EP #161: Become the Designer of Your Own Life - A Conversation on Agency, Taking Risks, and Living Boldly with Ximena Pineda

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stephnopoulos, and this week we're switching things up a little bit. The episode recorded this week actually was for my friend's podcast called The Leap Club, and my friend, Hemenna Pineda, is actually a former guest on the show. I had interviewed Hemenna a while back. It's episode 139, so you should all go check it out, and we talked about how language is really a tool for building a deep connection. And Hemenna, since that podcast went out, has now launched her own show called The Leap Club, where she talks about what it means to take big leaps of faith in life. So I was honored to actually be a guest on her podcast last week, talking about this idea of what it means to become the designer of your own life. And the reason we wanted to promote that interview here is because Hemenna and I are actually partnering together to host an event exploring this exact concept in Amsterdam at the end of this month on August 31st. For whoever's listening right now, if you happen to be in Amsterdam on August 31st, would love to have you at our event. If you know of anyone that lives in Amsterdam or who will be traveling there around that time, please send them this podcast, send them the information about the event because we'll essentially be exploring and diving deeper into the topics discussed in this interview, which is really centered around how do we live a life with more agency, more conviction behind our decisions, and what does it mean to act boldly and take leaps of faith. I hope you all enjoy this episode and if you're curious to learn more about the event, details are on my Instagram profile, on the feed, and also you can find the linked RSVP in my Instagram via as well. Hi Stella, I'm so so happy to have you here today with me in the Leap Club podcast. For me today really feels like a full circle moment because we actually met when you hosted me in your podcast. So welcome. Thank you so much for having me here. It really is a full circle moment and I remember so vividly that first phone call that we had where we just kind of got to know each other better and I just remember feeling so grateful that you were placed in my orbit and you really understood the mission of what I was doing and you really felt connected to the brand that I'm building and it's been so exciting for me to see you now, build the Leap Club, start your own podcast and I'm just so happy to be here and to help also support you and your journey as well. That's so nice to hear. I think it's been a great inspiration to see how you've done it. I think when likewise when you invited me for that first phone call I remember you were sitting in the park in New York and I was in my house in Amsterdam and I just remembered we had the deepest and most natural conversation and it just really inspired me to open up this space for people who have a similar way of looking at the world and I think that today in this podcast I would love to talk a little bit about one of the topics we really connected with and I think that we both live life from a very intentional space and I think that one of the things I love about your profile is that you have a very interesting composition in your life. Maybe tell us a little bit about your job and your creative endeavors on this side. Yeah so I kind of describe my life as Hannah Montana which is silly but also kind of holds true to the way that I've found a sense of balance in what I'm doing from a more corporate versus creative perspective. So my day job is in innovation consulting at one of the big four consulting firms and my side creative pursuits is building my podcast and wellness brand everyday endorphins which is really focused on you know finding things in life that spark joy and redefining what it means to be happy through guest-based podcast interviews and in addition to everyday endorphins I'm also a yoga instructor so I teach a few times a week at various yoga studios in New York City, core power being one of them in Equinox which is a luxury gym being the other. So my day job is very different than how I spend all other hours of the day with podcasting and hosting wellness events in New York and I'm really getting immersed in that entrepreneurial community but you know I've tried to find ways to bridge the gap and create synergy between more of the corporate world and my entrepreneurial spirit and I'm based in New York City like you mentioned to kind of go back a bit further as well to give your listeners a bit more perspective into who I am. I grew up here. I went to university in the Midwest in St. Louis and I studied this in a great of major in philosophy neuroscience and psychology and I had minored in creative writing and strategic management in my school's business school. So I kind of had all these like interdisciplinary areas of focus for my studies and I think that really informed my interest in what I'm doing now. Like I wanted to be a doctor my whole life that ever happened I fell into the corporate world but now in a weird way I feel like I'm living those values of wanting to give back to others and wanting to help other people. I was always curious about how the brain worked hence the neuroscience and psychology part of my studies and although I never became a neurosurgeon I now explore human behavior and human motivation through interviews and through storytelling and I think one of the most rewarding pieces of this whole experience and journey that I've been on the past few years is recognizing how parts of my personality as a kid have resurfaced and really flourished in the way in which I'm expressing these traits now because my second job that I wanted to have aside from being a neurosurgeon was being an actress when I was a kid and I always loved performing and I did that growing up but in a way I've now been able to express this quality of performing through hosting interviews through teaching yoga so I find it really interesting to reflect on the way that our like inner child or childlike traits or the things we just gravitated to as kids like how that kind of resurfaces and manifests differently as we become adults. Yeah, no