203. Healing to Create Our Collective Pleasure with Jessica McDuffee

[00:00:00] Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast, exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole.

 On today's episode, we have Jessica join us for a conversation about how another world is possible. Together we talk about following your zest for life, creating mutually empowering relationships and joining in our collective repair. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world tuning in for another episode each Wednesday.

My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy. And I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice, supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener, Another world is possible. That is the anarchist saying and it is a part of all of our responsibilities as pleasure activists to see that world, to feel into that world, and then to embody that world in our relationships, right?

The personal is the political and the revolution begins in our relationships. And so today's episode is an invitation to reflect on peace, embodiment, Slowing down and being present to love the people before you, and this world is wild right now. I know I have listeners globally that are not in the U. S.,

but in the U. S., things are pretty, uh, wow, every day you wake up and it's, uh, another thing, and so, I think it's been pretty hard to see a world of peaceful transition to any other future where Like Jessica said, a world where we care about every single person. Ugh. Our current systems are so far from that, and it's difficult to remember that our current systems are not broken.

They are actually working in the way that the people who design them want them to work, right? And so it is hard. To think about another world through peace. I just want to say that I am struggling with that, dear listener, every day when we wake up and see the news that is happening in our world. And I am grateful for Jessica and this message to try and embody a world of peaceful Love a world where we go through rupture and repair and where we trust in the power and the ripples of the love and all of the moments that we are creating in our communities.

I do believe in that, right? The power of our community. And so when all of these systems are wild and big and scary and Yeah. out of our control. I hope you can focus on the people in front of you, the people that you know, and how can we bring that new world, that vision of that other world into our reality, into our relationships today.

Alright, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources at modernanarchypodcast. com, linked in the show notes below. And I want to say the biggest thank you to all my Patreon supporters. You are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast, keeping this content free and accessible to all people, so thank you.

If you want to join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modern anarchy podcast, also linked in the show notes below. And with that. Dear listener, please know that I am sending you all my love and Let's tune in to today's episode.

All right, Jessica So the first question that I ask every guest is how would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners?

[00:04:44] Jessica McDuffee: well, the first thing that comes to mind is Just owning what's most important to me, which is that I'm a mystic and it's something that I have Not that it's taken a long time to kind of own but it's such a deep part of who I am and What I love what what mysticism means to me is really being comfortable with not knowing, like being able to dive into the great mystery, into the unknown and be open to what emerges out of that place, out of that not knowing and something new that's being birthed in the moment that's emerging in the moment that we don't already know.

And so That is how I try to live my life and another aspect of mysticism that I love is it's really focused on our direct experience and really valuing that, valuing our, our own experience and our own wisdom gained from our experience. And so I love. I'm just endlessly fascinated by people's experience, and I have a master's degree in user experience design, and a bachelor's degree in psychology and religious studies, and so those are just in the religious studies part was mostly studying the mystical aspects of spiritual traditions, and so I just have a Deep, endless, lifelong fascination with the human experience and what that means and going deep into that.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:41] Nicole: Exciting. Well, I'm delighted to have you here today and to see where our minds get up to. Even just that first, uh, piece about the unfolding, right, of, of the future in that way. I'm, it's hard. So hard, right? I want to know what's going to happen. Where are we going? Where are we going? And I try to predict out and every time I'm, I'm met with the reality that it's not what I thought it would be.

Right. Right. And so I try to practice in terms of my spirituality and definitely. Definitely practicing and teaching yoga, like just the act of presence, like, okay, I'm, I'm here right now. I'm here right now again, and right now again, right? And trying to come back to that. It's like every week on my, uh, agenda or, um, calendar, it has like, what's this week's goal?

And I've like flipped back to presence, presence, presence, like just repeatedly like trying to be present and right here. Um, but yeah, it's so hard when we want that, like, you know, where are we going especially in. Yeah. Relationships, sexuality, so much of a hold of like, where are we moving in our, our dynamic?

What are we building? You know? So to come back to presence can be really, really hard, but I feel like that's also, you know, I know you had mentioned the interest of talking about sacred pleasure and I feel like presence is deeply connected to pleasure. And so I'm curious where that leads you when I'm saying these things.

[00:08:03] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Why don't you say more about that for you, what being in the moment, how does that relate to sacred pleasure to you?

