Confidence Classic: How to Reconnect With Your Inner Compass with Saje Dyer & Serena Dyer Pisoni

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There is actually no way to happiness.

Happiness is always available to you in your situation that you're in.

My dad always used to say to us, do not process life as you assume it should be processed

life as it is.

You know, if life is going as we assume it should be, it's easy to be happy.

As soon as, you know, the wind changes and we're grown something that we do not assume

to be good.

And it's not the way that we want our life to go.

That's when it becomes challenging.

And as soon as you start resisting, whatever life is bringing you, you're creating more

and more resistance.

How do you break down that resistance and still find happiness?

One of them is by no longer assuming that life should be a certain way.

I'm on this journey with me.

Each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals.

To overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close time.

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I hope you love this one as much as I do.

Hi, and welcome back.

I am so excited for you to meet my two guests today, which is a rarity.

But these two ladies had to come together because not only are they the authors of the

knowing, which we're about to get into, but I want to tell you a little bit about each

of them.

Serena Dyer-Pasoni is the author of Don't Die with Your Music Still In You.

My experience growing up with spiritual parents.

She's been a contributor to Huff Post, positively positive.

And her sister, Sage Dyer, is the author of Good By Bumps.

She's a featured speaker in the 2014 Game Changer Global Summit.

She was part of the National PBS Special with Dr. Wayne Dyer.

And yes, these are two of Wayne Dyer's daughters.

Ladies, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having us.

So it's funny, Serena.

I was just on with Sage earlier before you got here, and I wanted to share some behind

the scenes of what happened.

So to take this back a few months ago, I got a DM on Instagram from Serena.

And she was letting me know that she had written a book with her sister, Sage, and they

wanted to send me a copy.

And in podcasting, we get books are sent to us all the time.

So I said, first I checked around, I'm like, okay, she's not a psycho.

Great.

Here's my address.

Please send me a book.

And I get the book, okay, this is such a true story.

I get the book, and I literally have stacks of books in my house because I get so many

books sent to me.

I put it in a stack, and I forget about it.

I just forgot.

I move on in life, blah, blah, blah.

Months later, here we are, and I, I was just telling Sage, I had a friend who's been seeing

an energy healer, and she saw me at a spin class the other day, and she said, you look so

stressed out, I really want you to go to this energy healer.

And I thought, I'm up for whatever, like, okay, throw it at me, it can't hurt, right?

I'm like, there's nothing bad that can happen from this, right?

And she said, yeah, there's nothing bad.

At worst case, you waste an hour of your life.

I'm like, okay, I'll go.

So I go to this energy healer, and first of all, she was other level, amazing for anyone,

and I know there's people out there that don't believe in this stuff, and that's completely

cool.

I get it.

However, I will say this woman is a game changer.

There are certain people in the world that have gifts that you just might not have been

exposed to you at as my opinion.

So anyhow, I am leaving her, and she says to me, how do I just want you to remember one

thing?

It's all in the knowing.

Don't forget.

And then knowing.

And I said, okay, and I'm very much a visual person, so I know if I need to teach myself

something, I have to write it down somewhere so that I see the words to remind myself.

So I get home, I have my to-do list out, and I write at the top.

It's in the knowing, and I underline it, and I have estimation points to remind me.

And then I'm sitting there that day, and I'm working, and all of a sudden, I glance

over the table, and I see your book.

And I literally, the knowing, and I thought, well, that's beyond bizarre, and obviously

that could be a sign.

So I picked the book up, and I looked at the table of contents, and I looked at the

signs, and then I looked at Serena, what you had written to me about all the green lights,

and I thought, okay, wait a minute, this is a sign right here.

I've got to go to that chapter.

So I went to that chapter, and I couldn't believe I was overcome with emotion, and then

I read that entire book in a day, and I absolutely loved it.

So I messaged Serena back on Instagram, and said, I finally read your book, and I am dying

to have you guys on the show.

So thank you so much for coming on today.