I love that and I think you have carved a path that has yeah you have asked yourself the right questions and why you're doing what you're doing so I want to ask you what does it mean to you to live life from a perspective of design and intention? Well that's exactly what our event is going to be focused on and I'm so excited to partner together with you and to really explore this concept I think part of the reason I'm actually so excited to do this is because it's a question that I am continuously trying to answer and also hold myself to this standard of actually being in the driver's seat of my own life and I love that this is a topic that you explore as well on your podcast and I think that you really actually live those values of what it means to live life by design that's something I really admire in you and I'm going to flip this question back to you after I answer it but I took this course about a few months ago at NYU and it's a course in NYU's business school but the professor Suzy Welch has opened it up to the public so if you pay the registration fee you're eligible to take the class and the whole premise of the class is what does it mean to live a life filled with purpose and have a career that's purposeful and she created this methodology on understanding your purpose which is at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes which are like your skill sets and your economically viable interests which are basically things you can get paid to do right and her whole framework to kind of tee up how to discover your purpose is that in order to live purposefully we need to move out of living life by default and moving into a life by design and the way that she articulated it to me really stood out which was essentially along the lines of living by default is being complacent, being passive and living by design is having intentionality in your choices and a lot of the times I feel like it's so easy to be passive and like sit in the back seat because we feel like or at least in my life I felt like oh this experience just happened So now I have to like react to it and then like figure things out. But what I'm coming to realize is that to really live life by design, you get to, in a sense, kind of control the outcome of your life because you're being very intentional with how you make decisions and you are really learning how to understand yourself better as a person so that there's a logic and reason behind the choices that you make. So you can fully have conviction behind the choices that you do make in life and therefore influence the outcome and kind of your lived experience. And I think in the past I've struggled with better understanding who I am and why I'm coming to the conclusions that I'm making. And now it feels like the fog has kind of like cleared up on the window and I've gained more self-awareness into the way I think why I behave the way I do and that has helped me inform my decision making and better understand how I can align my decisions with my values because the closer I can get to my actions with what I care about and what I believe in, the easier it is for me to live a life that's in alignment with who I am. So that's really what the concept means to me. But I'd love to hear from you what your take is on, what it means to live life by design or if that even resonates with you. Well, first of all, I want to also mention that I thought about you when planning this event because when I launched the Leap Club, I remember my, yeah, my coach, let's say, she wasn't really my coach but she was the one that helped me take the leap. She was like, what do you want to do? Like, what are things you want to, one day do? And I was like, that's actually very tough. How do I know what I want? So I think I really struggled with understanding this concept for a long time. I think I've been someone that has lived an amazing life. I've lived in so many different countries, I've learned languages, I've met so many different people. But I feel like I was always someone that when an opportunity came, I took it jumped and went for it instead of making room for it, let's say. And then when I fell into my previous job, I started realizing that that was something that led me into living life from a very passive place. And you know, the funny part is that my gut feeling and every part of my body was screaming, get out, this is not your life, this is not for you. I even felt like in my body, like I have, I found these notes on my phone last week and it was crazy. I wrote back in Jan and February when I was about to quit my job. I wrote on a note saying, I want to run away every day. I feel my stomach with like a massive hole and I feel a insane pressure on my chest. And when I told this to my psychologist, she told me that I was completely resistant to what I was living. So she told me that I was not aligned at all with who I was and what I was doing and the environment where I was every single day. So that's when I started my journey into awakening. And that's when I started my journey into understanding my values and what I envisioned for myself. And the biggest discovery for me was that my biggest value that dictates everything in my life is freedom. And that value is something that I apply to everything in my life, for example, my work. I couldn't work from home back then. I couldn't travel to Guatemala to see my parents and my friends and work from there. I could not take a holiday with my friends who all could work from Spain on Thursday and Friday. So I was like a bird in a cage. Then I, with my boyfriend, for example, he gives me a lot of freedom. If I want to go on a holiday with my friends, I can. Like I don't have to ask him for permission or I don't have, like we trust each other. And that also applies to my friends. I think friends that don't judge every move I make or friends that celebrate who I am. That's where I thrive. So I started to realize that I had to start aligning my life to that, to the freedom that I crave. And along the way I started discovering my values as well. So I think living life by design is really taking the time to reflect and really, really getting to know yourself and say, what do I value most? And how can I shape my life around that? If that's family, if that's time, if