally manifest in your body as the, you know, what I call the cosmic two by four, because then we tend to listen, right? You know, we don’t listen, when we get those thoughts like, oh, this doesn’t feel right, or I don’t know, you know, we procrastinate. And it’s fine. I’ve been there done that, you know, we all do it. And I’ve gotten the cosmic two by fours. And they’re interesting. I wouldn’t choose them all the time. So I’m, I’m interested in helping people just attune to and develop a sensitivity, a way to communicate with other aspects of themselves and learn how to care for yourself in such a way that literally no matter what is going on in the external world, you will be fine. Because you’re cultivating and tapping into an energy a level of vibration. That because energy behaves by the law that like attracts, like, anything coming into your awareness has to match or raise your vibration. So even the tough, hard, you know, I lost my job, you know, the economy’s tanking this global pandemic, you know, how do I reconcile this? Oh, this is a great opportunity for me to spend time alone and quiet. You know, I’ve had clients, women who are like, I didn’t realize I’ve spent so much of my life, traveling around taking care of my kids hosting holiday parties, helping everybody with everything I’ve put me last for decades. And now it’s I’ve got all this time for me, and I’m learning about me. And I’m learning to say yes to what really feels good to me and no to what doesn’t, you know, and the ripple effects of that are tremendous. absolutely tremendous. So, so I love this conversation. And it’s very upright now. And whenever we’re in these stages of,

of, you know, pick a word, you know, of upheaval, of change of transition, the possibility for change is right there, like we’re on such a threshold, because, you know, there’s no perception, well, there’s very little, at least for most of us, that we can go back to the way things were right or go back to, you know, the way it was when our parents were younger, or whatever, like we are in a whole new world, it’s going to continue to change just that much more rapidly. And how can we adapt with it? We have to learn how to adapt with it. It’s like, I’m seeing a surfer, you know, and it’s like, the waves are getting bigger and bigger. And it’s like, okay, get a bigger board and learn how to ride those waves. And that’s what we’re, that’s the goal. Yeah, yeah. I

george grombacher 13:44
appreciate that. When, when when things are going okay. It’s it’s it’s, it’s, it’s it’s hard to make that change until we do get hit by the cosmic two by four. And when things are turbulent, like we’ve been experiencing for what feels like the past several 20 years or whatever it’s been and foreseeable future. That really is it’s it’s such a wonderful opportunity to be taking that step back and sort of reassessing and, and questioning why it is that my operating system is the way that it is and the potential to be reprogramming it.

Whitney Freya 14:18
Yeah, you know, they say in certain teachings, I think Access Consciousness says, I think it’s even more, but at least 90% of the thoughts and beliefs in your head are not your own. You know, so a lot of us are telling ourselves, you know, oh, I can’t do that. I shouldn’t do that. Even things like Oh, I’m not good at that. A lot of that is just things we absorbed from others often from decades ago. But we’re still defining ourselves by other people’s stories or expectations, or, you know, just the way the school system is laid out. You know, if you can sit in rows and be quiet for 45 minutes at a time and come up with the right answer. You’re golden, but if you can’t You’re a problem child, you know, there’s something wrong with you. And that’s just not true. There’s so many different ways that we think and create and perceive and understand. And that’s a beautiful thing. But it that has not been widely encouraged. I work with a woman who’s taken my certification course, who I’ve known for 25 years, she came to my art center, way back, and she’s been a trauma therapist and specializing in helping women in recovery for 25 years. And she said, people that struggle with addiction are usually highly creative. But that hasn’t been encouraged. Right? So their authentic self has been told, you know, that’s not right, that doesn’t work, you got to do this. And so that leaves them in this, you know, state of feeling very out of sorts of, you know, like wearing a mask, or, you know, not at all being in alignment with what they’re here to be and how they’re here to live. And that often leads to an addiction. And so we’re actually working with women in the online program with from the book that I am the unstoppable dream for women in recovery, and the results, avenge tremendous, you know, honoring people, like you came here to wrestle with this addiction, because you wanted to learn the lesson and you wanted to make it non negotiable. Right? So it’s like, okay, yeah, I want to, I want to make sure that I live my most creative, authentic life that is in alignment. And heck, yeah, I want to come in and be the black sheep in the family. And, you know, I’m going to wrestle with these lessons and emerge, stronger, wiser, more in alignment because of it. So we really honor the women in the program and, and like you, you are advanced, like you came in to get the PhD in this, not just stick your toe in. So that’s been a really amazing experience. And again, it’s raising the vibration around recovery, you’re not broken, you’re not wrong, you’re not, you know, something to be ashamed of, there’s no guilt that, you know, anyone is imposing, or you know, like, in our model, you wouldn’t feel guilty, you would be like, Wow, this is intense, and how am I here? What am I here to learn? You know, what’s the opportunity here? And, and just, you know, with that perspective, it’s very empowering for everybody. And, you know, we all deal with that, like, how we escape, you know, what’s your escape route for things, you know, whether it’s food or wine or whatever, it’s, it’s, it’s up. And the antidote is really coming into alignment with who you are, what you want, how you want to live your life, and you giving yourself permission, no one else is gonna do it. I’m gonna do it, actually. But ultimately, you have to do it for you.

