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Hey y'all, and welcome to this is nothing new, the podcast where we drop the trends, get back to the basics, and uncover those lessons hiding in everyday life.
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My name is Michelle Grooning, and I am thrilled to be welcoming Leslie Wright to the podcast today to have an awesome conversation.
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Now, Leslie Wright is a yoga teacher and the creator of The Anchored Wave, where she helps women quiet the noise and reconnect with their own inner wisdom.
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With a background in business operations, event planning, massage therapy, and more than two decades of personal growth through yoga and the healing arts, Leslie brings a unique perspective to what it really means to come back to yourself.
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Leslie, welcome to the show.
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Thanks, Michelle.
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I'm thrilled to be here.
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Yeah.
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So we can go so many different directions with this conversation because there's definitely some commonalities in our stories.
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But I would love to just start with what does getting back to the basics mean for you?
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And how have you experienced getting back to the basics in your own life?
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Um, in my own life, especially as I um have just passed my 45th year, getting back to the basics for me is about returning to my own deepest truth and trusting my own deepest wisdom and removing all of the excess external influences that are coming at us like a fire hose from social media, and especially as a midlife woman, hearing information on you know, looking younger supplements to improve longevity.
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There's um an overwhelming amount of information and noise out there that all seems to contradict um one another.
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And so getting back to the basics means um getting down to what your own body is telling you because that is your own deepest truth.
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And I I love that perspective because I agree, there's so much outside noise.
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But I always kind of chuckle to myself when I when I think about um shutting out outside noise because here I am with the podcast adding to the noise.
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But whatever.
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The whole focus is to help people kind of get back to those basics.
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So for you, when we think about when you think about your yoga practice and that act of returning kind of to your inner wisdom, it sounds like you reach a lot of that through movement.
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Absolutely.
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Yes.
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Me especially, yeah.
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So I'm I'm imagining there's there's people out there listening who are like, okay, that sounds great.
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But when I'm doing yoga, my inner wisdom is don't fall over.
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Can you hold this post for much longer?
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You know, we kind of get in our head.
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So for you, how do you know when for for yourself, how do you know when it's inner wisdom leading you or if it's ego or if it's impulse?
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Like, how do you know that you're in alignment with your inner wisdom?
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Like, what does that feel like for you?
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I feel like I'm truly connected to my purpose.
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And so oftentimes when I'm out of alignment, I have found myself making the same mistakes over and over again.
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So it's a tool, it's not a goal in of itself to master yoga poses, to be able to stand on your head or do one-legged, you know, whatever circuit sole.
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It's a tool to align your body with source, whatever that might be, and to sit and and contemplate.
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There are a handful of directions we can go from this.
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So I know that part of your past, one of your past lives, was being a corporate event planner.
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And so I am curious if the discovery of yoga or really tapping into that practice, did that come to you when you were in that corporate hustle and bustle?
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Like, is that where the practice began?
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Actually, the practice began as a true healing method.
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Um, in my early 20s, my brother passed away in a car accident.
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And almost serendipitously, I discovered a new yoga studio in my town that had just opened up.
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And I was just drawn to it, and I went every day.
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And I would I work during the day, just getting through the day, and then I would go and I would stay until they closed and take every class and just being around other people that were on their individual paths, or maybe they just wanted to feel good too.
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But that is where my own inner healing opened up.
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And since then, my connection to yoga has been this kind of sacred anchoring for me to come back to the healing properties, the moving meditation, the checking in of my mental, spiritual, emotional, physical state, and to get a pulse on where I'm at in my life and how I'm feeling, and do I need to go in a different direction?
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And so when you're truly in alignment, those questions come naturally.
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There have been plenty of times when I haven't been in alignment and I'm trying to do my yoga practice, and it becomes the I just focus on how good my balance is, or you know, this was really hard for me, I just wasn't feeling it, or I didn't like the music in that class, and you're I'm still focused on the external stuff.
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But um, truly it is a tool to get back to um your deepest self.
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And in times where I've been in the corporate world with those demands, the travel, the the demands on your body physically, the demands on the ment your mental state, because you have so much that you have to keep in order.
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And so many things can go terribly wrong.
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Um, it has been the way to reconnect at the end of the day.
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Yeah, and it it having that kind of tapping into that practice from a place of healing.
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And um, no, thank you for sharing about your brother.
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I can imagine the the pain that comes with that.
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But I one of one of the things I I like to do whenever somebody shares that they've lost someone they love is I would love to know if you're willing to share what's one of your favorite memories of him.
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Um, something that I like to remember about my brother is that he was hilarious.
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So he was um he was only a high school senior when he passed, but um he was known as like a class clown in a way, but also just somebody that would make everybody laugh.
