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 former Family Law Paralegal now a Breathwork Facilitator, Sound Healer, and Transformative Mindset Coach.
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 Surprising Truth Jessi Learned After Quitting Smoking for Good | 154
Feedback on the show? Send us a message!
Author and former smoker Jessi Hartnett joins Amanda Russo to share how she broke free from decades of nicotine and marijuana addiction by shifting her mindset, listening to her intuition, and embracing self compassion.
In this deeply moving episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Jessi Hartnett, wife, mother, author, and former smoker to explore the emotional roots of addiction and the mindset shifts that make lasting freedom possible. With raw honesty, Jessi shares her decades long struggle with cigarettes and marijuana, the cultural myths that kept her hooked, and the self compassion that ultimately set her free.
From her first cigarette at 13 to the day she realized she was done for good, Jessi unpacks how cravings, self-talk, and emotional avoidance can keep people stuck far longer than they realize. She opens up about “practicing quitting” over a five-year period, discovering that the heart (not the mind) holds the key to lasting change, and why she believes cravings are an invitation to listen to your deeper needs. The conversation also dives into her book Honor Your Heart, written as a guide for her daughter and anyone seeking to break free from destructive patterns, and her recent transformative experience with holotropic Breathwork.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating addiction recovery, supporting a loved one through it, or simply wanting to build a healthier, more intuitive relationship with themselves. Jessi’s story offers hope, practical insight, and a reminder that every craving, relapse, and breakthrough is part of a bigger journey back to yourself.
🎙️ In this episode, listeners will discover:
💭 Why willpower alone rarely works — and what to replace it with
🔎 How “practicing quitting” can reveal the real drivers of addiction
💔 The hidden link between negative self-talk and cravings
🛠️ Tools Jessi used to regulate emotions without smoking
🌱 How self-compassion and intuition changed her recovery
📖 The inspiration behind her book Honor Your Heart
🌬️ What holotropic Breathwork revealed AND released for her
🕒 Timeline Summary:
[1:35] – Who Jessi is at her core and why “happiness” drives everything
[2:02] – The first cigarette, initiation, and early emotional wiring
[6:45] – Marijuana addiction and why it was just as hard to quit
[12:46] – Practicing quitting: what repeated relapses revealed
[14:41] – The mindset shift from willpower to kindness
[20:34] – Allowing emotions instead of avoiding them with addiction
[22:07] – Writing Honor Your Heart for her daughter and others
[26:29] – Reframing cravings as clues to deeper needs
[29:21] – Heart vs. mind: which truly leads to lasting change
[34:58] – Jessi’s #1 tip for breaking any addiction
[35:58] – Holotropic breathwork and releasing emotional control
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!
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 2:Welcome to Mander's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, amanda Russo, and I am here today with Jessie Hartnett, and she is a wife and mother who loves to spend her time in the kitchen and outdoors. She has a college education in geology, geography and early childhood education. She is now in a stable place, but Jessie has lived with addiction the majority of her life. She wonders if she had the right tools at an earlier age, if she could have avoided addiction or at least found her way out sooner. Choosing to see her addiction experience as strength, jessie now wishes to share her method of stopping smoking with others, to spread the knowledge that transformed her life. She has also written a book, honor your Heart, which addresses the emotional aspect of ending this habit. Thank you so much for joining me, jessie. Thank you for having me. Now. Who would you say? Jessie is at the core.
Speaker 3:At my core I don't know and I'm always kind of changing on the outside. That's why I have different many roles and identities. I go throughout the day. So I have different many roles and identities. I go throughout the day, but at my core I'm a person that just wants to be happy, wants to connect to others and wants to enjoy life.
Speaker 2:I love that. Now, can you tell us when you started smoking and how that came into your life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started smoking pretty young. I was 13. A lot of people do start young. I was at that age where I was trying to find my identity and find my way into a community and you know I had grown up around smoking, seen all the adult smoke was hanging out with older friends that smoked and just seemed kind of like a very natural thing, a part of growing up. So I wanted to try that and looking back now I can see that I was kind of looking for initiation at that time, which makes sense, and so that was blessed by everyone around me and, you know, just started to get really hooked on it.
Speaker 3:Where it was becoming a priority for me. It was becoming like my main hobby. It was my way of connecting with anybody really and just kind of fell into a really deep cycle with it where I was using it as an emotional crutch and kind of just was really depending on it very heavily. So like when I went to go quit, you know, after a few years of getting into it, having some trouble breathing, I was like okay, I'm done with this and then realized oh, I can't. I just was really dependent on it for emotional stability During that time, when you're so young that's a lot of big part of your brain development and I just kind of wired this in where I was not able to regulate emotionally at all without smoking. So anytime I had an unwanted feeling I would turn to smoking and, yeah, just got caught in the cycle of negative self-talk and workaholism and it was just really tough for me to get out for a long time.
