The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #338 - Cortney McDermott

TRANSCRIPT

 Cortney McDermott
and we now know right through epigenetics that we have this signaling capability. If I have certain things that are showing up that are recurring in my life, am I aware that there's a belief in a behavioral pattern that is reinforcing the experience that I'm having?

Or does it just seem like it's happening to me? The process of observation becomes this sort of game. You're still an active participant, but from the mindset of I'm not that, and yet I'm all of it.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying here in. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Friends, what a beautiful, inspiring, incandescent conversation I had today with Courtney McDermott. I love how she bridges concepts, which might seem a little bit quote woo woo when it comes to attracting what you want in life, fulfilling your life goals, all the things with clinical supportive science. She is beyond brilliant and an incredible case study of how when you give yourself permission to do some very certain things, you can truly manifest what you want in life. In today's conversation, we talk about the difference between conscious versus unconscious versus subconscious beliefs and how they're driving your life, how to reclaim your time and distinguish between urgent versus important things. The profound power of laughing and yawning, how to hack your email habits, why your reticular activating system makes you only see what you want to see, the importance of becoming lovable and so much more.

Definitely do not hesitate and get her book. Give yourself permission now. The show notes for today's episode will be at Melanie Avalon.com slash permission. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group. I have biohackers intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love and then check out my Instagram. Find the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things without further ado. Please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Courtney McDermott.

Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. It is with a beautiful, profound, stunning author, actually not just an author. She's a bestselling author, a TEDx speaker. She is a master of science from the London School of Economics. She's had incredible roles, including an executive at Vanity Fair Corporation, vice president at Sustainability Partners Inc. She runs her own businesses. She inspires people all over. She has multiple books and she is here today for her book, Give Yourself Permission. Be confident, be happy, be you. Master the habits to transform your life, your personal development, confidence, self-improvement, business skills, and winning leadership.

Melanie Avalon
And that is Courtney McDermott. And friends, I really, really am looking forward to this conversation. Reading her book was so eye-opening when it comes to our personal beliefs and paradigms and how we view the world and how that is literally affecting how our life manifests. The book, I mean, we're going to touch on this in today's conversation, but it touches on all these things that we need to give ourselves permission for, like give ourselves permissions to be lovable and to pursue our dreams and do all the things.

And then it also has a lot of really practical things you can do to take charge of your time and your life and just really up-level what you're doing. And one of my traditions with this show is the night before. So I do like a lot of prep for a couple months. And then the night before, I just go in and I read all the Amazon reviews of the book. All the reviews for this book are just stunningly, overwhelmingly, I mean, you're changing so many people's lives. So everybody's talking about how reading this book, you know, practically really did change how they view and approach their life. So I think there is so much we can touch on here. Yeah, thank you so much for being here.

Cortney McDermott
Wow, thank you for that lovely introduction and I'm super inspired by your work and super happy to be here. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon
The subtitle has so much in it, and I feel like with titles of books, people don't really pay attention to the subtitle, but I feel like for me at least, everything is very intentional, and talking to you just so briefly, I can tell things are intentional, so was it hard for you to cram everything you wanted to into the subtitle? I'm wondering if you had a lot of how that process was, deciding what to put in the title of the book.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, I love that question because sometimes I feel like the subtitles and the titles can feel a little cliche, you know like we've heard this before and It was very intentional because I have my own take on what it means to be confident I have my own take on what it means to be happy And being you is essentially kind of at the heart of all of it. And so Yeah, so it was very intentional.

It was very purposeful. And yeah, that's that's why it's there

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I feel like just subtitles don't always get their credit. And I just remember like, when I was coming up with mine, like all the back and forth. So I love this.

I actually have a question from that. But before that, I will touch briefly on you were just saying that you recorded two of your books, the audiobooks together. First of all, I love when authors record their own audiobooks. I think it's so, so special. I'm curious revisiting because you said you released your first one in 2017. And then you rerecorded it with this one around the same time. So what was it like rerecording your book from a while ago? And then recording this one now, like when you recorded it, did you have any epiphanies or insights revisiting it in that perspective?

Cortney McDermott
And so when I, especially the first book, because going back to it after all those years, this is a stunning question, because this question I never get, and it was really bizarre because when I went back to it, I realized, wow, a book is a snapshot of your consciousness at any given time. It's literally like a picture. And it was where my consciousness was then, right? So when I wrote that first book, Change Starts Within You, it was, I was in the middle of just all of these massive life transitions.

I was changing my career. I was going from corporate executive to, I didn't know completely what at the time, but it was included, and it was this writing and this speaking, which is what birthed the book as well, and it's just so wild because you, when you allow yourself to kind of step into all these unknown places that I'm sure we're going to talk about today, what begins to happen is you take on different personas and characters, right? And then you start to realize eventually that you're none of those, you're none of the characters, right? So as I'm reading the book, it was almost like being in that total space of observership, you know? It was just observing where, where my consciousness, or where the consciousness that flows through me was at that time, and so it was really, it was really interesting. And then the second book, Noticing While I Was Reading, okay, there's still a lot of things in alignment, and already so many things that have shifted in terms of my understanding, and so it was really, really fascinating exercise.

Melanie Avalon
I'm having an in-real-time epiphany right now because I know for me, appropriately enough, we were talking before this how we have so much overlap. I released my first book, or my only book, in 2017. Also, that's wild. And I've realized, I don't know if it's fear, but I'm hesitant to like go back and read it.

And it's probably because of what you're saying, it would capture who I was right then. And I might see things that have changed. I might be scared to look back at what I was before, certain aspects. I always thought it was just because I thought what if I find that I said something that I feel differently about like just practically like scientific wise, but I think it also has to do with that, which is interesting to think about. So in and give yourself permission, because you open with your personal story, or you talk about it throughout the book, your personal transformations that you discuss in there. So where is that on the timeline of was that during the time that you just mentioned transitioning out of the corporate world and everything?

Cortney McDermott
Well, I've had so many of those remarkable transformations, I don't know how else to describe them, but where it's been almost in some cases overnight, but in other cases, for instance, I show a picture of myself in presentations I gave around the world, I show a picture of myself from 10 years ago, and well, well over half of the, I would say maybe 90% of the audience doesn't recognize me at all, and then you start to hear a little murmur in the audience of, really, kind of? And then next thing you know, everyone's kind of in a state of shock that they're looking at the same human being, and so there have been all of these physical, tangible changes over the years, and I was seeing that same thing in my clients.

I have stories that even I was just, at first I couldn't explain, and then I went deeply into the science of change and started to get those answers, and that's a lot of what I share in the book and my keynotes around the world is, okay, there's very specific things that we can turn to in science and that we can apply through this understanding in order to experience some of these transformations. So they weren't all at once, they were progressively over the years, and I started to dissect and get to a place where I was, it had a clear, as clear an understanding as I have in order to explain the mechanics behind that.

Melanie Avalon
And so how often, because one of the transformations is a physical one, to what extent, what percentage, how often when we see people in our lives that maybe we haven't seen in a while and we see some sort of transformation physically in them, where does that come from? Does it literally always come from a person's internal belief systems?

Can it be separate from that? Can you maintain the same belief system and just go on a diet though and lose weight and nothing changed really belief wise?

Cortney McDermott
So it extends beyond our beliefs, but clearly our beliefs and especially the beliefs that we're not as conscious or aware of are shaping so much of what we're experiencing in the physical. But there's also obviously gene expression plasticity, for example, is one example of how through our environment, both inner and outer, we are shaping or deciding almost which genes get to be expressed. So which ones are lighting up? Which ones are dimming down? Which ones were turning up? Which ones were turning down? We have and we now know right through epigenetics that we have this signaling capability, right? So it's not just through our beliefs, but clearly things like exercise and all that, which are shaped by our beliefs, right? For instance, if you believe yourself to be a fit person who exercises, the action will happen through you as a result of who you know yourself to be. And so they're all interlinked. It's not like necessarily even one before the other. It's a beautiful ecosystem when you start to understand it more clearly.

But it's things in the brain, for instance, you know, your rectangular activating system. What is it directed toward? What is it looking for? Seek and you shall find, right? And then as a result, not just again, those inner beliefs, but what starts to happen externally as a result. And then again, how that all feeds in. And we could even look at this from other scientific discoveries in quantum theory, et cetera, to just see it's all pointing to the same conclusion. And this is what I like to talk about in the talks that I give around the world, which is that directed consciousness is determining your experience. And at the same time, your experience then is informing, it's feeding in, it's this, it can be a beautiful loop and a beautiful ecosystem feeding in again to those belief systems and to everything that's driving that.

Melanie Avalon
love to talk more about this because it's, no pun intended, it's really hard to wrap your head around. And you talk about how we have these conscious beliefs and these non-conscious beliefs and how there's with the, or unconscious, I should probably clarify there, non-conscious versus unconscious, would those be, or subconscious, can we define like conscious, non-conscious, subconscious, unconscious.

Right.

