JESSI: Yeah. And I think I realized, and this has actually been more of a recent realization. Go in rooms where you're celebrated. Like, why keep going back to the places where you're cut down or minimized or dismissed?

And many of us who grew up in kind of environments like that, right? Where our big dreams are cut down. You can't, you can't get too tall or you're going to make the rest of us look short, right? I continuously learn, like, that is probably not a place, a room I want to be in, right?

And, and that became really important because a little over a year ago, I lost my little brother. And we grew up together. We grew up in the same environment. He made very different choices than I did, and he actually died in prison.

JESSI: And it was a moment for me where my grief was so immense, right, that other things just kind of became unimportant. Like, any negativity on top of that was just like... And so my world became very small for a while.

And weirdly, it was like the one of the weirdest, best things to happen to me because out of that I became even more focused on what is it that actually lights me up? What are those rooms I really enjoy being in? And I got back into kind of some of my spiritual practices. I keep an altar. And I got back into, you know, even self hypnosis and things that I had kind of let go to the wayside, getting distracted by life things, right. And I, I just started that practice again.

Shortly after my brother passed away, I ended a relationship because I'm like, this isn't meeting me in my grief, right? This isn't.

And it's not even so much does this serve me more? So is this actually meeting me with full presence and resonance where I am right now? And that became pretty clear pretty easily.

And so, like, basically, long story short, experiencing grief like that made me realize a lot of that we focus our attention on, like, people pleasing or getting people to like us or, you know, trying to convince others that we're worth time and attention. It's just not worth it. And since then, I've been kind of on that journey of, well, what rooms do I belong in?

JESSI: And earlier this year got serious about, like, kind of speaking about things that I saw to be true on TikTok, and I started getting a following. And it's interesting that when you start telling your truth, it's kind of polarizing. It's kind of polarizing.

LISA: Oh, it absolutely is. And then, you know, so let's talk about telling your truth, because this is a great thing, because when I started telling my truth, oh, did I get pushback? How about you?

JESSI: It's uncomfortable.

LISA: I got pushback from the people closest to me, and I have to tell you, somebody in my family... I had done a video on Facebook because I'm okay with being vulnerable, totally okay with it. It's one of my superpowers. It's why people talk to me. Because it's. And I, I did soon a video...

I was very unhappy this day and I was crying and I did a video, crying on my video. And I was just like, you know, and I know this will pass and tomorrow, be a really happy person and please make sure you come back tomorrow because I won't be crying and I won't be crying. And somebody in my family called me up and I got the judgment that I shouldn't be doing that on the Internet.

And this was about four or five years ago, so. And I retreated because that was the me that we. I used to retreat. And now, like when, with this podcast, I'm sure I'm going to get lots of that. And I'm ready because I already know. I already have experienced it and I know, and I want to hear your version of that. What happened to you with your people?

JESSI: Let's see. When I started talking about my brother who was in prison, someone in my family was like, you can't talk about that. You can't talk about that. Oh, and I, I recognize that this person was afraid to share that story because of the judgment they might receive, and yet they were like, projecting that judgment onto me. And so I kind of came at it compassionately, but at the same time, I said, I'm going to tell my story because it's my story.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: And she and I ended up having actually a tearful moment because of her involvement in the whole thing. She was like, you know, nobody recognized what I went through in all of that. And I'm like, you're right, nobody did. And then we just like cried together. So it ended up being a moment of compassionate connection.

Actually, I get hate comments on my TikTok videos occasionally or comments about my presence. And I just, I either like, you know, I'll make a joke about it, like, not a dismissive joke, but like, you know, thanks for the engagement. You're helping me reach more people.

LISA: You know, that's the reality of it.

JESSI: Right?

LISA: They are helping you in some way, even though they dispel and hate towards you. But that's great. You have a great outlook on it. What else happens?

JESSI: The other thing I've noticed too is creating content. I saw somebody make this TikTok video. And it really hit me. They're like, if you're anxious or self conscious person, creating content is like exposure therapy.

LISA: Oh yeah, I agree.

JESSI: Because eventually you get kind of numb to the comments people make.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: And if you keep pushing through it. And I noticed when I started on YouTube there's like a group of people out there who are lonely sitting behind their keyboards or their phones and they see, oh, there's like 12 views on this video. Let me go mess with this person. There are people out there who literally do that. And you know what? They're not out there creating or doing anything good. They're wasting their life doing that. And I think of that every time, like, wow, their life must be so boring for them to be spending their time doing this. Okay.

