Manders Mindset
Are you feeling stuck or stagnant in your life? Do you envision yourself living differently but have no idea how to start? The answer might lie in a shift in your mindset.
Hosted by Amanda Russo, The Breathing Goddess, who is a Breathwork Detox Facilitator, Transformative Mindset Coach, and Divorce Paralegal.
Amanda's journey into mindset and empowerment began by working with children in group homes and daycares. She later transitioned to family law, helping people navigate the challenging emotions of divorce. During this time, Amanda also overcame her own weight and health challenges through strength training, meditation, yoga, reiki, and plant medicine.
Amanda interviews guests from diverse backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and wellness experts, who share their incredible journeys of conquering fears and limiting beliefs to achieve remarkable success. Hear real people tell how shifting their mindsets—and often their words—has dramatically changed their lives.
Amanda also shares her personal journey, detailing how she transformed obstacles into opportunities by adopting a healthier, holistic lifestyle.
Discover practical strategies and inspiring stories that will empower you to break free from limitations and cultivate a mindset geared towards growth and positivity.
Tune in for a fun, friendly, and empowering experience that will help you become the best version of yourself.
Manders Mindset
The Mindful Mutiny: From Corporate CEO to Spiritual Explorer with Jeremy Van Wert | 139
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What if burning it all down is exactly what sets you free?
In this soul-stirring episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Jeremy Van Wert—a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified psychedelic guide, and former CEO turned transformational coach—to explore what it really means to live in alignment with your true self. From high-stakes leadership to deep spiritual awakening, Jeremy’s story is one of radical reinvention, ignited by a devastating wildfire and fueled by years of inner work.
Together, Amanda and Jeremy dive into the masks we wear to survive, how ADHD shaped his self-worth, and how psychedelics opened the door to long-overdue healing and self-acceptance. They unpack what it takes to strip away societal expectations, step off the treadmill of “success,” and build a soul-aligned life from the ground up.
This episode is a powerful listen for seekers, creatives, healers, and anyone feeling stuck in a version of life that no longer fits.
🎙️ In this episode, listeners will learn:
🔥 How a literal wildfire catalyzed Jeremy’s complete life transformation
🌿 What psychedelics revealed about identity, purpose, and healing
🧠 Why ADHD is more misunderstood than most people realize
🧘♂️ The disconnect between external success and internal peace
🌀 Why integration not just the journey is the key to sustainable change
💬 How being truly seen is one of the most healing human experiences
🛠️ Jeremy’s approach to helping others design a life that reflects their values
🕒 Timeline Summary:
[2:00] – Jeremy shares who he is at the core and how psychedelics helped him reconnect
[5:19] – The identity layers people build to be accepted and the cost of wearing them
[9:53] – Living with ADHD and chasing achievement as a form of self-worth
[12:31] – His first psychedelic journey and the clarity it brought
[17:30] – Losing almost everything in a wildfire and finding clarity through it
[25:04] – How an ayahuasca ceremony helped him release fear and leave his CEO role
[36:25] – The collective awakening and how modern conversations are evolving
[45:06] – Why psychedelics require reverence and the real work begins afterward
[50:30] – Shedding old relationships, rewriting identity, and choosing alignment
[56:39] – Legacy, kindness, and the power of truly loving yourself
To Connect with Amanda:
Schedule a 1:1 Virtual Breathwork Session HERE
📸 Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess
Follow & Support the Podcast:
📱 Instagram: @MandersMindset
👥 Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE
To Connect with Jeremy:
🌐 Learn more about Jeremy’s coaching and offerings at mindfulmutiny.com
Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers and a variety of other people when your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective and her guest's mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Mander's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life.
Speaker 2:As always, I'm your host, amanda Russo and I am so excited to be here with Jeremy Van Wert today, and he has been a licensed marriage and family therapist for over 15 years. He also received a certificate in psychedelic therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a healing mastery certificate, and I am so fascinated by his background. He's also a former CEO and the host of the Mindful Mutiny podcast, and I cannot wait to delve down his journey. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 4:I'm excited to have a really wonderful conversation with you, Amanda.
Speaker 2:So can you tell us who Jeremy is at the core?
Speaker 4:Oh, my goodness, let's not start slow, shall we?
Speaker 4:So, yeah, who I am at my core, I believe that I'm kind of this little boy that I've always been struggling with trying to find out what it is that he's going to be in this world, and trying to fit on all of these different identities to try to fit in, but that I finally figured out that being just that kid that's inside of me is who I really am, and that I've always been chasing something beyond that, and so that's something that I've realized about myself.
Speaker 4:And, of course, a lot of the psychedelic journeys that I've been on has kind of revealed that I love living in that kind of childhood wonder of the world. But what I really do is I work with people to really dig deep into that little child inside of them so that they can strategize to be what the thing that is the most consistent with that identity that's really deep down, and so that they're pursuing their highest potential, that they have a strategy to actually get there. The first thing, and often the hardest thing, is recognizing what you really are about, and so I work with people to help them realize that in the way that I had to struggle to realize it inside myself.