Cortney McDermott
This is such a good question because a lot of times there's confusion and in basics So it was funny because just the other day I was having a conversation with my brother and I said unconscious beliefs and he said He said, you know if it were anyone else saying it's that to me I would tell them that they were using that word incorrectly and I said, well, let's look it up and so we looked it up and Unconscious beliefs or unconscious the unconscious is not just what happens when you pass out for example, okay? And you're unconscious. It is the beliefs that you hold that you aren't aware that you hold it's the thought patterns that you hold that you're unaware you're holding and Even sometimes that extends into behavioral patterns Some people have certain behavioral or things that they do physically in the physical and they're completely unaware of it You know could be fluttering of the eyes It could be a kind of a tick or something or you know movement of their hand in a specific way and they're Unconscious of those patterns. They're unconscious of those habitual a habitual either thought patterns or behavioral patterns And so being unconscious merely means that you're unaware of it You're unaware and so and then of course, there's the subconscious and the conscious we get into really deep realms of even the word Consciousness, right?

It's maybe the it's maybe the most powerful word one of the most powerful words we can utter What is the extent of it to what you said around wrapping our head around it? It's so massive It's kind of the one intelligence if you will. It's the observer It is the I am that I am it is the fundamental awareness. That's that's watching this whole show So yeah, so again we get into it It can get a little confusing, but it doesn't have to be so I think to bring it to its simplest terms It's am I aware of this or am I unaware of this and then from there seeing okay? Well, if I have certain belief if I have certain things that are showing up that are recurring in my life am I aware that there's a belief in a behavioral pattern that is reinforcing the experience that I'm having or Does it just seem like it's happening to me? And so there's where we get to start to play a lot more It's just becoming more and more aware and then directing our consciousness more and more So it becomes again a determinant of the experience

Melanie Avalon
I'm curious with the definition of just consciousness in general. I once heard a description of it, which I really like.

I'm curious if you, what you think about it, and it was that to be conscious is to be like something or to be able to be like something. So basically, like, if you could say, what is it like to be a blank? That would mean that it holds consciousness. So like, what is it like to be a human? What is it like to be a bug? But if you were to say, like, what is it like to be a rock? That would answer whether or not you think a rock is conscious. I'm curious what you think about that idea.

Cortney McDermott
So, I tend to maybe interchange the word consciousness with the word intelligence, and the way I think about intelligence is this force that is conducting the whole thing, right? It's what's conducting the trillions of biochemical reactions occurring in your body every second. It's the force that's beating your heart. It's the force you kind of don't... even it's the orchestrating force behind all of life, and so it is in a rock, you know?

If we look at it even from... because we look at a rock, right? And we might think, okay, that's an object, just as we would look at any other thing we ever saw. And we'd say, you know, in the physical realm, and we'd say that's an object. But what our scientist tells us is, wait a second, let's look what's happening inside the object. And then they might point out, okay, there's molecules, and then they go down deeper, and they say, well, there are these atoms, these things they call atoms, right? And then we go down deeper, and they say, okay, it's electrons and neutrons and protons. And then we go even deeper, and it's quarks and leptons and bosons, and they keep going, keep going, right? And all these really fancy names, and then we get down to something that they call wavelets, which is really just force fields acting as particles behaving as particles. So why am I sharing all this? I'm sharing it because this fundamental question of what is consciousness? What is this intelligence? We don't know. I think wavelets is a really funny, cute, sweet way of saying, we don't know, we don't know. But there is this underlying intelligence. And so when we talk about consciousness, it's this awareness, it's this, again, observer, right? So it's watching the whole dance, really. And it's when you get to that place, almost like the wavelets within you, the process of observation becomes this sort of game. You're still an active participant, but from the mindset of I'm not that, and yet I'm all of it. Does that make sense? Because it is pretty heady stuff.

Melanie Avalon
That was something that really stuck with me when I was reading your book, was when you were talking about these sorts of beliefs that we don't, that we don't even know that we have. So, like, an example of one that you give in the book is we just accept or believe that our heart is beating. Like, we don't think about it. It's just happening. And we just accept it.

Which type of belief is that? That's an unconscious belief? A subconscious belief?

Cortney McDermott
conscious? It's more of a dependency, right? So when I was talking about in the book, what I was trying to underline is, because we have this very curious human tendency, right, in which we decide that there are certain things that we kind of have to control and other things that we just let them do what they need to do. And we trust in the organization or the organizing principle of this intelligence, right? And so what I was getting at there in terms of those fundamental workings of the body that we don't question, which are the unquestionable, which are the, they're also just subconscious, they're subconscious belief systems, right? The subconscious holding of that belief that this is going to continue to work, right? And the reliance on that, allowing us to really step out of that illusion of control versus other areas that we say, oh, this thing, right, where I hold this belief system about whatever it might be, weight or whatever else, I have to kind of force some outcome. So we try to manipulate.

So that's, so not to get us off track, because I'm sure we'll probably go there. But where I was talking about was like, there's these collectively held beliefs that allow us to survive, essentially. So the beating of your heart, right, is we collectively know we have this reliance, we know that this is going to continue to work, unless of course, it's not. And then we have a state of emergency, right, in which we seek outside help. But it's like, we have these ones that we say it's just working. And then we have, and then on the other side, we have these other things where we say, oh, this isn't somehow, right? So again, we'll get into that. But those are really those kind of just subconsciously held, you know, in a way that allows for survival, right? And then there's other kinds of beliefs that are subconscious or we're unconscious of that are determining more of our behavior versus like, just the inner working.

Melanie Avalon
of our being. It's funny. So I, because I hadn't really until I read that part of the book, I hadn't really thought about all the things that I just accept in my body as working all the time, like breathing and heart beating and all the things. I actually went into a loophole that was not, I came out of it, but I was thinking about it and I started over analyzing and this was happening. I don't know why, but basically I started, I could feel my pulse. I don't know why my adrenaline was going or whatever, but I could feel my heart beating more presently than normal. And I was thinking about reading that in your book and I was thinking about, oh, I really can't control this heartbeat. And then I started thinking about the complete powerlessness I have over it. And it's actually kind of scary. And I was like, what if I, what if my heart does stop, like stop beating? And then I was like, I was like, what is telling it to keep going? I have no control here. And then I came out of it and I was like, oh, okay. I have to just accept that because that like, nothing good is going to come from me like ruminating on this.

But I think it was a really nice reflection for me personally about again, like what you're mentioning with where we put our attention on what we think we can or cannot control. Like I could try to put my attention and control that, but it's completely pointless because my heart is presumably is going to keep beating. I don't know if there was like a question in there, but it's just a reflection on how I was thinking about all of this practically and how it applies to our life.

Cortney McDermott
it because it comes down to trust right and we can we can do that with anything just like you had that brief glimpse of doing it with your heart right and we do have ways to settle our heart right we do we have deep breathing we have going for a walk we have all these things all these ways in which we can help and we can moderate heart rate variability etc but here's the thing it's like whoa when we start to really sink into it's almost like when you lay down in this bed of trust around oh wow my heart's beating and i don't need a five-year plan for it and i don't need you know to get it's the same way with the sun coming up and going down right we don't we don't have the audacity to say that we need to somehow manage the forces the the gravitational forces and the axis of the earth and all of that we're not thinking about that at all right we just we just have this reliance and so when we can kind of just deeply relax into this reliance the state of reliance that is our natural state of being when a child comes into the world it doesn't expect to not be fed it doesn't expect to not be taken care of so it's kind of that deep like oh there is there is something greater there is a greater force at play and i can just start to relax and trust more in it and as we allow more of this it sort of starts to take over all those areas that we previously thought we had to control

Melanie Avalon
Okay, so that captures it because the fear or the concern I had was it wasn't as much calming it down as it was me thinking. I was thinking about how my heart keeps beating and has been beating since I was born and will until I die and how that is just a continuous energy flow. So like, you know, with no stopping and that's what was stressing me out and it was a moment, trust is like the perfect word to describe what I literally had to do because there was no other option was I just had to accept like, okay, that's really, that's a lot for my heart to keep doing and I'm just gonna trust that it keeps doing it.

So applying that broader, so I'm to play, to play devil's advocate because I love this idea of we, we trust that. So we trust that the sun comes up, we trust that our hearts gonna keep beating, we trust these things. And I like the idea of also applying that logic to other things in our life. And also devil's advocate, you could say, well, those other things in life aren't necessarily guaranteed. So, in theory, heart beating sun coming up or maybe not that it's guaranteed, but it's been so consistent for so long. It's not changing that much compared to extending that trust to your future or that everything's gonna be okay or your next step. Like that feels like it has a lot more variables of uncertainty. So I'm wondering how can we have trust in our life beyond these habitual things that we've come to trust that are more physical or practical.

Cortney McDermott
Wow, I love that distinction and so important. I think you really nailed it because lots of times we don't understand, okay, so why can't I trust it? And you hit it right on the head in the sense that it's so uncertain, right? And the unknown is so scary for us.

And that's why people talk about this so-called comfort zone, which really isn't comfortable necessarily at all for most people. It's just what they're used to. And what we're used to feels somehow safer. And so, first of all, we have to just recognize that, okay, that we have this, we have this tendency to want to just be, have everything kind of stay the same, while at the same time knowing that the only constant is change. And so we just, first of all, we just sit in the recognition of that. And then, you know, to go to this deeper level of extending that trust, right? I would ask you a question and the listeners, right, it's has it ever happened or has it happened many times that you thought something was really terrible and, you know, put this label on it of like, this is a very, very bad thing. And then shortly thereafter, or maybe even years after, you realize, wow, that was the perfect thing that could have happened to me. And I just didn't know.

Melanie Avalon
I'm curious about using the word perfect. So I think what I might think later is something that I thought was horrible later. I'm like, Oh, that was actually a good thing. It's hard for me to, and I think this comes from my religious upbringing. I am hesitant about using words that seem to indicate absolutes or like that this was the perfect thing.