[00:08:13] Nicole: Okay. Well, right now I've got this cup of tea, right? So if I'm, you know, or literally, maybe I'll just go back a little bit, like 10 minutes ago before this recording, right?

Like me scarfing down my lunch going, Oh, I got to get that client note in. I gotta do this. Like I gotta do this. Oh, but what am I doing later tonight? Do I have enough time? Right. I. Not. Tasting my food. I am not tasting my food. Like I really don't think that I can actually feel and think at the same time.

The second I tune into felt, there is no cognitive up here. You know, it might be the, the, Oh, this is delicious. This tastes like that, but I'm not actively like processing life. for other things, and so I really do feel like the pleasure of our felt senses and being here, not that all pleasure is purely sensational, I guess you could have like pleasurable thoughts too, but the basis of it being in sensation, I really don't think I can be thinking about the past or the future if I'm trying to be present with pleasure.

[00:09:15] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. There's a kind of intimacy with life that happens when we're fully engaged with our senses and fully in the moment and, you know, smelling all the beautiful smells and tasting all the delicious. You know, taste and hearing the birds chirping and, you know, actually seeing the incredible beauty that's all around us that we often are so in our minds, you know, and caught up in thoughts that we, we were missing the miracle of life.

All around us that is just so life giving in and of itself to be attuned to the beauty in each and every moment and like the exquisiteness of this planet that it's so easy to get caught up in all of the problems and challenges of life and yet and forget that we are this Transcribed We are on this ball, floating through space, filled, teeming with life that we have not seen on any other planet, we have not discovered anywhere else yet, like, but our planet is just filled with life, abundance of life and color and diversity and just exquisite.

Yeah, beauty.

[00:10:47] Nicole: Mm hmm.

[00:10:48] Jessica McDuffee: So yes tuning into that. Absolutely is such an important part of life And so easy to miss our whole life and just miss miss the beauty. That's all around us

[00:10:59] Nicole: Absolutely. It's like the um Glass half full, half empty thing. I feel like sometimes, you know, especially if you start off your day listening to the news, right, or other sorts of things, like there's so much of the half empty, half empty, and it's always that yes, and.

There are horrible atrocities going on in our world, and it's also, yeah, a life giving planet in the cosmos of infinite grandeur, right? Like that yes, and, um, and I feel like that's definitely been like a muscle that has been grown when I, like, Sit in therapy sessions talking about like really complex trauma and hearing clients stories.

And then I'm supposed to like, get out at the end of my day and just like go hang out with my friends and be happy. Like, it is tough. Like, it was a muscle. It's still a muscle I'm growing. And the ability to like sit in that, be with someone, and then like get out and be like, Okay. And usually for me, what I do in those moments are like body stuff.

Like, how do I breathe? And then it's usually next, like nature. That's usually my next thing. I like look at the clouds. Get some perspective and I'm like, okay, this is a beautiful world. Like it is a beautiful world. It's got a lot of pain, a lot of pain, but it is pretty, you know, and like kind of try and like Balance that but that's been like a really hard job as a therapist I would say

[00:12:17] Jessica McDuffee: Absolutely. I agree. Yeah. I work, I'm not a therapist, but I work with clients in a healing way for the last, my whole career since high school for 30 years, almost 30 years in various different healing modalities. And yeah, just with my own life experience as well, just had a lot of complex trauma from childhood.

Uh, tremendous amount of trauma from childhood and to, yeah, how to balance that, you know, because I've also always been a very deeply spiritual person. And so I guess that's why I've just had an endless. It's fascination in life with both healing and awakening because both are so predominant in my life.

Just having a natural spiritual propensity, but then having so much trauma to heal from and such a strong desire to want to help others heal and help others, uh, awaken. And so But for me, sacred pleasure is really about that. Um, it's about that because that is connected to the deepest part of my soul, like the deepest part of who I am and what I'm about and what my heart calls to, speaks to.

And I think for all of us. Like there's a line on your website that said some said discovering and pursuing the things that bring your soul alive And give you greater zest for life And I just love love that line and I love I think that is such a noble pursuit, and it's so deeply personal about what is, what does give us that juice and zest for life.

And I really think that has to do with When we're in alignment with our soul's purpose, and that soul's purpose is unique to each individual, like, we don't know why we love what we love and why we're drawn to what we're drawn to, and what we're interested in, why we're interested in what we're interested in, like, we don't know, but we do know that we're interested in it, right?