Well, I love that story.

First of all, you do not look stressed, so I don't know what that lady saw here, because

you look great.

But when I saw your message, and you said, like, I'm so happy that you sent me the book,

and I finally read it, and I'd love to have you on.

I was thinking to myself, wait, did I send you that book like months ago, or I just could

remember when I had sent it?

So then I was like, yeah, no, I sent it months ago, and it must have just come across your

attention really at the right time.

Totally, completely at the right time.

And first of all, for anyone listening that does not know who Wayne Dyer is, and I just

wanted to give a little context, Wayne Dyer is, and if you go back to my episode with

Sarah Blakely, Sarah Blakely attributes the entire Spanx organization to Wayne Dyer.

She used to drive around listening to Wayne Dyer cassettes.

In her 20s, she was unhappy in life, not living her purpose or her potential.

She knew it, and she didn't know what to do.

So she figured, listen to this man who, you know, for people who are in the personal

development space, understand that he's really an authority, she would drive around and

listen to hit your father's cassettes, because that's how old we are, Sarah and I, and she

attributes 100% that the Spanx idea came to her after weeks of her driving around and

listening to your dad's tape.

So your father has impacted so many people in so many amazing ways, and it's so exciting

now to see that you two are carrying on his legacy.

Yeah, well, thank you.

You know, Ellen DeGeneres actually has just reminded me when you said of Sarah Blakely

driving around with the cassettes, because our dad actually officiated the wedding of

Ellen DeGeneres and Porti Durassi, because Ellen also attributed, not all of her success,

but some of her success to his cassettes in her car and just what that did for her belief

in herself and her manifestation and all of that.

So you're absolutely right, he's definitely impacted several well-known individuals as

well as millions of, you know, not as well-known individuals.

I think Sage and I are, we feel like to hear that we're, you know, following in his footsteps

or somehow, like, you know, stepping into his shoes a little bit.

I think it's a huge honor, but I also think that it's really what he is kind of inspiring

from the other side as well, not just for us, but for you and for so many other people

that are continuing to get messages and inspiration from their loved ones or him from the other

side.

So it's actually a really cool.

Yeah.

I mean, for us as his daughters, or I'll just speak for myself, when, you know, growing

up with this father who so many people looked up to and he changed all their lives, you

know, I, I recognize that as I grew up, but I also felt like he was just my dad.

So it wasn't until he actually died that I felt connected to and called to his work in

a really big way and started really just digesting it, reading, listening to his tapes all

the time I still do.

And I get so inspired.

So it's almost like his passing away brought us to a place where we could actually learn

from his work in a totally different and new way and helped to spread his message and

our own message because it's become unique for us as well.

Absolutely.

And you know, one of the things when I thought about reading your book and maybe this was

the turn off that I had why I didn't open it initially was this idea I didn't come from

spiritual parents.

I'm not a master at manifestation.

All of this is very new to me at 47 years old.

So I felt a little, well, gosh, they're lucky.

I mean, they had the number one guy as their guide in life.

I mean, geez, I wish I had that.

What's so funny is your book is the antithesis of that and I'm so grateful.

I got that message to read it.

Even starting with I had no idea Wayne Dyer wasn't always mystical.

And when I started reading about his initial journey and the August, you know, 1974 situation

that occurred that really changed his life, I'm hoping that you can share that so people

can relate to it hasn't been all flying around and happiness and harmony for for you guys

your whole life nor his.

Sage is the one who discovered that connection and that synchronicity between the day that

kind of changed his life.

You said in August of 1974 and what that meant for us after he passed away.

So before she tells briefly about that, I just want to say that you're absolutely right.