So I'm curious about the word perfect there. Could there have been many multiple perfect things there or does perfect indicate that this was the one thing that was perfect that happened?

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, well, first, that's a really important point, too. So if there's any, this is also for us to pay attention to, you know, words have carry vibrations, right? So what are the words that sit best with you, right? To understand what it is that we're talking about, you and anyone else listening, right? So it's okay, so if it's not that word, it's just, again, because all of these are labels, like bad, good, perfect, right, wrong, up, left, right. They're all labels.

And what we're talking about, really, is kind of this in-between place, almost like you're not even thinking about the sun rising and falling, or you're not thinking about actually you switching where you are in the atmosphere every 24 hours, or 12 hours. So it's kind of, it's this middle place. And this is why I share that story in the book, too, of the farmer and the horse, because it's that reminder that we don't understand why things are happening, but here's what I'll say about it. One, we don't have to understand why they're happening. Two, because it's just useless, kind of it's just a useless exercise in trying to figure it out and rationalize and analyze everything, in terms of just the direction and the use of our energy. But two, when we're in this trusting place, it's just consuming, again, so much less energy to say, I don't understand this, but I trust that it is, however you wanna frame that, that it is right for me in some way, or that this is the way that it's supposed to be, simply because it's the way that it is. So what happens is we stop fighting with what's happening. We simply start almost, again, coming to that place of observing, where I'm not gonna pose opposition, I'm not also gonna rally around it in cheer, I'm just watching it. And one of the most beautiful ways to do this that I have found actually the most beautiful way that I've found to do this is just to say, I'm grateful. I don't understand it, but I'm grateful. And finding the bits and pieces that you might be grateful for. Like for instance, okay, maybe someone's saying, well, I can't pay the bills today. And I'm also grateful that I have somewhere to live, or maybe they're outside and they recognize, well, I'm grateful for what is around me. And so it's kind of this, again, this deep relaxation, which is hard depending on where we are in life and how much, again, most of the time, how much we're trying to analyze and rationalize everything, because that's where the mind, instead of being this beautiful instrument that can support a new belief system, that can support a new direction of your consciousness, become somewhat of a tyrant, because it's constantly looking for ways to protect you, which is kind of the job that we've given it most of the time for most of us. And so what I'm suggesting is that as soon as we start relaxing around this and saying, you know what, everything is, and again, not to use a label for it, but everything just, maybe just everything is, and that's okay.

Cortney McDermott
Everything as it is, is okay. And just, again, inspiring that deeper relaxation, because once we do that, we free up so much energy that's just spiraling around otherwise, around things that we really don't have control over.

And ultimately, and this is kind of the starkest and most, it's just kind of really harsh, it's like we don't have control over anything other than potentially, and I do believe that we have, where our free will lies, is just directing our consciousness, and to bring it back, keep bringing it back to some of these things that I'm talking about.

Melanie Avalon
I have a lot of trust about my future and what I'm doing, and I've always felt like I was moving towards something. I don't know exactly what it is, but I don't feel like I'm wandering or lost. So everything feels purposeful.

And yet at the same time, the slight irony of it is that I don't necessarily ascribe to day-to-day events as necessarily having an overwhelming amount of meaning from a story perspective. I think that's why the perfect word threw me off, kind of like what you just said. For me, I feel like things happen and everything, good things happen, bad things happen, and it's all just okay, because I have trust about where I'm going. And when I have that trust, everything on the journey is okay. I'm very aware of ascribing a story to things, and maybe that's beneficial, I don't know, but to things that happen in my life and being like, oh, this happened for this reason and this purpose, and this is why this happened, but I don't know how I know that. It could have been something different. So I'm really fascinated by the stories we tell in our mind about our life.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's this is reminding me of something I heard Jim Carrey say years ago, he said something along the lines of I don't really know if that's because he was telling himself that everything was working out for himself. And he said, I don't really know if that's true. But believing it helps me that makes me feel better.

And so it's just this simple, like what feels good? And where do you notice yourself spinning? And how can we sort of just start to calm that so that you again, free up or liberate so much energy for these creative pursuits for what you feel needs to be expressed through your physical form in this time.

Melanie Avalon
I mentioned earlier that I was really curious about the behavioral unconscious thoughts as well, not just the ones about trusting our heart and the sun and everything. There's two things that make me feel not stuck, but I don't see how we transcend certain situations, which are if we hold these unconscious beliefs about the world and life that we just have, that are just there, that we're not even aware of, how do we change what we aren't even aware of or that we don't know we need to change?

And then B, you talk about thoughts in the book. I love this part of the book. You talk about how we still don't even really know where thoughts come from and they kind of just happen. And so with something like that, it's like, okay, so how do we, if thoughts just happen, and if we just have beliefs we're not aware of, how do we make change? And how do we, how do we, I guess people seek control, which is kind of probably what we're not supposed to be seeking.

Cortney McDermott
Right, but I do believe that there's something about training the mind that then leads to the allowance, like the knowing that you can relax because you've actually brought the mind back into its proper place. So let's take the first question. One is how do we know what unconscious beliefs we're holding? And the simplest answer to that is what are the results that you're seeing in your life? What do you see around you? Who is surrounding you? What kind of conditions do you have going on in your body, right? So we see these very physical, plain results in our material experience.

And from there, we can extrapolate belief systems, underlying belief systems, okay? So if we're not as aware of them, that's the easiest way is to say, okay, this thing's going on. So take, for instance, if there's something happening or, yeah, something transpiring in your life that feels more unpleasant than other areas of your life, right? You can just say, well, wait a second. So if I am holding these underlying belief patterns that are reinforcing this, again, that are lighting up that genetic expression versus, so for instance, genes of disease are not necessarily bad genes, right? They're just expressions in the body and they do serve a purpose. Genes of health, right, also are not necessarily good. They just are. So it's like, so which ones are we lighting up? And that's where we get these probability amplitudes that we can start tuning into. And so what that looks like, again, from a neuroscience perspective, if we go back to your question about thoughts, is how are we guiding our thoughts? Now, most of us are having anywhere between 50 to 70,000 thoughts a day. For the vast majority of us, those are the same thoughts every day, so they're really on repeat. And what happens as a result of that is something that I like to call the calcification of the persona. In other words, you're quite literally calcifying into a character to a point where you have no idea that that's just a character. It's just one probability amplitude, one probability outcome that's available to you, but yet you're running it. And again, we can also look at this from a genetic perspective. If you want, I'll circle back on that later. But the point is the thoughts are really shaping what you're experiencing. They're shaping what's happening in the physical. And so many times, and this is where all of the work around affirmations came in, right? So it's, okay, stand in front of a mirror and say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone at people like me, right? But that didn't work for most people, and that still doesn't work for most people. And the reason it doesn't work is because, again, the underlying patterns that are like currents, imagine them like currents in the ocean that are so strong that they just pull you along.

Cortney McDermott
And so if you're on the face of that just saying, I can get out of this Riptide, you know, it's just gonna keep pulling you in. The more you try to swim and say, I am this, I am that, whatever, and you're going against the tide, versus really allowing yourself to relax and use the part of your brain called the rectangular activating system to start to direct the thoughts in ways that are not fighting the current current.

So what do I mean by that? The easiest way for us to use this, so for anyone listening who might be more or less familiar with it, the rectangular activating system is essentially that part of your brain that serves as a filtering system. And what it does is it takes the gargantuan amount of data that you're exposed to virtually every second, and it pairs down, it literally filters for things that are important to you. So for instance, many, many years ago, I started working at the North Face, the outdoor company, and all of a sudden I saw North Face jackets everywhere. And I'm like, why do I'm seeing these North Face jackets? Everyone's had this experience when they bought a new car, whatever, they get a new kind of chew that they've seen, oh, other people are wearing, whatever that looks like. It's really the rectangular activating system in our brains that are saying, this is important to Melanie, this is important to Courtney, let me bring it into her awareness. So again, going back to what's the easiest ways for us to start directing this process is through the questions we're asking, especially the questions we start asking habitually. So for instance, and this is where a lot of the, people are using the frequencies of their words in ways that are more or less constructive, right? So oftentimes you might hear some people saying, well, why can't I just, why can't I lose this weight? I've tried everything, et cetera, et cetera. The question, why can't I, is its own force. And so, and questions, again, versus affirmations are so much easier for the unconscious to accept. They get past the gateways of these strong conditioned beliefs that we hold because they're just questions. So they're kind of innocent. So they show up and they say, oh, how is it that this is working out? I don't know, but how is it, how is it? And we just start asking these questions. I had a friend that used to always say, how is it possible that there's always more, more miracles, more wonder, more awe. And I, everywhere we went, there were just more miracles, more wonder, more awe. And she reminded me of this, of this, again, this really great potential we hold and how easy it is to access that when we start asking better questions.

Cortney McDermott
So again, it's a, I'm not, I wouldn't dare to expect that overnight this occurs because again, these are deeply embedded, continual thought loops that a lot of people are in. So again, I wouldn't suggest to anyone to try to conquer their thoughts or use affirmations versus, let's start asking some better questions and relaxing as much as we can so that the better questions can slip through undetected and that our brain that is primed to do this starts to look for the answers because that's what the rectangular activating system does.