We do know that we have a passion for, we have something deep inside of us. We Inside of our heart that just call it back and relentless. But it's also patient and persistent. It's not forceful, but it's just like, you know, it can be this still small voice that's quiet, but just always. Kind of prompting you in a particular direction and I feel like at least what I've noticed in my own life and with clients is When we're not an alignment with that, that's when we suffer That's when we experience the deepest pain and the deepest suffering is when we're actually Going against that deep impulse of our hearts Calling whatever.

I don't know. I don't know. Whatever you want to call it. But so sacred pleasure to me is the opposite. Sacred pleasure to me is being in alignment with our soul, like doing the things that call to us. And because when we do, they are life giving, they are soul enhancing. That's when we get the zest for life.

That's when we get it. That's when our soul comes alive is when we're actually listening to it instead of, you know, no, I hear calling, but nope, I'm not, I'm too busy. I'm not going to answer the call right now. Right. And I've spent most of my life. In this dance between listening and refusing the call.

Sure, sure. When I refuse the call, I suffer. And when I listen to the, when I pick up the call, I, it is so life enhancing and joyful. I'm ecstatically joyful.

[00:16:45] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I'm glad you found your path, and I found mine. It feels good. Like, I love that, like, my path, like, quite literally, like, brings me that life force, gets me all riled up, and I'm like, yeah, like, let's do this.

I think, uh, When I think about this, it's tricky because so much of our connection to our pleasure is literally just obliterated by systems, right? Like even the larger scale of capitalism, how many people hate their jobs and are actively forced to Work in this because where are you going to get that health insurance?

Where are you going to, you know, like all these other, you know, levels to this that like, you know, you get the Sunday scaries. That's for a reason. Maybe it's not because that, um, that job actually isn't in alignment with your pleasure because of the systems, maybe that amount of work. You know, isn't in alignment.

I always think back to the fact that people literally had to die for us to have a five day work week. And like, prior to that, the systems were even worse. Right? So, like, for all the people that have the Sunday scaries, I'm like, yeah, that's because this isn't good. Right? So, like, just the ways that so much of our pleasures actively cut off.

And so I don't like to end the conversation there because I think that, you know, the dismantling of that is going to take a long time. And I do try to remember that, like, It's like a tapestry, right? We all have different threads that we're going to be pulling on, like for me, it's sex and relationships.

For another person, it's like changing transportation, you know, I don't know, all these different sides of it and, you know, all these different parts that we can pull at the thread to change those systems. And while we're under these systems, what does it mean to center our pleasure in the ways that we can, right?

Is it that, I'm actually going to take these five minutes that I have in between picking up my kids today to just sit and breathe with a cup of tea. I've got only five minutes, but I'm going to center my pleasure, right? I just try to think about the different ways that under the responsibilities and these systems, we still can center our pleasure.

And the more that you tune into that, the more that it grows, right? It's like a voice. Maybe you have an inner critic, right? The more you listen to that, the more it grows. That inner pleasure, right? The more you listen to that, the more you hear it. Oh yeah, this is the food I'd want today. This is actually the partner I'd want to connect with.

I like this outfit. This feels like me, right? Like there's all these ways that that starts to connect. And so I really do look at it as like a muscle that you start to flex.

[00:19:15] Jessica McDuffee: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. There's so much emphasis on really learning how to work with all of our pain and suffering and difficulty and trauma.

And that is also, uh, muscle that can be developed. We can learn how to titrate, you know, as we work with trauma and learn how to self regulate as we go into these really dark, scary places and memories, um, and feelings that are so. So painful and hard to tolerate, and we can learn how to regulate the nervous system so that we can, can do that in a helpful way.

But I think it's the exact same thing for pleasure or for on the opposite end of the spectrum, which really doesn't. It isn't given as much attention in the healing process, but it is very much a muscle that needs to be, that it can be developed in the same way. And it's also very much related to the nervous system and our capacity to withstand.

That much joy in your body and not much pleasure in your body and not much love and compassion and care and kindness and opening up to the mystical states of beauty and oneness and peace and aliveness and vitality and joy. Like it is not well, for one thing, it's not socially acceptable. To be joyful and happy and then it's also, yeah, we just, we have all of this programming that it's not okay and especially for me and I think you kind of touched on this when you were talking is.