I think that one of the things that people probably assume is that if you have spiritual

parents, you have all of the internal sort of connection to just everything happening

for you and everything kind of just falling in your lap and things just being really easy

and so often, I think people think that, well, if your dad is Wayne Dyer compared to,

you know, the asshole that I had as a parent or the absentee parent that I had, then

you already have it made and you already have, and in some ways, I think, you know, there's

a truth to that in terms of having the exposure to like higher consciousness type of topics,

but it was not until we had to, you know, really kind of learn and apply it for ourselves

that we really understood that, you know, having this spiritual parent, both of our parents

actually are very spiritual, having these spiritual parents is great, but if you can't

do the work yourself, it doesn't matter, and it's just like having terrible parents,

they are not going to make or break your life.

You have to do it for yourself.

Yeah.

And for example, that is our dad had a terrible father and he became so spiritual and we had

wonderful parents and it wasn't until he passed that we sort of really started embracing

that.

So sorry, sage, what were you going to say?

Well, I was just going to say we also described it in the introduction as it's a return

to our knowing.

So we're sort of born without these egos and we spend our lives building up these boundaries

and walls that, you know, sort of make up our ego.

And so to get in touch with your knowing, it's returning to that place that you have built

up walls against.

And so that's what the book is about and we built up the same walls that other people

build up and they're individual to our own experiences.

So we just kind of go through how to help you get in touch with your own knowing and how

we did it ourselves.

Because like you said, when it's not a book that like, oh, we were just born this way and

we had these great parents.

So everything was, you know, it was very much a returning and still is a returning to my

highest self, my knowing all of that.

But for our dad, I'll try to make it a brief story because it's long and complex.

But our dad passed away on August 30th of 2015.

And when he died, I, you know, I felt like I was at a crossroads of I had grown up with

all these incredible spiritual teachings and highly spiritual parents and he always

talks about how death is just a transition from the physical to the non physical and how

I should just think of him as being in the next room because that's all it is.

It's just, you know, we can no longer see him because our bodies are limited by our five

senses.

It's, but there's so much more than what we can perceive.

And so I grew up with these ideas, but I had never been challenged to really believe

them and have faith in them.

So when he died, I felt like I was at a crossroads of, okay, but yes, I know that this is what

you said and this is what I was raised to believe in.

But at the same time, I can't see you.

I'm grieving for you.

I, you know, and I don't know.

I don't know that you're still here with me.

I can't know that for sure right now.

And so I kind of was putting feelers out there and I said, if, um, if this was all divinely

orchestrated and if his death was on time and on purpose, then there would be a meaning

behind the day he picked to die because my dad was very into numbers.

He had this whole thing with 11, 11 at the number 18, like, our sister's guy was buying

a house and the one of the addresses that she was looking at was 909 and added up to 18.

Our dad was like, you have to buy that one.

I don't care.

Don't tell me about that.

It has termites or this or that.

Just buy that one.

Because so he was very into numbers.

Um, there's, I could give you, we could give you a lot of examples.

So I just felt like some part of me knew that if there was meaning in this life and there

was meaning in his death and that it was on time, there would be meaning in the day he died.

And I kept looking for it and I couldn't find it initially, you know, it didn't add up

to any significant number.

It didn't.

I couldn't think of any significant date that thing that had happened on August 30th.

But I decided to read his book, I can see clearly now, which is a memoir that he wrote.

He wrote it when he was like 73 and he died when he was 72.

And we were all like, are you even writing a memoir?

I'm sorry, he died when he was 75 and we were all giving him a hard time.

Why would you write a memoir?

You're going to have to write another one in 10 years.

Like your work is just getting greater, you know, but he, he said, I just feel called

to write this book.

And Streen and I were out there with him when he was writing, he was writing like eight

hours a day.

He just said, I have to write this book.

I don't know what it is, but something's coming through me.

He died a couple of years later.

It was his last real book that he put out.

So a part of him knew that his time was coming up on him.

But in that book, there's a chapter about his relationship with his father.

So when my, when our dad was little when he was born, actually, his father walked out on

his family.

He had two older brothers.

He was the youngest and he was an alcoholic and he just didn't come home when our

grandma got home from the hospital.

Our dad spent his life hating this man, hating him, but also wanting to know him, you

know.