Melanie Avalon
I have a question about because you said that, you know, looking at a person's current state or their current reality can give us an indication of what their unconscious beliefs are up until that point. So quick clarification question there, what all is meant by the current state that they're in?

So is it for example, on like a financial level, like somebody not doing well financially or was it more about the mindset? So like, would it not even matter if a person's like making a lot of money or not? Rather, are they happy where they're at?

Cortney McDermott
Well, I think first of all, I want to draw back for a minute and say the results that we're experiencing are not all determined, obviously, by the thoughts we're holding, the beliefs we're holding. They're also our external environment and how much it's able to support and adapt to the changes we're wanting to make as well. So I think it's important to draw back because I feel like lots of times we can get into this almost self-flagellation of, oh gosh, and I need to double down and I need to whatever. But it's, again, the most powerful thing you can do even in terms of your brainwave frequencies and shifting into different ones that allow for some of this information to come through and start to settle into your genetic expression, et cetera, is really to relax. And I know that seems so counterintuitive in a society that says, you know, hustle and make it happen in all of this, but it's really like, okay, first let's relax and realize that it's a dance.

It's a dance between what's happening internally and what's happening externally. So when we look at the results, so it's not necessarily, we can just measure it. We just use these results as a measurement so we can say, okay, this thing is happening. And again, like I said, it's more or less comfortable. And so let me see where I can pivot internally and let me see also how my environment can start to support that, which could be literally just signals in your environment. For instance, if one of the things that someone's looking for is something like, you know, to feel really fit, there could be pictures or there could be other anchor points in their environment that remind them of this fitness and draw them back, just draw their consciousness back because that's where we start to take some of the power back because there's points where we can't necessarily do that much about our environment per se, right? So I'm reminded, as you were talking, I was reminded of this famous, really, really well-known violinist. I don't recall his name, but he went down and played in the subway. And he was Carnegie Hall material, right? And he played in the subway. Have you heard of this? He played in the subway. I have. Keep telling it? Yeah. And he's, I don't know, he earned, I mean, his concerts earn him hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? But in the subway, he earned, I don't know, 20 bucks or something like that. And it was just incredible to see like your environment also has. It plays a role. You know, Einstein, Einstein said that the field is the sole governing agency of the particle. And I used to believe that the meaning of that was that your external environment was quite literally shaping you. In other words, you know, what was going on around was shaping the particle, was shaping the specific material expression.

Cortney McDermott
What I started to realize as well, what's comprising that is also your inner environment. So when you can kind of shut out some of the stimuli that, because we're, again, we're so exposed and we can go into this too to talk a little bit more about it if you want, but it's like, how do we draw back in so we get that force and that strength to come back out with, for instance, new questions, new, new beliefs based on, or sorry, new habits based on those questions so that then we can start to see some of these shifts and then using also our external environment to reinforce the inner shifts that we're devoted to.

Melanie Avalon
I'm glad you brought it up because I have a really practical question about it that has haunted me for quite a while. It's kind of, I guess it is the RAS system, probably. Maybe you can let me know.

But it's kind of the opposite of it, which is that I read, I don't remember which book I read this in, but it has haunted me to this day. I read that kind of like the RAS finds what we're looking for. Also, that we stop seeing things in our routine environment. So if we were to put a motivational poster on the wall, we might see it the first few days, but then it just gets cataloged or categorized in our head as part of our environment. So we stop actually seeing it consciously. So I'm curious how we, because people will say, put posters on your wall, put motivational things up. But maybe the only way that would be effective is if somebody comes in every day and switches it around and makes it say something else.

Cortney McDermott
Well, one thing to keep in mind is if it does enter just subconsciously, it's actually stronger, right? So if you're not even aware that that signal, that prompt is being suggested to you daily, it starts to enter into your subconscious.

Now, you are talking to someone though who doesn't have any motivational posters up. So even though I say things like anchor points and things, I say that because I know the science and the studies behind it. For example, let's take one where they brought in, you may have heard of this as one of the more well-known ones, they brought a set of octogenarians into a controlled environment and just, yeah, these 80-year-olds, I think it was in New Hampshire. And everything in the environment suggested a time when they were much younger, right? And so whatever it was, record players, music, what was playing on the TV, they weren't given the instruction to treat one another that way to pretend, to make believe. I love that expression, to make believe that they were back at this younger time in their lives, right? And what was so... So all of their vital signs, all of these things were measured before they went in. The scientists even measured the length of their telomeres, which are these shoestring-like sort of... They look a little bit like the end of a shoelace at the end of your DNA. And as a human gets older, they tend to fray and get shorter. And so they measured the length of those. They were also more qualitative versus quantitative measurements as well. And what they noticed when all of these participants left, which I believe was only a week later, is that all of these indicators of health and wellness had improved significantly. I mean, statistically relevant. But even the length of their telomeres, which to me was the most astonishing piece of the study, had extended, had repaired. And so literally there was this fountain of youth simply by the ways in which the environment and they themselves were signaling. And so again, it's not that I don't... Yeah, I don't have motivational posters, but I have reminders, I have anchors in me that are things I constantly will come back to as a reminder of again, probability amplitudes that are available to all of us.

Melanie Avalon
So, it sounds like it's changing the entire environment around you to, like, immersively support this, where you want to place your attention. If we say, like, if we look at somebody in a circumstance and we see what the circumstance that they're in, and we use that, and we're using that as a marker of what their beliefs have led to, is it more about their perception, their happiness in their circumstance, or the literal circumstance that they're in.

Cortney McDermott
So I love this because we get to play with both right and instead of coming from this perspective of because I feel like again lots of times people can get kind of down on themselves if they think oh so this is somehow just tied to what I think and how am I going to overcome that that's really hard and that's where the environment becomes an easier way of signaling so again it's less important where it comes from.

Cortney McDermott
It's more important our agency in flipping the script so I don't know whatever for whatever reason the example that's coming to me is Sarah Blakely who I just really admire and she's the founder of Spanx she's sold that company since but it was a multi-billion dollar empire that never had any outside investors and all the things but before she founded Spanx she was selling fax machines door to door right and there was in for years I think for seven years and she but she had she had to dream she had to dream she she actually could envision herself being on Oprah but she didn't know why and all these things and so there was a certain point where she was walking around and she tells her story and she says walking around selling fax machines and at a certain point she just stopped and she said this isn't my movie this isn't my movie and so she started to make you know shifts right in her environment and also in her inner environment in her outer environment that then started to feed off of one another but again going back to what I was saying earlier oftentimes the little things that we can do just as prompts in our external environment are a little bit easier entry gateway points than necessarily trying to override these thoughts that have been on a loop for a while and so but then you start to get into this place again of playing with it and I keep coming back to this but I think it's one of the hardest things for us to hear and one of the hardest things for us to quote unquote do is the non doing is to start to really relax because again if we're not relaxed any change we try to implement is going to fall pretty short because we don't we're not in the frequency of the change and that's why lots of times the environment can can really assist us like for instance even just laying down in bed it can so people say all the time well I don't have time for that and I'll often paraphrase or not paraphrase but often kind of steal from the Dalai Lama who was saying that if you think you don't have five minutes to meditate please take it out it's like if we're not in the vibrational frequency of something right which is with what is happening inside of inside of us right we're not going to be able to expect that frequency to be what comes back into our field or what's reflected back to us and so again I don't necessarily know that it makes a lot of sense for people to try to figure out well is this happening externally externally like is this based on what my real literal circumstances are because again then we're in another story it's more paying attention to like what are the sensations I'm feeling and how can I start to just relax the whole system kind of almost like all systems down for a minute so that I can start to invite in new information and then as a result of inviting in that information and really becoming more and more devoted to a different vision of yourself starting to say okay I'm just this one little step and this one little thing and this one cue in my environment.

Melanie Avalon
that state of relaxation and inviting that in and changing that perspective, is that a state to be in when you are having the shift? Like, do you stay in that state then when you actually go and do the things that you are changing your directed attention toward?

Yeah, how long is the state that you're speaking of?