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Um, first of all, he was enormous, like he was well over six feet tall, um, but he was a gentle giant, and he was also somebody that um was kind of the a guy that's looked out for the little guy, you know.
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He didn't play sports, um, he played music, he was uh into like, you know, uh like uh tinkering with things, he was uh a hobbyist, but he was just you know an interesting kid.
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And he was one of those kids where it's like he would kind of push the boundaries in class in terms of like being goofy and stuff, but even the teachers had to laugh at you know some of his jokes or the things he did because he just had a lot of humor.
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Oh, thanks for sharing that little bit about him.
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Yeah.
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So when you think about this practice of this yoga practice, it really came from a place of healing.
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And sometimes that's that's where a lot of our inner work starts is we experience a great loss, or we hit our own version of rock bottom and we have to do something.
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And so that that choice you made back then to go to that studio and just stay there and take all of the classes and really it sounds like quiet down the outside noise and maybe even some internal dialogue going for yourself.
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So when you think about getting back to ourselves, I think there's there's a lot of people who were like, that all sounds great, but I don't even know how to get started.
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Maybe they're not interested in a physical practice necessarily like yoga.
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And you've mentioned how it's a tool, and I totally agree, it's a it's a method that we can get to know ourselves a bit better.
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We can see what our body is capable of, and maybe even more so our mind is capable of.
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How outside of your yoga practice, what other tools or methods do you kind of turn to to help you keep that compass pointed, the direction you want to go?
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I think for me, yes, yoga is the tool that I use.
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And what I find it does for me is that it gets me out of my head and into my body.
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So at the end of the day, doing something for yourself that allows you to get out of those thoughts that might be repeating themselves, spiraling, or just not um giving you the messages that you need to hear.
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And so um it's almost like you know, the the purpose of meditation is to um take a step back from being in your ego or in the the active thoughts and becoming the observer.
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So being able to take a step back.
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So taking a walk in nature, going for a bike ride, swimming, there's so many different ways that other people have a connection that maybe when they think about it, they don't know that the reason why they love that activity so much is because they're able to take that next step of getting out of their heads, taking a step back, and maybe looking at themselves from the eyes of the witness or an observer, and being like, okay, so what's going on, you know, how are we feeling?
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Do taking taking a pulse on on just kind of where we're at in life and um starting to explore what might be something that we can let go of that is excess or not healthy for us, or just something that maybe it's um a relationship, friendship, whatever it is that um the time has come to go in a new direction or say goodbye because um we feel resistance when we're um trying to force something that just at the end of the day doesn't serve us anymore.
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So I think a lot of people can choose or think to themselves what might their version of their yoga, their moving meditation or their contemplation practice that they can introduce or do more frequently to really develop those skills or that muscle of tapping into their deepest truth.
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And I I totally agree that a lot of times we get so stuck in our head that we are trying to think our way out of a problem that we acted ourselves into.
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And I it's the reminder that you shared in a different set of words is that clarity comes from taking action.
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It comes from movement.
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And I know that for me, whenever I'm feeling creatively stuck or, you know, I'm trying to put together a talk, or it doesn't matter.
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If I'm feeling stuck, one of the ways that I can get my mind to open up is to literally move my body.
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And so getting out on a walk, I tend to have some of my best ideas because it's just your your body is moving and it's kind of quieting that those thoughts to a point where you it's almost like you open up another like access point, a new like wavelength of thought.
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I'm sure there's some science behind that.
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Actually, no, there is.
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I just don't know what it is.
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Somebody can correct me on it.
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Um, but I love that reminder of it's just move, whatever that is.
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Maybe it's a stroll through your garden or through your backyard, or maybe it's playing with your dog if you have a pet.
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Um and with this, with the yoga practice for you, that's been so sacred and so treasured.
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So, how did you move from participating in classes to becoming an instructor?
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What was kind of that's that step to take that next dive into the world?
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It was really the desire to be able to pass on what had been given to me by my teachers, the people that I learned from, and just um have a deeper knowledge of it.
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First of all, I'm one of those people that if I'm interested in a subject, I will go deep into the rabbit hole and know everything about it.
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And it's not necessarily because I want to master it or be an expert, it's just because I want to devour everything I can about it.
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Um, but also I just want to be able to share the um you know incredible gift that I've received from it and just kind of shares this practice that has been so meaningful and opening to me in so many ways with people that might be searching or needing a tool for their own practice or for their toolkit, you know.
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So with yoga, you kind of mentioned this in passing earlier, but you mentioned that an advanced practice in yoga doesn't necessarily mean handstands or all the I think there's one called Bird of Paradise, which is really really gets those legs going.