He never find him and he said that as he became a teenager and so on, he would have nightmares

about finding his father and beating him up or screaming at him and he became obsessed.

And he eventually learned that his dad had actually died.

He had been still searching for him for a few years and his father had been dead and nobody

had even informed him that his father had died.

So his search had been in vain for the past few years.

But learning that his father had died did not bring him any sense of healing or sense of

forgiveness.

He's still carried around this hatred, this dread, this anger towards his father.

And so he was then in search of his grave.

He said, if I can't find him while he's alive, I want to find where he's buried.

And he set out to find where he was buried.

And through a series of really crazy coincidences, he actually found where his father was buried.

This is back in the 70s, it wasn't a Google search and a phone call away, it was a lot

more complicated.

And he wound up finding where his father was buried and he went there.

It was in Biloxi, Mississippi.

And he went to his father's grave and he went there with the intention of pissing on

his father's grave, of screaming at him, you know, all of that.

Yeah, literally.

Literally.

And he went there, he got out of his car, he went up to the grave and he did all of

that.

And he was screaming at him, he screamed at him, how could you leave my mother, my dear

mother, who had three boys in the 1940s, you know, right after the Great Depression,

to fend for herself, our father wound up in orphanages and foster care because his mother

could not afford to care for all three of her children.

And so he just had all this resentment about that that he was trying to pour out onto

his father.

And after he did that for however long, he went to walk away, feeling no better or no

worse, just the same.

And he walked away from his father's grave and he walked back to his car.

And when he got there, he was about to leave and he felt this overwhelming sense that

he needed to go back to the grave.

So he turned around and he walked back to the grave.

And tears started to pour from his eyes as he just felt this powerful force of love coming

over him that he had never experienced in relationship to his father before.

And from his mouth came the words, Dad, I forgive you, I forgive you.

And he was just overcome with love, lightness, forgiveness, and just emotions that he had

never experienced for his father.

And when he walked away from that grave after that second experience of going back and

saying, from this moment on, I send you nothing but love, I forgive you, I love you.

He developed a whole new relationship with his dad.

His entire life turned around.

Our father wrote his first successful book that went on to be the best selling book, Bound

Fiction Book of the decade of the 1970s.

He got into a new relationship.

Everything about his life turned around from that day forward, his career took off.

The date that he went to his father's grave and forgave him was August 30th, 1974.

The same day that he died, that he left his physical body, August 30th, 50 years later

or whatever it was.

And when I read that, I could not believe that in my dad's own words, he said, if you were

to ask me the most significant date of my life, I would say it was the events that took place

on August 30th of 1974, the day that he forgave his father, his whole life turned around.

Now I'm coming to find out that this is the same day that my dad chose to leave his

physical body.

And I'm like, this is incredible, you know, this wasn't just some random day, it was something

divine.

And then I thought, what is he trying to tell us by leaving his body on August 30th, by choosing

that to be, you know, his return ticket home?

And I felt like what he was trying to tell me personally was, you know, August 30th in

his life marked the day that his relationship with his father did not end.

It actually changed to take on a whole new meaning, a more beautiful relationship developed,

one that was pure love.

And I felt like what he was saying to me was, this is now the day in your life that marks

the same thing.

Your relationship with your father did not end on August 30th.

Instead it changed to take on an entirely new divine meaning and that I can still continue

to have a relationship with him, even though he's not here in the physical from this day

forward.

And it can be even more beautiful.

And once I really internalized that notion, everything started to change for me.

I started to receive signs from him.

I started to feel him around me.

And I just moved from like a lower level energy of grief with, there's nothing wrong with

grieving.

And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing.

I think it's important.

But I was stuck in sort of this lower energy.

And when I shifted my perspective on his death to having this grand meaning that was on

purpose, my energy shifted.

I was calculating at a higher field and I started to connect with him in a way that I wasn't

able to before.

We a different guest, each of me, all together, all that's great.

