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transform your life with this one tip

“I have been the self-help queen since I was young,” Maria Menounos told me during our Big Talk. She admitted to trying everything out of a desire to achieve peace, happiness and control. Relatable!

Maria has found happiness, but it didn’t unfold until she employed a strategy that she had resisted for a long time.

I’m so grateful to Maria for joining me this week. She was incredibly vulnerable and brave, sharing really raw, personal elements of her journey. These qualities are exactly why I’m proud to call her a good friend, and why I wanted to have her on the podcast.

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why your transformation efforts haven’t been working

The desire to transform your life usually stems from a misalignment between your expectations and your current circumstances. It is grounded in boredom, frustration or simply a desire for fundamental happiness.

Ask 100 people how to transform your life and you’ll probably get 100 different answers, ranging from moving to a different country to overhauling your diet to divorcing your spouse. 

The problem: All of those—and many other strategies aimed at transformation—are drastic and rely on external changes. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Wherever you go, there you are”? It’s true. Relocation isn’t an antidote to discontent, and neither are other moves that mask what you really need to look at.

So what does work? We get into it—and Maria shares her #1 tip for true transformation. 

in this episode, Maria and I talk about:

  • The phrase Maria will never say again, after someone called her on it
  • The strategy Maria tried that she says inspired her husband to ask, “Who are you and what aliens took my wife?!”
  • What it takes to finally trust yourself
  • How I fit my transformation strategy into a busy life (something Maria may need now that she’s a mom too!)
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Maria has achieved enormous success while facing serious adversity—including surviving a brain tumor and enduring a long and difficult road to motherhood, at the same time she took on being a supportive caregiver to her beloved parents during her mother’s catastrophic illness. 

the common threads that connect individual struggles

Maria is a source of inspiration for me. And though there are things she’s been through that I can’t fathom, there are elements of her experiences—grief, hope, frustration, joy, forgiveness, trauma, love—that resonate with me and with all of us. 

Another universal thread that connects us: If you landed here and you’re part of the Dear Gabby community, you want to be empowered to make positive changes in your life. 

This episode is a great place to start. 

I can’t wait for you to listen—I know you’ll love Maria as much as I do.

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weekly card reading

I always trust the direction of the universe and know I'm being guided.

Taking a spiritual trustfall can be a little daunting, but it gets less scary the more you surrender to it. You don’t even need to believe in a higher power or spirit guides (great, if you do!) in order to be guided. The Universe has no ego, but it always has your back! 

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free manifesting meditation to attract your desires

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  • Maria Menounos is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, TV personality, actress, motivational speaker, New York Times bestselling author, former pro wrestler, and digital entrepreneur whose many accolades include conducting the only sit-down interview with the Obama family, being the youngest host of Entertainment Tonight and wrestling at Wrestlemania. As host of the Noovie cinema preshow, Maria is the most watched female in movie theaters, and she also hosts the podcast Heal Squad x Maria Menounos.
disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #160 Aug 28, 2023 manifesting

the #1 tip to transform your life

Listen on:

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

GABBY: Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Big day, guys. Listen up, my friends. Oh, I have such a special message for you today. The Gabby Coaching app is here. Yes, my friends, we start the conversation here on Dear Gabby and we carry it out with deep dive coaching inside the Gabby Coaching app. And I'm going to tell you, my friends, it is out in the world.

This is the real deal. My app is officially here, the Gabby Coaching app. There's early member pricing. And these rates are going to go up. So if you are like, yeah, maybe I want Gabby to be my coach in my pocket. Yes. Maybe I want 200 of Gabby's best meditations and manifesting practices. And I want access to her quarterly challenges and journal prompts.

And I want on-demand access of her best motivational talks. And I want her special feature called the Get Gabby section, which is like having her as my personal coach in my pocket. Yeah, I want all that. Then this is your moment, people, to go try it out.

Go to deargabby.com/app. You can try the seven-day free trial.

When you try it now, that locks you in for the early member pricing. It's gonna go up, so don't mess around. And when you're in the app and you have access to it, you get all of my challenges, like my manifesting challenge that's coming up, and my relationship challenge, and all the challenges throughout the year are yours.

So, if you're feeling anxious, if you can't sleep, if you need a miracle, if you want to manifest your dreams, if you are just struggling with any area of your life, I can help you. It's going to be like having me on speed dial. So if you want to go check out the Google play or the app store, search for the Gabby coaching app.

Go to your 7-day free trial and lock in the exclusive member pricing. You can also go to deargabby.com/app. People, this is major news. I'm really excited to share it with you.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein, and if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.

GABBY: Welcome back, my friends. Today's episode is a big talk. And for those of you who are new to Dear Gabby, that means I'm joined with a special guest, always one of my heroes, that I love, that I cherish, and there's no small talk, just big talk. We get right down to business. And today's show is absolutely no exception.

We went big here. I have my dear friend, the multi-hyphenate powerhouse and very close friend, Maria Menounos. Maybe you know her from TV. Maybe you know her from her wildly popular podcast or maybe you just know her because her energy and her presence just is so magnetic. Maria and I talk very candidly about a lot of very personal and profound topics and it's a big talk, big talk.

She is a truly amazing woman and I have so much love and connection to her and she's very successful in her life and has struggled a lot along the way—surviving from a brain tumor, supporting people closest to her through catastrophic illness. And we talk at length about her long journey to motherhood.

And throughout the episode, we talk about the baby that's coming. Well, the exciting news is that the baby is actually here now. The baby is here. So enjoy this episode. Just be ready to get blown away by Maria. She shares the 20-minute method that changed her life. Not even kidding you. She shares it here on the show.

Listen now.

GABBY: Miss Maria.

MARIA: Yes.

GABBY: We have a very strong desire on this community here at Dear Gabby Big Talks to hear only from my heroes, truly. And that's actually my desire. I want to really be talking about the stuff that matters most to me and really diving deep into the spiritual conversation and the life choices and paths that people I love choose to follow.

And for you, my love, I believe that from my experience of you over the years as a good friend now. That you've been very guided by spirit. And I want to hear from you what that means today to you. What does it mean to be, I'm just going right in for the big talk, Maria. There's no small talk here.

MARIA: Big talks, big talks.

What does it mean to me to be guided?

GABBY: To listen to your intuition, to be guided spiritually, like how does that show up in your life and how do you trust in that?

MARIA: So I think it's something that you learn to trust over time, right? It's that invisible voice that you learn to trust over time, just like you learn to trust a friend over time.

You don't just hand over your trust. You start to pay attention to the signals and the signs and their behavior and, okay, I trusted them and that worked out. And so, I feel like this inner knowing or guidance or whatever you want to call it is an invisible trust that's built over time. There were many, many years where my first line would always be, I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but.

And then here on my show, I remember having a mystic on, her name was Deirdre Hayde. And she stopped me in my tracks when I said it. And she said, never say it again. You are not crazy. You are wise. And that really connected with me and really stuck with me.

And it was probably the beginning of my journey to really trusting myself more and not feeling like I had to couch it a certain way to protect myself from rejection or protect myself from saying something that I knew and I believed and I felt, but to the other person may seem strange.

I really started paying attention to that and trusting that. Now the journey to trusting also really started with my mom's illness. When she was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2016, all I had was God and my guidance and listening to the messages and paying attention and seeing that people were placed in my path for a reason at that very time.

Things happened in certain ways at certain times. And then as I look back on life, I realized so many things that I wanted would have steered me in a completely different direction and they weren't right for me. And so over time, I've built that invisible trust.

GABBY: Isn't that the best feeling when you look back and you're like, thank God that didn't happen the way I thought it should happen?

MARIA: Yeah. It's hard because... As mere mortals, there are so many things we want for, and there's so many things that we think we could do and crush and be great at and all this stuff, but we have a path and it becomes more apparent, I think, as we mature and get older and really do walk that walk and have tragedy after tragedy, crisis after crisis that knocks us off our feet and really humbles us to a place where we realize we're not in control.

And we are guided and we are protected as you always say as well. And, and that there has to be a trust and a surrender to it all. It's scary. And it's not easy, but it is something you have to cultivate, I think, is that trust in wherever you're going is the right way. And trusting that something's happening for a reason, even if it's something horrible, I've been able to extract the good from all of the bad in my life.

GABBY: You're in a interesting position now. You're going to be a mom.

MARIA: Yes.

GABBY: And you've been on a very beautiful journey towards motherhood. And since I've known you, we've been going back and forth with the conversation and here we are now. When's the baby due?

MARIA: The baby is due this summer. So we are very excited.

And I mean, talk about trusting. That was actually one I really trusted in because I think there was a little bit of fear involved because I wasn't sure, do I really want this or do I not, right? There was so much fear over, can I do this? Is this the right thing for me? There were just a lot of those moments.

And so when we started the IVF journey, I did I think two, maybe three rounds of IVF and then had a lot of pain in my head and soon found out I had a brain tumor. And so that was what led me to the surrogacy journey because my neurosurgeon was like, this is not a good idea to get pregnant. You can't. You can't risk having this tumor grow because when you get pregnant, everything grows and they're hormonally connected, they believe.

So anyhow, talk about trusting. There were so many moments where we thought, okay, this is it. We're going to implant and we're going to have this baby. And the uterine lining wouldn't grow to the final stage, and we'd have to start all over again. And then my mom and dad got COVID, and both of them were high risk conditions.

One was glioblastoma, stage 4 brain cancer. The other one was type 1 diabetes. And so... having to deal with them in two separate hospitals at the same time at the height of COVID was excruciating. I cannot imagine having a newborn at that time. There were so many of those moments and then even losing my mom.

It was such a journey for the two of us that we were on and me really tapping in and taking care of her. And so I needed to have all of that time for me to heal. I remember calling you in a moment where I was literally just lost. My mind was gone. I was having a nervous breakdown and you're like, okay, that's it.

We're shutting down the show. We're shutting down life. You are going on a healing path. And so I'm forever grateful for that because I did, I shut down and I took care of myself and the work I did with some of the therapists that you pointed me to really helped me deal with the loss of my mom in such a powerful way.

But I was always patient about this baby. I'm like, the baby's going to come. If it's meant to come and at the right time, and I think about it now and people would always ask me, it was a 10-year journey, literally almost 10 years to have this child. I mean, we did everything I joked on Live with Kelly.

I'm like, Kevin hung me upside down like a chicken. We did everything. Before I knew I couldn't have carried. We were trying so hard and we did in vitro inseminations. We did everything. He had a surgery. And then we, of course, went through a surrogate and then now we have our current surrogate who is currently carrying our child.

Everyone's like, aren't you like stressed? Aren't you impatient? And I would see people be so stressed and I'm like, no, I just really think if it's supposed to happen, it's going to happen. And when it happens, it's going to be the right time and it's the right time.

GABBY: Yeah.

MARIA: And we're really, really, really excited.

GABBY: Yeah, I want to really highlight a lot of the faith that you had throughout because it's beautiful to witness somebody go through a journey that can be pretty much completely out of your control. You have a few steps that you can take, but the uterine lining, the other human being carrying the child. I mean, there's so many steps along the way.

And that faith, I believe, allowed you to one, show up for yourself and your life and your family without that other pull to like, when is this going to happen? How is that going to happen? But also to allow the baby to come in, in a time that was right, not just for you, but for the baby.

But that certainty that you've carried reminds me of this beautiful passage from A Course in Miracles, which is those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety.

MARIA: Ooh.

GABBY: I just really honor your certainty in that area and it's beautiful to witness because there's so many listeners on this show. So many listeners who have become mothers or who are on the journey to becoming mothers who have struggled, who have lost babies like myself, who have had lots of different difficulties.

And it's a topic that comes up a lot. Particularly, even if someone hasn't been on the journey of trying to conceive and all that goes along with that, we all suffer at times from the desire to control the future and the desire to control outcomes and your story is such a beautiful example of when we do really surrender and we do trust and we say, you know it, it's gonna be, or it's not gonna be.

Staying in that place of just hands in the air, then everything can unfold naturally in the time and order that's of the highest good for all. And it's really beautiful to witness now. This baby's coming at this time at a time where you're in such a healthy place.

[AD BREAK]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. There have been many times in my life where I've been at a crossroads where I've needed support and the person that has always been there for me. is my therapist. She is a go-to in my life for all the difficult things that have come up for me. And therapy can make you learn really great coping skills, but it's also like having a close friend that's always there for you.

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And what I really like is that Pique is made with zero sugar because I'm sugar free, so it's a big win for me. For a limited time, Pique is offering up to 15% off, plus a complimentary frother and beaker with subscriptions over $105. Go to Piquelife.com/Gabby. That's P I Q U E L I F E.com/gabby.

[END AD BREAK]

MARIA: I was focused on living a simpler, less stressed kind of life, I think, and really only doing the things that really made me feel good. But I don't think I was as focused on the physical health. And what this did is it really charged me to say, I want to be my healthiest possible self for this child. And I went deep into my meditations and I really would focus on all the things I wanted to heal, autoimmune this, whatever that.

And it's funny. I would have these weird knowings, like I had pernicious anemia. I got diagnosed. My dad and I both got diagnosed. Anyway, it was funny. I went to the doctor and I said, I don't think I have this anymore. And he goes, no, no, no. It's an autoimmune condition. You're going to have it forever. I go, yeah, but I don't know how to explain it, but I have this knowing I don't have it.

Let's just test. And so we tested and it's like a B12 deficiency and my B12 was always really, really low and whatever. It's perfect. I go, so I guess I don't have this anymore. And that's happened a few times now with different things. And so, I'm super grateful for that wake-up call where it's like, Oh no, I really matter now.

I really matter for me because I have to be there for someone else now, in a whole other way, I've always looked at my parents, like my kids, and I've always focused so much on taking care of them, but the end of the day, this is a baby that needs me. And so it's a whole gift in that way for me, I think.

GABBY: Kev's going to be the best dad. That's a little side note. You'll be the best mother. I can't even wait.

MARIA: He's already reading books.

GABBY: He's going to rock it. He's going to rock it. He's going to rock it. It's going to be beautiful. Now, I think that this meditation practice that you've developed, particularly in the last year, has been really big for you, really profound for you.

You've done a lot of physical healing in your meditation. Now, can you speak a little bit about what that means to you or what that might look like if you're like, I'm going to go in, I'm going to do some work on my body in my meditation practice. Like what is that?

MARIA: So I started doing Dr. Joe Dispenza courses, I think late January, last year.

And I first started with his course, The Formula, then I did the progressive course, then I went to some of the events. And so I oscillate between different meditations that he offers and that I have on my phone, but I really like this morning meditation. And within it, I focus on what I want healed. And so I focus on what I, what I want.

And then I feel the feelings of it already happening and what it's going to feel like and what it's going to be like and all of that. And I would just go through the different things. Like I'm trying to heal the rest of this brain tumor. I want to get rid of the Hashimoto's. I want to get rid of the pernicious anemia list all the way down.

And there would be moments where there were certain milestones. Like I wanted my blood marker at a certain number and I'd be in the meditation, I'd be going through the list. And I'm like, Oh, that already happened. She just called me last night and told me that that was done. Oh my God. And so I'd be able to knock things off the list.

It was so cool. And then what I added after the baby was I would envision the baby coming out and then being placed on my chest and that baby knowing that I was super healthy, like superhero healthy, like I am the healthiest and the baby knows I'll be all the way to the end with it.

GABBY: So, that experience of being in meditation and visualizing and feeling into it, I think that's the key that we really need to showcase here is feeling and visualizing, but visualizing not just for the sake of controlling something or try to make magic happen, but visualizing from the standpoint of guiding yourself into a feeling because the feeling is ultimately what manifests.

What we believe, what we start to experience in our physical and emotional state is what we attract. And so, what is the moment where you feel that shift from being trying to control or trying to be in your worldly experience to that shift of that, almost like I call it spiritual sight, that shift into the vision of what it is that you want to create and the feeling of what that feels like.

Is there a moment where you feel that click in?

MARIA: Yeah, I think because whether it's you or Esther Hicks or Joe Dispenza, anybody who's I've studied from and has taught me that feeling is the important part. So I will focus on what I want, right? One of the things that I've trained myself is to try to stop focusing on what I don't want and really focus on what I do want.

So anytime a bad thought comes in, I'm like, nope, what do I want? And then I reconnect to what I want. And then in the meditation, so I'm visualizing it and feeling into what I want. And then I think of what it will be like to have that. And then I think of it happening in real time and it is the now. And what I think of is.

Oh, I'm going to be joyous. And so I think about me skipping around and smelling the flowers and being joyous and whatever that is going to give me, that's going to give me a freedom. Healing from that is going to give me this freedom where I don't have to do this anymore. I don't have to take that medicine anymore and what that's going to feel like.

And it's really powerful and it feels so good. So I love doing it.

GABBY: It feels so good. So I love doing it. That's what I want. This is the message for the whole show right here. That when we use our meditation as a practice for feeling good about what it is that we want to create in our life. Of course, feeling good in general is what we want.

But when our meditation practice becomes this experience of feeling good, then we can do what Esther Hicks says, which is really just build up the momentum. behind that desire. She calls it a desire.

MARIA: Yeah.

GABBY: In meditation, we can start to feel relief. We can start to feel our body relax, our nervous system settle. In that settled state, we're in that place of the absence of resistance and in the absence of resistance, we become the super attractors that we truly are.

MARIA: But also I think, Gabby, that's where the belief comes in because she talks about your desires and your beliefs have to be congruent for the universe to flow what you want in.

So when you're feeling those feelings, that is cementing your belief that it's possible and that it is. And that's why you get that joy. Cause I was walking around for the longest time and this first all started like clicking for me. It's like, I could lift the car with my joy. I didn't know that this joy existed.

And so you have to hang in and you have to suspend your kind of mortal brain with like, I don't understand this or I don't understand that. Like people are like when they listen to Dr. Joe, they're like his voice, why is he doing this weird thing? I'm like, I didn't even give a s**t; I was just like, I'm all in.

I want to be better. And when you just go all in, you reap the benefits. When you start picking things apart and questioning everything. Just give in and go. And that's, that belief part I think is really, really important because then you can get what you want, which is just to feel good. Really. When you ask most people, they just want to be happy.

Well, what does happy mean? That's happy. It's feeling good.

GABBY: And I want to just make a note that when you were walking around feeling like you could lift a car with your joy. S**t was still going on in your life.

MARIA: Oh, yeah.

GABBY: That… big shit was coming up for you. And so it's like really valuable to state that because people could be like, Oh, well, like Maria, she's famous and gorgeous and blah, blah, blah.

You know, it's like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Like you were walking your spiritual talk because deep in that joy and that I can move a car with my joy, I can lift a car with my joy. You're going through some of the toughest stuff that people have ever imagined and grief and physical stuff and dot, dot, dot. So the beauty there is it wasn't some outside circumstance that was giving you that joy.

It was a full-blown internal condition.

MARIA: Yeah. It's possible. Trust me. Like I have been self-help queen since I was young. I used to read anything self-help. Chicken Soup for the Soul, whatever it was. Cause I'm always trying to find my way and to get better. And meditation was just one thing where I was like, I, this is just not for me.

And it was so challenging and I tried so many different things. I studied TM. I think there were a couple that I really loved. Agapi Stasinopoulos had one meditation I loved, it was a colors meditation that brought me so much joy. And then Yoga Nidra, if you YouTube Yoga Nidra, the first one that pops up was one that I really loved because it would just take my awareness everywhere.

And by the time I was done 20 minutes, I felt like I rested for hours. So that was really good, but it didn't profoundly change me like Dr. Joe's meditations did. If you asked me to go to a meditation event, I would be like, I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out. But once I started this journey, within three days, all of my anxiety was gone and I had really, really bad anxiety.

And I was in denial about it for my whole life because I didn't want to take medications. I didn't want to deal with it. I was like, I can do this, but I suffered for it. All of it was gone. And it just got to that place where I was like clicking my heels in this utopia-like world. And my husband was looking at me.

Keven was just like, who are you? And what aliens took my wife? Where is my wife? He couldn't even believe it. Now. I can't say there haven't been moments of falter where. I've had life knock me out again. And I always say, Tyson, Tyson just shows up here and there. Tyson shows up, knocks me out. And then I'm like, oh, well.

GABBY: Then Gabby's there to help!

MARIA: Then Gabby's there to help me.

I call Gabby. I'll never forget you sitting on my couch over there like, we're gonna be best friends. And I was like.

GABBY: Oh, I knew it. The minute we met.

MARIA: I kind of feel it. And so Tyson knocks me out, but I get back up and then I will push through and get back into my zone again. It doesn't mean it's easy. But I do.

And you just keep getting back up. And now I know that feeling exists. So I know what I'm looking for, too.

[AD BREAK]

Are you like me, constantly on a mission to transform your health and your well being? My mission. I want longevity. I want to feel my best. I want to have that healthy skin, glow, hair, everything. I want my gut to feel good. I want to have a healthy immune system so when I travel around the world, I stay healthy, feeling good.

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[END AD BREAK]

GABBY: I love to be able to be the power of example and share these powers of example, but I also want my audience to really have these experiences for themselves. I'm going to seek out the meditation that I think is the most healing and transformative for folks. I'm going to go find one that really takes you on a journey and I'm going to put it and just go to deargabby.com/freemeditations.

And I want this to be the practice that just really gives folks that experience of being able to know what you're talking about, tap into that joy.

MARIA: And I would say, don't be afraid to make it your own. I've made some of these my own. I know there are certain things I want to focus on and so I make it my own

Again, we're always so scared and we think there's certain rules and everything has to be done a certain way, especially if we're type a or perfectionist. Make it your own so that it works for you.

GABBY: Yeah. You know, it's funny when I create guided meditations, I often lead people in and get them into sort of a more centered state using breath work and some visualization.

And sometimes I'll use mantras to really help people have that single pointed focus. And then I usually leave them with a good three to four minutes of music to just choose their own adventure. I love what you're saying because it's nice to have that guidance to get grounded. And that's oftentimes what's most hard about the meditation practice.

But once we're in that zone, you're right. Make it your own. Let your guides, let your inner wisdom be the DJ.

MARIA: Yeah.

GABBY: I remember back in the day when I was really deep in my meditation, like super deep. I was in a period where I actually had broken up with Zach for a year and I was just going deep into my own healing.

And I would sit around and I was like early in my sobriety, like three or four years into sobriety, and I would sit in my meditation, listening to Sigur Ross and Helios and all this super heavy, trippy music. And I would sit there for three hours on a Friday night and just go deep into these meditations.

And it's funny, as I'm hearing you and talking to you about this, I'm like, Oh, you know, I have a very functional meditation practice right now. It's 20 minutes, twice a day. It's very, it's very much—

MARIA: You're a mom.

GABBY: Yes. But I do have time when I say my kid’s at school, I could just carve it out. I kind of want to go back into those journey meditations.

MARIA: Yeah, because it's so amazing.

And I like what you said. There are moments or periods or chapters when we can go deeper or we do go deeper. So there's permission to an acceptance for when you're not there, right? Like right now, I'm not there. I am skating by in my meditations right now. I've been going through a lot lately. And so what I've really stuck with is I end my night with one and it puts me to sleep.

It makes me feel so good and I'm getting a good night's sleep because of it. There's been some frustration that that's all I could do, but I also have to say to myself, this is all you can do right now. And I have to be okay with that. But when you go into those deeper places, like I didn't want to watch any TV, I didn't even care to be around people.

I wanted to just feel that and be in that all the time. And I started thinking I was an alien at one point. I'm like, is there something wrong with me? Am I being taken? But I told my best friend, she was listening. I go. I'm so sorry. I just want to meditate. She's like, no.

GABBY: Bring her on the journey with you.

Bring her on. Yeah. I think back to that time that I was referencing and I had some friends that I would just channel with and we were just deep in it. And I remember recently last week I was having a meeting with three of my senior team members, Joshua, who's here now, my producer and Jessica, who's been with me for a decade and we were all just deep in reshaping things and moving things around.

And we were really exhausted and at one point I looked at them and I was like, you guys, I'm going to meditate. I'm like, you can join me if you want to, right? Of course, they were like, yeah, hell yes. These are, they work with me. Like, these are people who obviously like follow this path in their own way.

Not that that's a requirement, but they do. And so I put on this music and we all lie down and we do our meditation. And the song comes on, I really want to record something like this, but the song comes on where there's this deep moody music and then this voice, almost like a motivational voice in the background.

And he's talking about clarity and like simplicity. Take it all away. And we come out of the meditation and Jessica, who's been with me for a decade, she's been working with me for literally 10 years. She jumps out of the meditation. She's almost like shapeshifted. She looks like a different person. She's talking like a different person. She's like, I got the download. I got the exact message I needed. Simplicity, simplify, clear things out. I mean, Josh can testify. She came out of that meditation, a different human. Five minutes or 10 minutes of meditation, 15 minutes of meditation. I think that's our message today. This is our message. It's you can have the power. You can access the power to totally transform your experience of your life when you're willing to go deep inward.

MARIA: Yeah. Agreed.

GABBY: And giving yourself grace. I want to really acknowledge what you just said. You're busy, you're going through a lot. So you're the best you can do at this time is your deep meditation at night.

What a beautiful way to do it. It's extremely restorative. You're grounding, you're healing, you're clearing, and then you're deep in your sleep. Beautiful. Love that practice. Give yourself applause knowing what you're capable of at this time and knowing what you're not. And maybe you sneak in a long, deep little meditation here and there and we'll see what happens.

So my love, what are you most excited about? Of course, this child's coming. What else is most joyful, exciting, filling you up at this time?

MARIA: My new studio is filling me up, to be honest. I've only been in here a week now and it's just got such a healing vibe. It's so cool. It's just got such a like peaceful vibe.

It matches what I'm doing. I really love being in here. I love what I'm doing every day. I love having amazing conversations with people and all areas of life, whether it's health or wealth or relationships. And so this show really fills me up and I love, and I'm excited to do this every day. And I have some trips coming up that I'm excited about and of course, most of all the baby in the throes of the nursery being built, I didn't want to do anything crazy. That's not my thing where I have to have the perfect whatever, but I do want to make it nice for us to want to be in there and—

GABBY: You're nesting. It's really beautiful.

MARIA: Oh my gosh, my chiropractor had to adjust me yesterday and I went over to his house and they have a one month old and I was like, Oh my God, I'm watching them in live time.

Each help each other, put the clothes on and change the diaper or whatever. And I'm like, Keven, this is our future. And I almost guttural cried like 50 times. They’re going to think I'm a maniac. So I was holding it back, but it was so wild to hold a one month old and know that that is my future very soon. And that there's nothing more exciting, like nothing more exciting.

GABBY: Nothing more exciting.

And it's the absolute most precious time of your life. It's extraordinary.

MARIA: I'm sad. I was supposed to be back east with you. So we were going to raise the baby for the rest of the year on the east coast. But our house flooded and as you know, got torn to pieces. And now we had to rebuild and do all of that.

And so we're in the throes of all of that stuff. So we'll be out here. But hopefully by the holiday, I'll, I'll be out there and you'll get to meet the little one.

GABBY: I'll be coming to see you before you know it with that baby.

MARIA: Okay, perfect.

GABBY: Don't even worry about that. No, no, no. I need a baby. I gotta hold the baby.

I just want to acknowledge you for walking your talk and for being such a profound healing guide for so many.

MARIA: Thank you.

GABBY: Because the greatest healers, I believe, are the ones who heal through their own experience. And your voice and your commitment to others and your commitment to your well being and your joy is what heals.

And my love, you have done a lot of good with your voice box.

MARIA: Thank you.

GABBY: You have done a lot of good and I'm so grateful that the universe is providing you with all these gorgeous gifts to support you and to bring all this joy into your life.

MARIA: Thank you. Oh, I appreciate that so much.

GABBY: And thank you for reminding us to go into deep, heady meditation.

MARIA: You know, I told you I was doing them in the middle of the night. He talks about like melatonin production being the highest between 1 and 3 AM. So I was like, well, I'm waking up at 1 AM and I can't sleep. So I started doing 90 minute pineal gland meditations every night for over a month. That was really powerful because it creates a Benzo like effect in your body.

So it's like you're taking a valium. So when you crawl back into your bed, you feel like you're in clouds and you feel so good. So I was doing a lot, many hours a day. It was great.

GABBY: Yeah. You mentioned other meditations that I'll share in the show notes. So we'll hook everybody up here in the show notes.

And thank you for giving us that reminder. We have this opportunity to just get high on our own supply.

MARIA: Get high on the own supply. Yes. Oh my God. You're so right. That's what it was. I was getting high. What a great thing to get high on.

GABBY: What a great thing to get high on. Ride it. Mm hmm. Ride that momentum.

Beautiful. This conversation went exactly where I wanted it to go. I love you so much.

MARIA: Yay! I love you. This is so fun. So effortless. As always.

GABBY: As always.

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