Align With Your True Self with Nancy O’Reilly

This is my second full-length podcast!

Ragan’s mother, Doctor Nancy O’Reilly,  drops in for a meaningful conversation about the harmonization of the masculine and the feminine.

Dr. Nancy O’Reilly is an international philanthropist, skilled horsewoman, and trailblazer for women’s empowerment who believes women supporting women does change the world. A successful author and educator, she recently completed a new book:

“In This Together: How Successful Women Support Each Other in Business and Life”

available for purchase on Amazon.

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Thank you and have a spectacular month,

-Ragan ????

Audio Transcript

Below is an edited transcript for all of our bibliophiles and hearing impaired community members. We hope you enjoy!

RAGAN: Hello, hello, hello (Ragan laughing). All right. Thanks, Mom. I can’t be normal now. Of course, this is what happens when your mom comes in. All right, shh, everyone.

Hello, hello, hello, everyone. This is Ragan Thomson. I’m so happy to be joining you all today on this lovely podcast, exploring a topic that I’m really excited to share with you today, as well as bringing in my guest speaker who is my mama. I will share about her more in a moment. So happy that she has joined me today.

Today’s topic is around expressing your divine essence and aligning with your true self. This is a highly profound topic, and I found to be nothing short of amazing to truly do this in my life. It’s really become my life’s work, which is to really align with my true self. So, we’re going to explore that further today.

So, I want to start with some questions for our listeners today. These are some really important questions I’d like you to be with before we dive into our topic together and invite my mom here. Do you find yourself in a disconnect between your current self and your true self ever? Just kind of feeling into that question right now. How do you think the masculine, the feminine energies in our day-to-day lives can work better together? Where do you feel you are at currently today with where you are leading, from with your masculine or your feminine?

You being a man or a woman, typically that would mean the man leads more with his masculine and accesses his feminine when appropriate, and a woman would lead more with her feminine and accesses her masculine when appropriate. Where are you at with that? Have you thought about it, what’s your journey been with the masculine and feminine inside your body, which really is your natural essence, your core energy, the style of your being? Where are you at with the masculine and the feminine within your body and how you access it?

How can we empower ourselves to find harmony and embrace our collective power and strength instead of competing against each other? The masculine can be seen more as competitive, and the feminine can be seen more as cooperative. So, it is true that in the workplace, in our relationships, with our friends, our loved ones, our family members, we are consistently accessing one of these energies more than the other. So, thinking about where are you at with accessing those energies, why are you accessing them, and when you find yourself accessing more of one energy versus another, right? So, maybe in the workplace, you constantly say, “Oh, I have to be masculine, this is how it is.” Or could it be that accessing your feminine is just as appropriate to be leading in the workplace? Maybe there is just a misperception around the feminine in general. So I’d like to help you clear that up today.

In the meantime, I want to also invite my mom into the podcast now and introduce her. My guest today is an international philanthropist, skilled horsewoman, and trailblazer for women’s empowerment. My mom, Dr. Nancy O’Reilly, who believes women who support each other in abundance and joy, is the key to equality. A successful author and educator, she recently completed a new book: In This Together: How Successful Women Support Each Other in Business and Life. If you are interested in purchasing the book you can find it on Amazon. Thanks mom, thanks for coming in for this podcast today.

1. NANCY: Thanks. [crosstalk] just a little additional information you can give, the book is available in all the bookstores now too.

RAGAN: Ooh. That’s exciting. That’s awesome.

1. NANCY: Yeah. Hardcover. Many books don’t come out in hardcover so [inaudible]. I’m so happy to be here, Ragan. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. I never thought I would be doing this and IT is truly a treasure to be with you today.

RAGAN: I was really feeling that, before this started today, I had this strong, just really grateful as well we would be able to enter into this space together and have this be happening. It’s really a great topic to also bring in around, even what we’re bringing forth, the topic, as well as with our relationship. I think we both, as we’ve talked about, we do speaking engagements together, and we have entered into space where we’re starting to help women awaken and empower the divine feminine within themselves.

Really when I talk about one’s true essence, I’m really talking about one’s true style of being, one’s true natural core energy that they Are meant to be leading from. What I have seen for myself is I used to lead more in my masculine. My mom and I have really discovered that as women, heterosexual women, were meant to be leading in our feminine and to be accessing our masculine when needed. This is such a huge issue on the planet still because of the historical past of this planet with the more dominant patriarchal society that we have lived in, not only in this life but also the many lifetimes before this where that is just what it was, dominant patriarchal society.