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I ask you to try to find your passion.

Serena, for you, you didn't have that comforting.

You were going through your own personal struggles and you weren't necessarily seeing the signs

at the same time, is that right?

Yes, I was going to say, actually, that's exactly right.

What Sage was saying was like, for her, it was a reminder that her relationship with

our dad changed.

For me, having, you know, that was in 2015 that he passed away and now that it's 2022 and

it's been six and a half years, essentially, and I have gone through so much in the last

six and a half years that I talk about in the book, but just to touch on briefly, becoming

a mother for the first time, my husband being arrested, indicted for his business, losing

all of our financial assets, him going to trial, being sentenced to seven years of prison,

that getting overturned at the last minute, giving birth to three children in that time,

really struggling with body image and depression because there's still a weight gain from childhood,

and then to top it all off my teenage steps and passed away from an accidental drug overdose.

So that's really just like a very brief snapshot of just the highlight reel, really the

low light reel, if you will, of everything that I experienced.

And so for me, I believe now with the gift of hindsight and having kind of immersed myself

more into this spiritual work, like Sage was saying, kind of starting to calibrate on a higher

energy level, for me, what that represented his act of forgiving his father and changing

his life was the knowing that I needed to discover for myself or I needed to return to

which was self forgiveness, self love, because when you grow up in a spiritual household,

like we did, one of the greatest benefits is that you are taught from a young age to take

responsibility for everything that happens in your life. One of the downsides of growing

up in a spiritual household is that you are taught to take responsibility for everything that

happens in your life. In other words, you don't get in life what you want, you get what you

are. And when all of these things were happening to me in my life, back to back to back, I could

not help but feel as though I must be bad. I must have attracted this. I must have done

something in a pastel hay for a carmically or energetically to align with all of this

bad stuff. And because I had that experience of growing up with believing that you have

to take responsibility for everything that happens and because all these bad things were

happening and I identified myself as attracting them or creating them, I started to carry an

enormous amount of shame, of shame and guilt. And so when my dad forgave his father and his life

changed, I know that for a sage that was sort of symbolic of the idea that her relationship with

our dad could change and take on a new meeting. And for me, it was symbolic in the sense that I never

had to forgive anyone really before, but I especially never had to forgive myself. I never had to deal

with shame and feeling as though I somehow was bad, you know, because I never had anything bad

really happened in my life before everything started happening at once. And out of that whole

experience of learning sort of like self forgiveness and self love, I came to understand that I had a

choice in this. I could continue to view these things as bad or I could choose to view them

as experiences that I signed up for before I incarnated in this lifetime in order for my soul

to grow. Because what Sage and I were sort of raised on was this idea that you come here and

your time in your body as Heather or Serena or Sage is your time in the classroom and that when you

are done with the lessons, you go home. And we sign up, we sign up for these experiences as

what we were raised to believe so that we can grow. And you don't grow by never being challenged

or by living comfortably and safely. But in every single situation or experience that happens in

your life, you have that choice to view it as a reason to stay stuck, to stay the victim, to stay

feeling bad, to stay carrying shame, to stay carrying guilt, to not forgive yourself or others

that have harmed you. Or you have the choice to view all of those things, all of those experiences

as rungs on the ladder that is placed before you at the time of your birth, that is your chance

to climb your way up toward God consciousness or divine love or Christ consciousness,

but you also don't have to. You also don't have to climb that ladder. And each time something

happens and you choose to view it as bad or your fault or somebody else's fault,

you know, that's your choice and that's fine. And you can stay there. Or you can change the entire

way you are looking at everything that has happened to you and say, this is not because I am bad.

This is not because I attracted bad things. In fact, these things are not even bad. These things are

opportunities for my own personal growth, for my own ability to become closer to God. And that

took me a very long time to understand that these were not things that were happening to me because

I was bad or I deserved them. Or, karmically, I was doomed to have them. But instead, these were

opportunities to grow. And I really believe that in every person's life, we have that ability to make

that choice for anything that happens to us. I don't want to minimize or mitigate what sage has

gone through in her life or what I have gone through. Everyone has their own challenges and struggles.