LISA: You have a great outlook on it. So you're on TikTok. And so you do content about, about life and helping people. And I see also a hypno and yeah, as well. And I love that. And people like, you can't hypnotize me. I'm like, if you don't want me to know, I can't. You're exactly right.

JESSI: Yeah.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: Yeah.

LISA: And so have you found great success with it, with the hypnosis?


JESSI: Oh, yeah. I mean, hypnosis is the whole reason everything that I did in my life changed. I saw a hypnotist to help me walk away from cocaine and it worked. Like I just, I had already quit, but like I was still thinking about it.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: I was, still had that tug. Oh, I kind of miss it. I kind of wish I still had that crutch in my life. And, and the hypnotist helped me just kind of erase those feelings.

LISA: That's fantastic.

JESSI: Yeah, it was amazing. And then I've used hypnosis and you know, neuro linguistic programming, which is like, we're getting technical here, but it's kind of where hypnosis came from. And it's basically the way you talk about your problems is the way you experience your problems.

LISA: Right? Exactly.

JESSI: Yep. And rather than seeing my problems as, oh my God, why is this happening to me? Your brain is going to search for the answer to why is this happening to me? And keep confirming to you it's going to look for all the reasons that's happening to you. And so I started to ask better questions.

LISA: Yeah, it's important. Ask better questions. What else can I do? What questions did you ask?

JESSI: How can I make my life different? I started simply, how can I even like the smallest tiniest that how can I think about this differently? And then my brain goes, let's look for ways to think about this differently almost instantly. You can almost change it in an instant, right?

LISA: Oh, you. Yeah, I'm a firm believer in that. And I'm also, I'm a master practitioner of NLP and our linguistic programming. So I totally get it. Your words matter. And I still have a job and I, I don't... This has come up previously on the podcast and I'm sure it's going to come up again. I don't let people talk negatively about themselves when they're in my company.

JESSI: Yep, Yep.

LISA: I was like the self fulfilling prophecies and I'm just not interested in that. You're, you know, especially the really good people that are saying, oh, I'm so dumb. No, you're not dumb. You aren't. You made a mistake.

JESSI: That's--

LISA: That's not who you are. You did something incorrectly. You'll do better next time.

JESSI: Right? Yep. Well, and when you're telling yourself you're dumb, your nervous system is going to look for ways to confirm it. Yes.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: Like if you tell yourself you're clumsy, you're going to keep tripping. But if you tell yourself, I'm aware of the spaces I enter, I am aware of the... Where I step my feet, I'm aware of my space around me, you're going to become more conscious of your space around you and you're going to stop tripping or being clumsy.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: It's just a matter of how you like I'm. I rather you can start even like less affirmation and go. I'm becoming more aware of the space around me.

LISA: Right. It's so funny because I just want... I'm laughing because I was an extremely clumsy child. Okay. And looking back as a child, the only time I ever got attention was if I fell or got hurt. So I was always falling and always getting hurt.

And then I met a mentor and I walked into his house and I... And they were having a sign, a release. You know, I said, oh, too late, I already fell. You know, just joking about it. I didn't actually trip going in the door. And he says, that's hypnosis. You can change that.

That was the day that changed. I stopped, I stopped getting hurt that day. That it was instant because somebody made me aware of it. Isn't that so interesting? You really need to become aware of these things. And, and it is instantly.

LISA: So what else have you changed?

JESSI: I have changed. Okay. So I went from being broke all the time to now I live in a beautiful two bedroom apartment. This isn't a, like, brag. This is like something I'm really proud of. Like, I live in a beautiful two bedroom apartment next to a park, next to a lake. Like, this is amazing. This. I did this where, you know, five, 10 years ago I would have been like, oh, that's an impossibility for me.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: And now I'm realizing if I set my mind to do something, it's not even I have to talk myself into it. It. I again, I ask better questions. How can I get there? And since then, now I also have learned how to swing trade the stock market. And so over time, I'm building that as well. And let's see, I mean, all kinds of things. It's really just like whatever you need your brain for. Like figuring out a problem.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: Figuring out a challenge. Kind of when you stop wasting that mental energy on stuff you can't solve and move on to things that you can. Oh my God, it makes life so much easier. Life is so much better.

LISA: Absolutely. I totally agree with you that's. Yeah. So let's talk about patterns because, so, and I'm a mom, so I'm going to go from this way. Like, I'll look at some of the patterns that are the generational patterns, or there's other terminology for it. But this is what's coming to my head right now. Generational patterns that I was able to break. And then I look at the ones. Oh, I didn't break that one yet. Okay. So then I say to myself, well, how can I break these patterns? Because I need to do something different and I want to do something different. So let me figure this out. So talk about patterns for you.