Speaker 2:Now I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking, but when you were 13 and you tried this first cigarette, where were you?
Speaker 3:I was with a friend I remember that I had stolen some cigarettes from an adult and I got in with my friend I was like, hey, let's try this, it was awful it burned. It was awful, it burned, tasted nasty. But it was like, hey, this is cool. We're like we're transgressing something here and figuring out who we are and proving something to ourselves that we're tough, that we're adults. And I think that's where that initiation part comes in, because initiations typically are uncomfortable but you push through the pain to learn something about yourself and belong to a community. So I think most people that smoke that first one it's like, oh, this is awful. But you're like, no, I'm gonna be tough, I'm gonna stick through this and get somewhere with it. Yeah, it was kind of unpleasant that first time.
Speaker 2:You stuck through it. Yeah, was it helping you with stress right away?
Speaker 3:No, I don't think it ever really was. That's kind of the addiction mentality. The way I've heard it put and kind of think of it myself is like when you're addicted to smoking, you basically feel bad all the time. You're not really at your best, you're low energy, you're kind of sick, and then when you smoke you feel a little less sick. So that starts to feel like it's good. But really it's like you're kind of creating this environment that's rough to begin with. So it took me a long time to realize that because you just get that rush and you're like, oh, I feel better, but you're kind of like in this permanent sickly kind of state. That's the way I see it now. So I don't really see it as a stress relief. It's a stimulant.
Speaker 3:I know some people with like ADHD. When they have a stimulant that's relaxing for them. But for me that's gonna increase my heart rate and have shallow breathing and all that kind of anxiety and stress that comes along and the cortisol rush with a stimulant. So it's not really relaxing. It's just something we pick up from the culture. I think too, everybody thinks of that way from like 50 years of marketing. Really well that you know, you think it's going to have all these magical powers and reality when you break it down, as this doesn't do what I want it to do, but I reached for it every time I was stressed, so I kind of just had built that pattern.
Speaker 2:I'm curious were you doing this more so with people? Were you smoking more so alone?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think it started as a social thing and then it turned into just part of my life where, like I said, I was a really hard worker and so I would do this thing where I work really hard and then take my smoke breaks. That became like a reward system for me for working hard. And then, while I was doing this hard work, I developed like this negative self-talk. That was like really harsh and critical, and so that kind of like got tied in with the smoking too, where I'd be like oh, you're a loser, you're not good enough, you need to work harder, and those kind of like bad feelings. And then I would smoke to try to like stuff that down and it was like all this was happening subconscious, like I had pretty much no awareness of this for like a decade. So, yeah, it was just something that I did all the time eventually. But, yeah, it started as like a social thing, just, you know, to hang out and connect.
Speaker 2:Now I'm curious did you develop an addiction to smoking marijuana?
Speaker 3:So I got some pretty bad advice early on. It's like, oh no, don't smoke cigarettes, Smoke pot. It's not addictive. But I became addicted to pot.
Speaker 2:I smoked pot and cigarettes daily for 15 years, mmm. So it just added an addiction, exactly, yeah, and was it more difficult to? I'm curious if there was a difference in stopping one addiction versus the other.
Speaker 3:I didn't notice a difference. They're both very hard. So I would try to play these games all the time where it's like, oh, I won't smoke cigarettes, I'll only smoke pot, or I'm quitting pot and I'll just smoke cigarettes, or I only smoke when I drink, and like all these like little rules that I try to make to reason my way out of it. But then it never worked. I always would end up coming up with an excuse, and it was, I don't know when I was doing one I was like I just want to do them all, so I had to end up putting them all together eventually. But there were times where I would quit smoking pot and just only smoke cigarettes. And you know, like pot kind of has this reputation of being a medicine or being, you know, not that harmful. But when I would quit smoking pot I would really just be so depressed, like just down, like don't want to leave my room, just when I was like sitting in a dark corner and cry like thoughts of suicide, like it was actually really intense. And so I think, like I said, that's a cultural thing too, where I kind of pick that up, where it's like, oh, this is benign, it's just for fun, not really that dependent on it, but I would have serious effects physically, emotionally, spiritually. So that's just one thing I wanted to say about pot is that it kind of had a bigger hold on me than I ever expected it to. And then, like with cigarettes too, it's, you know, going through similar cycles I just felt like I just was down really low when I would quit pot. So I don't know, they're both really tough, they're very similar, so I don't really distinguish it.
Speaker 3:When I talk about quitting smoking, it's like it's the same kind of process. Honestly, people say that quitting nicotine is worse than heroin. I don't like to do this like comparison of addictions. It's just like, oh, this is better than that, and like people do that to justify it to themselves all the time and it's just like I don't know if it's holding you back from living your highest potential. It's a problem Like end of story. In my opinion. I don't like to play that game because some people they have a really rough time with some of like the more commonly accepted addictions, like things like sugar, workaholism. It's like these. Some of these things are like celebrated, you know, but they can really wreck people up. So I don't really distinguish between the addictions? I think they're all hard.
Speaker 2:I love how you made the comment holding you back from living your highest life. Anything can be. Any of these addictions can be. Now, when did you start smoking pot? Was that at the same, around the same time?
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah, 13. That same year, I guess, where I was just trying everything I could.
Speaker 2:And people had advised you that smoking pot would help you not smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't really follow that logic.
Speaker 2:but Then what was your next step from there?
Speaker 3:So, like I said, I kind of had this workaholism thing within me too. So I was working really hard at school. I was pretty much just like obsessed with this external validation, with like all the attention I would get, all the praise I would get, and felt that's like how I earned my worth, because I had really low self-esteem, like a lot of teenagers do. But I was getting all this praise and stuff. So while I was smoking and partying and doing all these things I still was achieving pretty well. So on the outside it looked like, oh, she's doing great, she's successful, but inside I was struggling and that struggle got worse the older I got, the longer I was in these habits and so I ended up going to college and studying science and like that was just really rough on my soul because I just fell into this like really nihilistic viewpoint where it's like if you can't measure it, it's not real, everything's random, disconnected, we don't really have any purpose or meaning, it's it's just survival of the fittest competition, and that's the kind of environment I was at the time. So yeah, it just was plummeting emotionally. It was a rough time for me, just wondering why am I even alive? What am I doing? Where am I going?
Speaker 3:And I was fortunate enough to go to this talk. It was something I heard on the radio and it was like this guy talking about linguistics. His name is Michael Mead. I went to go check him out, thinking that it's like oh, this is going to be an academic lecture, I'm going to go learn something and get smarter. And I went and it was like very soulful, like we came in with a song. He's playing drums, he started telling myths and it just really spoke to my heart and made me start to open up my imagination and maybe think like, hey, maybe there's something more to life than just numbers and measurements and that there's some kind of magic, some kind of purpose and meaning here. And so I started diving into the myths. They really just changed my life. I started to understand what it meant to be human and have a glimpse of what I could have for myself gifts to share and I could heal wounds, and so I started going down that path.
Speaker 3:But it took me a long time to ultimately end up quitting. I was having a lot of problems physically from smoking, having mouth surgeries and just not feeling well, and even after that I still continued to smoke. But I started practicing quitting. So I was going days without going, weeks without going, months without, and really started to hone into like what was happening with the cravings, like what kind of thoughts I was having, what kind of feelings I was having, and then I was able to start like looking at some really deep stuff with that and ultimately was able to quit by understanding myself and having developing slowly, very slowly, different tools to cope with some of the things I didn't want to before some of the unwanted emotions now you mentioned you practice quitting, so you would stop for like weeks at a time or months at a time and like see how you could do.
Speaker 2:Did you do that intentionally?
Speaker 3:I mean, each time I was like this is my last time I'm quitting smoking, here we go, but I would end up coming back. And so I started paying attention to, like why am I coming back? Like what is happening here, and I could really link it to emotional distress, negative self-talk, self-hatred, all those kind of things when they would come up. I just started paying attention to what was driving me to go back to smoking. But then I started also giving attention to if the thing I wanted I was actually able to get out of smoking. So it'd be like a thought, like I'm so stressed, you know, I'm inadequate, I can't handle this, I'm inadequate, I can't handle this, I'm overwhelmed, I don't have what it takes to quit, so I'm going to just go and smoke. And then I would smoke and be like I'm still stressed. This didn't do the thing. So then I could start breaking down those beliefs about the benefits I thought I was getting out of smoking and really see it for what it was.
Speaker 2:How long did you do that for?
Speaker 3:I would say it probably took like five years of that to actually really start to work through some of the deep-seated stuff. I had going on, like I said, a lot of self-hatred, so I had to come to terms with that and look deep with that and then start changing the way I talk to myself instead of I always was like using willpower and kind of like this tough it out mentality where it's like you know, you're just weak and you need to be strong and let's go, let's do this, and that was never motivating to me. It wouldn't last. And so when I started talking to myself with kindness, with forgiveness, with patience, that's when I started to actually be motivated to take care of myself and to stick through on, you know, committing to moving on and finding different ways to cope.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious. I'm sure you had to change a lot of your mindset. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Speaker 3:yeah. So I just talked about one with the willpower and seeing myself differently and then, like I said, seeing the smoking differently, seeing it for, hey, this isn't really adding the things I think I keep turning it to. Maybe it did in the past, but that's not working anymore and then just being open to new ideas and new possibilities and it's like, okay, maybe I don't like the way my life's looking now, but I actually have choice and I have power and I can change. The things I do right now are going to like where I am is where, a result of everything I did before, all the choices I made before, and now I can make new choices and put myself somewhere else. Because I kind of got caught in this like helplessness, where I was like I'm just addicted, like I said, those kind of stories that go around like oh, it's worse than quitting heroin and everyone smokes till they die, and you know there's not like a lot of people that I knew or had seen that had quit smoking, and so I didn't really believe it was possible. But I started working on shifting that entirely, being like I can't do this, I am doing this and it's going to enrich my life. That's another big part, too, is that people can be like sad about quitting smoking like very long time they can hold onto it for years and be like life will never be as happy as when I smoked and cause they feel like they're missing out on something, like they're losing something, and so making that shift.
Speaker 3:Because of all the experimenting I had done, I could see that I actually wasn't losing it, what I thought I was. I'm not losing my way to make friends. I'm not losing my way to deal with stress, because it actually doesn't do those things. So I could just focus on what I was gaining, and that made it a lot easier. Just like, instead of like fighting yourself and being sad about what you're losing, it's like you get to align with yourself. That's.
Speaker 3:Another big part, too is getting in touch with my intuition, because I had ignored it so much and I feel like addiction really separates you from yourself.
Speaker 3:So I was able to listen to my real needs and figure out how to meet them in a way that was actually fulfilling, instead of just trying like desperately, like oh, if I smoke, maybe it'll be better, but like I could actually like listen to what I needed and try different things, so like I had a big trouble with anxiety and I don't know. I just had the idea. I was like maybe I should drink some water. I feel dehydrated and like that was a game changer for me, like it was such a big difference for me Just drinking some water and when you're smoking you're super dehydrated, so that's just like one of those like small things that's like, okay, I can actually pay attention to my body now and provide myself what I need, and just learning how to take care of myself because it's something I didn't really value for most of my life but really, you know, makes such a big difference in your quality of life.
Speaker 2:I love everything you mentioned there and I like how you compared the heroin example, because I think a lot of people, whether it's pot or cigarettes, are like at least I'm not doing heroin. I hear that a lot, you know. And why are we comparing drugs? You know it's like one's not better than the other. And I love how you mentioned intuition, you know. I think that's something that not everybody realizes in terms of if they're smoking or if they're even I even want to say if they're addicted to alcohol, not able to tap in or listen to yourself. You know what I mean. Like you're totally, your mind is foggy, whether it's from the smoking or if it's alcohol. You know, I think that's not talked about as much, but like it's because you're not thinking, you can't rationalize it, and I think part of it was just like my background too.
Speaker 3:Like it's because you're not thinking, you can't rationalize it and I think part of it was just like my background to a science. It's just like I had come to undervalue intuition so much and fight it and just do what I was told because everyone's like no, you need to do this, you need to do that, even though I didn't really want to. I was kind of living this life that everyone else wanted for me, that I didn't even want for myself, like I just come so cut off from my intuition. It was really hard to get back and it was confusing. But I started practicing it and now it's something that's very important to me. I try to check in every day with what feels right and what doesn't, and I listen to myself and when I don't, I regret it. So I'm very respectful of intuition. Now it's a superpower Now.
Speaker 2:I'm curious what was the most difficult part about you quitting smoking?
Speaker 3:I guess just accepting my emotions, accepting that anger is normal, sadness is normal, these are like OK things, because somewhere along the lines I had learned that I wasn't supposed to like have these emotions, that it wouldn't like make me unlovable or make me an outcast, or they were just like very bad. And I think that me fighting them like ended up me like repressing them. It was just kind of like stuck inside me where I was just kind of like down, not feeling very energetic, not feeling a lot of joy, because I couldn't let these emotions come up and experience them. And so when I decided like okay, I'm going all in, I'm going to actually connect with myself and allow myself to have these feelings, like it was so intense, it was kind of scary. It was like I have been really pissed off for years and now I have to deal with this.
Speaker 3:I don't know how the emotions were definitely like the hardest part for me, but you know it was a period and I worked through it. I just developed new ways to sit with them, accept them and let them pass through. That was hard. Sometimes I still have a knee-jerk reaction to it. I've learned new ways, but sometimes it's still something that catches me off guard. I think that having a kid has been really helpful for that, because you know she was born, she's angry, she's sad, she's happy, like these are just very temporary, easy things and they're natural, and so it's kind of helped me accept them more and just like ride through it, cause I know it's not going to last, but like have respect for them too, instead of like no, everything's fine. It's like no, you're allowed to be sad, it's okay, like it's going to pass. So I'm really grateful to my daughter for that.
Speaker 2:I love that comment you made Everything's fine. No, you're sad, you're allowed to be sad, and we don't have to bypass the emotions and we don't have to use an addiction to get rid of them. We can feel them, you know, like it's not a bad thing to be angry, to be sad, like it's part of life, all the emotions, the good ones, the bad ones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they have their purpose, you know. So just let them do their thing and just not get attached. Because I found like the more you fight it too, the more you get attached to it. So just like I try to kind of just like, okay, I'm angry, whatever, let it go, go on with my day, I'm not like sitting there stewing all day, if I actually just accept that I'm angry Instead of being like, no, I don't want to deal with this, and then, like you, end up exploding on somebody for no reason.
Speaker 2:Like road rage, like I feel like all that stuff just happens because people don't want to deal with it and it comes up anyway.
Speaker 3:So yeah, now I'm curious when you wrote your book in terms of your journey? Yeah, so it was after my daughter was born. She amazes me so much. I just started getting more tapped into that creative side that I had like totally squashed out, like I forgot that I even enjoyed writing and I got back into it and what kept coming up again is just my experience with addiction and the things I learned from it and kind of the things I'd want her to know about her worth and her purpose.
Speaker 3:Her to know about her worth and her purpose, just like lessons that I've learned that I would like want to share with her. And so that's kind of how I wrote the book was like to a younger version of myself, to an older version of her, just like some of the deep spiritual concepts that were completely inaccessible to me for so long. I just want her to have that knowledge right off the bat, and so that's why I wrote the book to share with some of the ideas and practices that really helped me get through. I guess just the lack of self-awareness, the disconnection, because that was really hard for me is to come back to terms with myself and really pay attention to what was going on, because I was just so driven and distracted so I figured maybe this stuff could help someone else.
Speaker 3:Now how long after you quit smoking did you write the book, you know it's hard because I don't keep track. Some people are so crazy about counting days. That really stressed me out. I was just like I don't know, I quit, I'm done. I knew I had gotten through some really hard stuff. So I knew I was like really quit because it's like, well, if I was going to go back, I would have gone back during this. So there's a point where I just realized like I'm never going back and that felt amazing. But yeah, a few years probably no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a tough thing because I feel like a lot of people, or at least myself I'll just talk about myself I had for something for so long an all or nothing perspective. It's like either like I'm in it and I smoke as much as I can, or absolutely nothing, never going to. So I never really got that moderation thing down. I think I could, but I just don't even want to anymore, like I have no interest in smoking, so I don't really care about moderating. I just think that there's a mentality that can really set people off Like I don't know, I'm just going to throw stones at AA Because, like a lot of people, like they're, like you can never have a drink the rest of your life, and so when people have a drink, then they're like oh, I guess I'll just fall off the wagon and go all. You can stop at any point. As you've already opened the beer, as you've already let the smoke, you can just put it out.
Speaker 3:You to keep going over the deep end, especially if you have those kind of realizations that I was having, where it's like this isn't getting me what I thought it was, like you just back out, and it's not like you have to go back to day zero in your mind. That's why I don't like the counting days, because it's like so depressing when you're like I broke my streak, might as well just give up now. But it's like no, you don't need to think that way, it's just a bump in the road and you can learn. What can you learn from it? Because I don't think I would have really been able to quit if I hadn't had those relapses and noticed the disappointment. So it's like it really helped me solidify that I wasn't missing out on anything by quitting.
Speaker 2:That makes complete sense and I love how you mentioned you can stop at any point, even if you're in the process of relapsing, like you can put out the cigarette, you can put down the beer, whatever it is. I don't think it's always addressed, you know. I think it's glamorized, this all or nothing mindset in any aspect. Even if it's sugar, then you've got this all or nothing and it's like you can't put on the and it's like we're human. You know. Yes, it's an addiction and it's not a good thing, but I think we need to be mindfully aware and not stigmatized so much. I really appreciated that chapter because I've read different books on addiction and even different types of addiction and you don't hear that, you just hear about these glamorized. And I achieved this. I've gone this long.
Speaker 3:Like you said, we're human. Sometimes things happen, but we can actually learn from it. That's what I say about cravings too, because a lot of people they're like, oh, cravings, they're horrible, they're the worst, like can't quit because of the cravings. But the cravings are actually a gift, because they help us tap into what we're really needing, because you can figure out when the cravings come up. And that's what I was able to figure out.
Speaker 3:Whenever I had negative self-talk, I'd have a craving, and so I'm like, oh, okay, I actually need to deal with the negative self-talk, like let's start there. And so that's how I was able to quit by talking to myself a lot kinder, and it was awkward as hell at first, but it took practice and intention, just like an openness, like, okay, I'm not sure if I really believe this yet, but I want this is what I want to believe. I want to be the kind of person that cares about themselves and loves themselves and has confidence. And so it's just kind of started, like it took some imagination, like this is where I'm going and let me just try it out, and it felt really good, so I stuck with it.
Speaker 2:I like how you mentioned imagination. You know I've heard I can't remember exactly what was said, but you've got to be almost a little delusional about it. Even in terms of quitting an addiction, achieving a goal, whatever it is, you've got to delusionally believe in it, even if nobody else does. You are never going to pick up another cigarette again. This is, and you just know it, Nobody else does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because if you have a doubt, it can be hard to battle that. And I think having a little bit of doubt is like totally normal, though like having some resistance, because I found that, as I've like reconnected with intuition and been working with that, that sometimes it can be hard to separate the intuition and fear and resistance. So it's like, oh, I don't want to do this, so it must not be the right thing for me. Intuition but then the intuition like sneaks in and there's like a call. It's like no, I should do this thing. It's like, even though I don't want to, the intuition is like you should do it, and so I've like found that the things that I resist are actually the things that help me grow and so like resistance is normal. So it's a little bit of both. It's like you need to do a thing that you're afraid of if you have this calling to it, if you know it's going to be a path to something greater.
Speaker 3:And I can really distinguish between my intuition and fear now because of the tone. The intuition is always like calm and like just very clear. It's just like very even keel, just like do this. And then the fear it's always kind of frantic and loud and like off kilter, like the energy of it's just so much different, where it's just like you need to do this, you need to do this because because and then the mind starts coming in. It's like, oh, because I'm gonna, you know, be popular or I'm gonna, you know, be looking successful or something like that like there's some weird kind of underlying drive. It's like, no, that's not really what I need for myself, that's just not like my mind coming in. So I've tried to like distinguish between my mind and my heart and I feel like intuition comes from the heart, it's a feeling, and the guidance from the mind is kind of just like scattered, it's like very self-serving and rationalizing. So I don't know, that's a little thing that's helped me, because it's kind of hard to tell sometimes, especially in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Now you've mentioned how you believe the heart is more useful for us to overcome addiction than our minds. Why do you think that?
Speaker 3:not really that useful because you go in well knowing about. You know there's risk involved and that it's like a bad choice and that people have gotten sick. And you do it anyways because of the emotional drive. Like I said, you're looking for something more meaningful in life, looking for acceptance, looking for an identity, and so to get out of it is going to take like an emotional awareness and emotional motivation. It's hard to reason your way out of something that you went in ignoring. Reason for you know what I mean. And then the heart just has so many things to offer that the mind can't.
Speaker 3:Some of the greatest qualities of being human, like love, imagination, forgiveness, these aren't really logical, they just come from the heart, they come from the well of who you are and they're not really like self-serving all the time. You know what I mean. It's just like something that just comes up, like love, like you can't, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it's one of the greatest motivators in life, it's one of the greatest parts of being alive, and so I consider that like a heart state that's from your heart, a different way of looking at life. It's radically different from the scientific perspective I had. It helps me understand who I am and my connection to others and center into what it's really all about. It's not about paying bills and following rules. It's about just enjoying life and living who you're authentically meant to be.
Speaker 2:I like how you mentioned rationally Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you, you know. It's not like we're in the 1930s anymore and we don't know. We do, we know the effects of it. That makes a lot of sense. So people need to tap in more emotionally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's hard. It is so hard, like I said, that when you asked me what the hardest part was, it was dealing with those emotions, just even allowing them. So but I think that's very healing and that's where the healing comes from. It's from the heart, it's not from, you know, medicines. Like the doctor approach is very mind oriented and very logical and I don't feel like it's very successful because of that, because it doesn't happen to the real reasons. People smoke the real motivations and it's almost always emotional that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:You know, I've personally never smoked a cigarette in my life, but my grandfather's in his mid-80s and he did years and years ago when he was a teenager and like nobody knew, they didn't know the severity of that. So when he was doing it it wasn't necessarily an emotional thing. Or when people years ago were doing it, it wasn't necessarily an emotional thing. Or when people years ago were doing it, it wasn't necessarily an emotional thing. But now, or even when you were doing it, it was because people know that there's bad effects to it yeah, it's crazy the switch that's happened with it.
Speaker 3:So I know my whole lifetime it's been like being banned, like when I was a kid. That was like people were still smoking restaurants but it was getting phased out. Pretty much everyone from my age on is very aware of the marble man and all the horror stories, but people still pick it up and now it's like vaping and I consider vaping and smoking to be very similar. I wasn't a vaper myself, but it's the same kind of pattern, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same concept. Yeah, I'm curious if you've noticed if this has helped your breathing, helped your lung capacity.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Because I really got a window into like the timelessness of humanity and connection with nature and I was like really into hiking. In college I finally got gotten out, I was camping and just having so much fun out there but man, I was winded. It's nothing dumber than like hiking up a beautiful mountain and puffing on a smoke. You know, it just like doesn't just doesn't coincide. And my intuition, my body, is telling me those messages and I'm like no, shut up. You know I'm doing my thing. But yeah, it was getting pretty obvious that I couldn't continue to be active and healthy with this habit. It's so much easier for me to hike and get around and just I feel a lot better.
Speaker 3:I used to have had rushes daily when I was smoking. I didn't realize until I quit that it was just a smoking thing. Like I used to have had rushes daily when I was smoking. I didn't realize until I quit that it was just a smoking thing. Like I don't have had rushes anymore at all and that, just like I said, you like you kind of get in a state of like permanent sickness where you don't even know what it feels like to be healthy and so it's kind of hard for you to know what you're missing out on, because you just come to accept it and integrate it into your life. It's like, oh yeah, I wake up every day coughing, I haven't had rushes, my teeth are in bad shape and you kind of just can't accept anything really when you don't know how great it is. So that was one of the great things was the breathing. I was just like, wow, I can really take a breath now. It just felt amazing.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love that. I'm curious if you could give anybody listening to us. What would you say is your biggest tip to quit any addiction?
Speaker 3:Give attention to the thoughts you're having around it, what kind of thoughts you're having when you want to use it and what it does to you, any kind of changes you notice really with your thoughts, with your emotions. That's the place to start, because it's so easy to get distracted. Us like use addiction as a distraction, so we're used to like tuning out, just going through, but like try to slow down and take some time. And it's hard at first, but the more you do it you'll start to really make those connections for what you're actually wanting and what you're needing and other ways you can meet those needs.
Speaker 2:I love that. That makes a lot of sense, regardless of what you are addicted to, even if it's food, because there's an emotional trigger. That makes so much sense. Jessie, thank you for that tip. I'd love to transition a tad. Thank you for that tip. I'd love to transition a tad Now. I know you recently did a breathwork session. I'd love to have you elaborate on that for us.
Speaker 3:It was amazing because, yeah, when I heard about you I didn't really know what breathwork was and then I saw you in one of your reels talking about it. I'm like I don't really know what this is, but it sounds cool, like like breathing, like I had done some yoga stuff to help regulate and had already seen like small changes be really helpful. But I didn't understand what a breathwork session was. So I had an opportunity and he called it a ritual. So I was like, okay, I guess this is kind of a serious deal and still was like completely underestimating it. And we did the holotropic session and that was very intense and amazing. I guess, just like the sensations were crazy.
Speaker 3:I felt like I was on drugs, you know, which. I hadn't had that feeling in a long time. I kind of enjoyed it, but it also got kind of scary too. It was a little bit like a trip, a bad trip, some good trip. I convulsed a lot, I screamed, I yelled out a lot and I just felt like I released a bunch of somatic trauma that I needed to.
Speaker 3:I guess when I talked to the guy, the leader, after he kind of broke it down, he's like, yeah, you only like release as much as you are meant to in a given moment. So sometimes it's chill, sometimes it's not. It depends on where you're at and what you need and what you're ready for. So I was ready to let go of a bunch of stored baggage and it felt great to let that go and I want to try again, but it was so intense that I'm a little nervous. It's not something I would definitely not do that every day, you know, but something I'd like to keep up with.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, keep exploring, because it was amazing, it was otherworldly for me. I don't know. I just didn't realize I would lose that much control and I was like willing to though I think that's what he was talking about Like I was willing to let that stuff go. Finally, I think that I'm kind of a control freak sometimes, so that that was kind of nice for me to just let it go. Oh, you need to understand it too. That's the whole thing it's like with the mind always wants to understand. It's just like no, I don't need to understand this, it's just, you know, let it happen. So it's very emotional ties into what everything we're talking about that's amazing and it's true like it helps you just let it go.
Speaker 2:You know, holotropic is a deep, intense type of breathwork. There's different types of breathwork, though, too, but you could always do a different type of breathwork. You know, and I love how you mentioned it like you let go of control. Yeah, it's hard, it's really hard, but if you can, that's what. That's the way to have the biggest breakthrough in breathwork.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it comes about like safety and I just was like, okay, I felt so relaxed going in. I'm like, oh, I'm safe, this is chill. Like I said, I didn't really know what I was doing so that was a little bit of a surprise for me, but I'm really grateful that I did it and I'm curious to do more Because, yeah, some of the breath work I had done before was with yoga, but it has been super helpful. The simple stuff like making it exhale longer. Like I said, I had to learn these tools to regulate without smoking and that one saves me. That one saves me every time now when I start to go in fire flight, I just do that longer exhale and I love that. So that helps me come back to me and not get carried away.
Speaker 2:The longer exhale. I love that and you can do that anywhere. I love that.
Speaker 3:That's amazing and was this your first time doing any type of breathwork.
Speaker 3:I had learned that yoga one early on.
Speaker 3:I feel like that one helps with smoking too, because that's kind of what you're doing when you're smoking Honestly you're taking like a longer exhale, like maybe that's why it feels a little bit relaxing.
Speaker 3:I don't know. But yeah, I started doing like kind of mini breath work, just like having breath awareness, because I started practicing yoga and meditation when I ended up being able to quit for real because I had those new tools to use to help me, that would like really sealed the deal for me for like okay, I can do other practices to manage my stress, to get in touch with myself, to have gratitude and connection to the divine and to my own body, and so I guess breathing played a major part in that, because that was like my very intro to meditation was to just focus on the inhale and the exhale. But yeah, I guess I'm not sure what breath work is because, like I said, that kind of threw me off when it's like okay is really intense. So I don't really know what my other options are, but something I want to learn more about definitely no, I gotcha.
Speaker 2:I just meant like breathwork, like a breathwork session, like you did this holotropic versus like the breathing exercises in yoga are more simple, like they. They are helpful but they're much simpler. You know, it's not sure you've noticed.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that was my only breathwork session.
Speaker 2:I gotcha. That's amazing. You released control and you took the shot and went for it. Yeah, I love that. What made you decide to do the breathwork class?
Speaker 3:I mean it was like a sidebar. You might know him. His name is Victor Odo. He's kind of like a spiritual I don't know what to call him figure on YouTube. He's a YouTube star and he was doing like a course for to help with business, connect to more spiritual minded business, and so I was taking his course to check out for my business and then he's like okay, we're going to do this breathwork thing. So I mean I had no real intention with it, it was just like an add on to the thing I had intention for and I'm so grateful that he did that because it was really meaningful for me.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love that. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, jesse. I really loved getting to speak with you, me too.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me and a great discussion.
Speaker 2:Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? Yes, so he's got a podcast called On Popus and he ends his podcast with two segments and I've stolen them. And I end my podcast with those two segments Nice, and I end my podcast with those two segments, nice. The first segment is the many sides to us and there's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each. Okay, I'm ready. What is one word?
Speaker 3:someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as so many words. Interesting was the first one.
Speaker 2:Let's go with the first one. What is one word someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as loyal? What is one word you'd use to describe yourself fun? What is one word if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would you use to describe you as nosy? What is one word you're trying to embody right now love. 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 3:Be, yourself.
Speaker 2:Why is that the best?
Speaker 3:Because it makes life simple.
Speaker 2:What is the worst advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 3:Work hard for happiness Doesn't work.
Speaker 2:What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?
Speaker 3:Validation.
Speaker 2:If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?
Speaker 3:Helps others, lived in empathy, was true to herself.
Speaker 2:If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I don't know why.
Speaker 3:Honesty, because it helps people be vulnerable and really connect.
Speaker 2:I love that. Well, thank you so much, Jessie. Any final words of wisdom you want to leave the listeners with? I just like to give it back to the guest.
Speaker 3:I'm going to go with. The best advice I got is to be yourself, and it can be the hardest thing in the world. People might tell you not to, but that's the way that you can really live in true alignment with what brings you joy and calm and peace, any hurdles that might be in your way, and once you get there, everything is easy.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Jessie. Thank you and thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Mander's Mindset. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you, I'm booting 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.