that's exercise, if that's health, if that is maybe culture around the world. How can you find something that will allow you to live that every single day? So for me, that's the meaning of it. Yeah, that's so beautifully said. And there are two things I want to point out. The first is, you know, taking the time to reflect and understand your values is so critical for the exact reason that you shared. And it also kind of gives you permission to understand the choices that you're making are not inherently right or wrong. It's just a matter of alignment. And your life is going to look different than mine because your number one value is different than my number one value. And I think that's the beautiful thing about different people's paths and learning from how different people shape their lives. Because one way is not the right way and the other way is not the wrong way. It's just unique to that person. And my life shouldn't look exactly like yours because we have different number one values or number two values, right? And we've been brought up in different ways. And I speak one language, you speak seven. So like we're going to have different lives, you know. And I think that like that's the most beautiful thing about what it really means to like understand what your own value system is. And what it looks like for you to align your actions with what you actually care about. Because when you live authentically, you're kind of in this flow state. Like you're not experiencing those physiological symptoms, let's say that you had had at that time where your chest was heavy. There was that pit in your stomach. Like that's anxiety, right? And that leads me kind of to the second point that I wanted to make, which is really kind of a reflection on like that fine balance between surrender and taking action. Because something that I've come to learn through this podcast where I really do explore what does it mean to be happy in life and find a life that is fulfilling and meaningful for you. And what I've come to conclude, I truly believe this is that a lot of the suffering we create is self-inflicted because we're resisting what is like any time you're unhappy in life, it's likely because you're upset with the way that things are like you're not happy with the current reality. So there's a resistance to what is and the times where I've learned to just like let things go and fully be present and surrender to the fact that like there really is a lack of control that I have and dictating the outcome in life. The happier I've been. And this is very like potent and Buddhist philosophy and stoicism and I've just noticed my own life time and time again the more I surrender. The happier I tend to be. But it's interesting because when you think about your experience of at that time and that job, you are not happy. You were like this is not the life I should be living. You don't want to just like surrender to that and accept that that's going to be your fate forever. Like you actually took action against changing your environment, changing certain things that you could control to influence how you were feeling. And I want to make this like distinction really clear because I don't believe that surrendering is being passive. That surrendering is having the awareness that there's not everything I can control in this life. I'm not going to wallow in this. I'm going to notice how I'm feeling, but I'm also going to recognize that if I want expiry to change, there are certain things within my immediate control that I can do to try to influence that change and see what kind of outcome that might might lead to even though I don't know what that end result is going to look like. A lot of people get stuck in like paralyzed and acting because they're so deep in that negative emotion. But another thing I've come to realize is that choices that we make happen in like a moment of time. And it's hard to really predict the future. So the best you can do is just put one foot forward and go off of that and see where that leads you because you never really know how one choice will unfold and influence like the series of events. So I think that's like an important distinction to draw, especially as it pertains to like our own happiness and our well-being. Yeah, I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned in the past experience I just shared is that when our body is screaming signs to us, we shouldn't ignore it. And I just suppressed it, you know, I was like, and I think it comes from being very very strict with myself that I need to finish what I started. You know, it's crazy because now that I look back, I understand that the reason why I didn't want it to quit is because I would disappoint myself. I was like, "I'm stronger than this. I don't want to be a wine baby. This is real life." I thought that was real life. I thought you should be going to the office every day. You should be working for more than the hours you were requested to work, sometimes weekends. The more I started observing my surroundings and the more I started to talk to other people, I realized that that was normal. That was a choice I was making. If I was going to stay there, nobody was holding a gun against my head saying you have to stay here. When I went to Brazil, I coincidentally matched, well not matched, but I saw that one girl from Guatemala was in Brazil as well. We started texting. I asked her, "What are you doing here?" She said, "I moved here. I'm going to live here for a couple of months." I was like, "How?" I was back then, I was in love with Brazil. I was like, "Oh my God, I would give anything to quit my job today and just stay here. Not go back." That's when I realized that it was possible. She was like, "Do you want to jump on a Zoom call? I can help you quit your job and go freelance." I took the leap and that's what I want to do with girls. I want girls like us, like you and me, to understand that if there's something you don't like about your life, you can change it. You can first realize that anything is possible, but now I want to jump into the next part, the methodology, because I think that is what gives you the power and the strength to do it. I think, as anything, if you move to a whole new country and you have no idea where you're going to