Well, for me, I've had this feeling like it's not okay for me to be happy when so many other people are suffering and it's been almost like a, um, like survival's survivors. Guilt. I heard somebody talk about that recently and I'd never thought of it in those terms, but like we're on this path for most people, a lot of people who are on the path of healing and awakening.

And the whole goal is to be free from suffering. And the whole goal is to heal, be healed, be whole, be happy, be free, be vibrantly alive. And yet it's not. Okay, like, I don't know, at least I've, you know, it's been not okay for me and that's something that I have really, really, really, really struggled with is because I have.

I've been so deeply on this path of healing and awakening for my whole life and helping others and I've had success, like I've had success on the path and then I feel like it's not okay because there's so many people suffering. And so, yes, it's a muscle to develop. Like how good can you stand it? Like really?

And I've found I have a lot of limitations and how good I can stand it. Like how much joy and ecstasy and bliss and sacred pleasure I can hold in my nervous system without freaking out. Um, And I do psychedelic work with people to and, you know, going into really expanded states of consciousness. A lot of, you know, people can have a strong contraction, it can go into it.

But there's a part, you know, there can be parts of ourself that then rejected that can hold that energy and collapse back down into contraction or fear, fear response. And so, That's why it's both healing and awakening because it's healing those wounds. Totally. Yeah. And the peace around so much, yeah, like you're saying of the societal structures that our beliefs and the whole ways in which we view things that limit us and prevent us from.

You know, actually being whole, actually being healed, actually being fully awakened or alive or vibrant or joyful,

[00:24:03] Nicole: right?

[00:24:03] Jessica McDuffee: Totally. Yeah.

[00:24:04] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. So complex, right? It's so hard when like, yeah, if you have clients and you hear these such Yeah. Yeah. Difficult things and right you come out and you're supposed to live on with your day or you're driving around you see people who are on housed or people who don't have resources and you pick up any article and you see the rest of the world.

It's almost impossible to say, like, how could I be happy when this is also happening? Like, and I think a lot of us are. Are feeling that particularly in this age of having access to awareness that previous generations didn't have before the internet to know like they just lived in their neighborhood, you know, you're had your usual scandal, not this like wide.

Level awareness of the inequities, you know, so then any level of stepping into the pleasure, it feels like, yeah, like that survivor's guilt. And I certainly don't have the answers to understand how we live in pleasure when other people are utterly suffering. But I do know that, you know, that metaphor of you, you put the mask on for yourself before.

The child on the airplane, right? Like you cannot be in complete suffering all the time and expect to do large or even small level activism work, right? Like, you will burn out the amount of conversations I've had on this podcast about like activists and this sort of like, I need to change the system because.

Yes, but if you continue to run in that you will hit a wall where you literally can't not yourself and so like what does it mean to be in this dynamic dance between understanding that yes, this is fucked up and Also, what do I have in my life that is going? Well, how do I channel this energy to be in pleasure for myself?

So I can be in better connection to my community and my work, right? Like, there's ripple effects to your joy and, uh, one of the, I don't even know. It's like one of those quotes for like the, uh, best, uh, social justice work you can do is like smile, you know, it's like one of those yogi quotes, you know, like, and it's true social justice work.

Like you see someone on the street and you smile, like that changes their day, your day, and the way that that can ripple out. And, Yeah, when you were talking about the psychedelic work, it reminds me a lot of just the experiences I've had with people who have had, um, yeah, like you said, like that rebound effect where you might go somewhere and then it recoils, right?

Or these experiences where they come into such deep states of pleasure, and then they kind of like, look to me as a therapist. They're like, did I do it right? Is that okay? Like we didn't talk about heavy stuff and it's like, yes, like it is great that you're tapping into your pleasure and feeling that when you've been depressed for months.

Like we didn't have to talk about the depression. You actually went to that state of joy. How beautiful, right? But yeah, the complexities of sometimes when you access that state and then go back down because it's. It's a part of yourself you haven't been in connection to, right? I think about the same thing with, like, pleasure and sex, right?

People have, you know, have that beautiful threesome, the scene, the multiple people, and then afterwards they're like, oh my god, who am I? And then they just go back down into the turtle shell, right? Like, this is weird, this is different. Because pleasure, particularly in that area, is so forbidden, right? It's all connected.

[00:27:19] Jessica McDuffee: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, totally. One of the models that I've come up with that really helps me mm-hmm . Is I call the arc of healing. Mm. The longer name would be the mystical arc of healing and awakening as a long, long title. Sure. Shorten is the of healing. Yeah. Um, the, A stands for awareness and Acknowledgement, the r.