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But if if an advanced practice isn't fancy poses, what is it in your words?
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It's it's truly deeper intentionality in the most basic of the poses.
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But um, I like to remind myself again that yoga in itself was created as a tool to uh prepare the body to sit.
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So the ultimate advancement in the practice is uh reaching enlightenment via stillness, sitting, and and nothing to do with a fancy pose or something that's impressive to look at.
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I think the way that yoga has been introduced into Western cultures has um really been pushed in a way that people will offer, you know, a three-hour workshop on advanced poses, or we introduce heat, or now we're doing yoga with dumbbells in our hands, you know, and it's just like a way to kind of advance physically, but at the end of the day, it could potentially open some people up to realizing that there's something deeper going on, but it's kind of diluted the real intention behind it.
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So, in the practice that I created for myself, it is really just surrounding the most basic of postures, the ones that if you've taken a single yoga class, you're familiar with them, but doing them in a way that you're truly connecting to the purpose of the pose, what it's opening up for you, and how you're noticing other parts of your body reacting, not just in the maybe in the muscles or the parts of the body that are in the active pose.
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Your entire body is connected.
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So while you might be doing something that's opening up your hip, you might be feeling some tension in the opposite glute muscle.
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And so then you can start to develop a picture of what your body is going through on a daily basis.
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I'm feeling this way, these areas are tight because I'm sitting for 12 hours a day and I'm forgetting to take time for breaks, and um, I am surviving on caffeine and sugar because I'm not letting myself or I feel like I can't step away for a moment.
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And so those are the things that I feel create advancement in the practice because at the end of the day, you're becoming more aligned to your truth and your purpose.
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I'm thinking kind of what I took away from that is almost in a seemingly contradictory way, advancement is the basics.
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It's the intention behind it.
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Kind of what I'm hearing is the more advanced we go, the more skilled we are at the basic fundamentals.
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And I think about like let's think about like elite athletes.
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If we think about an NFL player, they might be the most elite athlete, the most advanced wide receiver, but that's because they're doing the basics consistently.
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They're doing the fundamentals, the sprints, the all of the other stuff that they're doing.
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And that's really what I took away from that.
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I feel like that's such a great reminder, is that if we want to advance and grow and evolve, whether it's in a yoga practice or if it's as a writer or as a speaker or as a business owner, and maybe even as a parent, how good are you at the basics?
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Like, where is your intention for all for this practice starting?
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And is that in alignment?
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Hmm.
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Really got me thinking there, Leslie.
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Yeah, a hundred percent.
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And I believe, again, going back to what we were talking about earlier with just like outside influences from social media, especially the messages coming at women for the supplements we need to take and the types of workouts we need to be doing, and how much protein we need to be eating, and you know, the weight vests we need to be wearing when we're walking.
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And um, again, it's like you can kind of choose your own adventure, but do what works for you if it's with intention and mastering the basics across the board, including lifestyle, eating well.
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It comes down to right fueling our bodies, hydrating, getting a good night's sleep, and doing well with being physically capable.
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You're going to become more advanced in your um entire life because you're honoring your body with where you're at.
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You're not pushing it beyond its capabilities in the moment, but you're moving with intention and you're building strength, building stamina in a way that is honoring your body.
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So, as we are kind of coming to the close of our conversation today, you've shared so much about your journey and the power of not only yoga, but movement in general and really being able to tap in to that inner wisdom.
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What is what is one reminder that you would like to leave the listeners with today?
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I would like people to recall a time in their lives when they were doing a movement or doing an activity or a sport or a hobby where they felt the most connected.
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And so when I return to my mat, it's because I'm returning to the thing in my life that anchors me and gets me back to my deepest wisdom so that I can make the big life decisions from a truly aligned space.
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And that's different for everyone.
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And so if the thing that you're most connected with, or the thing that connects you most to yourself, is the thing that you should return to to continue living your life with a greater purpose.
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It's amazing.
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I know for me, one of the things that really connects me to myself is hiking.
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I feel being out on the trails, surrounded by the mountains and the forest, that's my church.
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That's where I feel most connected to the universe, to Mother Nature, but also to myself.
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So that's a great reminder.
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For me, I know that's I need to get back out on the trails.
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I can, it's been a little too long since I've been out there.
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Thank you so much, Leslie, for the conversation, for sharing your heart and sharing about your brother and um just bringing us along your journey a little bit.
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All right.
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Thanks, Michelle.
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It was such a pleasure to be here.
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I appreciate you.
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And remember, sometimes the best way to advance yourself is to return to the basics.
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Find out what makes you feel most connected with yourself and tap into it more often.
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Thank you all for listening, and I'll catch y'all later.