Cortney McDermott
as long as possible is great because here's what it looks like in terms of just almost if you can picture it right our brain waves function on cycles per second and so most humans are rushing about in a state of high beta and what that looks like is just really really really fast brainwave frequency that is also not just fast because fast can it could be great like gamma is really fast and it's unbelievable it's I've been in states of gamma that are just they're beyond that anything that I can't even describe but they're not just fast they're they're regular they're they're what's there's a specific word I'm looking for and because I see it almost reflected back on a graph but they're very kind of almost choppy you don't know you know when you're spiking up or going down you know all these things so the best we ever heard a high beta described is like having a four-gear race car that you're driving around in first gear so we have this magnificent machinery right we have this machinery of our brains and our bodies and how we choose to relate to it and understand it is so important in terms of how it operates so again most of us going around in high beta then there's mid-range beta low beta when you're in low beta you already start to become more receptive to things information starts to come in like for instance anyone listening to this is definitely not in high beta you would not have gotten this far if you were in high beta and you wouldn't even be able to stick with it you're you wouldn't be able to hear anything that we're saying you just wouldn't be able to invite any of it in and you probably would have already turned this off so well no not probably you would have already turned this off so that's one of the ways of knowing okay you're not there okay low low beta might be you're still inviting another stimuli you know you're still kind of moving very quickly from one thing to another you're sort of fragmenting your focus a little you know you're still doing that right then we start to move into alpha right and alpha states are actually extremely easy to access and people don't know this again we don't get this kind of training we really should as we're growing up we should get it immediately when we enter into any kind of school our educational system because education is about inducing it's about drawing forth what's in you write your own gifts and those come through again this relaxation process so and it sounds so almost like it sounds counterintuitive but really what it is it's counter societal right so anyhow we start to move into alpha and alpha again like I said super easy to access you can access alpha by laying down for a minute sometimes even less that's why I often counsel people get horizontal please just get horizontal for a few minutes if you don't think you have ten take three but just getting horizontal starts to do that and the reason is because we are quite literally signaling to our brains we're getting to a state of relaxation and hence our brains can calm down they don't need to they don't need to focus in they don't need to laser in on anything necessarily we start opening up to this field of potentials and so alpha is where we start to access greater creativity the longer you stay in a relaxed state you start to and you can do this eyes wide open you start to access brainwave frequencies like theta or delta and we're really slowing down here but the thing is we're slowing down but we're also bringing in things like for instance when you're in theta your brain starts to release something called catecholomines these are vital for learning and memory when you're in Delta your body starting to release human growth hormone I mean you are real-time using which is why we need to sleep every night for example and get good rest so these are just some of the examples of what's happening in like this beautiful chemical cocktail that can happen in your body as you relax but most people think well if they time out they're gonna miss something or they're going to have a more difficult time coming back in or whatever and so it can feel really scary at first but I often tell people literally even just yawning yawning will start to do this yawning is considered one of the best-kept secrets of neuroscience it's energizing and relaxing at the same time it's why animals do this before and after a fight shaking is a good way to start to release some of what's in our bodies so that we can again move into this these deeper states of relaxation and then to your question the longer we can hold the deeper relaxed states the more present and more vitally with whatever is that we can be so there's just such profound medicine in it and it's not difficult so yeah

Melanie Avalon
I love this. I love the really practical example of people who are listening now, not being in the beta state.

And yeah, I was going to ask about the yawning and the laughing. Is laughing also, what is laughing a gateway to? Oh my god.

Cortney McDermott
Oh my God, I love, I always tell people the best meditations by far are laughing and yawning. It's like if you can get yourself laughing because again, what happens with laughter, it's so beautiful, right? You know, look at a little kid, right? We were born to laugh, we were born to cry, we were born to scream, we were born to, we were born, our natural state is to express, right? And to feel, that's the human experience.

And so the more we start kind of suppressing that and getting serious and everything, the more we start blocking what's meant to come through us, what's meant to shine through us. I'm not saying that everyone has to go around screaming and laughing hysterically wherever they go, but I am saying, well, I mean, I would love if everyone was laughing hysterically all over the place sometimes, but it's this medicine that comes with it, right? So as soon as we start laughing, we're releasing a whole host of neurochemicals like in hormones and feel good hormones and things like oxytocin, serotonin, we're just starting to really get all of that in our bloodstream, which actually is then signaling ourselves to respond differently to what's going on around us, right? For instance, have you ever noticed laughter just diffuses everything? You could be talking about something so serious and it just diffuses everything, right? Like all of a sudden your whole body can relax. That's because these neurochemicals, these neurotransmitters are actually flooding your bloodstream. It's not woo woo, it's not something that, it's just plain old science, but it's also something that we know. It's something that we intuitively know as humans that it's just really powerful medicine.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I was thinking about how, I think you can really notice the power of laughter if you're in conflict with somebody. If you're able to laugh in that moment, it's wild how much it can change like the vibe in the room and the relationship, I love that, okay, laughing, laughing and yawning.

Speaking of how we are using our time and the state that we're in, I loved the whole chapter on time. I think it was a specific chapter. There was a whole section on time. And can we talk about the four circles of things that are, what is it, urgent versus important? The four dimensions.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, so this was I want to say one other quick thing for anyone listening the laughter and the yawning on that note is it's also our these are our mega connectors to one another. These are what really create the bonds that we can have with one another, which are what we thrive off of most. It's actually with the most most youthful or the the blue zones, for instance, it's the connection that we have with one another and laughter and yawning both do that. So I just want to share that to for anyone listening.

If you can find ways to just yawn with people you love laugh with people you love. So let's go back to the time model because that's actually a fantastic segue into this time model, right? So this was kind of a mash up of everything that I had learned in leadership, all the books that I'd read about time and managing time. And it was when I started to get this. I started to realize holy smokes, like, I'm getting through my day, my, you know, my typical day looks like maybe what for most people would seem like 10 days or, you know, it's just it's wild. I talked to my I was talking to my sister yesterday, and I just flew back to San Diego a day and a half ago, and I was telling her everything that happened and all the beautiful, wonderful things that have transpired. And she said, didn't I just drop you off at the airport like 24 hours ago? Yeah, but it doesn't feel busy. And actually, that's a word that I eliminated from my lexicon years ago. I, you know, people say, Oh, you must be so busy. I'll suck on and say, No, I'm the least busy person, you know, I will not glorify that at all. I'm living fully. Yes. But I'm not busy. I know where the time is. You know, people say I don't know where the time goes. I know where the time goes. It goes into this really beautiful, rich life. And so, and the way that's happened is through this time model that, like I said, is kind of a mashup of a lot of different models. And what it comes from is, so the outermost circle in this time model is the dimension of distraction. And that's where we're really consumed by things that are not important, and they're not urgent. So a great example of this is something like social media, right? And so people say, Oh, my God, I got on and I'm, I feel so zapped, right? It's because it wasn't important. It's not urgent. And it's almost just like this really massive distraction. And of course, billions, if not trillions of dollars are invested annually to capture that most precious resource, which is your attention, right? So this isn't necessarily something that is so easy to extricate oneself from. But it is, it's the more you become aware of it, and the more consciously you start directing your time, your attention, the more you're going to start to see a flip in this time paradigm. So the second one in is the dimension of delusion. And what that is, it's, it's things that are not urgent, but they're seemingly important. So a great example of this might be your inbox, right? Your email. So a lot of people go to their email right away.

Cortney McDermott
And the best way I ever heard email described was a great organizing mechanism for other people's priorities. And so you know, we go in there. And it's kind of like we deal with all these fires or whatever, especially if we're working in corporate and all the things. And then at the end of the day, it's like we don't necessarily have that much to show in terms of our own projects, what we wanted to advance our is our purpose evolving in in beautiful ways. You know, all that kind of stuff. And so none of these dimensions are bad or wrong, per se, it's really just allocation, the time allocation that we dedicate to anyone any given one of them at any time, right? And so as we move into that circle, as we hit the dimension of demand, and this is where we're focused on stuff that is important and it's urgent. And the problem is that most so-called high performers in business and in other pursuits tend to lump a lot into demand. And so they think everything is really important and everything is urgent, and in reality, it's not, right? So an example of something that is really important and really urgent is someone that you love goes into the hospital, say, right? And you really do have to and want to drop every single other thing in that moment so you can focus in and take care of the human that you love, right? That is something that belongs there. But a lot of other things that we put in this area, they don't really belong there. And so what happens is we start to make everything so important and so urgent and we feel like we... Well, basically, we just burn out, right?

And we're releasing massive amounts of cortisol and other stress hormones into our bloodstream. And so it's just a place that you can't spend much time in. Again, not necessarily wanting to spend so much time in any of these three dimensions, but a little bit, you're going to, right? That's just the nature of life and also wanting, for instance, distraction or wanting to occupy yourself with other people's things for a while. But that innermost circle in this diagram is the dimension of design. And yeah, there was a whole chapter dedicated to this because it's like starting to intentionally design your life. Years ago, it was actually around seven years ago, I decided to ditch traditional planning and I went to the local grocery store, I got this cardboard box and I cut out a square a little bit bigger than the size of my head and I drew some lines through it horizontally and vertically, so I'd have 12 little squares. And I put these really bold dreams into some of the squares. I didn't fill up every square, but some of the squares I put things like that I wanted to write and publish my first book, that I wanted to give a TEDx talk, I even put that I wanted to be invited as a speaker on Richard Branson's private island, Necker. I had no idea how to do any of these things, but what happened was every single one of those dreams did come to fruition, so I started to become increasingly curious about the mechanics behind that, which is a lot of what we're discussing today.

Cortney McDermott
But more importantly, I was focused on things that were in this last dimension and this dimension of design, which are things that are not urgent, but they're important to you. So for instance, I also had in there that I wanted to spend a whole month in the United States, and I hadn't done that in over two decades at that point, because I had been living in Italy for however many years, I'd been living in France before that and England before that. And so I hadn't spent that time with my family of origin here that long, I wanted to bring my daughter with me, all these things. And so it was like those things are things that only I can do, I can't outsource them, they're really important.

Another example is exercise, like I can't have someone exercise for me, I can have someone cook for me, but I can't eat the food, they can't eat the food for me, right? They can't have a whole kind of, I don't know if ritual is the right word, but they can't have a whole kind of setup around how that happens and all those kinds of things. So what's important and not urgent. And unfortunately, what happens is we tend to put that off, like the writing the letter to someone who's important to us, you know, taking the time to actually tell someone how much you love them and how grateful you are for them. Focusing on gratitude is a great example, too, like all of these things are things that are really important. We know they're important, we know intrinsically we know they're important, but we also have all the studies that show how important it is to have those connections to really, you know, focus on your dreams and find ways of bringing them into the light. All these things, like we know they are, but we tend to slate them and we say, I'll get to that, I'll get to that, you know, kind of the Scarlett O'Hara syndrome of, you know, tomorrow I'll do that thing, or next week, or when things aren't so quote unquote, busy.