Speaker 2:I love that. What you really are about. I think we're all figuring that out, Regardless of your age, regardless of where you live any of the above, I think we're all figuring that out the more and more people I talk to.
Speaker 4:It's not as easy as it might seem. It's actually relatively complicated, because, as we grow up, think about your life. Okay, in your first couple of years of life, your parents are always there for you, they're caring for you, they're making sure that you have enough to eat, they're making sure that they stop the car whenever you need to use the restroom. They really are there for you in those first couple of years. And then there comes a point at which your parents begin kind of helping you grow up, helping you move on. They start kind of pushing you away.
Speaker 4:Now, from four years old, five years old, six years old, how many times in your life have you ever actually truly been seen for who you are?
Speaker 4:And that's the difficult thing, because, when you think about it, very seldom in life do we actually get seen for who it is that we really actually are. And what we start to do is to create an identity around us. Think of it as you're this little kid inside yourself. And what you start doing is putting giant robes on you this one's black, this one's purple, this one's gold, this one's this and pretty soon you have this ego that is surrounding you, what we want to be, what we need to be in certain friend groups, what we need to be in our workplace, what we need to do to be cool in school, what we need to be in order to succeed, and all of this around us is kind of the weight that we carry over who we really are deep down.
Speaker 4:And so how do we and sometimes like, do we even want to scrape away those layers and really know that person deep down? What are we afraid of? Are we afraid that the world will not accept us the way that we are and so we have to wear those giant robes in order to kind of hide ourselves? Are we unhappy with who that person is deep down? And so you know, one of the things that talked about psychedelics just a moment ago does is it helps you strip off some of those layers so that you can see really what's down there and how beautiful you are just with who you are, who you were born to be, in that soul that's deep down there.
Speaker 2:You know it's so true about us not really getting to choose anything for those first couple of years. You know, and I was thinking of something so basic but even like the clothes that you wear in preschool, like I like some outfits I look cute in but sometimes, looking back, I'm like I would have never wore that and it's a super basic thing, but it's like you know a basic thing, but it's like you know.
Speaker 4:You know, I think it's really honestly kind of sad these days that everybody pretty much wears the same thing, and I think that it comes from a lack of willingness to kind of go out on a limb and express yourself with fashion. I think fashion is fascinating and really you look at television, for the last 25 years everybody's wearing the same thing, Everybody's wearing the same sorts of things. I wish the people would express themselves a little bit more with fashion.
Speaker 2:I get that. Can you take us down memory lane a little bit? Tell us about your upbringing, your childhood?
Speaker 4:Yes, and it relates to kind of what I was talking about here Now, when one time my mother told me you were such a happy child, such a happy, sweet child, and you would always be smiling. And you stopped smiling in the first grade and you never really smiled again with that same kind of childhood wonderment that you had when you were in preschool and in kindergarten. In the first grade I started having problems in school, and in the early 1980s I got diagnosed with something that was very new. It was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and at the time there wasn't really as much research or understanding about all of this, and so the doctors and the teachers got together and they prescribed to me Ritalin and other sorts of things that I started taking through the years of my schooling, and what became very clear to me as a growing child is that I was just not okay the way that I was, the way that I was built, and my father is a tremendously accomplished man who worked for NASA for a very long period of time. He still works there as a contractor and through growing up I really wanted to be as accomplished as my father. Accomplishment really didn't come very easy. I had this really strong IQ and this really difficult time being able to focus. So I would be able to focus for a short period of time using a stimulant medicine, but then for the rest of the day I would just kind of cycle through different emotions and different ability to either remember or not remember things. Adhd is really tricky, especially when you're a child, because you have a lot of emotional reactivity like the other kids.
Speaker 4:And skateboarding was popular in the 1980s. I got really into that because there's a rebel component to that and you got to work skulls on your shirt and stuff like that. It was really cool and the girls liked it. And then I got into drumming and percussion and I had given up on being smart and accomplishing things academically. So I kind of ran into this whole world of music and that's where I started actually excelling in something. And then at a certain point, societal ideals got to me and I got my college degree and I said, okay, now in my life I need to get serious, I need to be a serious person. So I got a desk degree and I said, okay, now in my life I need to get serious, I need to be a serious person. So I got a desk job, which is like really the worst thing that I could have possibly gotten. And I worked my way through college being a security guard and then I got my first desk job right out of college and I worked like crazy 15 years to try to make desk work work for me and it just never worked. Work my way in my career from lobby security officer to CEO of a company and it sounds really impressive.
Speaker 4:But when you have an ADHD mind, your brain is processing things at a really fast rate and you have a lot of insecurities. You feel like you're never quite doing what you need to do, never quite accomplishing the thing that you need to work harder than the people around you. Because I had years and years of failing in academia, years and years struggling in a workplace to fit in and never really feeling like I had quite accomplished who I need to be. Didn't matter that I had one master's degree, didn't matter that I had a clinical license, didn't matter that I had a second master's degree, didn't matter that I kept racking up all of these accomplishments In my mind. I was never enough and I had my first psychedelic experience somewhere around I don't know a decade ago. Now, all of a sudden, I'm in this beautiful, lovely space of self-acceptance.
Speaker 2:Can I ask what made you try psychedelics?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, that's a great question. So I'd been reading up a little bit about it and I had a friend from high school that was into it, was very accomplished at, you know, understanding dosage and everything like that, and so he was able to make sure that what I had was a proper set and setting and a dose that was not going to harm me. And so I did it with a friend and we listened to music together and it was a lovely evening and I probably wouldn't have done it in any other environment, just because this is a friend that I trusted. And it changed my life in showing me what is inside my mind, when my mind can be still for a moment, when my mind can just simply be, when I can enjoy the creativity in my mind. I was swimming through these beautiful colors and music that I had known for so long. I was listening to a lot of Pink Floyd that evening, this music that I had known and loved for so long. It had so much more depth to it, so many more colors. I could smell the music, I could listen to the music at such a deeper level and understand it so much more, and I had such a sense of emotional connection to the transcendent, to my own spirit, to my own higher spirit.
Speaker 4:And I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to understand what was going on. I just know that I experienced a level of bliss in my life that I had never known, particularly in a life where, you know, during school I had been bullied quite badly, you know, and where I never felt like I fit in anywhere. But then, all of a sudden, I was walking out of this experience, no longer being afraid to die, no longer feeling ashamed of things that had happened in my life, my life, and it was so wonderfully healing for me that I felt like I needed to go a year before I ever did it again, because I just felt like I had all of this that I needed to integrate into my life and not just go wow, that was cool, we'd do it again next weekend. You know, it felt more weighty, more important than to just simply enjoy it, like a bottle of wine, I guess. And so my career at that point continued to ascend in corporate America, but I had this weird duality in my mind of like this spiritual space that I had existed in and this corporate space that I had to shoehorn my strange brain into and as a CEO I was working like crazy 80 hour work weeks, sleep, literally sleeping in a bus in the back of the parking lot and then coming into the headquarters and then sitting at my desk all day long, working these 15 hour days and just pressing the gas so hard that I could quite literally feel my body becoming less healthy, my strength draining from me and this connection to spirit that was so divorced from the life that I was living.
Speaker 4:And then there came this one day where my wife and I were on vacation and we were out in this beautiful desert land. We're sitting in those hot springs and we're just enjoying the stars, coming out and camping out in this wonderful space out in the middle of the high desert of Nevada Very healing, wonderful space and we dry off, get back into the truck and I do what we all do, kind of look at your phone to see what kind of messages are coming through. I got a message from my neighbor and we live in the woods, way out in the middle of nowhere, and this message on my phone said we're evacuating. We left the generator running in your garage with the garage door open. We'll update you. And I looked at my wife and I said evacuating from what? And so we start trying to call the neighbor to ask what are you even talking about here? And he wasn't answering the phone. None of the other neighbors would answer their phones.
Speaker 4:And we start looking on Twitter and we start seeing something about a fire in Placer County. We don't know. Should we be going home? Is this a fire that's going to threaten our house? He said he's evacuating. How close is this fire? And so we decide overnight because when this is going on you can't sleep. And so we're up all night looking on Twitter, looking on social media, trying to contact people to find out what's going on. And we contact some people that go yeah, this fire is bad and it's fast and it's ugly. And what we find out by morning is that this fire is coming directly towards our town. And by morning we're driving home, cutting our vacation short because we're thinking is there any possibility we're going to be able to get into our house to grab a few belongings? And by the time that we had arrived within proximity to where we live, this fire was burning our town down. To give you the scope of this, fire started within a mile of our home. Within hours, this fire was burning our neighbor's homes down, and there were 20, we live in a little tiny mountain village. There was 29 homes and after this fire came through, 12 were left, and so for about a week and a half we're living in our trailer in a field field full of goats.
Speaker 4:In you've purchased everything, and I had this weird feeling of serenity that if it was all gone Then I'd be okay, that we're living in a trailer at this point and we could just hook up the trailer and drive wherever we wanted and start again, and that it would be. It's never easy, but would I be okay with my entire house burning down? And I came to the conclusion that I kind of would. That starting over would be an invitation to start again, to change everything. What would I do if I had this opportunity to just change everything? And through the next week we didn't know whether the house was there or not. And I went to a community meeting and there was a firefighter there that I kind of knew. I walked up to him and I said, hey, can you tell me if I have a house? And he says, well, I don't know which one's yours. And I gave him an address and he said I'm going to be up in that area tomorrow. If your house is standing, I'll send you a picture. And he said I'm going to be up in that area tomorrow. If your house is standing, I'll send you a picture.
Speaker 4:So next day, at 2.33, fought the fire out of the trees that surrounded our home, that there were scorch marks on the deck and that all of the work that I had done over the past two years in clearing brush saved our home. And so, six weeks later, we are allowed to come home and see our home, and it was a devastating environment. Just imagine your home existing in Hiroshima in 1946. Everything is black, the smell is pungent with ash. At night you look out from the deck and you can still see fires burning six weeks later out just across the canyon, and you don't know whether you're supposed to call the police and call the 911 and tell them, or there's nothing left to burn out there anyway. So so what? You see a couple of flames and that's what it was like, and imagine the smell of meat in all of your freezers that had been rotting for six weeks because there's no power.
Speaker 4:Long after that, I left the CEO job that I had, because exactly who was I if I was not living the life that I really want to live, if I was not living my own value? And so I started my podcast, mindful Mupne, and this coaching, pulling together all of these things through my life that I had learned and specialized in so that I could answer to myself and create something that could benefit people in a way that was uniquely me, that aren't going to see me for who I really am. And so this switch in my mindset is something that, for the very first time in my adult life, I get to live my actual value and I get to create something that is uniquely mine. I'm not working to create value for a corporation that could just decide to let me go at any point, which a lot of people are dealing with that right now that I get to create something that is really uniquely my own and help people with the transition in life that I went through, which is recognizing that I was not living my highest potential, that I was not in a space that truly kind of lit my fire inside, and so what I do is I help people move beyond where they are now and strategize like with a strategic plan for their lives, where it is that they want to go with their lives, and I help them with writing down their values, understanding their goals and holding them accountable to these goals.
Speaker 4:This fire now has been two years ago and the mountains around my home are still, you know, dead trees that are still needed to be taken out and everything.
Speaker 4:But the forest is starting to grow again and these wonderful little pine trees are coming up and they're about this big right now, and these wonderful bay bushes are coming up and the flowers, the wildflowers, are blooming right now and it's truly beautiful to see life emerging from a paradigm that I once knew to a completely new forest that I once knew to a completely new forest.
Speaker 4:And that's what I'm doing in my own life, through shifting my consciousness from chasing that lead title of CEO that I thought was going to bring me that sense of accomplishment, that sense of I finally beat the system, the sense of that kid, that sense of I finally beat the system, the sense of that kid that was in the corner, that's got sent to the principal's office every single day, had finally proven that everybody was wrong. But I still wasn't fulfilled in any of that and now I get to actually do something that I find fulfilling in helping other people find what is fulfilling for them and strategize to actually get there. In tying in the personal, the professional, the spiritual and the physical wellness of a person to be their highest person.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious how long post the fire did you quit the job?
Speaker 4:it was a couple of months after that I left that position, and probably three or four I think and I kept trying to do that. And the more that I kept trying to do that, and the more that I kept trying to do and be that, the more it became clear to me that it wasn't an environment that I enjoyed. And so doing this I mean it's hard because you start from like square zero again, but I really wouldn't have it any other way because I've never been so fulfilled. That's what is the hardest thing to do is kind of rip the bandaid off and actually go for something new that is truly you.
Speaker 2:Do you think psychedelics helped you have that ability to trust and go for it?
Speaker 4:Psychedelics have helped me with everything, and I'll talk about this. About two weeks ago from the time that we're recording this, I had an ayahuasca journey. And in this wonderful journey because I mean, all of us deal with a fear factor, all of us deal with a sense of we're not good enough there's something about me that maybe people think is weird, there's something about me that I think is holding me back. We deal kind of in those lower frequencies, you know, and especially if you have like a neurodivergent brain, like ADHD forms of autism and stuff like that, like ADHD forms of autism and stuff like that and in this wonderful space of Mother Ayahuasca, this last time around, I was able to just see my own fear and my own feelings of insecurity, my own misgivings and my own negative self-talk kind of existing in this little tiny space, while I floated in this overwhelming sense of love and acceptance and support from Mother Ayahuasca like an ocean of love that had no end to it. This kind of beautiful, holy realization of you can't fail, jeremy, you can't fail. There's no such thing as failure in what it is that you're doing. And that's not the space that most of us occupy in our minds. We occupy a space that goes my family depends on me, it doesn't matter how much pain I'm in, I need to keep going with this, these obligations. I've got a mortgage, I can't change my life, and all of these things that we tell ourselves when we kind of fail to recognize just how capable we actually are, just how much beauty there is within each one of us.
Speaker 4:And I think it's more of just a symptom of living in a world where we're very much conditioned to live conventional lives and unfortunately, our educational system it programs us to live conventional lives.
Speaker 4:And unfortunately our educational system it programs us to live conventional lives.
Speaker 4:Our medical system it has conditioned us that they are truly the authority in how to seek treatment. For you know, whatever it is that we are supposed to be thinking certain things and we're kind of afraid of kind of bucking the system. But if we were actually to see our real true value and to love ourselves the way that we were born, to truly love ourselves in a healthy, sustainable way, imagine what each one of us could accomplish and the kind of world that we would have if people were living in a space of bliss and happiness and self-belief, willingness to take the chances necessary to live that brilliant life that they're born to live. And yeah, the psychedelic world for me is one that is so deeply a sacrament, so incredibly special, that I make sure that I'm doing this in a manner that is exceedingly respectful to the medicine and around people who are well-trained and understand in what way this medicine is supposed to affect you, and caring for the people that are in this kind of circle doing it together.
Speaker 2:Now, before you ever did psychedelics, had you thought it was something you might do? Not at all.
Speaker 4:Not at all. Not at all. I was raised in the Mormon church and so I had a lot of like those kinds of beliefs that these substances are very bad for you. I grew up in the Nancy Reagan era, where I was raised to say no to everything and was very proud through high school and college that I didn't even have a drop of alcohol. I was very kind of like clean living and very proud and also living in this kind of like ball of anxiety that I felt like I had to overcome my ADHD through just working harder, just pushing myself harder.
Speaker 4:We were once in marriage therapy, my wife and I, and the therapist asked well, how do you solve problems, Jeremy, in your life? And I thought for a second. I went well, I start banging my head against a wall as hard as I can until the wall falls down and then I just walk to the next stage Like cause. That's kind of how I was living up to that point that I would just push myself harder in order to accomplish the next thing, awakening, if you will, and I see the whole world in a very different paradigm, a very different way, and I had much more kind of respect for myself and empathy for myself, for everything that I had gone through and put myself through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I was only curious personally if you had thought about it, because I've done one ayahuasca journey and it's been about two years now, but before that I had a lot of ego, you know I oh yeah, I was. I'm not gonna do that. I was a full-time paralegal and a boyfriend I was seeing I was like you, think I'm going to do drugs in the woods? I'm not going to do drugs in the woods, and so I'm always curious when people mention it, like is it something you thought of before or is it not? Because, like you never know, and I truly really shifted my own mindset around them and I looked at them as they're drugs.
Speaker 4:It's this bad thing, it's this whatever and I think a lot of that is what we're hearing even in society. Well, you know what an interesting thing, because I'm very sure that your experience with ayahuasca was something that was deeply enriching to you, that showed you pieces of yourself that you had never really acknowledged but somehow felt at home seeing them. You know, it's an experience that you will never forget and may likely go and try it again to see what it is that you learn. I think it's a very sick civilization that tells people you can get drunk, that's cool, you can take these medicines from these big companies that numb you out, that we can't even really honestly tell you how they work. But these medicines that have this historic capacity for healing the heart, for helping you feel truly loved, for reducing your self-judgment, for helping you truly heal from trauma, these are off limits For helping you expand your mind.
Speaker 4:And this is one of the things that made it so troublesome during the Vietnam era, because you had young people going. I'm not going to go and die for your stupid war. That doesn't make any sense. And, boy, when a civilization begins to lose that kind of our government, begins to lose that kind of control over their fighting aged young people, they start to panic and the young people's minds were expanding into this space where the only thing that the government could do in reaction to it was to just shut it all down and brainwash an entire generation into saying this is wrong and bad and degenerate. That healing is degenerate. That loving yourself is degenerate. That sitting with other people in the ancient ceremony that has been vetted over tens of thousands of years, that is degenerate, but that alcohol is cool. What kind of civilization are we living in if that's the case?
Speaker 2:It's so true. Do you have a suggestion as to how to step away from that, how to change that? I know that's a big ask.
Speaker 4:Well, I think that institutions are going to have to fall, and when I say that, I believe that this is what is actually happening, and there's this wonderful great awakening that is occurring with the democratization of information the fact that you, amanda, can have your own podcast, that you can have a voice to the world, that people can understand where it is that you're at, amanda, where it is that I'm at, and that independent people are able to sit down outside of the guise of the big media conglomerates and have conversations about things that are not a part of what would be considered the official corporate narrative. This is changing the way that people view medicine. It's changing the way that they view politics. It's changing the way that people view medicine. It's changing the way that they view politics. It's changing the way that they view what kind of car to drive, what kind of lifestyle they wish to live, what kind of country they want to live in, and so these deeply held beliefs that people have are. Now it's safe to begin questioning these beliefs, and really that is something that I find to be.
Speaker 4:One of the most profound things that has been happening over the last like five years is people's willingness to go. I think that the world is a different place than what I'd always been raised to believe, and these incredible files are being released that are painting a different picture of history. In our nation, there's this incredible findings that they just had about the pyramids, that there's these structures underneath and, of course, they're verifying all of this. It rewrites the history that we thought that we knew and replaces it with something that we, the average person, go. I think everything's different than what I expected out of the world. I think it's going to help people start being more creative and think more creatively about who it is that they want to be in a world that isn't what they thought that it was.
Speaker 2:I think that makes a lot of sense and I like how you mentioned even the past five years. Like five years ago, if someone would have said to me, you're going to, you're going to do a psychedelic journey, I would have said no way in hell, I am no way in hell. I am so even myself. Like podcasts, books, different things that people are getting out there, there's more ways to learn about things you know, even hearing about psychedelics, as opposed to three years ago. I had heard about it from this one guy and I was like you're doing drugs in the woods? I'm not doing drugs in the woods, like you know, and I think I've had more people talking about it. You know, like getting it, getting stuff, you find that funny Drugs in the works.
Speaker 4:No, I find it funny because the first time that I did it I didn't tell my wife that I was going to go do this. And so I do this. I have this most amazing mind expanding experience and, of course, you know, at this point in my life I had been very evangelical and I was playing in a church band, playing drums in this church band, very into Christianity and everything like that. It was a wonderful congregation and everything like that. Christians generally haven't been people who do this sort of thing.
Speaker 4:I come home to my wife and I'm like sit down, sweetie, I have something that I need to tell you. And I'm like sit down, sweetie, I have something that I need to tell you. And it was really a coming out, because she wasn't expecting this out of me and the way that I explained it to her, what it was that I experienced, that it wasn't something at the time that changed my faith or anything like that, but that I was able to have a greater amount of empathy for the people around me, a greater amount of compassion for her, a greater amount of understanding the ways in which I'm a bit much, and this greater self-evaluation, this greater self-evaluation and, by the end of me telling her this and the way that my life had changed. She kind of goes well, I want to do that, but it felt very much like I was telling her something that was going to change our relationship forever. And I think that it did in hindsight.
Speaker 4:But, yes, very much like oh well, is Jeremy a druggie now? Is Jeremy a degenerate now? You know, but in what way did this change your life?
Speaker 2:It opened me up a lot. I felt like I was watching a movie. At times I wanted to shut off that, I couldn't, but it really helped me. Take myself out of my life and look at it. I felt like I was watching a movie and I could see myself. I just watched my whole life and thought about it from somebody that wasn't myself and I've never been able to do that the way I did that day and I, literally I was like looking at me and looking at somebody that looked like me and she was just talking and she was saying different stuff and it opened up a lot for me, a lot.
Speaker 2:I had never met or spoken to my father prior to that. Two months later I called him out of the blue and introduced myself and we don't have a relationship now. I honestly had some fear about how it would work, what would happen, but deep down I knew I just wanted to do it. You know, like I don't want something to happen to him and not have met him, not have had certain conversations, whether things are good right now, whatever. It was something that deep down I felt this longing of like who the hell are you? I'm more Polish than I realized you know Like little things I wouldn't have known had I not gotten to speak to him, and I feel a sense of fulfillment in like who I am, like who is Amanda.
Speaker 4:Oh, if you had the courage you unlock, the courage for you to contact him and, for whatever reason, that relationship was not something that you continued with but it helped you have the self-confidence to be able to open the door, knowing that there's nothing that he could do that could injure you, and that you got more information about yourself ancestrally, and that's really a beautiful thing for you to kind of have open in your life is to actually know more about where you come from. That's a really beautiful thing. I'm really glad that happened in your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great. I now have a brother. Love him very much. I didn't have any siblings before, so it was wild.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh From a phone call. You have a brother.
Speaker 2:How cool is that? Yeah, and it just gave me courage to not worry about, like, what's going to happen down the line, know and deep down, it was one of those that, even like I compare myself to people who are adopted. While it's not the same concept, even if you don't want them in your life forever, there's certain stuff you want to know, like I've had friends who had been adopted. They just want to know certain stuff. You can go on your merry way, I'm gonna go on mine, but like I to meet you. I don't want to get to the end of my life and be like damn, I didn't meet him.
Speaker 4:Well, what a wonderful fulfillment in this lifetime for you to know these people and know whether or not they are the kind of people that you can share space with and it sounds like your brother definitely is. So what a wonderfully enriching thing about that changed a lot about you. Know what this life is for you.
Speaker 2:It did, it did. So I'm curious you did ayahuasca two weeks ago. You said I did. Now you mentioned before that you don't. It's not something you do very regularly because it's a sacrament. So is there a consistency in what you do it or do you base it off like when you're feeling you feel that called?
Speaker 4:So I've been doing this on average once a year because I feel like the yearly rhythm of it helps me be able to integrate everything that I learned in a manner that doesn't dismiss the experience as a carnival ride. And this is just for me. I'm not saying that other people need to do this exactly like me. For me, a year feels more like a humble discipline than feeling like I'm going to rely upon the medicine to just do the work for me. One of the beautiful things about this medicine is that you know, my ADHD brain is this tornado. It's just always moving around and I think really quickly and all this different stuff.
Speaker 4:After a journey I'm able to focus so much better, I'm able to kind of command my brain a little bit better and I have less of a sense of anxiety. My wife can tell when I'm anxious because I do this thing where I drum with the tips of my fingers and I walk around like doing this. I don't even know that I'm doing this, but I stopped doing it for a long time after one of these journeys because I'm not constantly thinking that I'm not good enough and that's just one of the programmed reset things in my brain is I'm never quite good enough. That I've gotten much better with since I've started walking the spiritual path, but it still kind of creeps in, particularly when I feel a little overwhelmed. And so I do this once a year because for me, that rhythm helps me learn and incorporate what it is that I have done.
Speaker 2:I get that. I like how you mentioned it allows you to not rely on the medicine. I spoke with the medicine handler who facilitated my ayahuasca journey and she mentioned that. You know people don't usually talk about it, but anything can become something that you rely on. It can use it too much, even psychedelics, not necessarily but if you approach it in a way that your intention is different, your outcome is different.
Speaker 4:That's really kind of the sad thing, and the system will always point to the people who go too far with a substance and say look what this will do to you. This person became a junkie because they used too much LSD and oftentimes in these sorts of things, what you find, for instance, with the Matthew Perry yes, he had ketamine in his system. He had a lot of other things in his system at the same time and he was sitting in a hot tub. Even though ketamine is a federally legal substance that can be done therapeutically, it shouldn't be done with alcohol and cocaine and methamphetamine and fentanyl and all of these different things. These medicines are not toys. They require humility in order to do them and get something out of them that helps you move in a better direction in your life. Transcendence does not require them. They're one tool for transcendence.
Speaker 4:I've had some of the most transcendent experiences doing simply holotropic breathwork and flying with ravens in the sky while just simply breathing. Sometimes that is something that can trigger the response that you're needing to think differently about your life. Maybe it's mindfulness and meditation meditative practice that helps you realign yourself with your real value. Sometimes it is a mixture of these different things, which is another part of what I do. It doesn't require any sort of psychedelic journey. It can be a part of it, you know.
Speaker 4:But the strategy they say that the integration is where the real work happens, and that's one of the things that I specialize in is that work of the strategy of your life, because you can have all these wonderful feelings. You can feel like you're kissing the sky, you can see yourself as the great raven, you can do all these wonderful things. But how does that relate to who it is that you want to be in your life and how you change relationships with people, how you decide? You know what this friend group is no longer fulfilling for me and I respectfully need to just let it go. I don't like the work that I'm doing in my life and I feel like I need to kind of let that go and do a different kind of work. How do you know that your strategy is going to work and build it into an actual plan that helps you live the life that you really truly feel fulfilled by?
Speaker 2:I get what you mean. You know, I think, with the society we live in, even, like you had mentioned before, the alcohol and how society accepts that so many people are trying to escape something, whether people want to admit that or not. I think that's why alcohol is so socially acceptable, because you are escaping something and not realizing that's what you're doing, and I think you can get involved in any type of substance and still using it to escape. It's going to lead you down the wrong road.
Speaker 4:No, it is, and it sneaks up on people.
Speaker 4:And another sign of a desperately sick society that so many people struggle with this very consuming malady, this alcoholism, and so many people hiding it.
Speaker 4:There's this road that I used to walk down near a house that I owned, and I started noticing little Jack Daniels bottles in the bushes, so I started just picking them up when I was walking the dog, and I noticed that there was always another one, and so I started picking all the Jack Daniels bottles out of the bushes, realizing somebody would go and buy a bottle of Jack Daniels every day after work. They drink it on their way home and they throw it out the window of their car, and so that they could get home and hide it from whoever their spouse was, and so they would just throw it out the window on their way home. And I picked 50 ish bottles of Jack Daniels and I just, rather than judge whoever this person was, I just thought you know this poor person living with this deep sadness in their life, but the only thing that they can do is numb themselves out before they come home to whatever struggle that they have in their life.
Speaker 4:And it's not like they're hiding it, because they come home smelling like Jack Daniels every night. But that person is dealing with a depression that none of us knows their story. But I could read the story through all the little bottles that some of them were new, some of them were very old. You could tell by the label how long they'd been there. But day after sad day, this person had done this, just like that out there of people covering up pain and feeling like the only thing that they can do is just simply grit their teeth and get through another day.
Speaker 4:you don't have to be that way you don't no, because there's always an answer for changing the situation that you're in, and I think that a lot of people surround that answer with a lot of fear, and that fear is, if I change something, everything's going to collapse around me, and the likelihood is everything that's around you is fake anyway. Maybe some of the relationships that you have are fake, maybe the relationship that you have with your employer is fake, maybe the relationship that you have with your spouse is fake, and maybe it's time for a huge change. And if that change is getting real and renewing that relationship, or if that change is changing everything about what it is that you define yourself by, there's always an answer. It's just sometimes really hard to face it. I love that. There's always an answer. It's just sometimes really hard to face it.
Speaker 2:I love that there's always an answer. There is always an answer. It might be hard to face and there might be fear around it, but maybe you got to let go of something.
Speaker 4:Yes, living goes hard because you work hard to accomplish the things that you have, because you work hard to accomplish the things that you have, and sometimes with all of that work, it backs you into a corner that you think is insurmountable to exit and it never quite is. And I, you know I was gosh. Where would I start again? Would I want to go to Nevada or Montana or Alaska or Washington or New Mexico, like, where would I do it? What kind of life would I design? And then all of a sudden I have my house, which is wonderful. Not everybody was that lucky and what I kind of came out of that with was well, I was about forced to have to reinvent everything. What if I just do it and reinvent everything as if it had happened? And so I did.
Speaker 2:I really like that you were able to use that situation in such the light that you did. It's fascinating to me, oh well, thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you, you know it's interesting. I also noticed this is something for the ADHDers out there. It was difficult because I didn't have any emotions in the way that other people had emotions at the time, and I was kind of confused by it because everybody around me was crying. Everybody would think about this and cry. My neighbors, my wife and I didn't feel that same way.
Speaker 4:What I noticed out of the stress of what was going on, I noticed over time I was more distractible, that I had a hard time focusing, that I kind of felt like I was walking around in a cloud and I kind of had to realize oh, this is kind of interesting my ADHD mind.
Speaker 4:We live in such chaos that when the world is chaotic it's functioning right about where we're at all the time anyway, and so for me I'm like, okay, there's total chaos around, that's my frequency, right. But then there's also the other frequencies, other things of losing everything you've worked for neighbors who are feeling sad, people who lost their homes 100 yards from your own house and grieving for them, and people losing their animals and things like this, dreadful, horrible things that are very sad. My ADHD brain handled that by being less focused, I guess for a while less focused, I guess for a while Whereas other people felt more emotions, more of their kind of like sad, depressed sort of space. I was more in the anxious space, but I used all of that to you know what is it that I actually want for the rest of the life that I have? And so I used it as fuel to create that life.
Speaker 2:What is it you want for the rest of the life you have? I think that is a perfect question what is it that you want for the rest of the life you have to live? I love that. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty?
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 2:He's a monk, an author, he's got a podcast called On Purpose and I'm a big fan of the podcast. He ends his podcast with two segments and I've incorporated them in mine. First segment is the Many Sides to Us. There's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each. What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as Happy? What is one word someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as Passionate, Transcending, Arrogant? What is one word you're trying to embody right now Peace. Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in up to a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 4:You are the top five people you spend your time around.
Speaker 2:Why is that the best advice?
Speaker 4:I've spent a lot of time in my life hanging on to people who I shouldn't have hung on to, and in the past two years I've let go of a lot of people, not quite realizing how much of that was weighing me down, because I'm an intensely loyal person and I'm now surrounded by people who are so much more loyal to me, so much more interested in what I'm doing, so much more caring for me, more caring for me, and it's such a wonder I have more rich friendships now that I have let go of people that I was honestly working way too hard to keep a hold of, and I feel myself lifted by the people around me now.
Speaker 2:What is the worst advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 4:Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I think that's the dumbest thing that anybody could possibly believe, because does alcoholism make you stronger if it doesn't kill you? No, it harms you and it harms your family. There's lots of things that we do that don't kill us, that don't make us stronger, and I think it's a bit of a masochistic mindset that I kind of let go a long time ago this notion that suffering is the meaning of life.
Speaker 2:What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?
Speaker 4:You know I had.
Speaker 4:I spent a long time in my life a part of the marching band activity and it was actually the organization that I was the CEO of, one of these world-famous marching bands.
Speaker 4:And as I have changed in my own values, all of a sudden my deep emphasis on those friendships and that world is no longer important to me and I've taken down all of the things that I had from all of that time and I don't miss them.
Speaker 4:I've got them all in a box, a couple of boxes, because that was a version of me that existed a really long time ago, a version of me that existed a really long time ago, a version of me that was great for the time, but a version of me that I've grown out of. I see what it does when people define themselves deep into life by who they were early in their lives. It keeps people from becoming higher versions of themselves because they're defining themselves as that championship football player that they was, kind of like the uncle rico in napoleon dynamite, that person who is living in that old version of themselves, and really how sad that is. And so I've stopped defining myself by who I was when I was a world champion drummer, because I'm not that person anymore. I get to be something so much more than that now, and it makes me happier.
Speaker 2:You could describe what you would want your legacy to be if someone was reading it. What would you want it to say?
Speaker 4:If someone was reading it, what would you want it to say? That I always got up. That when things got me down, I was always able to get up and reinvent myself and build something even better and brighter that lifted both myself and people around me up into a higher version of all of us.
Speaker 2:If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 4:And I want to know why that the person needed to learn how to be the utmost of kindness to themselves, because when you are kind to yourself, you become kind to others. When you have compassion for yourself is when you can truly have compassion and love for everyone in your life. And it's the people who and I'm excluding the narcissist from this, because that's not kind to yourself but when you truly do have compassion for yourself and love and appreciation for just exactly how it was that you were created, you can then empathize with everybody else around you who are also on their own journey of accepting themselves the way they are.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4:Can I tell you something that I love about you? Yeah.
Speaker 4:What I love about you is your genuine interest and your attention to detail and the way in which you listen to people when they are speaking, because, like I've said, you don't often encounter people who really listen to you and who are interested in you, and your own compassion and your own care for people really comes out in the way that you interview people, and so what I hope for you is that your sense of wanting to heal others in the way that you have worked on healing yourself, is something that you are incredibly successful at, and that your mission to help others feel a greater sense of their own transcendence through breathing is something that also brings you a great sense of healing and love for yourself.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much and I really appreciate this conversation. I really enjoyed that. And now, where can listeners connect with you? Where's the best place for them to get in touch with you?
Speaker 4:Well, I'm the host of the Mindful Mutiny podcast. You can find that anywhere, and please come to mindfulmutinycom to find out all of the different ways in which I can help you in your life journey, in your work journey, in your personal journey, and schedule a time to chat with me. I'd love to take 15 minutes and talk to you.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and I will link that in the show notes and I do just like to give it back to the guest. Any final words of wisdom, anything else you want to share with the listeners?
Speaker 4:Love yourself deeply and when you do, you'll find that you have an endless capacity for compassion for the world around you and that compassion can help you play a wonderful role in the lives of people around you who need that compassion quite badly.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Thank you so much, jeremy, thank you Amanda. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Amanda's Mindset.
Speaker 3:In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you, I'm rooting for you and you got this, as always. If you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating, leave a review and share it with anyone you think would benefit from this. And don't forget you are only one mindset. Shift away from shifting your life. Thanks, guys, until next time.