live, what you're going to do for a living, how you're going to get there. Of course, it gives us anxiety because we don't have anything to hold on to. But the moment you make a decision that you're going to move somewhere and you have a house, you have a job, you have a bit of an understanding what your life will be, then you go with excitement. It's exactly the same. The methodology is the tools that are going to give us the courage to be able to take that leap. So I want to ask you for you, what does it mean to live with intention both in and outside of work? Because of course you have a methodology that applies to these two worlds. How do you do that? How do you divide your intention at work and also your creative endeavors? That's such a good question. Before I answer it, I love that you had that awakening and you saw what could be possible for you. I really believe that you need to see what you want out there. You need visual proof of it to confirm, "Oh, I can have this too." I think a lot of that has to come from the inner belief that you are capable of having what you want in this lifetime. A lot of it also, I think, is related to this concept of manifesting too. It's not all woo-woo in the way that maybe it's portrayed or communicated online. If you want to craft the life that you want for yourself, it is manifesting in a way. I think that's beautiful and it also reminded me of this word of the year that I had for myself for 2025 was permission. In a way, going to Brazil and experiencing this gave you permission to give yourself permission to do the things you wanted to do. For so much in my life, I was waiting for other people to give me permission to act. Then this year, I realized that the only person that should be giving permission to myself is me. I give myself that permission. I think that that also ties into your question on how do I live with intention in my day job and when I'm at home and what does that look like for me? I think it comes back to this concept of alignment that we've been talking about, but also, I think being intentional is having an awareness for who I am and my strengths and also the audience that I'm in front of, who I'm with. I would like to believe, and I think the goal is to show up fully as who I am at my day job, like to not have there be a divide between the way I conduct myself, for example, on a client call with my work and the way that I show up in an interview here that we're doing for your podcast and the way that I show up when I'm about a teach a yoga class. That should be the same Stella across the three different scenarios. I think when you're able to show up with like that stable, solid sense of self, no matter where you are, that's a sign of like you living with intention, with you being authentically who you are and not necessarily like shape shifting or molding to the experience that you're in. I think that's different than this concept of knowing your audience because I think a way to find like a connection point with other people is knowing what makes them tick or knowing what they're passionate about or knowing what their curiosity leans towards. And the way to better know that is to be a good listener. So when you're in certain environments in life, like I found it to be really helpful to take on an active listening role so I can find those points of connection. And I've noticed that different parts of my personality shine through in different experiences. But all of those moments collectively add up to like one stable consistent sense of self that is me and my identity. And so understanding that dynamic has helped me navigate through life with more intention in the way that I show up at my day job and in my personal life. And the last thing I'll say here too is that this idea of living intentionally for me is like well how do I make choices that align with the most amazing version of Stella that I want to be like who is she what is she doing what is she wearing who is she spending her time with how does she structure her day. In the here now what can I do to almost like mirror that alternative reality and the closer that I get my present self to that alternative reality. The more I'm actually living that future state so there becomes no difference between what is here now and what I'm imagining to be in the future. And that to me is like this concept of alignment and that's how I visualize it in my brain. Wow I love that and I also think that it all starts like inside of yourself. I think you know a lot of people like you said they react instead of the one being the ones in control. And I think for me one of the clearest signs of alignment is when I am in this like constant state of awe for example the last two weeks or three weeks I've been meeting up with people that have asked me to drink a coffee and I'm like you know what let's do it. There are people who I've seen before maybe once or twice and then we sit down and have a coffee and we have the most amazing deep conversations and every time we both leave we send each other a message saying like wow I love this conversation and you know what I think these people that ask me for a coffee I've realized they are now getting their awakening they're now on that point where they're like there's more to life and just this. Office job or there's more to life than living in this country where I was born and I want to explore more and I want to eat the world I want to do this and do that and today someone told me that they were like a little bit unsure how to connect the dots. So I think what you're saying here is extremely important it's getting to know who you are and getting to know what you need in order to be happy and fulfilling that for example I always thought home was a place and I had a lot of I had a lot of years where I was very overwhelmed with where do I want to live is that going to be Mexico is that going to be Guatemala is that the Netherlands is that Spain. And I would just go crazy with these questions and I think the last year that I've been acting from a place of intentionality I've been able to build a home in me like it doesn't matter where I am because whatever I choose and whoever I surround myself with and whatever I'm doing every day is aligned with who I am and what I need. So I think