And so once we actually start addressing those kind of at the beginning, the forefront, we give it the prime real estate place, like we say, you're my main focus. And then I get to the other things, then I get to what other people want me to focus on, right? Whether that's inbox, Instagram, whatever it is, right? But I'm going to focus on you, I'm going to dedicate this like beautiful beginning of my day to focusing on things like meditation, like moving my body, like, you know, whatever your practice is. And it doesn't really matter. It's more about really communing and grooving with the way that this intelligence wants to express through you. And so yeah, once you get into that dimension and you allocate most of your time to it, it's a little bit like what, it's a lot like what Archimedes said when he said, give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to put it and I shall move the world. It's literally the lever points in your life and they start moving everything around you.

Melanie Avalon
The things in our life, like using email as an example, how much of this is about us misattributing the circle it's in versus dedicating less time to the circle? So like with the email example, how much of this would be maybe most people put email into demand, like they think it's important, they think it's urgent, but maybe it actually needs to be, maybe some of it is in delusion, like so how much of it is about moving the circle that we put email in versus some people might say, well, email actually is important and urgent.

Like I wouldn't be able to do my life if I didn't answer the email. So maybe I just spend less time in that circle. So how much of it is like moving where we spend the time versus moving which circle we're attributing things to?

Cortney McDermott
Right. Well, do you remember that study where it wasn't a study? I think it was a professor who came into a classroom and I don't know the school. I don't know the professor, unfortunately, but I came into the classroom and had this glass container or jar and had was rocks and pebble, you know, big rocks, pebbles and sand. I think those were the only things they had. Right. And so it was like, okay, if I, what's the order that I have to put these in in order for them all to fit? And clearly, you know, I mean, he did different illustrations of, you know, if I put the sand in, right, then I can't get the rocks in. And that's what a lot of people do is they start with the sand. So I think a good way to think about it is we have a tank of energy, right, that we're given every day and throughout our lives really.

And we're given this tank of energy and it's fullest in the morning. It's fullest when we, when we start, you know, well, I mean, we can fill it back up in various different ways, taking naps, going for a walk, meditating, et cetera, but it's very likely at the fullest at the beginning. Right. So it's really a question of allocation. Again, all of these circles can be places where we, where we put our attention. That's totally fine. But the question is, how much are we allocating precisely to your question, to each circle, and where are we starting? Right. So I think what's interesting is lots of times we are almost afraid to do what's really important. And I haven't quite cracked the code on this of why, but it's a little bit like even when you were saying, Oh, I'm kind of, kind of afraid to go back to my first book. I know I was, I was like, Oh, do I want to go back? Do I want to do this? You know, this is, this feels hard, but I was also knew that I was getting a lot of requests. We were getting so many requests for the audio books. I knew I wanted it to be my voice because we had had numerous offers for other people to do it, but I knew it had to be my frequency. And so it was like, okay, no, I have to do it, but I did not want to allocate the time. And then I ended up having to allocate it while I was in the process of this huge cross Atlantic move, but I did it, but showing up for it was not easy. And so I feel like especially with how bombarded we are, right? We're so bombarded. And so if we don't become basically devotional to, again, the way I'm going to put it is the way this intelligence wants to express to us, we, that's how I, that that's how I like to think of it is like, whatever this intelligence is, however you want to call it, you know, and a Rose is still a Rose by any other name, right? It's like, there's this intelligence. It has a very specific frequency, but also kind of calling within us. And the more we sort of dance with it and commune with it, the more we start to hear and understand and know the ways that it needs to express or wants to express to us.

Cortney McDermott
And so we start to prioritize that. And again, this is the closest way I can kind of explain the way it works through me. It doesn't have to necessarily be that poetic. It can just be, okay, I know I need to reach out to my mom and I haven't been doing it. So let me just take tomorrow morning and make sure that that's one of the first things that I do. Or I know that I've been needing to exercise and I keep saying I'll do it later in the day. Let me just see about flipping it and starting with that. Since I know that again, I can't outsource my exercise. I can't outsource who calls my mom right for me. Can't have somebody else do that for me. Maybe you can. But still it's those kinds of things that again, it doesn't have to be this great. It doesn't have to be anything that's so big. It's just like, I know this is important. Let me just prioritize it.

And again, let me put it at the beginning of the day when the gas tank is at its fullest. And what you'll see again is this sort of time flip. It's like when you start to dedicate your attention, your focus, and your resources, your energetic resources to what's most important, the things, the other things sort of seem to just happen with so much greater ease. And the only understanding that I have of this, as far as I can tell, is just those are the things that we're supposed to get through. And so once we do, it frees up again, like I was saying earlier, just frees up so much energy for everything else that's left. Right? So I think pretty much probably everyone who's listening has had this experience. I know I have multiple times and people I talk to all around the world have had this experience of like, I did the thing I didn't want to do. And all of a sudden I felt so good and I was able to do all these other things. And that's just, that's just kind of the nature, as far as I can tell, of just of the way we approach what's important versus what's not as important. But it does take discipline and devotion. But you start to see on the other side of it how worth it it is.

Melanie Avalon
Ever since I learned the concept of important versus urgent as a lens, I've been really aware of it. It's kind of like speaking about people putting off the important stuff. I don't know if it's a joke, but I remember in college when prepping for exams, there was this joke about how college students have the cleanest dorms during exam season because you put off studying for the exam and do everything else. But it's like an example of because presumably studying for the exam is important, but we do all these other things instead oftentimes.

So two things I have found really helpful for me personally with this. One, going back to the email, I think it might have been Tim Ferriss who said this. Somebody said that for emails, for a lot of them, if you wait till the end of the day, a lot of them resolve themselves anyways. I do love doing my emails, so I get a lot of dopamine from it and I'm very much aware of that. So a little bit addicted to email, but knowing that, if you actually practice that, it's kind of shocking. How much stuff resolves itself without you having to do anything.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, I talked about that in my first book, yeah, in 2017, because I realized that same thing when I was in corporate. I was always just, I was in my inbox all the time and I decided to take this, I just gave myself a timeout.

I went for a little walk around the building and I had a little meditation in my office. And then I started working on this project work and at the end of the day, I went to my inbox and everything that was a fire that someone else was trying to get me to put out, got put out by someone else in the organization. I was like, whoa, what did I just, what just happened? And it's so true if you, and that also breeds a lot of self-reliance in your team or anything else, like knowing that they have to solve problems when you're not around and that you are not always available.

Melanie Avalon
Like, somebody has to put out the fire, assuming there is a fire and it's not a fake fire. If we all just went around and did the important things, like, would society continue functioning or do we need some people doing the other things?

Cortney McDermott
I think we would be in a kind of utopia, honestly, but I also believe that the people who are doing some of those other things would, that would be their important, you know, that would be what feels really important to them is to serve in those ways. And I think society would become very self-organizing versus right now everyone or not everyone, but a lot of a lot of people kind of running around doing all the same things, you know, it's kind of like, Oh, wait, we're missed that this is a whole, you know, that we all get to play these different roles. And what does mine look like uniquely, you know, how do I want it to look? And I think those are the questions that we get to step back and ask.

And again, they're going to be there. I feel like lots of times there's this fear that, you know, if I step back, the whole that the sky is going to fall. But what I've seen from my own experience has been quite the opposite in the sense that, you know, things have come up, but they've also it's like a wave, right? A wave came, but it also receded and then you get and then it's going to come back in in a different way. And you get to address it then when you're more centered and really equipped to be able to handle some of those things because you have taken care of what's really important first. And again, I like email to I'm not it's not like I'm never in there. But I just I'm very aware that if I start in there and if I spend the majority of my day in there, then a lot of the creativity that's meant to throw flow through me is just not going to happen.

Melanie Avalon
Like I said, I love this paradigm of urgent and important and email again is a good example because you're hit with so many seemingly important urgent things, but they may or may not be important and or urgent. So it's really a moment to see like, oh, what is important? What do I need to do? What is urgent?

On the one hand, so there's like two different approaches I'll take. One is what you're saying right here, which is I'm like, what is the thing that I don't want to do right now that I think that is important and do that first, because you're gonna you're gonna have to do it anyways. So why why have it like hanging over your head when like basically like do it now, especially if it's important. On the other hand, I will do the flip side, which is kind of like the dorm room situation where I'm like, if I save the thing I don't want to do that may be important though, but I save it and for whatever reason I don't want to do it, it'll make me so productive because then I do all these other things. And so I kind of find it it can be a good way for me to get a lot done to actually save the important thing like hanging over me because I have if I don't want to do it.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, well, I mean, it depends if you're the type of person which you clearly are that's going to do it anyway later versus I'm just going to keep slating it and I'll get to it eventually. And then it builds.