So now women today are doing their very best to start to lead in their feminine. And most importantly, start to even understand what their feminine is and to take the judgment off it, take the pain off it, take the irrational beliefs around it, off of it. We’ll explore that a little bit more deeply here in a minute.

What I can say is because of leading in our divine feminine essence, your true core soul essence, what happens is you start to tap into the true authentic power of who you really are. You start to really know yourself. You start to feel really comfortable in your own skin so that way you can kind of start to celebrate yourself.

So I’d like to explore this topic with my mom today. The first question I have for my mom is what has been your journey in reference to your essence and the masculine and the feminine in your life? Kind of where it started, what’s it’s been like for you to kind of go through that experience to start to know yourself better?

1. NANCY: You know, I think Ragan when we get together with women or we are speaking together, I think the first thing that we often hear is how wonderful it is to see a mother and daughter that are literally working and helping each other and standing and sitting in front of other women… I think even last night we had a woman say “I wish I had a relationship like that with my mother.” I think that’s the most important thing that we need to understand as women is that when we do support each other… – and going back to again, the whole essence issue my own mother, my grandmother, I mean, we learn by what we’re surrounded by- we become the people we spend time with.                    

Again, probably for me, there was a conflict. My relationship with my own mother had been conflictual and it seemed a little bit competitive. I often hear that women will say, “What do I do about that mean woman? What do I do about her?” You know, somebody at work or a relationship, but women, again, when we do support each other, – and I think that’s been the most wonderful part about you and I coming together – we are really helping other women see the extreme value. When you have a positive relationship and you really do care and support each other, anything is possible. We see that over and over again. We’ve watched women grow and become so fully aware of who they are as women.

But again, I had to understand that, that feminine part of myself was not how I was leading at all. You helped me tremendously to do that. So I really want to thank you for helping me to understand that.

RAGAN: Well, thank you for honoring me that way.

1. NANCY: Absolutely.

RAGAN: I wanted to kind of explore with you a little more deeply around this conflictual relationship you had with your mom when you said she was more competitive. I think it’s really important for those who are listening to kind of dive more into that deeper healing experience that you have had with your feminine. Because I think there’s so often this talk about it yet, there’s not really an understanding of how to get there to that next place where they too can begin to understand their feminine, lead in their feminine as the ultimate goal. It’s not, as you know, it’s not been an easy undertaking.

This has been a lifelong journey for you as well as it’s been for me. Just to mention that in the healing of myself, which has been this integration process of becoming who I truly am and learning all these parts of myself and coming into loving all these parts of myself, it’s been a process. The work of discovering that I want to lead in my divine feminine did not come right away. So I believe that first, the question is around your past, your childhood with your mom, and then if you can just lead that into this exploration like “okay, what does that mean?” Now I really want to dive into something that maybe wasn’t modeled for you.

1. NANCY: I think the one thing that is extremely important for women to understand is the biases they have towards themselves and they have towards other women. Oftentimes this is below the surface. As you’re talking, we’re talking about the essence. We’re talking about cores, that many women are not even understanding at that level, that they’re not valuing themselves. They don’t have self-esteem. They don’t have confidence. Fear. There’s a lot of comparing going on.

For me, my mother had a conflictual relationship with her own mother. One of the things that were so extremely valuable for me, I became very close to my grandmother and learned a lot about my mother through my grandmother, which helped me to really start to have more of a softer kinder thought towards her. It was interesting. The more I supported her, the more I showed love for her, the more I showed her compassion, I received that as well. That was something I think she was almost a little bit confused by because that conflictual relationship she had with her mother, which never ended, by the way, her mother passed and I don’t believe they ever really ended up … I know they really loved and cared about each other, but not that loving, caring, nurturing, that warm, cuddly feeling that they could have had for each other.

I had that towards my own mother before she passed. I believe that was probably the beginning of a journey for me, to understand that that was so important that I have that relationship with my own daughters, all three of you, is that I was going to be a different kind of mother and that took time. It’s still taking time to understand that we as women have this unbelievable power… We come into this world with power. The power to, not the power over, the power to. We have these wonderful skills to develop relationships. We see the big issues. We see ways to take care of those issues.