that once you find that true self and once you're aligned with that no matter where you are in the world you're going to be in that constant state of flow and for you that means having a corporate job and then your podcast and your own. yoga classes and all these creative things on the side, but for someone else it can be surfing the whole day and then working remotely in the mornings. You know, like everyone can become the designer of their lives and it just goes back to grabbing a piece of paper and brain dumping everything that makes you happy. Yeah, I have so many fall on thoughts so let me see if I remember it all of them. The first is um you know I think it's really amazing that our worlds have been brought together because you've also really inspired me just witnessing how you've taken certain leaps in your life and in a way just acted from a place of like yep I'm gonna do this, it sounds cool without maybe fully thinking through like the implications of this choice down the line and I think it's actually really admirable because a lot of people talk and they don't do like oh that could be cool if I did this but then they don't actually do it and it goes back to Nike's motto like just do it like the only way to make a change in life is to act you have to take some sort of action and you have done that time and time and again and it's just very admirable and I think that you know like surrounding yourself with people that inspire you in that way will also help push you to be the person that you want to become like that's how I feel about you and this is what you saw with Acro and Brazil and the people that you're now attracting who you're having coffee with and helping them open up their eyes to this idea of like what it means to take action with intention so that was kind of the first thing that I wanted to mention and secondly um you know I so this is not like a promotion for the becoming you class that I mentioned earlier it's not sponsored but I really do love the methodology so if Susie Welch is listening who is the professor of this class I think you're brilliant um but she did a lot of research on like how do we define our values how are they ranked in our lives like you take a questionnaire and then it spits out this whole report for you on your own value system and which are showing up more in your life which ones are not as expressed as you'd like them to be and which values actually conflict with one another and for me I took that test let's say and it gave me this response of like my top five values ranked across all the 15 that she's defined and where they show up in harmony versus where they show up in conflict and having that language just really helped me better understand like how my life is unfolded because for so long I felt like okay I'm live I'm like working this corporate job but now I have this passion and in order for my passion to quote unquote be successful it needs to blow up and I shouldn't be in the corporate world like I should only be doing this and I didn't really see the value in like what it means to live both lives at once like in a way I was actually less impressed with myself that I was working a corporate job and having this thing on the side in my mind what would have been more impressive was like gaining traction blowing up with my passion project and then like making the leap to not fully be in corporate America and like just fully pursuing my podcast and I think the reason that I like was so hard on myself for so long was because I had a very warped definition of success which is something I definitely want to get into because I think that we limit ourselves based off of how we define certain things in life and for so long I limited myself by having a very small and shallow definition for what success meant and now I've completely reframed what it means to be successful and like how I define success and I think that also comes back to what we were talking about earlier with like the choices that we make in life they're not right nor wrong they're unique to who we are and to what we care about and I wish I at the time had understood that success is similar like the way we define success is based off of things that like influenced us when we were younger and as we've grown older and it's not right or wrong it's just how we've shaped like our own definition and understanding of that word but then again if you don't like it if it's not working for you you can change what that definition is and I needed you know I hit this inflection point in life where I was not defining success in a way that was actually gonna propel me forward it was holding me back in the minute that I shift that definition I treated myself with more compassion and kindness and I've been able to do so much more and have so much more gratitude for the way that I've structured my life and that's only opened up more opportunity for me so I'd love to hear from you like how has that shown up for you how is success like influenced the way that you've seen your values be expressed in your life and like what is that like look like for you now well I think one thing I've discovered is that I love helping people really like I if I can share my knowledge with people and help them level up in any way I think that brings me so much passion and so much joy and every time we work in a group you know like I'm always like oh I can help you with this or oh I can support with this or I can do it and I really love like you know learning things I consider myself a bit of a nerd in guava house then you would always say to me like every time we had to do something I would like watch all the documentaries and I will research and I would like really dive into that rabbit hole and I feel like for me success is really how many lives can I impact and that's what I want to do with the lead club like I think my my definition of success is of course helping people but also my definition of success is being content in my life and with who I am and with what I have so I think success has been always we have shaped society where success always is linked to our status and our job title and the car we drive and the house we own and I think that's just the facade of things you know you can be all this but if your house from the inside is rotten then you're not happy so for me success is really being intentional in every every area of my life for example success for me is having a healthy relationship with my boyfriend and I work on that every day success for me is also having a job that excites me on Monday and it's also working on my health and my you know mental well-being and everything so I think success for me is something we should apply in all of our areas of in life and just to have this sense of peace in everything in our job in our relationships in our friendships in in ourselves so waking up with peace and sleeping with peace or going to bed with peace for me that's success yeah that's so beautiful because I don't think like I think that if you're always craving more and if you're always thinking you're not good enough or your partner you could have done better or your kids you know are not what you expected them to be you're never going to be happy and that for me is the opposite of success because you're living life from a very you know you're not you're not in a state of flow with your life you're resisting everything around you and I think yeah I think that comes from a place of not not getting to know yourself before you take action you know I I want to talk about something with you because I went to a workshop last week and the workshop really like wow it's yeah I took a very big leap this week that I'm going to share a little bit yeah I'm gonna share it very soon on this space but I took my second biggest leap in my career this week and honestly I have been thinking about this for weeks and I was so scared and my psychologist told me you have developed a dependency and the thing you have to do now is confront your fears and I'm showing you the mirror this is the fear so now you jump I need to see you into weeks and you're gonna jump and into weeks we're gonna talk about the jump and I'm like okay and this workshop before my therapy session literally shook everything up in my life and I want to talk about that because she talked about building a vision and having a vision and how when you have a vision what you have to do is live a life where you no matter what happens stay aligned with that always so having a vision sounds super simple but I think it's actually not that easy if you don't know what you want so what does it mean for you to have a vision and how can and you understand what your vision is? - That's such a hard question. (laughs) Which it's funny that the first, response that comes into my mind is actually what I spent a few years in my career, my job focusing on. So being part of our innovation team, a lot of the work that I did was helping to facilitate and design innovation workshops for our clients. And the audience was typically like C-suite members and executives at that company, whoever the client was. And a lot of the workshops were focused on like crafting a vision statement and an ambition statement and like North Star aspirations for that company and whatever, probably you're trying to solve. And it is surprisingly very difficult to get multiple people in the same room aligned on a singular vision. Where do we even begin when we craft that statement? And part of the reason I actually don't really have an intention of making that hard pivot out of corporate America is because what I've been learning is that there are so much wisdom to be gained from business into how we craft our own lives. CEOs need to set the vision, define that ambition and get everyone in that company aligned to that North Star. In order to drive value with the work that they're doing towards a singular common goal or set of goals. It's the same in your life. You are the CEO of your life. Your life is the company. You are the CEO. You're in the driver's seat. You need to create that vision and you can think of your daily actions as little employees like working towards that goal. All the actions need to be aligned and in service of this broader vision. So I love that analogy because for me it lands, especially because my day to day job is in that space. But this is something that I also heard from Arthur Brooks, for example, who is a professor at Harvard University and he writes the happiness column for the Atlantic. And he's just so right about this concept of you being the CEO of your own life. And as far as how do we craft that vision? I think a lot of it comes down to that self-reflection piece. And maybe it's not like I have a mantra or a vision statement that I'm creating in the same way that we do these workshops for our clients. But for me vision boarding is actually really helpful. There's a lot of science and research that supports the power of visualization and what actually happens in our brains when we think visually and how that can be reflected in our reality. It's like how we can bring those visual experiences to life. But I've had vision boards. And I do this practice every year, multiple times a year, honestly, of putting together a bunch of Pinterest images on my canva. And that's my vision board image. And the funny thing is that so much of what I've put on my vision board has quote unquote come true. But it's not like you wave a magic wand and this just emerges. It comes true because I see it every day on my phone screen. And then I'm like, oh, I'm calling those experiences in because I'm acting as if I'm already that that I want to become. That's what it means to have a vision and to live that vision. And I think part of the magic of getting there is not being so married to the outcome. But rather leaning into what that feeling is, that's a vogue for you when you see that image. Or when you have that idea. And if you can more so chase the feeling rather than how things look, you're probably closer to getting towards that vision than if you're like, I need that exact specific thing. No, but I want to add something to this because I love what you said. For me, I, well, my boyfriend being Dutch, he's extremely like, OK, what do we want? How do we want it? When do we want it? And I remember that at the beginning, I fought against that. I was like, I don't know what I'm going to be tomorrow. So stop asking me what I'm going to be in four years or in a year. Until a point where I understood the value of it. Like, one day, I remember I wasn't sure what I wanted and like in this life crisis, you know? In an existential crisis of the many I've had. He came to my apartment with a huge piece of paper and colored markers. And he said to me, OK, we're going to do an exercise. And he goes, I want you to write everything down that you would dream of. Like, how do you want to see your daily life? Like, what do you want to be doing? Like, what's your job? Where are you? And I regret not taking a picture of that paper because literally that was, I think, six years ago when that happened. And this year, my boyfriend said to me, do you remember that day with that paper? And he said, everything you're doing today was written down in that paper. And it's crazy because we've been doing this exercise for the past years. Like, not every year, but I think the last two, three we have. And we buy every first month of the year. We buy a massive piece of paper with the markers. And every year, we've been perfectioning it a little bit more because we get better at it and we do research and everything. But we open a bottle of wine, we put some candles, we put music, and we start just writing down. And this year, we implemented a new technique instead of saying, what do we want? How do we want to feel? That was the question. And from there, every feeling we wrote down gave us the answers. And you know, for me, how do I want to feel? I want to feel free. I want to feel happy. I want to feel empowered. I want to feel inspired. All these words are aligned to what I'm doing every day. You know, I'm inspired by the people I interact with. I am happy after I do the tasks that I enjoy. I am free because I can literally buy a ticket to Bali tomorrow. And there's nobody I have to ask for permission to, you know? So all these feelings, I think, give us a very clear answer on what aligns and what doesn't align. And I think what I want to talk about now is the power of saying, no. I think as entrepreneurs and as designers of our lives, then better we know each other and the better we know our vision, the better we know what things don't align. And we need to learn how to say no. I, you know, the leap I took this year is because my dream is to grow my own thing, to grow my community, to really take the leap club to the next level. And anything that is not aligned with that, it was, it was a point in my life where I had to start focusing and everything that doesn't align, I can't waste time because I already know deep down that if I invest all my energy in something that doesn't align, then my vision is not going to be complete. I'm not going to work towards that. So I think learning how to say no has been a muscle that I've been training. And I think that in order to get to that point, at the beginning, you have to say yes to a lot of things. Yes. And start understanding your gut feeling when things don't feel right where you don't feel like you're flowing, when things you're doing are not bringing your joy and they're frustrating you, they're irritating you, they're holding you back, that's not aligned. Exactly. I have to regain, like gain awareness and say no, I need to bring me back to the path that I was working with. Now I've, you know, I've moved a bit out of the way, so I have to recenter myself. Yes. I mean, it goes back to what you're saying on like learning to listen to what your body is telling you. And I, I'm also a person like you that gravitates towards, I'm just going to say yes to everything. So it's been very hard for me to learn how to say no. I've also been in intention for this year and it's something I've been trying to practice. And I think I've done a pretty good job at it, but there's always room for improvement. And, you know, I was actually just talking about this yesterday with a friend in the context of relationships and how for so long in my life I had entertained certain experiences that like we're not actually getting me towards what I wanted. And the less you waste your time on entertaining things that you know are not an alignment, like the more you're clearing up space to call in the thing that is an alignment, whether it be an opportunity, an experience or a person or whatnot depending on, you know, the context that we're talking about. And you know, I'll give a quick example like in the context of relationships, there were some of them that I had seen casually for a few months and out of the blue one day that relationship as it was ended. And at first I was like, what the hell? I was like, what just like within, you know, a snap of the fingers, like, you go from one thing to the next and it was very off-putting and like out of the blue for me. And I think my ego was definitely hurt by that. I was like, what's happening here? But as time passed, I reflected on that and I was like, I think that this person actually did me a favor. Like, my gut intuition was telling me that that relationship was not aligned with the way I wanted my life to unfold down the line. And not to say that it wasn't aligned in that moment because I believe that things happen in the time that they're meant to when that people come in and out of our lives right when that's meant to happen. But I don't think that that experience or relationship was aligned for like the future of my life and how that was going on fold. So why actually entertain something if it's not like right for you long term? And once I actually fully understood that and saw the events that unfolded as a blessing rather than, oh, this happened and this sucks and blah, blah, blah. I was able to reframe things and not get so swayed by things I couldn't control. And the things we can't control are like 99% of the things that happen in our lives. We cannot control how their people behave, react, how they talk to us, how they treat us. None of that is something that we can control. We can influence it by how we show up for ourselves because how we treat ourselves is teaching other people how we want to be treated. But we can't control that. And so once I kind of learned that lesson, I just felt more at peace. And less weighed by the stuff that I had no control over. I'm happening. Yeah. I also want to add to this because I love that comment you just said now. I think something I love that is actually she saying, but