It's something called, I've heard it called tasks. Well, it's like something takes on dimensions that it didn't have because because of just delaying and putting it off. But the first, you know, the first one that you talked about is kind of like when Mark Twain was saying, just eat the frog, you know, do the most difficult thing right away. Get it out of the way you've eaten the frog, you've fronted the worst possible thing that you could and then everything else becomes kind of delicious. Right. And so, but again, it's knowing yourself and knowing what feels good to you and then playing around with it because on some days, it might be like, Oh, it felt really good to tackle that right away versus I felt good to get all these other things done and then really put my focus in it when I felt like I had, you know, set up the environment, like, for instance, the dorm room thing, which I absolutely love. Even there, if you look at it, having your external environment clean, as we know from a lot of different studies around this is then reflected back into your mind and the way that you start to get and move information through your mind in preparation for something like a test. So it's understanding how do I operate most effectively and that starts with really deep listening, which is also where you start to get more in tune with what is really important right now and letting that flow through and have action around it. Right. Inspired action that comes from that place of deep listening.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, actually to the cleaning part, just as a really quick side note, I've noticed that it's almost like I can see everything in my head because I've been doing this urgent, important thing for so long that it's almost like every time I see an intended task in my head, I'm like, is this urgent? Is this important? Where is it in my dimensions in my head? I've noticed if I feel like I have a lot to do and I'm overwhelmed and I probably am stuck in the demand where I feel like everything's important, everything's urgent, all of a sudden I have to clean my space around me.

And I was reading it's because, and I think you were saying this just now, if your space is in disarray, then that's not supporting a conductive state to be in to do things. I also read that that's why people who are struggling with trauma get more triggered by clutter because it's like a subconscious stress signal to them. So just tangents there. Yeah, I just love this filter. Sometimes though I really, sometimes I genuinely struggle knowing what's important versus urgent. Do you have, or where it lands, do you have suggestions for that?

Cortney McDermott
Yeah. And it's a suggestion that I think a lot of people don't like to hear, but it's that deep listening again. When I am scattered, I go lay down and I wait for the next almost instruction basically to come through. Because again, I know I'm shifting brainwave frequencies. I'm in a state of deep listening. Sometimes I just actually truly literally need to rest for five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever that looks like, so that I can come back and really, again, start to dance with what's really important and what wants to be expressed to me. So I think, you know, we don't want to do it, but it's like a little kid, right? When we see a young child who's struggling with focusing on something or whatever that looks like, it's like, okay, let's time out for a second. You know, come over here, let's relax together, right? Until it gets back into that place of just play, constructive play, right? And so I think we need to give ourselves that gift too of saying, okay, right now I can't tell what's most important. I feel fragmented. I feel frustrated. I feel whatever that is, right? And you'll feel it, rather than it being a story, it's actually these sensations in our body, right? We just recognize them as, Oh, this feels a little mucky. I'm with all mucked up. It's for me, it's just go, go time out, you know, give yourself five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, because even though it seems like, Oh, I should be working on this, you're going to get far better results by timing out and coming back.

Once you feel that impulse of this is the thing right now, and it literally could be, okay, now I lay down for five minutes and I know I need to send a text message to X. I lay down for 10 minutes. I know I need to send an email here because it'll be, it's literally so much clearer than the second our brainwave frequencies start to shift to downshift.

Melanie Avalon
I'm just thinking about it. I'm imagining myself doing that because I don't think I have, I don't think I've done that before. No, I'm pretty sure I have not.

I don't think I have when I've been trying to figure out what's important, what's urgent, like just laid down. But I feel like actually that would really help because then probably what actually needs to be done would become very evident. If I'm not doing anything, then what needs to be done is gonna be like screaming, not in a bad way, but it'll become much more clear.

Cortney McDermott
Yes, yes. I love that one of the central teachings of the Dao is in the non-doing it is done. And I often feel this, it's like I just relax. It's kind of like what you were saying of not answering the email until the end of the day. It's like I wasn't just chasing or running around and putting out fires or whatever.

It was like this deep non-doing. What does that look like? And how again, the way I've experienced is the doing then starts to happen through you. It's not forced. There's a relinquishment of the illusion of control. There's really just this kind of very natural flow of energy through and as you.

Melanie Avalon
I have one more circle question because this is something that I've thought about for a long time because it's a daily habit that I do and I am I don't know if it's in the distraction circle or if things that normally would be in the distraction circle can get moved to the design circle because their purpose is to purposefully engage in a distraction. So what I mean by that is because for me I tend to workaholic has like a bad connotation to it but I just love my work and I love doing all the things and all day and I love it and I also like to have this time at the end of the night like at the very end where I do just like get on social media for a little bit and it's because I want to not do anything work related and I do want to kind of just have that moment.

So that looks like the distraction circle but then I wonder maybe it's designed because maybe I like maybe it's okay for me to have this time where I'm not doing work stuff. So how do you feel about that things that might not seem urgent or important can they actually be important?

Cortney McDermott
Absolutely. And this is one of the things that, you know, I was talking about on the book is that none of these are bad, right? We don't need to like, you know, shame ourselves for it or say, should I be on here or anything?

It's like, yeah, you need that at that point. It's the way of, again, kind of calming your nervous system and inviting in playfulness and inviting it like, play is such an important, essential priority for us that has gone missing in a lot of cases, especially when I talk to women who are very successful and very empowered and just really wonderful. And they're like, I don't even know what my play is. So if you can find glimmers of your play, what does it feel like? What just feels like you're just enjoying something, right? And even sometimes prioritizing that if that's what's needed, you know, I'll do that sometimes with I love reading. I just love reading. So I'll often just, you know, if I'm feeling like I just need to do something that just feels fun, I'll just go lay in the hammock and read. And I don't see anything like that's not necessarily something that's important, but it is to me, it's important to, you know, to how I feel and then how I can come back into the game of all the other things that we're doing in the character formation that we're stepping into. So I think things like that are essential. And I think knowing that about yourself is again, part of that deep listening and honoring without any kind of shaming involved. Okay, awesome.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. And then one of the biggest things, I think, is the last chapter being lovable.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, permission to be loved, yeah.

Melanie Avalon
Yes. So did you know going, like, whatever you choose for the end is, I mean, I think the whole book is obviously very intentional, but ending with that, what was the reasoning and motivation behind that?

Is that one of the main theses of the book? And what is it? What is this role of giving ourselves the permission to be lovable?

Cortney McDermott
Yeah, so the whole, so the book, the outline of the book came as a kind of a download, I would say, in the sense that it was just every chapter was in terms of title or the direction I was moving in seemed to kind of come in as just pieces of information that, yeah, just sort of came into my awareness. And so I wrote those down.

But as I moved through the book, I realized something really fascinating started to happen, which is that I started to move, you know, the first chapters, I feel like are really kind of this rational, very, in a lot of ways, kind of linear approach to understanding change, understanding transformation, and understanding how to give ourselves permission for a lot of these things that we can struggle with giving ourselves permission for. And then as I moved on in the writing through the next half of the book, and especially when I got to the chapter on play, it was like something else kind of took over and was sort of writing itself through me. And so as the closest I can come to explaining that, and so it kind of it felt beautiful, like this kind of natural progression that can happen in life as well, where we, you know, we're really trying, trying, trying, and then something else opens up that sort of takes over. So the chapter on love and also even the intro and the outro of that book, I feel like were more written through me as these are just messages that were kind of coming through globally that needed expression in this particular way. And especially that piece of being, you know, permission to be loved, because I feel like so much of what we struggled, struggle with, and so much of what gets in our way is this question of enoughness, of lovability, of, you know, will it ever kind of, will I ever sort of measure up? And it's, I see this even in the places that people would think, oh, it's not there, you know, that person has quote unquote, everything, right? But it's really, no, these questions keep emerging. And so it's sort of that deep peace place that resides in all of us. And starting to liberate again, I think this is the best word to use for is just kind of liberate and free, whatever has been sort of mucked up, tangled up in the way of us realizing that we have it all, we are at all, we are lovable, we are, you know, a necessary piece of the puzzle. And giving ourselves permission to really experience all of that now, regardless of whatever circumstances or situation we might be in. And is that

Melanie Avalon
This is a big question that I have struggled with my entire life, honestly, because I mentioned earlier being raised in a religious background. And so the messaging was that we're born as sinful, fallen human beings. So the dominant message was we are not naturally good, I guess.

So what is the role of that metaphysical belief, whether people think that or not? Because some people are going to say, well, that's just not true because people are born, like humans are born sinful and fallen. So this is actually like some people would say this is a harmful message, which is mind-blowing to me now, but I'm thinking about myself growing up and I would have thought that this was a harmful message probably back then.

Cortney McDermott
Fascinating. So well, I think if we go back to any, like the central precepts of most religions, or at least the ones that I'm more versed in, and so take for instance, Christianity and all of its different unfoldings, but you know, again, we can look at the Bhagavad Gita, we can look at all different places, like the greatest spiritual traditions and leaders were, as far as I know, not questioning our loveability. It's really the structure, like the structures that then got put around that, and the religious structures that got put around those messages, it was almost like they were missing the mark in terms of the central teachings of the leaders of those, the beginnings of those traditions, right?

And so if we go back to a lot of those messages, like judge not that you be not judged, or you know, whatever that looks like, it's like, wait, let's take a step back and actually, and actually really allow ourselves to sit in the deeper teachings that have been, again, kind of mucked up, or, you know, we're missing some of these deeper teachings. But I also think at the same time, even if we leave out the question of morality, right, it's just what is, and again, freeing ourselves from needing to label it, freeing ourselves from needing to compartmentalize anything or overanalyze anything and just say, what is, is, and can I dance with it? You know, and what does that look like every day? You know, regardless of, you know, what I might have been taught in the past or whatever, it's kind of like, how much can I liberate the energy again so that it can dance through me? Does that make sense? Because it is a big question. It's a very big question.