And in the ARC, so ARC is an acronym for, yeah, the A stands for Awareness and Acknowledgement. The R stands for Repair and Reconnection. And the C stands for Choice and Creation. And so, on this path of healing and awakening, the whole path, like the path of healing really requires both the ability to acknowledge what happened and move on.

And people often get caught in one side or the other where they Want to just ignore what has happened and just focus on moving on, moving forward, moving on, moving forward. And then there's, you know, some people who just get caught in the suffering and can't move forward, no matter how much. How many years of therapy and acknowledgement and talking about it, there is, it's not, they're not able to actually move forward and to really complete the whole healing process.

It's, it's this whole arc and so. Yeah, it begins with awareness, you know, sometimes we're lacking the awareness of what's going on, you know, why are we, why do we shrink back down after a pleasurable experience or we start to open up and be ourself more fully and then there's a reap that rebound effect or, you know, just the Acknowledging the challenges and hardships of life in our world and, um, collectively, interpersonally and, um, you know, individually, the things, the hard things that we've endured and the.

The traumas that we've, um, experienced. So having awareness first and being able to acknowledge the truth, simply acknowledging the truth, but without shame or blame. So we tend to oftentimes what prevents us from moving forward is. Is and acknowledging the truth, both is this shame and blame like we, yeah, it's so too painful to look at.

And so we kind of, we tend to ignore it and want to pretend it's not there or just get so caught up in the self beat up and the shame and or blaming other people, um, that we can't move forward. So being able to acknowledge the truth. Without shame or blame. So we can actually look at it and learn from it and repair.

So the repair is really deeply about understanding through the heart of compassion, through love and forgiveness and understanding and making amends. You know, if we've harmed somebody or someone has harmed us, that we. Can make amends that we can apologize. We can acknowledge the truth and apologize and make amends and make those repairs that are necessary for the healing process to continue to unfold.

And that leads us to reconnection, which I think is the crux of it all is. It's really this being able to reconnect with the goodness within ourself and the goodness within each other and with the goodness in the world. And so it's that repairing and reconnection on a relational level to ourself and reclaiming or reconnecting with the goodness in ourself and all of our positive qualities.

Like for me, this has been the most essential life changing thing that I've done after, you know, decades of. Therapy and healing and, you know, working on my trauma in such a painful, hard, challenging way. And I just had so much self hatred and self, you know, harsh inner critic and lifelong suicidal depression.

And I just had this complete and utter mental block around not being able to see any good in myself. Like none at all. For whatever reason, that comes really naturally for me to see in other people. Like I can see the goodness in other people. That's like one of my absolute biggest strengths. But when it came to being able to see that goodness in myself.

There was just a complete and utter block around that. And so that has been such an essential part of my healing process. And when I work with clients, it's really helping them focus on. That positive aspect, that reconnection, like you were saying with your client that they experienced pleasure and like, yes, that is part of the healing, that reconnection, that reclaiming of our, it's like a soul retrieval of our, um, positive qualities, our inner resources, but also You know, relationally, being able to restore and repair our ability to see the goodness in our partners, just to be able to see the goodness in our country, in our world, in our planet, in our, in God or the divine or the great mystery or whatever you want to call it, and then we can come into choice.

Like choice, we realize, we can realize that

we actually have the ability to respond. That it is a relational thing. How we respond to life, to how we relate to ourself, how we relate to each other in the world and the divine is a choice. And it's something that we have the power to change and affect. And so, it's about, I, for me, it's about developing a different relationship to all of life.

And, um, realizing that it is a choice and that there are other possibilities. Because we, we get so caught, this is part of that. You know, programming part that you're talking about of just how, you know, like how culturally conditioned we are. We tend to think things have to be the way that they are and that just, we just take it for granted that it is the way that it is, but it's not.

It's there's so many other possible ways in which it could be there's so many other possible ways in which we could relate to life. There's so many other possible ways in which we can design relationships and like you're doing, you know, you're interested in all these different ways. And I've experienced that.

Explored tons of different ways my sexuality and relationships, and created it for myself.

[00:35:16] Nicole: Mm-hmm .

[00:35:16] Jessica McDuffee: And it is the choice when we open up to these other possibilities and ways of doing things and creating things. Mm-hmm . And this is when we get into the, the creation part of the arc of healing is mm-hmm . We can actually redesign the world, we can redesign.