I love it because I've really experienced it in my life is that rejection is redirection. And that's in anything. In relationships, it can be with a job. It can be a house. It can be applying to move somewhere abroad. And I really think that we get so bombed and stressed and frustrated when things don't work out. But I think it's life or the universe or God, call it what you want, telling us, wait a second. Be patient. This is not what's meant for you. There's something bigger. But you just have to see it that way. And I think that if we keep trying to open doors that are not opening, that's only resisting what actually is meant for us. So I think for me, I've learned so, so, so much that I live life through my gut feeling and through my intuition. And if something doesn't work out or if something feels off, I learn to pause and check in with myself and say, like, OK, this happened. How do I feel? And why can this be happening? And then everything that happens to me, I take it as it's part of the process. And I have to trust it. And it's teaching me something or it's serving me as what's coming next. It's making me stronger or it's teaching me something that I'm going to need for my next experience. And if we see life like that, I think we stop acting from a place of fear, but more from a place of trust. And then everything that happens to us, we trust that we have the courage to navigate it. So I think that's living life with intention. I think it's people who live life with intention are people that are aware. You channel awareness into everything you do. If something feels off, you ask yourself, why does this feel off? If a guy you dated didn't match with you, why did he not match? I've always said this. I am super curious in life. I want to know the way for everything. For example, if my boyfriend and someone don't speak anymore, I'm like, but why? Because I'm like, no, I want to know why. And he's always like, yeah, but why do you always want to know why? And I'm like, because I want to have a deeper understanding to connect the dots. It can be that maybe you are now in a more ambitious part of your life and he's still partying, and that's fine. But that means that you've grown apart. You know, it's funny. I'm very similar. I've always wanted to have answers to everything. I'm like the exact same way. And I think the curiosity part of our personalities and who we are is one of the best qualities that we have. But for me, I've noticed it's also kind of killed me too. The saying curiosity killed the cat. Something I've realized too is that we're never going to have answers to everything in life. And I've had to get comfortable with coming to terms with the fact that no matter how much I poke and prod and have to figure out why, sometimes I've had to surrender again to knowing, well, I'm not going to know why, but that's OK. I can also co-exist with the fact that I don't have the answer. And I think it goes back to also what you're saying on having faith and having trust. Yeah, but I think also, living life through intuition, you're never going to have the answers. I consider myself a spiritual person. And I think being spiritual means you believe in things that are not tangible. And that means that you're not going to have the answers clearly written for you. But you can interpret the answers in the way you want. And I think that is also the beauty of living life with intention. Like you have an intention and you know very clear what it is. Maybe you don't know how you're going to get there. But your intuition is a compass that you can follow. Yeah. I mean, this is such a sneak preview to what we're going to talk about on the panel. So whoever is listening right now and tuning in, this is going to be a conversation now on steroids in real life in Amsterdam, which I'm so looking forward to only a month away. Yeah. And I want to add to that that you don't have to do it alone. I think for me finding a community of girls and even boys who are also on the verge of taking the leap or already mid-flight has been priceless. I think surrounding myself with these people has been something that has boosted my mindset. It has given me courage. And yeah, it has made me brave and empowered because we share our journeys and we share handy tips and just, you know, relatable stories with each other. So I think if you're someone that is considering to take the leap or maybe someone who just wants to live life from a more intentional space, join us in Amsterdam, the 31st of August. And you can find the link to the tickets on the leap club Instagram and also every day in Dorf Instagram. Beautiful. I'm so excited. And it'll be our first time meeting in person. And I think that is kind of like the beauty of being in this digital world now where we can connect with people across the world and foster that relationship. And now like I'm so excited to get to meet you in real life. It's crazy that that has not happened yet. But that is one of the beautiful things that technology can afford us is like the ability to connect with people across the globe. So I'm really grateful to have you in my life and for our paths to have crossed. And I cannot wait for August 31st. So hopefully everyone who's listening here can also join us in person. And connect with us. Please reach out on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the channels. I'm just Stella Stephnopoulos online. And also every day in Dorfins, you can find me on Instagram, Spotify, all the platforms. And hopefully you also listen to our episode on my podcast, "Everyday in Dorfins," where I interviewed you here in the team, and I was like, "Himana about your life, your story, and how language shapes our identity." 'Cause you are like brilliant and you speak a million languages and I don't know how you do it. So that was such a fun conversation. So if you want to hear more of us just bantering over a microphone, definitely go check out that episode as well. Thank you Stella for coming onto the podcast. And I'll see you soon in person. Bye bye. On the substock, I get to explore some of my own personal musings on what it means to lead a joyful and happy and fulfilling life. Reminder to keep spreading in Dorfins and focus on the things in life that bring you joy. Until next time.