Women have been solving problems for centuries. That’s what we do. We’re problem- solvers. We rock the cradle. We take care of things, with our support, our love and our understanding of what we need to do as far as the nurturing. But we also have to nurture ourselves. And I think that’s what we are saying to women over and over again. You need to take care of yourself. You need to love and care about yourself. The self- esteem, self-confidence, self-awareness that we have is so extremely important. Then we can share that with our daughters.

I mean, you’re a beautiful, wonderful woman, Ragan. There’s no doubt about it. I watched you grow and you know the love that you have for yourself, you exude with other women as well. I think that’s what we all need. We need those role models. We need those mentors. We need someone to help to show us the way, but we also have to say this is what we can do as women. We’re wonderful as we are. Our femininity is what makes us so very special.

I mean we have children. I mean let’s face it. We have such a huge responsibility, but the responsibility that we really have is towards ourselves first, and then we can share.

RAGAN: Thank you. Thank you so much. So in reference to the deeper dive that I’m asking you about, in reference to some of the pain that you might have been feeling regards to your mom being in this conflictual relationship already as you said, with her own mom, so being in that situation with your mom in that circumstance, really inside your home where she wasn’t nurturing, she wasn’t being compassionate and kind perhaps, and maybe feminine really. I mean, not that that’s all that the feminine is … and that’s something else I like to clear up. What is the feminine? What is the masculine and what are those energies? How are they working in our lives? It doesn’t feel like that sense of cooperation versus aggression versus more of that doing energy versus being energy. The doing is more masculine, the feminine is more being. It’s like there is a lot of doing, going.

I’ve met my grandmother many times. I became close to her before she passed. I wouldn’t say I was extremely close to her because I don’t feel like you were extremely close to her in my life, you know? So I remember thinking “I don’t know her that well”, but I got to know her a little bit more towards the end of the journey before she passed.                    

What I could sense is that something she said to me, which really always stood out to me that I knew she must have said to you probably 101 times was this, that she says, “You just gotta keep going. You just got to keep going.” What I heard when she said that always was a red flag for me, based on what she said and what you experienced was this lack of just being and just resting in her spirit. It was like, you gotta go, you gotta do. What I hear about that is there’s a lack of really feeling your feelings and that is the feminine. That is really, this … I’ve done so much psychological processing of my old stories and so much of trying to figure myself out through this, what I’m doing in the world. I think that for women … also, this is a topic for men today as well, but men are meant to be leading in their masculine. This is for anyone who is a man or a woman, what’s their core essence? What’s the style of your being? Who are you really? Where are you meant to be leading from?

So today, obviously in this audio or this podcast, we have me here with my mom. So we’ve got two women. We are exploring more of the deeper dive into the feminine. Point being is that we’re attempting to figure out within ourselves, who we are. So based on this experience of who we are, some of our energy of trying to figure out in the past through the doing, through what we achieve, how successful we are. Like, “Look what I’ve done. Look at this success … ” You know, that’s masculine. Men are very much about achieving something. Their life purpose, their mission. They want to get something done. It’s very, very common. So I kind of sensed, when I heard your mom say that, I felt like very masculine energy from her and didn’t feel feminine at any point, honestly in my relationship with her. So I can only imagine that that modeling for you has been an interesting thing to kind of unwind out of and see where you fit into the balance of really the harmonization of the masculine-feminine within yourself.

I know that with clients that I work with now and the goddess work that I do, as you know, I facilitate Goddess Gatherings, there are so many women that really have no idea what the feminine is. If they feel like they know what the feminine is, they are so confused by it being something more of a weaker nature and an energy that is not going to get things done. Which is really interesting because when we tap into our true divine essence, it is this ultra-empowering, energizing experience. I know that when I am leading in my feminine, it’s like there’s this vital vast source of energy and a well that I can just access and access. Then I go to bed, I feel very fulfilled and I did get a lot done. So there’s this misperception that you can’t get much done if you’re leading in your feminine and for the masculine, they certainly go, “I don’t have feminine energy. I’ve got stuff to do.” It’s like “whoa, whoa. Where’s the journey about getting in touch with their feelings?”.  Men are supposedly more thinkers, right? Women are feelers. We’re both meant to be doing both. It’s not just one or the other. It’s just, where are we meant to be leading from. So my question for you is, the journey of being in your house and moving from, you know, maybe leaving the house and this very masculine energy, and then moving into your own world, how long do you feel like it started to take on your journey? What was that like for you on your journey to start, again, to harmonize the masc and the feminine, to bring it into balance more in your life? What was that? What did that look like for you?

1. NANCY: Well, the term that keeps coming up as you’re talking is a vulnerability. This is something that women really do have difficulty with. Again, it’s because of the models. It’s because of what they’ve seen culturally. Again, going back to those biases that they have to be strong. That they have to be … As I said, you said, my mother said, “You have to keep going.” To me, that also felt like you had to support yourself. You had to do it on your own. You had to do it alone. I think that feminine essence is actually, you don’t have to do it alone. You’re never alone. There are always people out there if you ask for help, if you ask people how you can help and ways that you can also help and be helped. I mean there’s something so valuable as asking someone, “Could you help me?” I mean, how many people would say, “No, I won’t help you.” But women, as we become even more feminine, we can turn around and say, “Ragan, how can I help you? This is a wonderful thing that you’re doing, but I’d really like to be a part of that.”

I think that’s part of it for me was learning that I’m not alone, that there are many people out there that are here to assist me in this lifetime. That I don’t have to do it by myself and it … You know what? It’s a lot more fun when we have support and we work with each other.

No, I mean I think that was it. I think there are many women out there right now that have their superwoman T-shirts on underneath their clothing and they believe if they have to ask for help, somehow they’ll be targeted or they’ll be even more vulnerable than they’re afraid they’re already. But that vulnerability is the feminine, that vulnerability is reaching out, is being that softer, more feminine side.

But again, there’s something amazing when we all work together when we’re all in it together. That’s why the book is called In This Together because we really are not alone. I think that’s, for me, the feminine has become more and more that … I mean, we watch it over and over again when we bring women together. There are so many women that are thrilled. They’re absolutely thrilled when they find that somebody is saying, “Well, how can I help you?”, when we ask that question, “What do you need? How can I help?” That’s what we … if we can all do that, men included.                    

You’re talking about leading, but men have the ability to lead with their feminine side too, because we know. We’re seeing more success occur with relationship building, when we develop those kinds of relationships and those kinds of ways of working together, the outcome is always positive.

RAGAN: I think that’s where it gets into this idea of harmonization, right? For each sex, male and female, to start to just kind of intuitively tap into what energy is most appropriate to bring forward. So rather than this kind of old way of being that we need to do in a certain way. There’s a stereotype against men and women, right? Men shouldn’t cry and women need to be superwomen, right? These are just two examples. That being said, that lends to this level of inauthenticity. Really I think the pain that people feel around when they’re not leading in their appropriate essence, right? The essence is their natural energy, their natural, like I said, the style of their being. I just love the way that sounds because it’s really tapping into this who you are as yourself, not like anyone else, then tapping into when it’s appropriate, which energy within you, you want to bring forward.

As you start to kind of be comfortable with that, start to not judge that or again, you know what I should be doing, what other people think I’m supposed to be having to be a certain way, leads to this inauthenticity. When you feel that inauthenticity in yourself, you end up de-energizing yourself. You feel this kind of lack of vital energy, which leads to a lot of the less-than energy, a lot of the worth issues on the planet. You just don’t feel good about yourself. You feel no matter what you do, and that’s the key word is do versus just be, you feel that it’s never enough. There is no end to that journey. So we do have an opportunity to bring these energies into balance within ourselves and start allowing ourselves to naturally feel what we feel.

I might be talking a little bit more about the feminine right now with the feeling-oriented energy, but then again, men have feelings. You know, it’s been such an intense journey with certain men I’ve known in my life for them to come into being okay to have their feelings. Really they had a lot of feelings that were just pushed down by a controlling, perhaps masculine mother, by society, what they thought society would want to have them be more of, this strong, thinking driven masculine that supposedly that denotes that they’re worthy.

1. NANCY: Yeah. You’re talking about being authentic, but I think probably for men and for women, when we truly start to allow ourselves to have that self-value, that self-esteem, that confidence in knowing who we are, it gets to be a lot easier around men and women working together and living together and being together, when you don’t have to be on guard. I think that’s probably what happens when you’re not being authentic and you’re not in your true essence, is that you’re on guard. You’re afraid you’re going to say, or do I’d like to … that would-have, could-have, should-have thinking, which I call it stinking thinking. It’s when we’re on guard and we’re … I remember when I’d go back sometimes after, and this was again, did I do the right thing? Did I do the right thing? I think that’s when you come into your own and you start to truly know and understand and value yourself, you don’t question that. You don’t even think about that. You don’t later on go “Oh my gosh, why did I say that? Why did I do that?”.

When you’re on the right path, you meet the right people. And that’s when you feel good. Like you said, when you’re energized. I mean even our event last night, I went home feeling really good. When you’re on the right path, you feel good. You don’t question yourself. You don’t ask questions like, “Oh, what did she think of that?” Or, “Should I have done this?” Or, “Should I have done that?” When you start questioning yourself over and over again, you need to stop and go, “Wait a minute, why am I doing this?” Because this is not truly who you are. Who you truly are, is that your life is smooth and it’s easier and things just come easily, I mean, when you’re on the right path.

I’d like to think that’s how I value what I’m doing is, that time flies by. When you truly love what you’re doing, and you truly love the people you’re spending time with, time just flies by. It’s almost effortless to be in that space. We as women can feel that. Men can feel that as well. So maybe if we all stop would-have, could-have, should-have thinking and start really believing in who we are, and getting past that, something amazing can happen.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were all on the same page? Wouldn’t that be amazing?

RAGAN: Yeah. It would be amazing.

1. NANCY: No poverty. Everybody educated. We’d be healthy. Would be a wonderful, wonderful planet.

RAGAN: It would be a wonderful world.

1. NANCY: Let’s work on that.

RAGAN: It’s happening. It’s happening.

1. NANCY: Yes, it is.

RAGAN: It’s happening. So in reference to kind of the masculine and feminine, I wanted to take a little ride on exploring those more deeply. So the doing versus the being. The masculine, the aggression versus the surrender, this more feminine, analytical versus intuitive. Concrete versus abstract. Obviously, the first one is the masculine. So aggressive, doing energy, analytical, concrete, all about more of the competition versus cooperation. So it sounds like the masculine is life driven, driven to or for a purpose to accomplish something, to make something happen. It’s that doing. Go make it happen and achieve something. And the feminine which is again, it’s interesting because you can see that, obviously,  there are many women on the planet that are doing some wonderful things, right?

1. NANCY: Absolutely.

RAGAN: They’re accomplished in one or two things and highly empowered women, that are out there just being their true self and getting things done, right?        

So I think there’s this interesting misperception we’re constantly trying to clear up on this planet because there’s been like I said, such an imbalance with this, that women feel that when they tap into their masculine, that’s when they get things done. So great. I love that because that’s true. We can access our masculine because it is doing energy. But as soon as we are done with the doing energy to come back into the feminine to lead in it, to reside there. That would be your place of power, your seat.

The same with the masculine, for them to go into their feminine when it’s needed and to access that. Maybe that’s something that they want to access more often with a relationship with their beloved, or with their children or within their work partners, with their work partners at their business, really kind of diving into what’s going on behind closed doors, with someone who may be struggling, one of their friends.

So anyway, I just wanted to bring that forward and see how you resonate with the differences between the masculine and the feminine in your life.

1. NANCY: There are words that come to mind when you’re talking and one of them is value. Again, growing up in a conflictual relationship with my own mother, there was that questioning of my own value and my own worth. Maybe where the masculine comes into play is trying to figure out how you can get that value, how you can get that, approval. But where the feminine comes into is actually valuing yourself and knowing that this is who you are.

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone when somebody comes up and says, “You’re a loving, caring, kind person”. But I think there are women that will go, “What? What?” I actually love that and I’ve actually had somebody say to me before, “But you’re such a nice person.” I say to them, “Why shouldn’t I be?”

We in our society have some unusual thinking about when we actually do talk about the more feminine side, which is loving, caring, and valuing. I mean that, again, going back to the whole issue of vulnerability, but that it’s when we have that experience more and more with people, it’s just amazing what happens.

I mean watching people last night support each other, and seeing surprise sometimes on the faces of some of the women there. In fact, that’s where I began doing a lot of my podcasts. This woman, I said, “Well, Mary, how can I help you?” This little voice came back and said, and it was almost as if, “You mean you want to help me?” I said, “That’s exactly what I want to do.” We as women can do that, but men need that as well. So we are constantly … we have to find that balance between our masculine and our feminine.

We as women have this delightful opportunity to come out. I mean, we get to be women now. This is the exciting thing in work and in corporations. We get to dress as women. We get to act like women. We get to wear makeup and wear beautiful clothes.

When I was working in, I dressed as a man. I wore a tie. This was back when, but that’s the way I got it done. I had padded shoulders and I wore a tie, but now I can walk out with a dress. I can have beautiful hair and jewelry, but actually, this is a wonderful time for women and women that can actually be women and not have to lead as men or pretend to be men.

We see too many women out there that are leading as men and they’re not getting the job done. They’re actually causing more harm and they’re not lifting other women up as they go. I think that’s what’s so important: we lift as we go.

RAGAN: So, in reflection to what you were sharing, I think it’s just a little, it would be interesting to dive a little deeper into as well now around vulnerability, which has been a very kind of intense feat for me, I know, to fully become vulnerable and still at times wanting to be strong or wanting to show myself as “I got this” kind of thing.                    

So I think that what I’ve learned about that is for most men and women, to be vulnerable brings up a great deal of fear. I think that it’s important to note that fear is a pretty large contagion on the planet right now. A lot of these insecurities and fears that rise up, especially by becoming vulnerable, is real.                

Again, to advise to everyone who’s listening to just note what your fear is. What are your fears? What are your insecurities? To be vulnerable is to do that. Is to say, “Okay, yeah, I do have this going on inside myself. I still feel like I’m not enough. I still feel that I’m not worthy. I have a fear that if I’m vulnerable, someone’s going to hurt me.”                

Because that’s really what’s happened for most men and women is, at some point, you did attempt to be your true self. You did try to be who you were and those around you said, “No, it’s not working for me” in some way. Whether that be your parents or a sibling or it was a beloved, a partnership that you were in of some sort where someone said to you, “I hear that you feel like you can talk like that or say that or be that. I don’t like it. In fact, I need you to stop that right now. You’re too emotional. You’re too sensitive. You’re too silly. You’re too aggressive.” Whatever you were, you were too much. Typically, that starts to shut us down. Then our vulnerability is the first thing to really go. We just, “Oh no, I gotta put on this protective shell. I’ve got to wear this masculine shell or this feminine shell. I need to hide inside of it and wear these masks so that people can’t really see who I really am. Because I’m afraid if they see who I really am, what’s happened before is going to happen again.” So what do you have to say about these masks that individuals are wearing and how to take them off?

1. NANCY: Well, the first thing I’m going to say, and I say this quite often, don’t believe everything you see and you hear. Check in with yourself as far as your beliefs. I think that’s, again, going back to a lot of those biases that, what we’ve been taught is not necessarily true.

Again, I think unfortunately in our society, fear is how we motivate people to do things. We do it in marketing. I mean, if you look at marketing, the best way to get women to buy anything is guilt. So we have a huge number of women that are depressed because they have impossible comparisons that they’re constantly being saying, “You need to look this way. You need to act this way. You need to wear this, you need to do this.” So we have to understand that everything we see and everything we read and we hear, we don’t necessarily have to believe. But be aware of how it’s affecting us. Again, I think that’s where they’re actually attacking the feminine because they’re saying you’re not good enough. That vulnerability, they’re going right to the core of that.

But I say this, women, we have this wonderful core of vulnerability, but also, sometimes growth is uncomfortable and getting past our fears. Once we get past our fears, anything is possible. I don’t think you and I would be sitting here right now talking in this podcast if we hadn’t gotten past some of our fears.

I find as a woman, my fear has helped me to understand myself even better and that vulnerability even better. Once I conquer one of those fears, and you may call it masculine but I call it also that feminine, which is … Again, just think of the history that women have gone through for survival and for their children to survive. We’ve had to push forward and use those feminine strengths, and those caregiving and nurturing strengths to be where we are today.

But again, don’t believe everything you hear, and you see, and you read. Understand how things are affecting you. You have a right to have self-worth. You have a right to be valued. You’re worth it. Don’t ever, ever forget that. Your own value is so extremely important. That feminine part of yourself? Yeah. I think it’s absolutely the most important thing to women begin to understand the strength and the value.

There is a strength with being feminine. In fact, the term feminist is now a valued term again. Being a feminist is a valuable term.

RAGAN: Yay.

1. NANCY: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely yay.

RAGAN: What I was hearing when you were speaking was this strategy to question everything. Versus believe what someone might tell you and worry about what they think and what they say. Instead, you question everything within yourself. Again, by questioning everything, which is also kind of this spiritual-based principal, you certainly get to know yourself. You certainly get to know who you are and what you like, what you feel is important to you, what you enjoy, what makes you happy. Then also to know yourself is to know thyself is to love thyself. So there’s this idea of getting to know oneself, loving oneself and then starting to diminish fear through basically seeing the truth in everything.

It just becomes a natural byproduct of like, how do I really diminish fear? It’s really getting to the truth. How do you get to the truth if you don’t authentically know yourself?    

Because then you start to believe what everybody else is saying. You watch the media, Looking at the paper, looking at the TV. “So and so said this to me. I don’t really know myself. So now I’m going to take on what they think is to be true”, which is bringing up fear for me because it’s not my truth.

1. NANCY: I love that. Getting to know yourself, that’s extremely important. I believe every life is about learning. I’m here to learn. Every day I’m here to learn something else. So yeah, knowing thyself, that is a lifetime journey because we’re constantly faced with change.

People say they love change. Well, I know as a psychologist that’s not necessarily true, but I can guarantee you, tomorrow will be a different day. Today’s different, but tomorrow will be a different day.

RAGAN: I wish more people loved change. I really do because change is the only thing that is constant and most people really resist change actually.                    

They just resist it like it’s the plague. It is actually the most important thing to really become great at in this life. Because we are required to change and to grow in order to know thyself, to love thyself. It’s literally required because what we’re really doing over the course of time is we’re letting go of all that old unresolved stuff inside of us… that’s limiting in serving, right? These energies, these fears, these worries, these doubts, these insecurities, these judgments, these limiting patterns and limiting beliefs-

1. NANCY: Makes me tired.

RAGAN:… all this stuff, right? So I hear you that you felt like you were tired when I said all that, Mom. And what I want to say is, it is a day-to-day, moment-by-moment process.

1. NANCY: Yeah, absolutely.

RAGAN: It literally, if we could just be patient and just rest in the now of this moment versus the doing, right? Getting out there outside of ourselves.        

“Oh my God, when am I going to be healed? When is it going to be enough? When am I going to be enough? Finally, will someone appreciate me? Approve of me? Like me? Love me? I’ve done enough.” That is this imbalance with the masculine and the feminine we’re talking about.                

You know, if a woman is thinking that way, she’s denying herself of just being. A man, the same. If he’s constantly trying to do, to be approved of, and he’s forgetting about his feminine, same thing. It’s really the same thing. It leads to feeling low energy, not feeling vital energy. We all know what that feels like.

There are days where you wake up and you’re either on the right side of the bed or the other side of the bed and you feel how did this happen? Why did this happen? We’ll just check on what happened yesterday. What were you doing for the last few days before this? Was there any presence? Was there any relaxation? Was there any self-care? Was there any self-nurturing? Was there any resting in your spirit? Was there any of that?

Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh no, you know I took a bath on Tuesday”, well that was like four days ago.” Where’s the daily practice of that? I think that that is self-loving. That’s self-nurturing and that is for men and for women.            

I know many men who have a very solid self-caring practice of baths and massages and manicures and pedicures. I’m not talking about men that are not straight. I mean that are masculine,  that are taking care of themselves. So they have learned to harmonize their masculine and their feminine. And they do not see self-nurturing, self- care as weakness. They see that it’s just truly taking care of themselves.

1. NANCY: Absolutely. Yeah. We’re not promised tomorrow. Yesterday’s gone, tomorrow’s yet to be, and that’s why they call it the present. Today. Today’s where we are.

RAGAN: Right. Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Well, thank you so much, Mom. This has been such a joy and just an honor to be with you today. I had a lot of fun and this conversation really was enlightening and stimulating. I just really positive, good energy in my body. Thank you so much for joining me.

1. NANCY: I just love when we come together. Gosh, did you ever think we’d do something like this? This is so amazing. I just absolutely love this. Now, this is truly what I love to do. I mean, and it’s so great that we can do this together. So I’m absolutely thrilled. You can have me on any time.

Any time.

RAGAN: I feel like I’m going to have to call you again.