However, you losing your stepson to me on that, you know, losing a child seems to be one of the

hardest things that someone can go through. And when you wrote about this, or I don't know,

sage, maybe you wrote the chapter about Serena going through it. I believe as a way it was told in

the book, but that whole chapter and that experience and how beautiful it turns out to be was just,

it was so emotional to read and so beautiful and loving. And I was so proud of you of being able

to come through that other side and see the good that is there. Can you tell us a little bit

about how you were able to change that experience? Yes, because, you know, when my stepson passed away,

so I met him when he was 10 and I was, you know, immediately in a relationship with his dad

within two weeks of meeting, we were together and have been ever since. And so I, Mason was a part of

my life for the last nine years of his life from the time he was 10 to 19. And I did not always have

a great relationship with him. He and I were 13 years apart. And so a lot of times we fought more

like siblings. And in the process of losing him, the experience I had with his death was so completely

different than the experience I had with my dad's death. Because of my dad's death, it was per sadness

and grief that he wasn't here, but there was no aspect of that grief that was based in regret or guilt.

When my stepson passed away, and I think this is the case for like any parent or step parent or

grandparent or Andrew uncle that loses a child, essentially, that they love the guilt is ever present,

because for me, at least all I could do was think about the times that I was not good to him. And

all I could do was think about the times that I could have been better. And I knew I could have

been better in those moments. And I still chose not to. And I was consumed with self-loathing,

because that's all I could think about when he died was I could have been better. I should have

been better. And I wasn't. And I honestly will say that the reason I was able to transform that

experience from one of extreme pain to one of love was A, because my husband, my stepson's father,

who raised him as a single father his entire life, he was so encouraging of reminding me that

when my dad died just two years before Mason did, that I was aware that in order to connect with

my dad from the other side, I had to become like where he was now. I had to connect with him

from a place of love, because that's where my dad was now was only a place of love. And my husband

was so encouraging and wanting me to remember that Mason would not want me to feel anything but love

for him, from him, and that I was punishing myself unnecessarily, that, you know, I was a good step

mom and that I was focusing on these small things. So my husband offered me such grace in encouraging

me to remember that I could connect with Mason, even now that he was on the other side from that

place of love, and that if I felt I needed to ask for his forgiveness, I could do that. And so I did.

And so I ended up having this crazy dream after I wouldn't even allow myself to feel comfortable

mourning him because I felt responsible for his death, even though it was an accidental drug overdose

and I wasn't even in the same state, I still felt as though I had pushed him away so many times

that that overdose was somehow partially my fault. And so I didn't even feel worthy of grieving for

him because I felt so responsible. And so I couldn't think about Mason in the place of joy or love

because I didn't feel like I deserved to think about him in that place. And it wasn't until a

week or two or three weeks after he died of really so punishing that I had one moment as I was

falling asleep where I remembered a really funny experience of he and I had. And as I was falling

asleep, I was thinking about him from that place of joy, from this funny memory. And he came to me

that night in a dream. And it was definitely a full real visitation, not just a dream. And I asked him

if after he died, if he saw all the mean things I had done as his stepmom in his life. And he said,

yes. And I asked him if he could forgive me. And he said, yes. And I asked him, it's going to make me

cry if he loved me. And he said, yes. And I asked him if he knew that I loved him. And he said, yes.

And at the end of that, at that exchange that he and I had, he said to me, Serena, I just

want you to remember one thing. New teachers are emerging. Then he just disappeared. And I really

thought I woke up. I wrote the dream down. I woke my husband up. I told him all about it. And I felt

a sense of relief. And I really thought that what that meant was that I was going to become

a new teacher on some big stage. And that I was emerging. And I had no idea that what that really

meant was I was going to continue to go through a lot of difficult experiences that I could choose to

look at as teachers. And that those were going to be emerging and emerging in my life. And I will

say that Mason needed less time in the classroom than I would have liked. Then, you know, my dad

needed at his, I'd always need to be crying when I say that at his 75 years, that anytime a child

or a young person dies, it's so painful because we want them to have the full life. But I had to,

I had to get to a point of really believing that his soul just needed the 19 years that he was here

and that he left when he was meant to go and that I could choose to view my relationship with him

as one of perpetual self-loving and guilt or as one of the greatest, if not the greatest teachers

that ever emerged in my own life. Because what I now know that I would not have known had I not

been Mason's stepmom and lost him is that none of the judging, none of the criticizing, none of the

hurtful things, none of those things are things I would ever do again. Instead, if I could have just one

day of just loving him from a place of loving really everyone now, from a place of no judgment,

that's where I'm living, you know, that's where I essentially I'm living my life from now or at

least I'm trying to or I'm trying to remember to and Mason gave me that gift. Mason's role in my life

was helping me to get to that next ladder of just wanting to come from a place of love more and more

to everyone that I meet.

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one two four zero zero three eight. It's such a powerful and beautiful experience and this book

is so full of so many stories around your personal struggles both of you your parents there's

so much realness that's what I so appreciate not only the lessons are incredible and

not growing up knowing about these lessons right it's hard to even process it at first so sage when

we're talking about the 11 lessons to understand the quiet urges of your soul what are some of the

important takeaways that you want readers to bring through their life with them. One that just pops

out that just came to me I mean I think they're all really important and we spent a lot of time like

going through our whole lives and digging out things that could not just be relatable for us but

for for everyone but one that just thought of when you asked me that was you know we've all heard

the quote a million times there is no way to happiness happiness is the way you know and I've heard

that my whole life it never really resonated with me until one day I had gone through a struggle

nothing like what Strina is talking about but when I found out that I was pregnant I was I had

been married for about a year I had gotten off the pill I knew what we were doing but I did not

think I was going to get pregnant at least not you know I like I knew that I could but I didn't

think that I would you know what I'm saying I don't know so I I took a pregnancy test one morning

because I was feeling off and I was pregnant and I um felt immediately really scared and just like

oh my god what did we do you know and then I felt a lot of guilt for having this feeling of being

scared and not just being excited and happy that this new life had chosen me to be its mother and

that I just felt like I should be being happy that this child is inside of me and somehow feeling

what I'm feeling and so it was just this whole that tumbling down of this road of feeling scared

and then guilty about feeling scared and um you know I also during that time I just bought

into all these things that motherhood was going to do that we're going to be negative in my life

like that I would could never have a career again that was the idea that I thought I was 29 and

serena and I had written most of this book but we hadn't finished it completely and we had kind of

fell off the wayside from it ironically when I found out I was pregnant because I bought into this

idea that I could never have a career once my child was born it made me call up serena and call

up our publishers that we had been in contact with and call up our literary agent and say we got

to do this and we've got to do it now because I have eight months till my life is just over and I can

only be a mom from that point forward I just thought that this was true you know and so because

of that we got our book out there and we finished it while I was pregnant it didn't get released until

you know last year but because this was three years ago that I got that I became pregnant but um

but we did finish it during that time and we got our publishing deal and all of that and I just I

bought into this idea that I would never travel again and I would never be able to do anything for

myself and just all these things that's all I could think about instead of thinking about the

opportunities that were before me that I was going to grow that you know this was a blessing and

all of that I just was only seeing it one sided at that time but then fast forward to when my

son was born and just it turns out not that none of that was true because some of the things that I

was thinking about are true I mean you don't get a lot of time to yourself I don't travel unencumbered

anymore and things like that but what I realized was that none of it was anything to be afraid of

because it has enriched my life in a different way and I'm just in a different phase in my life

so when I heard this quote again after I had gone through all of this and my son was born and I was

like actually I feel a sense of happiness a sense of happiness that I couldn't imagine for myself

pre-having my son and I heard the quote you know there is no way to happiness happiness is the way

and it resonated with me in this holy way that you know I had this idea that I really bought into

that the only way to happiness for me was going to be to stay without children traveling doing

whatever I wanted I live in New York City just living this life that I thought was so great

and that that was the way to happiness for me and and now the road that I was on was no longer

the way to happiness and I was no longer going to be happy but what I actually came to find out

was that there is actually no way to happiness happiness is the way that happiness is always

available to you in your situation that you're in my dad always used to say to us do not process life

as you assume it should be process life as it is because you know if life is going as we assume

it should be it's easy to be happy because we're like oh this is what's supposed to be happening so

I'm having a good time as soon as you know the wind changes and we're thrown something that we

we do not assume to be good and it's not the way that we want our life to go that's when it becomes

challenging and I read this thing recently that said it well all it said was dance with life

and I thought about that I was on the treadmill and I was like yeah you don't as soon as you start

resisting whatever life is bringing you you're creating more and more resistance and sometimes

you're in situations that you just don't have a choice so how do you break down that resistance

and still find happiness in those ways and one of them is by no longer assuming that life should be

a certain way you know when you find yourself in a situation that goes against the grain of what

you believe your life needs to be challenge yourself then to say how can this serve me now because

so much in our lives we look back and you say oh this thing that I thought that was going to be so

awful this breakup this job loss you know whatever I thought it was going to be the worst thing

that ever happened but it turns out it was a blessing if you could see that when it's happening you

save yourself you know all those years of thinking that this shouldn't be happening when then

reality it might be just a gift packaged in some wrapping that you didn't know at the time

and so when I heard that quote to wrap it up there is no way to happiness happiness is the way I

also thought you know that's the same with my purpose like I had this idea that because I was

pregnant my only purpose was going to be to be a mom and that I didn't find my other purpose

my career type purpose you know quote unquote so I never would but what I realized is that

there also is not just one purpose in our lives you know that we'd go through our life and I think

our purpose it can shift and take on entirely new meanings depending on where we are in our life

at that time and that you can find purpose in everything that you're doing and if you're 40 or

50 or 60 or 70 and you still don't feel like you found your purpose to just sort of shift that

on its head because I don't think it's one thing that you're going to find I think that you can

live a purposeful life every day or most days same way with happiness you know there is no way

to one purpose find your purpose every day and so I now find purpose in being a mother while I

also find a lot of purpose in you know we wrote this book and doing these interviews and there are

other things that I still want to do in my life that I now know that I can do and that I can have

a different purpose every day every year every decade of my life it's like then when you retire

what is your life have no purpose anymore well there's just a new type of purpose that you can

dive into wow this book and you too a first I hope you keep writing and I hope that you will write

a book for teenagers because it would be wonderful to be able to empower younger generations

earlier on I'm getting this information at 47 I feel like I totally could have used this when I was

14 like my son is so I hope you guys will consider writing something for younger people out there

they need this information it's so good it's such an easy read and it's so powerful it's so

relatable for anyone like me that these are new concepts you know that you're you're not used to

growing up with a spiritual guide in your life this is the book for you and certainly anyone that's

ever dealt with any kind of loss it's incredibly comforting and and just really really powerful

where can people find you sage and serena more both on instagram i'm sage dot dire my name is

spelled with a j s-h-a-e because my parents wanted to be complicated for me um and my website is

sage dire dot com yeah i'm on instagram and facebook and all the social medias and we always respond

and replied everybody so all the typical social media pages you would be able to um find us on

like i found you so well i'm so glad you did it find me the knowing 11 lessons to understand the

quiet urges of your soul please get this book had a huge impact on me so grateful for both of you

thank you we're so grateful to you yeah thank you yeah all right love and all green lights until next time

and growing inevitably something will happen no one seems to learn you don't stop and look around

once in a while you can miss it i'm on this journey with me