george grombacher 18:02
I love it. You said make it non negotiable. What does that mean?

Whitney Freya 18:07
Well, I mean, kind of like starting the online program to write the book. Right? So that makes it non negotiable. Like I can’t put off writing the book. If I’ve already, you know, sold. There’s a clear, there’s no backing out, right? So when a lot of the life lessons that we learned the most intense ones, you know, that involve addiction, or trauma or abuse, from a perspective, and you know, we could talk about this for days. Okay, let me phrase it a different way, all of us can look back on a part of our lives, that was immensely challenging that we wouldn’t want to do again. But we know, we learned so much from that time in our life. So we wouldn’t change it, we’re glad it’s over. We wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemies. And we learned tremendously from that experience. So, so we, I believe that we, you know, kind of create attract are open to having those experiences, because we want to learn, and we learn best through contrast. So if you want to experience you know, personal liberation and freedom, the best way to do it is to feel stuck or trapped. It’s the only way you can appreciate freedom. Right? So it’s the yin and yang, you know, principle. So it’s really embracing all of life, which, you know, is a huge teaching. I’m thinking of Byron Katie, you know, she’s her book that talks about, you know, it’s not the suffering, that’s the problem. It’s the resistance to the suffering, right, anything, it’s loving, what is her book, so thinking I shouldn’t have lost my job, I shouldn’t have this health diagnosis. That’s where more of the suffering comes from when we embrace the fact that suffering is a part of life, which this is Buddha as well. And then Look for why is suffering part of life because that’s how we learn. You know, it’s the contrast. So when you stop fighting it, surrender to it look for the silver lining. It’s not about being Pollyanna. It’s about, frankly, getting out of it as quickly as possible, right? It’s like the way out is through, you’ve run away from a problem, what does it do? keeps coming back. You can’t run away from it, you got to turn and face it, but turn and face it from a place of like pride. Like, wow, okay. Right, that whole thing like life doesn’t give you something that you can’t handle, or God doesn’t give you something you can’t handle. Okay? So if you can handle this, That’s badass. Right? Like, you have the capacity to learn this very difficult lesson. And And when we’re in those difficult lessons, that’s what makes it non negotiable. Because eventually, the pain becomes so great that we have to make the change.

george grombacher 20:58
I like it. I mean, that’s really does make sense. You know, it’s not losing my job. Yeah, bad, sucky, but the the constant continual pain is freaking out about it and stressing about it. And, yeah, apply that to really everything and the resistance that you’re putting up, which is probably keeping you from taking positive action in another way, potentially.

Whitney Freya 21:23
Yeah. And it doesn’t mean, you know, don’t feel sad, don’t feel mad, but you allow that energy to direct your attention towards what you want. Right. Another thing is, when you said, you know, I lose my job. And then you know, you compare yourself to your brother or sister who has the high paying job, and the job security or whatever, right? Like, Comparison is the thief of all joy. And so we’ve given away a lot of our power by either trying to live up to other people’s expectations, or comparing ourselves to others. And in the truth is that we’re all on our own journey, and have our own lessons to learn. And you want to really respect the journey you’re on, embrace all of it. Because there’s no, there’s no way to pick and choose. You can’t just avoid, you know, the, the dark, the light and the dark are a part of it.

george grombacher 22:21
We just got one crack at this deal. Anyway, Whitney, so we better we better run around race and, and, and, and embrace every minute of it. So.

Whitney Freya 22:30
Exactly, exactly. I love it. Yeah. I mean, you can just ask yourself, like, oh, but you know, if any of you are thinking, Yeah, but you don’t know my situation, like, here’s, here’s what my life is like. So I would invite you to say, Okay, how is that a story? And I’m not saying it’s bad or whatever. But there’s a story you’re telling yourself. We all know, you know, a million people can look at one thing, and they’ll have a different story about it. Right? So you have a story that this is bad, or wrong, or hard or insurmountable. Well, how’s that story working for you? So let’s create a story that works for you. Oh, it’s not that easy. Okay, try it. Right, prove me wrong, prove me wrong. Change your story. And it takes repetition. You know, one of the things that I do and I’m living like, a living example is, in all of my courses, we take like, the goals we have the the dreams and visions we have, sometimes we break it down to, you know, how is that red Corvette going to make me feel? What’s going to make me feel empowered, successful, energized, okay, so let’s focus on empowered, successful, energized, but we paint into a canvas, I am empowered, successful, I am, you know, energized. And then we paint over it, we paint symbols, you know, an image that represents that, and you hang it in your space. And it’s this constant reminder. So without awareness, our minds will always go to like, imagining the worst case scenario. You know, I mean, we choose to spend time stressing and worrying was imagining what you don’t want to happen happening. You could just as easily say, Okay, this is letting me know, the stress is letting me know that I don’t want this to happen. So what we’re meant to do is and say, Well, what do I want to happen? And what are all the ways I can like, kind of corral myself so that I’m spending as much time as possible focusing on what I want, rather than what I don’t want? Because where we send our attention, it grows. That’s another any physicists will tell you that as well. I love it. So how, yeah, so let’s send it towards what we want, and make it work for you. So that’s what I love to do is help people learn to focus on what you want and no one goes to a canvas but very few people, but let’s just say no one goes to the canvas, intentionally to paint something that’s Gonna make them feel stressed, worried, upset, angry, frustrated, right? They go, Oh, I saw this. I really loved it. I want to paint this. Okay, so let’s learn to do that without the canvas just in our mind because we’re painting pictures in our mind all the time. And then we’re stepping into those pictures we paint. So let’s make sure we’re painting pictures of a life the way we want it. That’s in alignment with what we desire and what we’re naturally, you know, attune to and what lights us up.

george grombacher 25:29
I love it. Whitney, thank you so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage?

Whitney Freya 25:36
Yeah, Whitney freja.com is my website and you can contact me from there. Whitney Frey on Instagram Whitney Freya canvas on Facebook to get to my business page. Just Google Whitney Freya annual. Apparently I’m the only one so super easy love that. That’s how that goes.

george grombacher 25:55
Well if you enjoyed this as much as I did, so when your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Whitney freya.com That’s why TNEYFREY a.com found on Instagram and Facebook and I will list all those in the notes of the show. Thanks. Good Whitney.

Whitney Freya 26:13
Thank you, George. And

george grombacher 26:15
until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai