Alessanda Sagredo- Learning To Love Yourself

Alessandra  Sagredohas a fascinating story. She grew up as an adopted, ¼ black bi-sexual female mystic in a household of strict Salvation Army ministers. She left an abusive marriage and went through a divorce and subsequent bankruptcy, only to face a walnut-sized inoperable tumor growing inside her brain. These are just some of the things that have made her who she is today, at the age of 44, completely healthy, free, and living a life of bliss.

In this interview, we discuss the amazing system she has developed, called Soulphoria. Soulphoria is a systemic way of releasing trauma, healing and falling in love with yourself.

You can find Alessandra at:

🔗 https://www.soulphoria.ca

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Transcript

Brian Smith  0:01  
Now that you're here at grifter growth, I like to ask you to do three things. The first thing is to make sure that you like, click Notifications, and subscribe to make sure you get updates for my YouTube channel. Also, if you'd like to support me financially, you can support me through my tip jar at grief to growth.com. That's grief, the number two growth.com/tip jar or look for tip jar at the very top of the page, or buy me a coffee at the very bottom of the page, you can make a small financial contribution. The third thing I'd like to ask is to make sure you share this with a friend through all your social media, Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Thanks for being here. Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if like a seed we've been planted, and having been planted would grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Everybody this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth. And I've got with me today Alessandra segredo. And she's got a very, very interesting life story she wants to tell us about. She's written a book called so forea which we're going to talk about which is actually a process of living your life. So I'm going to do like I was Do as I read a short bio, and then I'll bring her in to introduce yourself. It's certainly an unusual have an origin story of a book founded on overcoming challenges. And as you listen the group's growth, you know, most of my clients have overcome certain challenges. Her story is actually very unique as all of our stories are, but it's as unique as a solution that she's arrived at for leading a powerful, fulfilling life connected to all aspects of what is generally accepted to make the human experience, namely on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. Throughout her life, she says a dichotomy of two worlds. One is one is business one a business I should say, as a high level corporate consultant and successful business owner, and one of his spiritual explore a mystic and a teacher. She's been privileged to touch 1000s of lives over the years recording artists of guided meditations. She's a public speaker, and she's, of course a retreat leader. Along the way, she's created this new system approaching spirituality in a way that some will call the paradigm shift. And that's what she shares with us in her book called Soul forea, which we're going to talk about today. She grew up as an adopted one quarter black, bisexual, female mystic, and a householder, strict Salvation Army ministers. So that had to be an interesting growing up, she's gone through bankruptcy, she's had brain cancer twice. And these are just a few of the things that have made her who she has today. So today, she's completely healthy, healthy, she's free, and she's living a life of bliss. So with that, I want to welcome Alessandro segredo, to grifter growth.

Alessandra Sagredo  3:10  
Hello, and thank you, everybody.

Brian Smith  3:13  
It's great to have you here. I'm really interested to let people get to know you, and hear your story. We all have unique stories, your sounds really fascinating in particular, so start wherever you like, and tell me about your background.

Alessandra Sagredo  3:27  
Okay, so I'll start kind of at the beginning, I was given up for adoption. And I was always told right away that I was adopted. So this was never a surprise for me. But I was given up to adoption to a very, I'm not sure how you'd we're kind of like a wonderbread family. And I always felt like I never quite fit in, I always felt there's something different about me. And so it was always a little bit of a struggle. And they were also Christian, very heavy, Lee Christian. And my mindset since being a very little girl was that they're, I think they're wrong. And there might be something out there. But that's something we'll never judge this is not. It's not a creature of hate. It's, it's an existence out there. And so it was a little bit challenging growing up with them. But, I mean, that's a story for another day, I discovered my bisexuality when I was in my teens, which of course, caused me to move even farther away from my family nucleus center, just because nothing like that would be accepted. I was raised in a house where you weren't allowed to dance, there was no drinking. There was nothing like that. And I was a child that was constantly movement. So I would spin and spin and spin around the house, just to I guess, to get the energy flowing. So and then I got married a little bit too young and we ended up getting divorced and not I guess a number of years after that I was diagnosed with CNS lymphoma, which is brain cancer, and it was inoperable. And that is probably my one of my first serious serious experiences of of grief for myself. And then a couple of months or after that my brother died. And then about a year after that I was re diagnosed again with brain cancer. So I have gone through a total of 15 cycles of chemotherapy and two sets. Wow. And my last cycle actually just ended this year, just my last cycle is at the end of January.

Brian Smith  5:19  
Wow, that's quite a bit. So you were talking about the grief of the diagnosis, of course, and the grief grief of your brother? I'm curious about with your family, you know, with them being such strict Salvation Army ministers and Christians? How was your relationship with them? Is that something else you had to go through with grief?

Alessandra Sagredo  5:38  
I definitely I went through grief with them. And it was actually more on one of my brothers is my parents, my father's dead now. My mother is still around, and she's kind of opened up her mind as she's aged, I feel like she's softened in her her views. And so we're still not going to talk about my bisexuality or anything like that. But she's just more a little bit more accepting. But I have a brother who I have nothing to do with because when I was diagnosed, he actually told me if I don't get down on my knees and pray to Jesus to save me, I'm going to hell. And I just don't, I don't have time for that. And when you're in a healing process, we should be surrounding ourselves with people who want to support us and believe in us, and actually are giving us that love, instead of that judgment. So

Brian Smith  6:25  
yeah, there's you know, and the thing about grief is the grief, we can grieve the loss of anything it can be, it can be a relationship, it can be a person, it can be our faith. And I can relate to what you're talking about. I grew up in a fundamentalist family myself, and never really felt comfortable with that judgment. And this guy that's got that, that hates most of us out of His creation, unless you do these certain things. And so there is there for me there was a grief process of letting go of that, that that faith of my parents,

Alessandra Sagredo  6:56  
yes. Well, and there's also the grief involved in probably losing the community that you were such a part of everything changes. And I think that's, that is a part of our evolution really, as beings is that as we change, sometimes we have to go through a grieving process, because our relationships around us will change and our friendships change. As we evolve. We can't expect everyone to keep up with us. Sometimes some things fall off. Yeah,

Brian Smith  7:19  
yeah, that's, that's definitely true. And the thing is, I hear you talk about kinda like, I believe people come in with certain personalities, you know, certain traits and certain things. And I just, I kind of smile when you talked about you're dancing, and you're spinning because my daughter Shana was like that she was just constantly in motion. And I could imagine being in a family that doesn't encourage dance or free expression, then you've got it, you go through this thing, where like, Can I really express myself the way that I am.

Alessandra Sagredo  7:48  
And you start to layer shame onto yourself. And in this just resistance, like, I think that if we don't allow our energy to flow out, it will contract within us. And that causes issues. And that can cause health issues. Not always, but it can cost it cause different things and will definitely cause grief, because you're suffocating an aspect of yourself. So if you think of a child, for example, that, you know, maybe you have this child side of yourself that loves to color and loves to paint, and you won't allow it because you feel like it shouldn't be allowed to do that you're suffocating that aspect of yourself. And that can cause you that side to be constantly experiencing grief, which could cause a lot of underlying anxieties and issues and people.

Brian Smith  8:28  
Yeah, so you, you you go through this process, you know, of becoming who you are, and then you're diagnosed with with the cancer. You've gone through the treatments. At what point did you discover Saul forea? Or was that an evolution over time? Or how did that come to you?

Alessandra Sagredo  8:46  
So So forea, as the book was actually initially going to be called Soul Gazans except that it was trademarked. But I had been I have been wanting to write about spiritual living in the way to live a more beautiful and fully aligned for you life since I was a little girl. So this has always been something I've been passionate about even being raised in a religious household. I wanted to talk about all these the connection to all the different elements around us. And so when I was diagnosed it almost it's it's a tough thing to express. But the cancer in a way, woke up aspects of myself that had probably been allowed to go dormant because I had become complacent and comfortable. And so these dreams and these old thoughts came to the forefront and became imperative that I started working on them. So I pulled the pieces of the book that I started back out, and I started working on it. And now we've you can kind of see. Now we've got we've got so far yeah. So yeah.

Brian Smith  9:47  
So so it's, um, as you talked about that, and I, again, I have people on that have overcome things and I don't know how you feel about soul planning or why these things happen to you, but it's very cool. I'm and I found what people that have gone through a medical crisis to say that it woke something up in them. And you mentioned that so what is it? What is it about that crisis that you think awaken that aspect of yourself?

Alessandra Sagredo  10:12  
I think it was a reminder that we have a limited time on this planet in this form. Because even as spiritualist people, they're always like, well, there's the next life and there's the next life. But in reality, this consciousness is only this one lifetime. And when we pass on that will dissolve and will form ourselves and renew it, and maybe come back, if that's what you believe. That's what I believe. So you know, it just, it stimulated this, this desire in this, this ache, this crave to share aspects of myself that I've wanted to share with the world ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to share these different components. And so it woke that up. And it just retriggered the drive. And it also gave me something to focus on. Because when you're dealing, when you're dealing with a diagnosis, you're dealing with grief, you're dealing with the loss of your freedom, your sense of security, because it's not like there's a war going on around you, you feel like you're constantly at work to protect your body, and to protect for me my brain, which is obviously a very important part for me. So it it, you know, you're also dealing with that grief. And so one of the things I learned was to change my space when I when it would come up, and go and do something that would make me feel better. And so the writing actually helped with that as well. So I woke up the love of writing, and the passion for what I wanted to do, and just trying to get it out there and realizing there is a limited time on this planet at this point in time. So,

Brian Smith  11:35  
yes, and I know that you you operate like a lot of us in two different worlds. You're a high level corporate consultant, and a business owner yourself. So how did that play into? Or how did that change during the bat with the cancer?

Alessandra Sagredo  11:52  
Well, I'm very lucky because I own my own business. I own a marketing consulting firm with my husband. And so when I had to go in for chemo, I was in the hospital every two weeks on with chemo, they had had an in hospital treatment. So I'd have to go in and he would start he stepped up and he took care of the business he took care of the clients and I have now I've still can't let it go. Because I do love the business side. So I can't I can't just push it away because it's a part of me it is. And so I've learned to or I am learning to balance the to and to try to dedicate like, one of the things I'm trying to do moving forward is dedicate maybe one day a week to creating content for so far. Yeah, maybe another day a week just to writing someone I want to keep writing and keep putting more books out there. And then I will give myself the freedom of the other days to be able to work on on exhale, which is our marketing company. So

Brian Smith  12:43  
yeah, well, I think the thing is, as we're complex beings, right, we're not we're not one thing or the other. And a lot of times we pensioners pigeonhole ourselves into one thing. And we think I can't, I can't do this other thing. And, and maybe we even have a passion that we say, well, because I'm doing this corporate work, or my nine to fivers, as we might call it, that I can't pursue my passion.

Alessandra Sagredo  13:05  
Or I think sometimes we get caught in the thing that we think we're so good at this, this must be what we're meant to do. Just because you're great at something doesn't mean that's your whole life purpose to do that one thing. So

Brian Smith  13:16  
yeah, I think that's really important, too. It's like what what really lights us up and there's, there's, you're right, there can be something that we're good at. But it may not be the thing that lights us up.

Alessandra Sagredo  13:25  
It's true. It's true. That's a good question. What lights you up?

Brian Smith  13:29  
Yeah. So tell me about what it what is so for you.

Alessandra Sagredo  13:34  
Okay, so So foria is, it's a guidebook that will take you from right from the very beginning of your journey all the way through different six, I take them through six different initiation points, and to the point of reaching a so forth state, and so forth state for me, is where your physical body and your heart center, and your mental self and your spiritual self are all in alignment on your dreams and your goals and your achieving them and that so forth state, that's what was gonna, I was gonna call it soul gasmate. Because it'd be like a soul that orgasm through the Soul, this euphoria through the Soul, experiencing euphoria through the soul. So I'll just walk you through the different parts, you start off with the flirtation of the cosmos. So the flirtation of the cosmos is where I introduce people to the fact that you've never really been alone, even though you think you're alone, you have your ancestors, your loved ones that have passed on, they're still around you. And there's different ways that we can work with them. There's also all the different elements that we can work with. So I talked about fire, water, air and earth and how we can connect them with those elements and learn to flirt with them. And how all along there have been these helpful energies that have been surrounding you that maybe you haven't been hearing because you haven't been open to the flirtation of them. So we learn to flirt back with them and exchange with them. So that's the flotation of the cosmos. And each part of the book has a teaching and exercises because I really wanted it to be a practical approach. That's why it's called a provocative and practical approach. The next part of the book is called embodied in the soul. And this is where we actually learn to live through the body allow the soul to experience the world through the body. Because too often we think, you know, there's the body and the soul. But the soul is here to experience it comes from this tactile experience, to be able to feel and touch and taste different things. And so, in embodying the soul, we learn to build a better relationship with our physical form, to make it healthier, more balanced, and to also be able to move with it and allow it to free itself. From embodying the soul, we move to the spiritual striptease. And the spiritual striptease is where we start to recognize the different layers that we have put on ourselves. So such as religious upbringings, quite often, there's old toxic beliefs that are hidden back there, or there might be masks that we're wearing, because we think it's safer to present ourselves this way versus this way. So the spiritual striptease allows you or enables the reader to be able to identify those different aspects of themselves and learn to remove them to strip them off. And then from there, we go on to the sublimely naked soul, and the sublimely naked soul. This is one of my favorite chapters, simply because it's so often forgotten that once we've done all this previous work, we learn to remove the things we learned to, to re evolve ourselves, but no one's really talking about how do we actually learn to be in that new self. So this is where I'm helping people to actually understand, once you reach this sublimely naked soul state, this is how you can become confident and putting themselves out there. And that doesn't mean actually running down the street naked, it just means going out there in your, your authentic, true self and being proud of it. And realizing that friendships may come and go, as we were saying, simply because this is the new you and people might not recognize you anymore, or it might actually threaten them, that they have not been able to keep up with their own changes, but they'll get there. So and then from there, we move to the mistress of mysticism, this is where I talk about the three aspects of the feminine. So I talked about being a child, a teen and a woman. And it can also relate to men, because you can also look at it as being a child, a teen and a man. The idea in this part of the book is that different traumas that we have experienced in our lives might be still locked into those aspects of ourselves. So there might be a child side that has issues. And you don't always know which side so I give them exercises where they can actually pull on, they can ask a question, which one of you is still holding on to this issue, and that person, that side will step forward, and then we can work them through that. Or, for example, let's say you're going into, you want to actually make use of one of your other sides. So you're going into, let's say, a business meeting, and you need to do a negotiation, and you need to be really kind of cocky and a little bit arrogant, well, you might pull on your team side. So you might actually say, have your team side come forward, and allow that to work through you to bring that little bit of energy that you might not have anymore. So that's the becoming the mysteries of mysticism. And we also talk about ritual and intuition in that in that area. And the last chapter is so for you.

Brian Smith  17:56  
Wow, wow, that's, that's a lot. And that's really, I love everything you said in there, there's, there's so much to kind of unpack in the first thing is about like being alone. And I think that's a very common feeling, especially in our, in our culture in our society today, where people feel like, you know, it's just me, it's me against the world. And we don't realize we have all this help. So I think that's really, really important. And the part you talked about, like embodying ourselves also, because, you know, we tend to go from one extreme to the other. So a lot of times our western culture says, we are our bodies, we are our brains. And that's all we are. But then we get into the spiritual aspect of ourselves. And we say, well, now now I'm just a spirit. And this body's just, you know, it doesn't matter. And that's, yeah, so go ahead. Yeah, I can speak to that. It's, it's,

Alessandra Sagredo  18:54  
it's just it's I just have to say it's, I'm just gonna say blatantly, it's untrue, because the reality is, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, your essential being you're i have i has chosen a physical form, and it's chosen your form, just like my chose my form for it specific attributes for its life experience it was going to have for all of the different components, whether I'm driving and wearing a Ferrari or whether I'm, you know, got an old Toyota, it doesn't matter. It's still my vehicle in this life, and we have to love it, we have to care for it. We have to respect the fact that this is our chosen vehicle. Which means I think if you believe that your soul self knows more than your mind, then it's better to accept the choices it's made for you and embrace them and see how you can make the most from those choices, how you can actually turn it into something beautiful.

Brian Smith  19:41  
Yeah, I think that's so important. It's a concept that keeps coming up for me personally, and I think this is kind of the way the universe speaks to us. I was just interviewing someone yesterday and said pretty much the exact same thing. We tend to almost fight our bodies and we look at our body we say this is what a lot of us was like this was this is not the body I would have chose and instead of saying mind, yeah, instead of saying, this is the perfect vehicle for me, I think that's such an empowering thing that to embrace and say, This was custom made just for my soul.

Alessandra Sagredo  20:12  
Yeah. And I tell people you are magic manifest you are where your soul, the energy of your soul and the energy of Creation combined with the earth, and it made you and you are the magic manifests your masterpiece of your soul.

Brian Smith  20:26  
Yeah, I think that's, that's such a beautiful sentiment that I hope a lot of people can embrace. Because, again, I think so many of us we fight our bodies, you know, we're like, this is this is not the body that I want. And we have these images of something very different. So I think that's really important, and much needed. Chapter aspect of this, this process is you're leading people for. And I love the fact that you know, you it's, it's practical, because you're giving people exercises, right? So, yes, again, we tend to get up all in our heads, and we'll read something. And what I've discovered is just reading something doesn't changes, you know, just just understand it's come and electrode doesn't, doesn't work to make lasting changes.

Alessandra Sagredo  21:14  
And that's why it was really important for me to make sure there were exercises built into each part of the book. And what I'm actually doing now is I'm starting to build up a library of online exercises that people who have purchased the book will be able to come to the website to be able to access some some audio or video versions of some of the exercises, or at least to walk you through them, because some of them are a little bit more, let's say trance meditative state. So I'll be reading them out, or some of them might, you might actually want someone kind of going, Okay, now, do this here and do that there and kind of guiding you through it or watching someone do it. So

Brian Smith  21:46  
yeah, so that's something you're working on. Creating now?

Alessandra Sagredo  21:49  
Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah. And I'm also hoping to create for each part of the book, I feel like the each part of the book is blossoming, like there's so many more layers I can put in there. So I actually want to create courses for each part of the book that will actually take if you've read the book, and you've enjoyed it, and you wanted to go further, let's say into the flirtation of the cosmos, there'll be a course for that.

Brian Smith  22:10  
Yeah, well, you could go, you could probably write a book on each one of these six different aspects of the book. There's, there's so much there to unpack. And it's again, I think it's so it's so needed, you know, for people to really understand, you know, who we are one of the things for people that have listened to listen my program and say, I have said over and over again, I think the biggest issue that we have in this world is we've forgotten who we are, that we think we are just our bodies. And again, sometimes people they'll get very spiritual and say, Well, no, I'm just my soul. And I love what you said, were to kind of have a beautiful union of the two and we need to respect both while we're, while we're incarnated,

Alessandra Sagredo  22:49  
we're a harmony. That's the thing. We need to be in harmony with ourselves and with the world around us and with the people we're exchanging time with an energy with. That's really the harmony is what allows things to move smoothly and allows us to enjoy life differently.

Brian Smith  23:03  
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I asked your promises sent me some some talking points. And one of the talking points is pretty provocative. It's masturbation as a meditative practice. I've never heard that before. So explain that to me what that means.