JESSI: What? What?

LISA: You know, because you told me briefly that, you know, you had self awareness and then you understood your pattern. So let's talk about some of the stuff you change and how you change it.

JESSI: Ooh, do I get into something very deep today? How deep do we want to go? I had a recent experience.

LISA: Oh, I like recent.

JESSI: Take a sip of water. There was a story I lived with my whole life. My mom is probably not going to like that I'm going to tell this story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. There was a story I lived with my whole life, and that was. Your biological father said he would marry me if I got an abortion.

LISA: Oh, my God.

JESSI: That was a story I lived with my whole life. So you can imagine how that played out in all of my relationships with men over time, right? Over and over again. That. Either long distance or missing partners or unavailable partners.

LISA: Right?

JESSI: That pattern of almost but not quite. The carrot on a stick that... But never the prize.

LISA: Right?

JESSI: And that repeated over and over again. And then I did an AncestryDNA test recently and figured out who my father was. And it turns out he had no idea I existed. And that story was a complete lie.

LISA: Oh my God, that's so sad.

JESSI: And in an instant, I realized I had been living by that story my entire life. And in an instant, and it's not even that the story being different changed me. Like, it wasn't the information itself, it wasn't the facts itself, that this person was not. It was that the story shifted in an instant when I realized in was wrong.

And how many times do we do that in our lives where we tell ourselves one story? Like, like, oh, I'm just anxious person, or, oh, I'm just an alcoholic. Everyone in my family is an alcoholic. That may be true. Or it may be a small sample size. Like maybe not everyone in your bloodline actually is an alcoholic, right? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, the stories we tell ourselves, that keep us chained to the old cage, right?

LISA: Yeah.

JESSI: And that was the first story that came to mind because it's been so recent. It's been like this big revelation for me. And I don't know if I'll ever have a relationship with that person, but it doesn't really matter. What mattered was. Was holy. Holy. My entire... I realized an identity shift in an instant, right? It was like, oh, I had been living, I had been acting out in a way because I believed something to be true about me, that I wasn't wanted, that, you know, I wasn't... I was an accident.

LISA: You weren't wanted, you know, was like. And that. That's so mind blowing. And that's so mind blowing to me because. And in turn, my mom would. If my mom would lie because she was uncomfortable with this subject, okay. If she didn't know how to explain something or she was. Made her uncomfortable, she would just lie to get out. And I'll give you an example. So when I was. She used to send me the store to get her birth control pills. And I never asked what they were. And one day I said, hey, what am I, what are these for, right? And she said, oh, they're vitamins. Okay.

JESSI: Yeah.

LISA: I'm like, yeah, let's fast forward six years later and I get my first pack of birth control pills. And I'm like, they don't look. Those aren't vitamins. Because I remembered what they look like. I knew what they look like. I'm like, oh, she lied.

JESSI: Yep.

LISA: And what else? And then it goes to, what else did she lie about?

JESSI: Yep.

LISA: And I understand that it came from not being able to, not having the skills to have the conversation, yet it still affected me just like that affected you for whatever her reason was for telling the story. It doesn't really matter what it, what the reason was. It still affected your whole life, right?

JESSI: And I have learned through my experience with working with people, but also in myself and my own self journey and in observing people as a whole, we lie because we feel ashamed of ourselves. Like, if we didn't feel ashamed of that thing that we're trying to hide, there's no reason we would lie.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: And you know, it's learned pretty early. You lie, you don't get in trouble.

LISA: You know, sad but true.

JESSI: Yeah. Yeah, true. There's a, there's always an unconscious benefit to a choice that we make.

LISA: Right. Yeah.

JESSI: Good. Negative or positive. So, you know, when we hide parts of ourselves, it's always because we're afraid of the ramifications of sharing that truth.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: Just like we've talked about. Like, like what are the ramifications if I say, you know, those are birth control pills, then my daughter is probably going to have questions about birth control pills.

LISA: Right? Absolutely.

JESSI: What are your... Yeah. Makes her have questions in her mind, and I don't want to have that conversation. Right. So it's easier to say it's vitamins than it is to tell the truth.

LISA: And so here's the gift from that. Because I believe there's a gift in almost everything. Like, sorry to say that your brother dying was a gift for you because it helped you. It helped.

JESSI: It did. It absolutely. Did. I thank him, actually. Yeah.

LISA: And so the gift for me and her lying was to never lie to my children about that stuff. And if it. So I've had conversations with them and I'm like, you don't need to know that information right now. You're a little bit young for that information and we can discuss it again. I'm not telling you. No, I'll give you a generic explanation. A very basic explanation. If you have more questions, ask. And I want you also to know that there is more to this than what I'm explaining. I'm giving you a very simplified information explanation.

So I was able to. I was able to break that cycle for my children because of what happened. So there's, you know, there was a gift there. So I break the generational cycle in that. In that moment.

And your brother, I mean, I'm sorry that he died. And yet here you are in helping other people because he did.

JESSI: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if I hadn't experienced so much negativity as a child and growing up, I would not be... And I'm not like, all rainbow sunshine positivity at all. I just see things in better perspective, and I don't know, I would have had this, like. Not even ambition, but, like, this, like, drive to be... Like, oh, my God. I discovered, like, how changing how I look at something or feel something or experience something, changing my story around it, right, is how I can get out of the suffering of whatever the problem is. And it just becomes a puzzle to solve rather than a problem that I'm very emotionally attached to.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: Like, you know, and so if I hadn't experienced all the negativity I did growing up, you know, some of the. Some of the stuff that I experienced growing up, I don't know that I would have had the same. It's almost like a slingshot, right? Like, you like, the stuff that we go through, pulls us back a little bit to. If we allow it to slingshot us forward into the next part of our lives and into the next level of our lives.

LISA: Right?

JESSI: And as I've gotten older, every time I go through a breakup or something in my life ends, it can be a really fabulous thing rather than a sad thing, like, oh, I'm one step closer to this experience I want to be having. And then it reconnects me with myself and, you know, everything in our lives we can.

My friend reminded me the other day of the. The Taoist parable of the farmer and the horse. And the farmer has this horse, and the horse dies. And everybody goes, oh, no, your horse died. And he goes, well, I guess this will help me get back into the basics. And then, like, something good happens to him. He gets another horse. And they're like, oh, this is great. You got another horse. And he goes, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's cool.

LISA: Yeah, see?

JESSI: Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. So having that sort of, like, ability to digest our life experiences and turn them into nourishment, I think has been, like, the biggest aha. For me.

LISA: I like what you just said. That was so profound. Taking our life experiences and turning it into nourishment.

JESSI: Yeah, Like. Yeah. I mean, all kinds of shitty things happen to everyone. Like, life is. Life is unexpected. And we don't... We cannot predict any of it, really not. I mean, we can... We can try to control our lives with predictability. Yeah, of course. But life is going to throw unpredictable things at us. And I guess it's really about, like, resilience. Like, how do you digest those unexpected experiences? It can either be poison or it can be nourishment.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: You know, and. Yeah, that's. That's a big thing. Yeah.

LISA: Wow. That's interesting. I. I just love the. The way you phrase that. That was awesome. This is going to be... My audience is going to...

JESSI: Yay.

LISA: I have two more questions for you. We've talked a lot about a lot of things and a lot of tools. So if somebody's struggling, either if you want to repeat something or say something new, if somebody's struggling with something or some everyday piece of advice that you were given by somebody that you'd like to share with the audience so, you know, in a time of need that they could think about, what would you like to share?

JESSI: My friend and I were talking the other day about this, and you know how we tend to, like, overthink things or over rationalize things?

LISA: Yes.

JESSI: The biggest piece of advice I'm going to give your audience because this was so profound for me. Your brain is not your compass. Your brain is there to help you solve puzzles and challenges. It's there to help you figure out the how, not the what or the if. And it's your inner compass, your feelings, your inner experience that tells you where you're supposed to go. And I don't mean that it's like, with... It's where you feel uncomfortable. You feel uncomfortable for a reason.

LISA: Right.

JESSI: If you feel stressed out for a reason. It's not just happening to you. You're meant to listen to that. And your brain isn't the point out... It isn't the thing that tells you how to get out of uncomfortable feelings. Those uncomfortable feelings are telling you something. So that's my biggest piece of advice because I thought that was so profound. Like, we tend to rationalize things, right?

LISA: Oh, absolutely. So, Jessi, when people want to get in touch with you and learn more from you, how can they do that?

JESSI: Sure, you can go to my website, moonhypnosis.com. That's M-O-O-N hypnosis.com and I have all kinds of, like, free recordings for various issues you might have going on. So you're welcome to have a look at my website and find them.

LISA: Oh, I'm gonna go look. I'm writing it down so I can go look. Well, this has been our episode of the Phoenix Mind Podcast. Again, I'm Lisa Manzo. This is where we do the real talk. We talk through the messy, the meaning, the full, the transformational rise from the ashes and through emotional intelligence. And I will see you on the next episode.