1. NANCY: Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Ragan. This has been delightful. Ah, yes. The book is available in all the bookstores. It is called In This Together- which we are- In This Together: How Successful Women Support Other Women In Business And Life. It’s available in your local bookstore now. Buy a copy for yourself, your best friends.

It’s really a say-and-do book. We talk a lot about things, but we don’t talk about what we do support each other, anything is possible. Also, go to drnancyoreilly.com and I have podcasts and I have information and blogs on women’s leadership, women empowerment and just how you can truly, truly be your authentic self as well. Remember how special you really, really are.

Thank you, Ragan. This has been delightful. Let’s do it again.

RAGAN: Thank you so much.

We’d also like to thank our sponsor for this episode. The Impact Hub in Santa Barbara. Impact Hub is a coworking space for change-makers and entrepreneurs to collaborate, be inspired and make an impact. Impact Hub, Santa Barbara helps members find their true self by giving them the tools to succeed as entrepreneurs and thrive in all of their ventures. Use the code Ragan10 to get a 10% discount on your first month, the flex part-time or full-time membership offer valid through May of 2019.

All right, so I’m going to move us into a closing prayer right now. What I’d like us all to do, if you aren’t already doing this, please take your seat somewhere. Please sit down, just resting your body and please place your hands over your heart space. I’m gonna move us through just a couple of deep breaths and then we’re going to move into prayer together. Thank you so much.

So on three, I’d like you to take a breath in through your nose, out through your mouth and on the out breath please make a sound. We are going to do three deep breaths today. Starting with our first breath, one, two and three (deep breath).

One, two and three (deep breath). One, two and three (deep breath).

Okay. Good. Return to a normal breath now. Just a little bit of a deeper normal breath. Just letting yourself rest in your breath right now, letting it center you, calm you down. Thank you so much.

Moving into prayer. So I thank you, I thank you, I thank you so very much, mother, father, God, Goddess for this beautiful, blessed day, for in this day and this moment here in this space in place, it is true that I know and I know that we all are this. We are all divine expressions of God. If that is true and it is true, it means that everything that we seek, everything that we desire, everything that we wish for is already within us. All the love, all the joy, all the beauty, bliss, faith, compassion, gratitude, abundance, prosperity, clarity, you name it, everything is there. The only thing that is standing in the way of us remembering the truth of who we are, the truth that these energies exist within us, is yourself.

What happens within ourselves sometimes we start to buy into what’s called the ego. We start to buy into these fears, these doubts, these worries, these insecurities, these judgments, limiting energies, limiting patterns irrational beliefs, feeling that we are these lower energies and we lead from these energies. So I ask you, mother, father, God, Goddess, help us all to remove anything and everything that is ready to be removed from our bodies that do not serve us anymore. Anything that’s limiting. Help us move into this deeper union with our true self, our divine core essence, our sole essence, who we really are, who we came here to be.

Simply being as we are would be enough. Letting go of any kind of not enough energy, not worthy energy, clearly seeing that as we are in this moment, we are enough. Thank you so much.

I call for the divine assistance of all angels, guides, and masters of mine and anyone else’s who’s on this podcast today, your angel guides and masters as well to be with us right now, to assist us in any way, to let go of these energies that might be unserving. I’m so grateful for your assistance and your presence.

And please, I ask you, mother, father, God, Goddess, if there’s an imbalance around this diving into our true soul’s core essence such as our masculine or feminine, our natural state of being, our natural energy, the style of our being, please I ask you, anything that might be standing in the way of this happening for each one of us, to bring this into harmony our masculine or feminine.

I ask for assistance to remove all blockages, all obstacles that might still exist within. I’m so very grateful. Thank you so much. With these words I say, and so it is.

So take just one moment here, take a deep and slow breath (deep breath).

Thank you so much for joining me today on this podcast and this closing prayer. It’s been such an honor and a privilege to be here with you all. Thank you for joining me. I hope to be serving you more in the future with these podcasts.

If you liked what you heard now, I would invite you to please join me on my website, raganthomson.com. There you’ll find information about me as well as upcoming events. You can buy tickets for the events as well as listen to my audios. Podcasts are there. I’m finding that women and men are telling me that they’re getting quite a bit of benefit from listening weekly to these. So please join me on raganthomson.com as well as follow me on social media @ragan_thomson, please. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Blessings.