Alessandra Sagredo  23:21  
Okay, so let me take a moment here and think of how the best way so

first of all, let's take a step back. I think that too often in the spiritual realm, people are looking at sexuality, as it's certain amount of points we have in an energy system, a lot of sexual practices will teach you that if you spend too much of your sexual energy elsewhere, you will not have it for creativity. So this was one of the first spiritual cows I tried to tip in the book was the fact that that's not true. If you believe that energy is everywhere, and it's eternal, and it's infinite, then why are we not able to always constantly pull in more energy. So the thought within meditation is masturbation is the fact that you can really tap into the love of your physical form and the love of your body. And just that whole experience of your soul, you can feel your soul as you're masturbating, you can actually, again, sexuality is a part of our human experience, right? And if that's a part of a human experience, then why not give yourself that pleasure and allow you to experience your soul self fully in that moment, because that's one of the things that you can do as well. On the flip side of that, you can also use it from for manifestation. So if you have a goal, that the energy that someone gives off when they are having an orgasm is so powerful, it's so intense, and if you can direct that into a thought or into a specific A vision, you can actually add more energy into that manifestation. So there's, there's two really great things for it, the connection to yourself. The fact that the masturbation can allow you to love yourself differently and allow your soul self to love you and new to love your soul self through the body, and then just connect differently in it. And that can actually open you up to once you've gone through that orgasm point and you're lying there, your whole system is open on a different level to receive different types of information. So there's a lot of joy in there. And

Brian Smith  25:35  
that's something I've never heard before. And I guess that's one of the spiritual cows that you're tipping because against a lot of our traditions tell us that that self pleasure is wrong.

Alessandra Sagredo  25:45  
But why is it wrong? Yeah,

Brian Smith  25:48  
that's a good question. Why is it Why do you think people tell us it's fine?

Alessandra Sagredo  25:51  
I think because often is based on old religions, religions, were trying to control the masses. religions don't want us to go out and experience and find freedom and have a good time. They want us to live in very strict environments in in very strict worlds, and anything they can do to control including our sexuality, which is a huge aspect of it, they will. So I think that's why a lot of people think that it may be wrong, right? Yeah.

Brian Smith  26:16  
Yeah, well, you're right. And it's it's pretty much on every level. All right. They try to control what we eat, what we drink what we think. And you know, as you said, you were raised, you know, no dancing. I was raised in a Pentecostal, my parents were a little bit freer than the people that I went to church with. But they were there was no dancing, no drinking, no smoking. Women couldn't wear pants. I mean, it was just like, on just down the line, all the things that we weren't allowed to do. So, and a lot of us are still living with that. And even what you said earlier about, like, even once we think we're out of it, that programming is still still there, on some level.

Alessandra Sagredo  26:57  
Oh, yes. Yeah, I even I've done so much work on myself. Something I want to put together is called religious rehab, because I feel like people almost need a program to, to rehab themselves out of it, and to realize it's okay. I mean, sometimes it's the feeling of shame or regret can creep up on you. But you know, we learn to deal through it.

Brian Smith  27:18  
Yeah, I think that's very much needed. And, you know, I deal with a lot of people that have gone through that religious abuse, and then again, that kind of the pendulum swing, they'll go the other way and say, well, since that's not true than we must just be biological robots and the meaningless universe.

Alessandra Sagredo  27:35  
Yeah. Or are they swing completely into the spiritual realm, and suddenly, everything is retranslated, from religion to spirituality. So we can look at karma, for example, and I'm not going to get into a debate around karma. It's not, it's not my area of specialty. But however, if we look at the correlation between karma and sin, it's pretty similar, you do something wrong, you're going to hell, if you do something wrong, you're going to end up in a hell and your next life or perish, things are gonna happen to you. It's this good and bad. Reward and punishment, reward and punishment in there. There's so many similarities. And that's one of the things I'm trying to deal with so far as to make people realize, we don't have to adopt one or the other, we can find a middle, a middle ground that actually feeds us allows us to tap in and be spiritual and realize that there are all different kinds of realms around us. And there's all different kinds of beauty and magic in the world. But that does not mean there's a God, that does not have to mean that there's a health. Like, there's different ways of living. So

Brian Smith  28:34  
yeah, well, I think you've made a very astute observation about karma and sin, because when I started hearing about karma, and karma is, is misunderstood by a lot of people. There's a lot out whenever I discuss karma with someone, I'll ask them to define it, because it's one of those things. We all have different, different beliefs. And but I think the most common understanding of karma and what I think is a misunderstanding, is that idea, I do something wrong, I get punished. The only difference between that and Christianity is at least the punishment is proportionate. Cuz in Christianity, it's insane. I have a piece of candy and I get tortured forever. That makes no sense at all. It makes a little bit more sense. But yeah, people you know, as we have these discussions, like people always want to bring up Hitler. It's like, okay, well, what about Hitler? Certainly, Hitler has to suffer. You know, we so there is that we're still holding on to that.

Alessandra Sagredo  29:25  
How do we know? And I'm going to I'm going to throw something that might be a little bit controversial out there. But how do we know that some people don't come to this existence to be the bad person?

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Alessandra Sagredo  30:36  
for a lifetime, if we believe that thing, if I don't know, if you believe in destiny, I'm still kind of going back and forth between it. I like it. And I don't you know, I'll get there one day. But um, if you believe in that, if you believe that people come here with a plan, maybe some people are, are meant to be I'm not saying Hitler, but to meant to bring darkness into the world to bring us to, to challenge us or to give us the challenges that our souls require. Because our souls don't come down here just to have a great time. They come here to grow and evolve and actually to be challenged. So we need someone to challenge

Brian Smith  31:13  
I think it's certainly a valid thought I I'm hold everything loosely. And so and we want to go to extremes, right? So we want to we always want to go to the Hitler, and we said was certainly that can't be planned. But we do know that there is some amount of pain that's built into this experience, we do know that we do come here, not just to have a good time, we do have coming to have something to push back against. And I use, I use analogies for people because the only way we can really understand because it's too big for our little brains. You can't have a movie, you can't have a good story without an antagonist, you have to have a bad guy. And when we watch the movie, the worse the bad guy is, the better the hero performs. Right? You need to have that that tension. So when people say, Well, you know, did Hitler was that planned? I don't know, maybe on some level it was it doesn't. It doesn't mean the pain here is very real. It's true. Yeah.

Alessandra Sagredo  32:10  
So it doesn't mean that knowing or not knowing is going to make a difference as well to the pain really, that's right thing.

Brian Smith  32:18  
And it's it's the same thing with with destiny. I you know, do we have free will? Or is everything predetermined? And I was my try to answer is yes. I think it's actually both.

Alessandra Sagredo  32:30  
I did too. I think that we have destined points along our path. And we have freewill about how we're going to get to certain Destiny points along the path.

Brian Smith  32:39  
So yeah, and so I think what you brought up is really important here because we this is why I tell people just keep exploring, don't don't lock into any one answer. You know, I'll bring up reincarnation, I post near death videos all the time, and somebody just yesterday. Well, I'm a Christian, and I believe in the Bible. And the Bible says that there is no reincarnation therefore there can be no reincarnation. And I'm like, Well, I questioned whether the Bible really says that. So I gave him a couple of verses, I said, go take a look at these verses. And even if it does, you know, where did the Bible come from? We should always keep exploring, we should always you know, that's in everything. Question everything. Absolutely. Yeah. I love the fact that you're giving again, people permission and a way to break these, these paradigms, these bonds that that our societies put in our families put on us. And you talked about, you know, I think this like you being adopted and in the family were adopted into that gave you something to push back against.

Alessandra Sagredo  33:43  
It definitely did. It definitely did. Yeah, it was a I hadn't good. I mean, my parents were always very loving, very kind, but I always just, I was just felt like I was the odd one out, like I was out of place. And I mean, my Nana mice, I had three older brothers and none of them were adopted. So there were there were three older brothers that were natural children, and then there was me. So yeah,

Brian Smith  34:08  
but it's made you into the person that you are today. And and such an inspiration for other people.

Alessandra Sagredo  34:14  
All my challenges have. That's why I always say I try not to have regrets. Because if I'm happy with where I am right now, in this moment, and I am happy with where I am right now in this moment, then what's the point of wasting any time on regrets?

Brian Smith  34:29  
Well, and it's also I think it's an important lesson that we have to learn. You talked about sometimes we have to let people go and there are and there what people are well meaning but when we try to change people around us, no matter whether it's a good change or bad change, just say that you your buddies did you drink with all the time you decide I'm going to give up alcohol. You know, that becomes an issue or when people start to lose weight that everybody wants to keep you the way that you were.

Alessandra Sagredo  34:56  
It's safe people don't like change it change it is scary for most people that threatens them. Yeah. And I think it's often because it's a reflection back that maybe they want to make change, and maybe they're not feeling courageous enough to make the change.

Brian Smith  35:10  
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's a really great point. People want to they want to, it makes them feel uncomfortable. It's like, okay, so Alessandra is she's doing this now, this is not the person that we knew.

Alessandra Sagredo  35:21  
Yes. And I have had I've had that happen with with different friends. Actually, when I initially SWOT I used to own a Wellness Center in downtown Vancouver. And so I was very much into it was all internal wellness, it was all like intuition, and energy healing, and meditation and yoga. And so when I met a lot of my friends, I was very much into that realm, when I switched into more to the business realm, because there was a point in time where it just was better for me to go much more to the business, which is where I started my company with my husband, we lost friends, they were disappointed, they thought, Oh, you've given up on your path. And, you know, all of this is just this, it's and yet I was happier and doing better. And that's the crazy thing is that just because you're happier, and you're doing better, doesn't mean that everyone's going to be able to embrace that. And it's important to be able to let that go grieve it and let it go.

Brian Smith  36:13  
Yeah. And I think, for me, anyway, it's important not to judge those people, because they're doing because they just don't, they don't know any better.

Alessandra Sagredo  36:22  
Yes, it's pointless to judge anyone really, because we don't know what people are going through behind the scenes. We don't know what's going on in their head. They might look happy and healthy, and they could have a lot of pain or a lot of different situations they're dealing with so

Brian Smith  36:36  
yeah, absolutely. I think I think, well, I we all we all do, we all have our wounds and our injuries and stuff. And that's one of the really important things I like to do on this program is to make people not feel so alone in their in our wounds, you know, and I applaud people that are brave enough, like yourself to come out and say, you know, this is what I've gone through because other people can say, Wow, I thought I was the only one that's that's gone through stuff like that. Because we all I think we do get back to kind of your first point that we all feel alone, we all feel abandoned in this world at some point. It's

Alessandra Sagredo  37:10  
true. It's true. But we're not. We don't have to be, we can take there's a difference between feeling lonely and alone. So so you can be alone without having to be lonely. It's that loneliness, that ache and when you're having that ache, it's, you know, part of my book, there's a whole section about self having a self love affair, because I feel like that's a really important thing that people are missing as well. How do you have a self love affair? And so I will actually walk, walk them through a whole part of the book that talks about loving yourself learning to date yourself, spending the time, but how do you actually build a relationship? What kind of questions what kind of conversations can you have with yourself, because when you actually spend time with you, you lose that sense of loneliness. It doesn't mean you never want to be around other people. It means that you don't have to be around other people all the time. But you lose that fear of missing out.

Brian Smith  38:02  
Yeah, let's talk about dating yourself more. What is what does that mean to you?

Alessandra Sagredo  38:07  
So Dating Yourself more, it means to me actually setting yourself time in the day to go and do something for yourself. So I used to take when I was single, I would take myself for movies, I would take myself for dinner, and I would get dressed up and I would go and I would sit at the dining room and have a dinner and people might look at me weird. And I've been carrying that I'd take myself to a movie. It's spending time with yourself doing things that you want to do with you. And then I would journal, I would actually have a conversation with myself. Because it's really important. I don't think we spend enough time hearing ourselves like, hey, Alessandra, what's going on with you this morning? How are you feeling today? Sometimes I'll stop in the day and I'll hug myself. And I'll just say, Okay, how are you doing? Because we need to be able to check in like that. That's part of the self love. That's part of the Dating Yourself. Yeah, leave yourself love notes. There's all different kinds of anything you would do for a partner. Like when you wake up in the morning, wake up and roll over and say to yourself, Hey, good morning. Beautiful, why not? That's the thing.

Brian Smith  39:05  
I think that's fantastic. And it's actually something that I've just started doing recently. I called dating myself, but saying I love you to myself, you know, because we, again, I think our religious programming says we're, we're evil, we're bad. You know, our society always wants to tell us all the things that we're not good at. And we really focus on all that stuff. And we don't focus enough on how magnificent we are. How we all are.

Alessandra Sagredo  39:34  
Yes, exactly. A radiant everyone can be

Brian Smith  39:39  
right and and giving ourselves permission and giving ourselves credit for where we are, I think is also really important. We so often look at where we need to be and where we need to go and how far and instead of looking at like how far we've come and again I look at someone like yourself and I just like I'm an aberration of everybody that comes on my part. So I look at you and I'm like, Look, you know, look at what she's become like who she is. And a lot of us don't see that ourselves.

Alessandra Sagredo  40:07  
It's a good point, though, because even I sometimes have a hard time, I can be so driven that I'll drive past the seller, the point where I should be celebrating the last thing I was trying to manifest and actually enjoy it. And I think it's a good point that we all need to stop and just say, If fact, did I do my best today? Yes, then that's enough. That's really enough. And I think sometimes ending your day with that. Did I do my best today? Yes. Okay, well, that's enough. And when you actually achieve something, stop and take a moment to celebrate whatever that means, if you want to have a cupcake, if you want to go for a run, if you want to have a glass of wine, I'm not sure what people would want to do. But whatever you want to do, take that and just celebrate it. Because that allows you to absorb that good feeling. And that will drive you out further and farther ahead the next time because you're more motivated. Yeah,

Brian Smith  40:55  
well, we can be motivated. We can motivate ourselves in two ways. One is we can drive ourselves and say bad things ourselves, and always look for the next thing are going to be motivated by admiring what we've already got, you know, being grateful we've got and what we've accomplished. And sometimes it takes that and I love making that a practice, you know, if I do something during the day that I've been putting off for I'm an I haven't, I'm going to avoid or I there's certain things I just don't like to do. But if I do that thing that I've been avoiding, I reward myself. So it might be having a bourbon or might be having a piece of chocolate or it might be knocking off early for the day. It's like I did that thing that day. So I'm going to take an hour off, whatever it is just something to reinforce, you know, that positivity in yourself.

Alessandra Sagredo  41:40  
And I think we all need that. And this is why things like social media, so popular is the likes, you know, we have to be able to give that to ourselves, instead of waiting for other people to give it to us.

Brian Smith  41:51  
I love that. I love that what you just said, because we do we you know, it's funny, cuz like, Why do I like the likes so much, you know? And now on Facebook, it's like, oh, did I get a like? Or did I get a heart? I know, you know, because they just, they just like to give me a heart. Yeah, because we do we all crave that. And we forget that we can do that for ourselves. We don't have to get that from somebody else.

Alessandra Sagredo  42:14  
It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's so important that that's such an important part of self care.

Brian Smith  42:21  
Yeah. And we talked about, I think, before we started recording, you and I were talking a little bit, and one of the things that I really try to drive home with people is self care. I think that that is so so important, and so needed in our society. And that's why when your book came across my desk, I was like, I really want to get her on, because most of my listeners are women. And it's interesting men, we don't do self care very well, because we just, we just power through everything. But women tend to look at self care as like, well, that's me being selfish. And I don't really deserve that. And especially if you're a mother or a wife, you know, it's like, well, I've got to take care of them first, before I take care of myself where it's, it's actually the opposite.

Alessandra Sagredo  43:06  
It's true. If you don't take care of yourself, then you won't have the energy to be able to take care of anyone else. And plus something else I'm just going to give everyone a tip about try to look at yourself like a child, how would you treat a child? If you're looking at your body or anything? How would you treat a child? Would you tell your child no, you got to keep going gotta keep doing this, no, you better do that, you would probably tell the child at some point, stop, have a nap, have a cookie, just take a rest, do something. And when we start to look at the fact that we have these aspects within ourselves, like the child side will start to treat ourselves a little bit differently. Because we're no longer seeing ourselves as just the mother or the wife or the father that has to get everything done. Instead, we actually start to realize there are different aspects of ourselves that require nurturing, and we're the best ones to give it to ourselves.

Brian Smith  43:52  
Yeah, that goes back to what you said earlier about the child and the teenager and and the woman or the child teenager and the man and we tend to think, Okay, well, now I'm just the man or not, but we're not we still have that child with us, you know, and we need to, we need to honor that child. And we all want to we all have that inner child, then we'd like to play we like to, you know, have fun. And we've we've suppressed that.

Alessandra Sagredo  44:16  
It's true. It's very true. And it's so important to be able to connect in with that and just even looking around to see if I have it. I have a coloring book that when my inner child wants to come out, I'll grab a coloring book and I'll grab my crayons and we'll just color. And it's sometimes it's just something as simple as that is just asking, spend a little bit of time it doesn't have to be every day to begin, but start to spend a little bit of time where you ask your child side, what would you like to do today? What would you like to how would you like to spend the morning or how would you like to spend the next hour and just do it be silly, be goofy, have fun, Do Face Painting, get dressed up? It doesn't matter. Just allow it because you will laugh and you will laugh in a way that you probably haven't laughed in a very long time. You That is so incredibly healing and empowering.

Brian Smith  45:03  
Yeah, I can't remember who it was. I always like to give credit when I reference something. But I remember there's a guy that wrote a book that talked about that. It's like, you know, dance or make silly faces, or just do something really silly. You know, and when when you do it, it really free something up inside of you, it really triggers something that I think people don't really understand. It's still there, being able to just do that. And I would I loved because I have dogs and that when I, when I was reading this guy's book, I was thinking about this. It's like, some of the best times when I'm just messing around with my dog, when I'm just playing with my dog, talk to my dog, like a baby, you know, running around the dog chasing it, whatever, when we just let ourselves go. And we're not really self conscious.

Alessandra Sagredo  45:46  
It's pure. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah.

Brian Smith  45:51  
So Alessandra, where can people find out more about you? Tell me more? Where can they get the book, stuff like that.

Alessandra Sagredo  45:59  
So if they go to Seoul, foria Sol, sol and foria s o ULPHORI a.ca. They'll find information about myself and they'll find information about how to purchase the book. Otherwise, you can just Google it and you'll end up you'll see it's on chapters. It's on Barnes and Noble. It's on Amazon. It's pretty easy to find out there. Otherwise, stop by the site sign up for any updates, because I would love to stay in touch with everyone. And I'm also going to be putting out some courses and I hope that you know, some of you might be interested.

Brian Smith  46:31  
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves. It sounds like you've got some great ideas for for courts and stuff. So I've encouraged people to go to the website and sign up for for your newsletter, so that they can be kept informed as more comes out. And certainly get the book in and start taking care of yourself.

Alessandra Sagredo  46:48  
Yes, exactly. That's all just start a lot self love affair.

Brian Smith  46:53  
Yeah, I love that. So any any final messages?

Alessandra Sagredo  46:57  
No, I think that was it. Let's all have a self love affair.

Brian Smith  47:01  
All right outside your It was great meeting you today. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Alessandra Sagredo  47:05  
Great. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Brian Smith  47:10  
Don't forget to like, hit that big red subscribe button and click the notify Bell. Thanks for being here.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai