Anita Moorjani, SENSITIVE IS THE NEW STRONG
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:06]I'm also the host of Momstone Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,
[0:12]which you should run out and buy, called Momstone Have Time to Accarantine Anthology.
[0:16]I'll proceed to that book, go to COVID-19 Vaccine Research.
[0:20]And I'm the editor-in-chief of Momstone Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium,
[0:24]and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there.
[0:29]And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram, at Zibi Owens, and my website is Zibi Owens.com.
[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Anita Morjani is the author of Sensitive is the New Strong,
[0:42]the power of empaths in an increasingly harsh world.
[0:45]Anita is the New York Times best-selling author of What If This Is Heaven, and Dying to Be Me.
[0:51]A beloved international speaker, she resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Danny,
[0:55]and has dedicated her life to empowering the minds and hearts of people with her story of courage and transformation.
[1:02]Anita was born in Singapore to Indian parents and grew up in Hong Kong,
[1:06]speaking English, Cantonese, and Indian dialect simultaneously.
[1:09]And that's hard.
[1:10]Prior to her near-death experience, she worked in the corporate world.
[1:14]Welcome, Anita.
[1:15]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read books.
[1:18]Well, thank you for inviting me, Zibi. It's great to be here.
[1:23]I am thrilled to be discussing Sensitive is the New Strong, your latest book,
[1:28]which includes bits and pieces of your previous work as well,
[1:32]particularly your near-death experience, which I could not believe when I read it.
[1:37]Why don't you tell listeners first what Sensitive is the New Strong is about, and what made you write it?
[1:43]So what made me write it?
[1:45]Well, so what it's about, it's about embracing sensitivity and embracing being an empath.
[1:52]There are a lot of empaths and sensitive people, particularly the people who are attracted to this genre of work,
[2:00]this genre of healing and spirituality and this kind of work.
[2:06]The people attracted to reading these kinds of books tend to be very compassionate, sympathetic.
[2:13]They tend to be empaths and they tend to be sensitive.
[2:17]And one of the things that we, I speak for myself as someone who's an empath,
[2:23]that we have always been made to feel that there's something wrong with us.
[2:29]And I've always been made to feel that I'm too sensitive and I need to toughen up.
[2:34]And I need to become harder in order to be able to navigate this world or deal with the real world.
[2:39]I need to get realistic and so on.
[2:43]But in speaking to other empaths and other sensitive people and in looking at the state of our world,
[2:51]I kind of thought maybe it's the wrong way around.
[2:55]Maybe in order to really heal this world,
[2:59]we actually need to be more empathic and sensitive.
[3:03]And maybe empaths have actually got it right.
[3:06]And the people who are not as empathic and compassionate,
[3:10]the people who we look up to, the people who we think, wow, they're so strong,
[3:15]they're so this and they're so successful and they're, you know,
[3:18]and I need to be more like them.
[3:20]Maybe those are the people that need to be more sensitive.
[3:23]And so basically in this book, I flip it around and kind of say,
[3:28]maybe actually we need to change our metrics on what it means to be strong.
[3:35]We have to stop saying things like, boys don't cry and stop being so sensitive
[3:41]and grow with their caskin and we have to stop saying that.
[3:44]And in fact, we have to do the opposite and we have to say, wow, that's a beautiful trait.
[3:49]And you're actually strong for allowing your vulnerability to show in this world.
[3:54]So that's the premise behind the book.
[3:56]Awesome.
[3:57]And I can tell you what made me write it was because I didn't realize I was an empath.
[4:03]I didn't all I thought was that I was just someone who's super sensitive,
[4:07]but there's something wrong with me.
[4:09]I needed to grow with the caskin.
[4:11]I needed to stop being so sensitive if I wanted to survive in the real world.
[4:16]And as I wrote in my first book, Dying to Be Me,
[4:19]I had stage four cancer, stage four lymphoma.
[4:24]I was in my final hours of life and went into a coma and crossed over.
[4:29]And realized that I am who I am meant to be and there's nothing wrong with me.
[4:35]And I realized that one of the biggest reasons why I had got so sick was because I was always beating myself up.
[4:43]I had never loved myself.
[4:45]I'd never embraced who I was.
[4:47]I'd never allowed my light to shine.
[4:50]I was so sensitive that I hid from the world.
[4:55]And I was meant to shine.
[4:57]And so I go into great detail about it in that book.
[5:01]But after I had that realization while I was in the coma,
[5:05]I ended up coming out of the coma and much to the surprise of all the doctors.
[5:09]My physical body ended up healing.
[5:12]Now, so that is all documented what happened in the hospital and how my body healed.
[5:18]And within five weeks, I was sent home from the hospital to go home and live my life cancer free.
[5:24]And that happened in 2006.
[5:26]After sharing that story, a lot of people related to what I was saying.
[5:33]And a lot of people started to say, yeah, I feel very sensitive about the world.
[5:39]But, but I, I dim my light and I, I hide in the world, I'm too scared to go out.
[5:45]And so I started to realize that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
[5:50]But the second thing, the biggest thing was I realized that even though I had this near death experience,
[5:56]I realized that this world is a really tough place to navigate.
[6:01]And I kind of realized that even though I had this NDE and I got that I'm supposed to shine my light and embrace who I am,
[6:09]I still felt really sensitive and easily hurt by, you know, I guess by, by harsh criticism by naysayers and by debunkers and people because as I started to go as my story went public and I was on social media.
[6:26]And I noticed that I found the world to be a little bit harsh to deal with.
[6:33]So I understood, I started to understand, oh, this is why, you know, when, when proprio to my NDE, it felt easier to stay in the background and to hide my light.
[6:46]What was going on in my head is that, but it's because all the empaths and the sensitive people are hiding because it's a harsh world because we're all hiding.
[6:57]That's why the world seems even harsher because we're not sharing the empaths are not sharing that empathic light because they're hiding it, they're dimming it, they're being invisible because it's too harsh out there.
[7:10]And the more that empaths hide and the sensitive people hide, the more we're kind of giving to the limelight to the people on the opposite end of the scale, the people who are not empaths.
[7:22]And so basically, if you're talking, let's say, within the case of leadership positions and all, if empaths don't step up and shine their light and and actually take on leadership positions.
[7:36]And if we hide because we're afraid of the criticism and the feedback, then we what we're doing is we're allowing those who are less sensitive and less empathic to take those positions.
[7:49]And those are also, but that leaves it open even for the people who are in those positions to exploit us.
[7:57]And then we as empaths, we say, oh my God, look at how harsh this world is and look at how all these leadership positions are taken by people who exploit us, but where the ones who are not willing to step up and take those positions.
[8:09]So I kind of get into that as well in the book and and speak about how I had this choice like either I have to continue to share my story and public and learn the tools as an empath to deal with it without suppressing myself or I go back to hiding and allow the world to continue to be the harsh world that it feels like it is for empaths.
[8:36]And basically I decided to create the tools for empaths to be able to shine their light in the world and to show that being an empath and being sensitive is a strength and not a weakness and it is something that the world needs now more than ever.
[8:54]Well, I also was really interested in your book about the difference between highly sensitive people and empaths because there's been a lot of written about highly sensitive people and I have read a lot of what has been written because I am a very sensitive person, which is why in part this book was just like jumping off the shelf for me because how great would that be of sensitive really worth a new strong.
[9:18]How do you know if your empath versus just a really sensitive person.
[9:23]So in the book I give examples like sort of like a quiz, a very simple quiz for you to identify how many of these traits you identify with.
[9:32]But one of the biggest things with empaths is that empaths actually feel things in their own body that are not theirs.
[9:41]So to give you an example and I didn't know I was an empath until recently, literally until the last four or five years is when I really started to discover I was an empath.
[9:52]So that means I have lived most of my life, not even realizing I'm an empath, but I remember when I was a teenager about.
[10:00]14 or 15 years old, I was watching a movie with my parents one evening in our living room
[10:07]and there was a scene of a woman in a car crash who went crashing through the front windscreen
[10:14]of her car. She obviously wasn't wearing a seat belt. And it repulses me to even, when I say
[10:21]repulses me, it makes me feel icky to even talk about it. But her face was completely cut up
[10:29]because of that. And so she was rushed to hospital and her face was, they had to bandage her
[10:35]face up and it needed a lot of work like stitches and everything. And she dreaded how she was
[10:40]going to look when the bandages came off. But during that time, like, you know, while she was going
[10:47]through this, this dread and her face was bandaged up, I actually blacked out, I fainted.
[10:53]But the interesting thing is none of us, including me, made the association that I fainted because of
[11:01]what was going on on the TV screen. My family, you know, so I was like, oh my gosh, my head is spinning.
[11:06]I started to just say that to my family. My head spinning. I don't know what's going on. I'm feeling
[11:11]faint. And so everybody stopped watching and their attention was on me. And so then my brother went
[11:17]and got something sweet from the from the kitchen. And he said, here, have this honey, maybe your
[11:23]blood sugar has gone down. And my mom said, oh my gosh, I'm going to take you to the doctor tomorrow.
[11:27]And so they were doing these things. But after a few minutes, I actually felt okay physically,
[11:33]I was okay. And at no time did any of us make the association that that happened because of what was
[11:40]going on on the screen. They just thought it was a random thing where my blood sugar went down or
[11:44]something. But to this day, I remember how much that scene and her emotions actually impacted me.
[11:54]I was feeling what she was feeling. But as a kid, I didn't know that that other people don't feel
[12:01]that way. I thought that's normal. You just think this is what you're feeling is normal. It was
[12:06]not until the last maybe five or six or seven years. Did I realize that, oh, other people don't
[12:14]feel it in their own body and in their own emotions. They don't carry the emotions about the people.
[12:20]That's when I had a deeper understanding as to why I even got the cancer that led to the NDE.
[12:27]It gave me an even deeper understanding as to why I had got so sick in the first place to cause that
[12:34]NDE is that I go around absorbing other people's emotions and feel what they feel and don't realize
[12:43]that they're not my emotions. And I didn't know how to separate it. I didn't know how to distinguish
[12:50]that this is not mine. This is not mine. And as I take on other people's stresses and other
[12:57]people's pain in my own energy field and it starts to impact my body. And that is the difference
[13:04]between being an empath and a sensitive person. A sensitive person doesn't feel it in their energy
[13:09]feel in their body. They are aware of it and they're super aware that this is going on and this
[13:15]is what that person is feeling. But they know that this is what that person is feeling.
[13:20]The other thing about a sensitive person is that they're sensitive about how things affect them.
[13:26]It's like, oh, I know that if I eat this, it'll have this impact on me. I know if I drink this,
[13:32]it'll have this impact or these clothes, I'm allergic to these clothes. They can be sensitive in that
[13:37]way. But they can still identify this is doing this to me. An empath often cannot even identify
[13:47]what is theirs and what is someone else's. They literally take it on as if it's their own.
[13:53]Wow. Well, maybe I'm not an empath. I don't know. I took the quiz and everything in the book
[14:01]and I was debating on some of them. And there was one data point in there in particular when I
[14:06]think it said something like, you know, when you've been around people, are you exhausted after
[14:11]because you've taken on all their energy, right? Yes. And I mean, I don't feel I'm exhausted.
[14:18]Like after we talk, I'll be like energized because this is so interesting.
[14:23]Well, regardless, whether you're an empath or just highly sensitive, the book gives a road map for
[14:28]basically anybody who has put their own needs aside, right? And is prioritized as other people
[14:35]if you have a whole section on being a doormat, which yes, I totally remember. I remember my mom
[14:42]like what I would just sleep away camp was like, don't be a doormat. Don't let them, and I was like,
[14:46]okay, okay. And then I literally let like all these girls in my bunk, like use my towels as
[14:51]their doormats. And I was like, I am literally being a doormat right here.
[14:58]That's hilarious. Yeah, I can even picture. They were like, my mother's ridiculous, like
[15:03]green monogramtables with her initials on it. Like why did I bring this to camp? Anyway,
[15:09]and you have all these affirmations too, like your soul is so valuable and to like,
[15:14]you know, remember why you're here and that you're here for a reason and it's very inspiring.
[15:20]So tell me a little bit about how we cannot be doormats, especially because I feel like so many
[15:26]moms in particular are just like get the brunt of everybody else's stuff time and time again.
[15:32]Yeah, they do. So first of all, so yes, I want to talk about how we can not be a doormat,
[15:39]but I just want to say that yes, you're right that you don't have to be an empath to be a doormat.
[15:44]Sensitive people are also doormats. Absolutely. And this book is for anyone in that range
[15:52]of sensitive all the way to empath. So sensitive people and empaths, they have this susceptibility
[15:59]to be doormats because when you're sensitive, you know what the other person is feeling.
[16:06]So even if you're not an empath, even if you're not feeling what they're feeling, you know what
[16:10]they're feeling and you want them to feel good. And so you do it to the detriment of yourself
[16:18]and also sensitive people and empaths want to be liked. And so again, we sacrifice ourselves
[16:26]in order to be liked by that other person. And those kinds of traits are what leads us
[16:33]to becoming doormats because it matters more what that person thinks of me than what I think of me.
[16:41]That's like the singular trait is like ask yourself, does it matter more what they think of me
[16:46]or what I think of me. And the work we have to do where the affirmations I give people and
[16:52]everything I speak about is about making yourself matter more. Now here's the thing I want to point
[16:59]sensitive people and empaths seem to think that if we make ourselves matter more, it makes us
[17:08]selfish. Actually, we are the complete opposite of selfish. So when you are somebody who is a
[17:17]doormat, when you are a doormat, you are the complete opposite of selfish. So let's say if the word
[17:25]selfish is on a sliding scale. And let's say on one end of the scale is like super selfish,
[17:33]someone who's super selfish, narcissistic, whatever we want to put theirs on one end in the scale.
[17:38]And at the other end of the scale is doormat. So you've got the sliding scale of doormat and then
[17:44]the complete opposite of doormat is like totally narcissistic level selfish. So with a doormat,
[17:54]their perception of this scale is so skewed. So to be healthy, you have to be let's say at the
[18:01]halfway point where you care enough about yourself to be able to take care of yourself, fill your
[18:09]own cup, recharge your own batteries. You have to care about yourself to have self-care so that
[18:16]you're healthy and strong. And then as a healthy and strong person, you can take care of others.
[18:23]But if you're on the selfish or narcissistic end of the scale, you don't care about others,
[18:27]you're only thinking about yourself. So you want to get to this halfway point, which is the ideal,
[18:33]because you want to be able to take care of yourself so that you have enough to give other people.
[18:39]Doormats are at the bottom end and their perception of themselves is so skewed that as they start
[18:46]climbing that scale long before they get to that healthy center point, like even if they're like
[18:54]10, 20% up, they go, oh my god, am I being too selfish? Am I being too selfish? And they go
[18:59]back to being doormat? That is what the problem is. Somehow there's some programming that's been
[19:07]ingrained in us from the time we're young where the minute we allow ourselves to receive some
[19:13]goodness in life. We allow ourselves to receive from other people love gifts, anything favors.
[19:20]We're like, oh my god, am I being too selfish? This is too much. And we start feeling obligated and
[19:24]we start giving back again or we start feeling like, I don't deserve this. I'm not worthy.
[19:31]So basically in the book, I reaffirm over and over that you are worthy. You are deserving.
[19:38]Your soul wants you to shine. It wants you to receive. You have to receive. You have to charge
[19:45]your batteries so that you have enough to give and so on and so on. You know, it's interesting
[19:52]because I think, well, a lot of doormatty type people, right? May end up. Well,
[20:00]Should I theorize this or not?
[20:01]Probably not.
[20:02]You've spent a lot more time on this than I have,
[20:04]but when doormats are around people
[20:06]who are on more of the narcissistic spectrum,
[20:09]when they start reasserting,
[20:11]when they inch to the left of that scale,
[20:14]the people who are used to them
[20:16]and like them being doormats
[20:18]don't particularly like it when they get closer.
[20:21]So I feel like that's another reason why it's hard,
[20:24]because typically people get used to that.
[20:27]They get used to not abuse per se,
[20:29]but like they get used to like taking advantage of that.
[20:33]Yes, right?
[20:35]Exactly, and that is what keeps a doormat, a doormat.
[20:39]It's their fear of losing,
[20:41]I'm gonna say losing love from those people,
[20:44]but it's not love,
[20:46]because someone who truly loves you
[20:48]wants you to shine your light.
[20:50]They want you to be fulfilled and happy.
[20:53]That's true love.
[20:54]But when somebody is only with you
[20:56]because you're a doormat, that's not true love.
[20:59]But what keeps a doormat a doormat
[21:02]is the fear of losing that relationship.
[21:05]And believe me, I know people.
[21:07]I know people personally, a lot of people.
[21:10]I've been that person myself
[21:13]that you build the relationship on your being a doormat
[21:18]and then you realize that,
[21:21]oh my God, I've been a doormat.
[21:22]And as soon as you start to step into
[21:25]growing out of doormatism,
[21:27]you start to fear, you're losing that relationship
[21:32]because that relationship, the person says,
[21:34]you've changed, oh my God, I preferred the old you,
[21:37]what's happened, what's going on.
[21:39]And you allow that because you're afraid of losing
[21:43]the relationship and the fear of grieving
[21:46]the relationship is greater than the fear of being a doormat.
[21:50]And so I bring this to people's awareness in the book
[21:54]that it is so much more important for you
[21:57]to shine your light and to stop being a doormat
[22:01]and filling yourself up.
[22:03]Because that's what your soul wants.
[22:05]That's what it came here for.
[22:07]And what happens is when you allow yourself to do that,
[22:11]it does one of two things.
[22:12]The person that you're in the relationship with
[22:14]will either find that they need to change
[22:18]in order to keep you, to hold on to the relationship.
[22:21]They'll need to change, which then shows you
[22:23]that they really did love you and they're able to step up.
[22:28]Or they move on because you're not the person they wanted,
[22:32]but you will attract someone who loves you for your light.
[22:36]So either way, it's a positive outcome.
[22:40]I love this.
[22:41]I love this whole theory and that you wrote a whole book
[22:44]about this.
[22:45]It's just amazing.
[22:46]It's really great.
[22:48]Also your dog is cosmos still your dog
[22:51]who knows when you're a mile from home
[22:53]or because I have a dog who I feel like is so hyper-attuned
[22:58]to my emotions.
[22:59]It's crazy, really, really crazy.
[23:02]And all your examples in the book of dogs
[23:05]and they're ridiculous powers of intuition
[23:09]just rang so true to me as well.
[23:10]Yeah, well, Cosmo was my dog for 14 years.
[23:13]Unfortunately, he's crossed over.
[23:16]Yeah, I know I miss him.
[23:18]He was so perceptive and his moods would reflect my moods.
[23:24]And also another story I think I shared in the book was back
[23:29]in I think it was 2005 or 2006.
[23:32]I was living in Hong Kong at that time.
[23:34]And in Asia, there was this huge tsunami.
[23:37]It was called the Boxing Day tsunami.
[23:39]It was the day after Christmas.
[23:41]And a lot of people succumbed and houses were taken.
[23:46]and a lot of people died.
[23:47]People in the coastal towns died in a lot of parts of Indonesia.
[23:52]And but the thing is, what they noticed later,
[23:56]the very, very few animals died in the tsunami
[23:59]because before the tsunami came,
[24:02]the animals all reached, went for higher ground.
[24:05]They all started moving their way up the hills.
[24:08]And so I found that to be fascinating
[24:11]when I realized that because the animals are more sympathetic
[24:15]and more empathic, animals are more sensitive.
[24:19]And one of the things I talk about in the book
[24:22]is how when you are intuitive,
[24:26]when you're young, when you're intuitive
[24:29]and you sense things, very often the adults around you
[24:33]tell you that it's your imagination.
[24:35]And they diminish what you're feeling.
[24:37]It's not treated like it is a real sense, if you will.
[24:42]So what I actually speak about in the book
[24:46]is that we have to embrace it as something that is
[24:49]as powerful as our sense of sight and smell and taste
[24:53]and touch, you know, it is we need to know,
[24:57]especially empaths and sensitive people.
[25:00]We need to embrace that we are six sensory beings.
[25:03]We are not five sensory beings.
[25:05]We have to stop saying that that is our imagination
[25:09]because if you were to take away that power of intuition
[25:12]away from animals, they wouldn't survive.
[25:16]So maybe it's time for us to realize
[25:18]that for our next level of survival,
[25:21]we need to embrace that.
[25:23]We need to embrace that it is as strong
[25:25]as our sense of sight and smell and touch and hearing.
[25:30]Yes, I loved your whole part about the sixth sense
[25:32]and it's important.
[25:34]So this is so empowering.
[25:36]I find this like just super inspirational.
[25:38]So thank you for telling me, thank you.
[25:41]I know we barely talked about the actual writing of this book,
[25:43]but do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[25:47]I would say right from your heart and not from your head.
[25:51]If you're crying while you're writing,
[25:53]that's a very good sign and I will also admit
[25:58]and probably publishers or agents or whatever
[26:01]may not like what I'm saying, I pushed back a lot
[26:05]on my publisher's editors,
[26:08]what they were things that they said,
[26:10]parts that they circled as being too woo-woo.
[26:14]I was like, no, but this is me.
[26:15]This is my book, this is what I want to say.
[26:18]And I pushed back on a lot of things.
[26:20]Even in the beginning, I was getting pushed back for the title.
[26:23]I did change the title once.
[26:25]The original title was Confessions of a Recovering Dormat.
[26:29]That was the...
[26:30]I love that.
[26:31]Yeah, I did too.
[26:32]But then a couple of people pointed out to me
[26:36]that it's not an empowering title
[26:39]because it suggests that you're still a recovering Dormat.
[26:43]So I thought, okay, that's a fair point.
[26:45]I also got pushed back on sensitive is the new strong,
[26:48]but I held my guns on that
[26:50]because I thought, no, that is what the book is about.
[26:53]So what I would advise to budding writers,
[26:57]if you feel strongly about something,
[27:00]don't compromise on it.
[27:03]Because when people read your book,
[27:05]they read the energy behind what you're writing.
[27:09]So don't be dogmatic.
[27:11]Don't stick to the rules.
[27:13]That's what sensitive is the new strong about.
[27:15]Share your vulnerability and share it
[27:18]and share it proudly and boldly
[27:20]and make it about you.
[27:22]For me, it was cathartic.
[27:23]If it feels cathartic, it means it's deep.
[27:27]And then let your editor clean it up for you.
[27:32]So you just write right from the heart
[27:34]and then let an editor clean it up
[27:36]but don't let them take out or challenge you
[27:39]on the bits that are important to you.
[27:42]So that's my advice.
[27:44]Anything.
[27:44]Well, I think confessions of recovering Dormat
[27:47]could be a great title for something else.
[27:50]So like a spinoff podcast or an article
[27:55]or you should do like one of those scribed originals
[27:58]or something, you should use it.
[27:59]Don't let it go.
[28:00]But I love that this became the title for the book
[28:02]because it is empowering.
[28:03]And it's also like a rebranding of anyone
[28:06]who identifies as sensitive.
[28:09]Yes.
[28:11]So I love that.
[28:11]So thank you for the rebrand,
[28:13]which I will proudly wear as my own.
[28:16]Thank you.
[28:18]I just wanted to touch on something earlier.
[28:21]You mentioned, because in the quiz,
[28:23]I mentioned that you get drained
[28:25]when you are with a lot of people.
[28:28]So I want to qualify that.
[28:30]It depends who the people are.
[28:32]And so with sensitive people,
[28:35]they when they are around people who are also sensitive
[28:41]or on the same wavelength
[28:43]or who are inspiring you and making you feel good,
[28:46]you don't get drained.
[28:48]But sensitive people are very sensitive
[28:51]to being around people who are very, very depleted
[28:55]with energy.
[28:56]And so the other piece to that is,
[28:59]however, sensitive people are drawn to helping such people.
[29:04]And then they don't realize why
[29:07]after helping such people, they feel really drained.
[29:11]And this is why it's so important for sensitive people
[29:15]to learn that it is not selfish to receive.
[29:19]It's not selfish to take care of yourself.
[29:21]It's not selfish to charge your own batteries.
[29:24]It's not selfish at all,
[29:26]because you have this innate tendency
[29:30]to want to give and to help people.
[29:32]So unless you learn to receive and to charge your batteries,
[29:37]you will get drained whenever you help people.
[29:40]So you need to create that flow where it's coming in
[29:43]and you're able to follow your innate nature of giving.
[29:47]So we tend to follow our innate nature of giving,
[29:51]but we tend to have a blockage when it comes to receiving
[29:54]somehow we seem to think,
[29:55]oh, I can't take this at selfish.
[29:58]And as soon as some...
[30:00]But he gives you a gift.
[30:01]You're kind of immediately thinking,
[30:02]how do I repay them?
[30:04]And it comes from feeling that we're not worthy of receiving.
[30:08]But the universe is gifting us all the time.
[30:11]If only we opened our eyes to receive it.
[30:14]Wow.
[30:14]Well, I'm open.
[30:16]I'm ready.
[30:18]Come on, universe.
[30:20]All right.
[30:21]Well, I need to thank you.
[30:22]It was so nice to meet you and chat with you about this.
[30:25]And thank you for your book.
[30:27]And all of the empowerment for so many people
[30:30]who I know will need it.
[30:31]So thanks.
[30:32]Oh, thank you so much for this.
[30:34]I really enjoyed it.
[30:35]I feel uplifted, too.
[30:37]Good.
[30:37]There you go.
[30:38]You can feel me.
[30:39]I can feel you.
[30:40]Yeah, I can feel you.
[30:41]OK.
[30:42]Bye.
[30:43]Bye.
[30:44]Thank you.
[30:46]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[30:48]to Read Books.
[30:49]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens
[30:52]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:55]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens
[30:57]and dot com and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:59]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:01]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[31:03]texture sound for the sound editing.
[31:05]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[31:07]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.