Melanie Avalon
And I want to super clarify because I think now, I think this is the most beautiful message and it is what I believe, what you're saying. I was ingrained in that for so long, so it's really, really interesting to have a different perspective now and question it.

And I agree as well about organized religion versus the actual teachings. If you look at them, it's not necessarily always the same thing. And especially that judgment piece because I remember one of the things in your book, I think it was you were talking about listening to your intuition or not, or the nudges, something and you were talking about how our intuition can be off when we're caught in things like judgment, for example, like how much that can cloud us listening to what is our true intuition. So I don't even know if there's a question here, but I'm just echoing back that, yes, I love all this and I'm very grateful that I have had a paradigm shift personally and that I'm not in that paradigm that I used to be in.

Cortney McDermott
Yeah. And so many of us get this, whether it's through religion or familial, whatever that looks like in our families, our societies, et cetera, especially I see a lot of this good girl stuff versus bad, I see and hear a lot of that.

And freeing ourselves from those constructs is, I think, of paramount importance for us to lead a free life where we're allowed to express in ways that, again, that we're meant to. And it's not easy work, but it's pretty simple because again, you can kind of feel in your body, it's such an easy litmus test of like, does this actually, does this feel good? And starting to give ourselves permission to feel good.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I know we so easily put people in buckets and especially like labels today. So like oh He's a narcissist. They're a psychopath. They're this they're that do you think there's some people that are That like what we think those labels are and I don't say are not lovable But um, are there some people that are just not good people?

Cortney McDermott
The way I think about it, and this might just be for my own sanity, but the way I think about it is almost, it borrows maybe from Shakespeare and a lot of other, even a lot of our spiritual traditions, but I say Shakespeare because I'm thinking the whole world is a stage. And if I think about all of the expressions, right, that are on the stage, if I'm watching a production, if I'm watching a movie, I am watching it through that lens of, this is really fascinating. I can enjoy this expression without, I can know that it's a character outplay. And I think especially for people who are involved as you are, for instance, in fields like acting or other artistic expressions, it's kind of an easier thing to see sometimes.

And the more you start to realize too, I'm playing a character, right? If we even go back to lighting up different genetic expressions within us, etc., we are truly playing characters. And what is the deeper truth about who and what we are? And the more we start to kind of convene with that, the more we start to listen to that deeper, you know, I'm not this, right? And yet you're the animating force, we are the animating force, or whatever that is, that's pumping our hearts is the animating force behind all of it, right? And so the way I tend to look at it is, I'll oftentimes watch people through that lens of like, wow, that's a really fantastic performance. And that might sound obtuse, or it might sound, even it may even come off as Aryan or something, but really, it's the exact opposite. It's like, wow, I get to watch the way this life force is expressing through you. And I can appreciate it, even if I can't necessarily understand it. And by appreciate it, I don't mean it's good or bad. I simply mean, I'm watching, I'm observing, and also notice the ways that that can change, right? So even if we look at, for instance, a play or a movie, like we see the character shifts, we see the plot twists, we see all this beautiful unfolding. And I like to think of life that way, maybe again, it's more self preservation than anything. But I like to think of this is the unfolding of all that is in its magnificent myriad expressions. And I can just kind of watch without that judgment, without needing it to be a certain way without needing it to go a certain way. And then I can, again, step more into that place of just enjoying being the observer, which even if again, I'm thinking in terms of even just quantum theory right now is one of the presentations I'm working on this kind of ties all into this last piece of this presentation of, it's almost like I, I get to watch this whole dance, and then I get to choose which expressions I'm going to let alight my attention upon. So that I'm bringing more of those probability amplitudes into my immediate field. Does that? Yeah, does that resonate? Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon
I think it's really helpful, especially with, I don't know, especially speaking of social media, just like all the conflict and tension between people and labels that we put on people. So I, I think that's a really healthy perspective to, to moving through this world.

And your your presentation sounds fascinating. I love that. Well, so we have covered a lot. I have a personal question for you. But was there anything you wanted to touch on that we did not touch on for listeners?

Cortney McDermott
No, I think this is great. I just want to say thank you so much.

Thank you for the thoughtfulness that you have in, in preparing all this. And thank you so much to the listeners. I just, I think you're creating, I know and feel that you're creating something really important in the world. And I want to acknowledge that and just say, thank you.

Melanie Avalon
Well, thank you. I echo all of that back to you so, so much.

I mean, just from reading your book and now a thousand times more talking to you, the personal question I want to ask is you say in the book that you'll tell a story in person when you meet somebody. I'm curious what happened with the passport. Right.

Cortney McDermott
Okay, so I got, so that last bit of that story is I got into the US with the passport and that was expired. I had an expired passport, this was after COVID. You can get the book to read the whole story, but it was really astonishing at each of the checkpoints what happened to me as I relaxed and let go of my needing it to look a certain way or go a certain way. And at that last passport control in the US, when he's, this guy's looking at or the security officer is looking at my passport. And he says, it wasn't going through the machine. And he said something like, just a minute, ma'am. And at this point, I had already made it across the ocean, everything I thought, Oh, crud, is he gonna make me go back to Italy? And he leaves the cubicle that he's in for a while. And I'm just and I'm sitting there. But again, went into those deep states of relaxation that I talked about in the book, just like whatever happens, I'm okay.

And it becomes goofy, it becomes playful. That's what I really love about hitting these states is you're just, you just it's almost like you can feel the laughter in your cells. And he came back and he said, I don't know what's going on. It just wouldn't go through. But you're fine. You're good to go, ma'am. You know, welcome home because that's what they always used to say to me when I'd come into the stage and welcome home. And yeah, and just let me through that checkpoint. And I thought this is bizarre. I mean, the ways the enfoldment of how that all happened as you deeply relax without an attachment to an outcome. Yeah, I love that. That's that's amazing. You know, no one's asked me that. And people take all these notes from the book and they say all then they've had all these phrases, but nobody's asked me that story. I love that you're asking and I go on stage like in front of 1000s of people and I haven't ever gotten that question. But I did. You're reminding me that I asked, you know, people to ask me about it. I love that you did.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I was like, I wonder if people ask her this all the time. No, I love that you did. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. Well, Courtney, thank you so, so much. I really, really cannot express my gratitude enough for everything that you're doing. So friends, go get the book now. Give yourself permission. Where can listeners get the book? Follow your work. I mean, you've just mentioned like presentations. Can people, you know, see you at presentations? Like where all can people go?

Cortney McDermott
Great. Yeah. Thank you so much for asking. So Courtney is spelled with an O only. So it's C-O-R-T-N-E-Y. And that's really important because if you look up Courtney McDermott on any of the social networks like Instagram or LinkedIn, that's how you'll find me is C-O-R-T-N-E-Y.

And also the websites Courtney McDermott or Court Inc. C-O-R-T-I-N-C as an incorporated. So you can go there for, we've got a free mini meditation also with my voice that you can tap into and use to kind of reset throughout the day if you need it. The books are everywhere. Books are sold also in a lot of brick and mortar, but you can definitely find them on Amazon and all the different places. Also the Audible, Audible version is available pretty much everywhere I think. So however you like to get books. I know lots of times people love the pairing, the two, the, they read and they listen. And they say that that's really helped in terms of it really penetrating their, their psyche. And so that's where you can find me. I love, love, love. I mean, we have at this point gotten hundreds of reviews on the book, like you were saying, where people have really talked about these massive life changes that have ensued as a result of connecting with that information that they called in. So I love getting those. I try to read all of them. My team shares them with me. And it's just such a delight to me to know the ways that this is shifting. And I love when people connect in these different platforms and send messages. And it's yeah, so I would love for anyone, especially from your audience and especially someone, like I said, who's in the frequency to have stayed with this. I would love for you to connect and let me know where you're at. Awesome.

Melanie Avalon
Thank you so, so much. So we will put links to all of that in the show notes. Yes, just thank you so much.

And the last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it is just because I am so very much aware and obsessed with the importance of mindset and gratitude. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Cortney McDermott
Oh gosh, everything. I write lists and lists of things I'm grateful for all the time because I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing.

All these things. I would say in this precise moment, I'm just so grateful for being here, for being here with you, for being in a position to be able to have these really important conversations that, you know, there's a poem, if even one life has breathed easier, right, because of this, then we've done something really great. And I do believe that's what we're doing day by day, moment by moment. And I'm so grateful for that. So thank you.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. I love it so much.

Well, thank you, Courtney. This has just been such a treasure. It was a complete flow state for me. I am just so grateful listeners get the book now and I would love to have you back in the future. Will you be writing any other books?

Cortney McDermott
I am working on a third one, but I'm also working on starting a podcast.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, we should talk because I, have you done, have you done a podcast before?

Cortney McDermott
I haven't. I've been asked to do it multiple times and I've even in collaboration and I've just kept shying away, but I have a really great concept that I'm super excited about and I want to share it in the form of a podcast because I think it's so powerful.

And I'm also going to be doing some in-person retreats and things like that to really connect people with some of these teachings. And so, yeah, I'm so excited and I'd love to talk to you about it.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Well, clearly, literally speaking my language here. So yeah, we should talk because I've been here a while and I can I can give you things, my thoughts.

Cortney McDermott
Love it. I would love that. I'd be so grateful. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. Well, thank you, Courtney. This was such a treasure and we will talk soon. Thanks. Bye.

Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What? When? Why? As well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit Melanie Avalon dot com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at Melanie Avalon dot com. And always remember, you got this.