Our relationship to ourself and our intimate relationships, our family relationships, our schools, our businesses, our government, our, our international politics, um, our relationship to the earth, like we, we can read it. It's all been designed. It's just. Designed unconsciously for the most part based on just inherited generational, you know, patterns that are playing out when we go through this arc of healing and we come back into this place of empowerment and of choice, and we can recognize that there are other possibilities we can start to experiment with new possible abilities, new ways of doing things and.

To me, this is what user experience is all about. It's usually used just for like making apps and websites better, but it can be applied to all of life. Sure. That we can design life to be a better user experience Right. for all of us. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And so the main problem to solve like in user experience design, it's part of it is figuring out the right problem to solve.

Solve. And I think in redesigning the world, um, the right problem to solve is win win. How do we make the world, redesign the world so that it works for everyone? Like literally, absolutely everyone. And we start designing and coming up with ideas and possibilities and Experimenting with how to do that, how to redesign work to work for everyone, how to redesign relationships to work for everyone, how to redesign parenting to work for everyone, how to redesign the government to work for everyone on and on, and that's back to sacred pleasure to me, that is the most sacred pleasure is that not only a Do we have a life that is deeply fulfilling to us that brings us aliveness and vitality, but we also are designing a world in which everyone is supported in being able to be fully alive and vibrantly alive and healthy and have their needs met, have their.

Needs for basic necessities met for food and shelter and clothing, as well as there are emotional needs for safety and love and care and compassion and belonging. And that is the most sacred pleasure to me is win win is yeah, seeing other people be happy and. Having it be okay for me to be happy. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:36] Nicole: Absolutely. It's a, the, uh, role of the anarchist, right. To like, see that future to dream of that possibility and to think about where we could go, right. How do we. We're here now. Yes. But where could we be right? And to dream about that world of deeper pleasure. Part of me just thinks that many of us in, in our like current state of pleasure would be giving up some of that, right?

Like all of us, Amazon primers get that delivered in the next couple hours while not thinking about the ways that that impacts or where it was made. In fact, right. Like I just, I do wonder what it would look like for all of us to actually be in a state of having like, um, equality in terms of access to pleasure.

I think that at least For sure the people at the top, like for sure the people doing power over dynamics that have the majority of the wealth. I think it was like, I feel like I looked it up recently. It was like 49% of the global wealth is owned by the 1%. It was pretty intense, so I imagine they're gonna have to give up some of that, right?

If we really wanna redistribute like this whole thing, they're gonna have to give up pleasure, which they're not gonna wanna do because right now, you know how nice it is to have millions of dollars and be like, I get my massage and my food delivered here, here, here. Right. So I'm, I'm curious, like what it does actually look like for all of us to like, get up off of our asses and actually get into the fight and like change the system in a way, like where I feel like most of us are pretty complicit.

Like a lot of us, especially in Western America are very complicit with our lives in ways while other people are suffering. So it's a really deep question. I think of like, how do we actually get that world, that world of everybody having access to this? It's probably a question I'll like examine for the rest of my life, right, as someone in the space, as other healers and activists in the space of like, how do we actually get towards that?

What sort of discomforts do I actually need to embrace to get closer towards that?

[00:40:31] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah, I think it is a good question and the right question to be asking and the right problem to solve is. How do we design a world that works for everyone that really, truly can benefit everyone? And coming back to the great mystery, like we don't actually have to know the answers.

I think that's one of the obstacles is like, yeah, that's a nice dream. That's a great fantasy, but. How does that actually happen? And because we can't imagine how that's possible, we just disregard it as just pure fantasy, but it's really, we don't actually have to know all of the details. The most important thing is first.

The intention and the desire to design the world to work for everyone and having everything that we do around that focus, and then it's really just experimenting. Let's experiment and people have knowledge in all these different areas and it's going to take all of us with all of our unique knowledge and all of our unique skills.

For everyone who's followed their passion into studying this obscure thing and that obscure thing and this obscure thing to really work together to with the same goal. So it's this reorientation to me or that. Well, it's this massive paradigm shift. So I also do, uh, paradigm shifting coaching is what I call it because it's really does require a paradigm shift to be able to do this.

One of the biggest paradigm shifts is the box that we're all in that we don't even question. Like when we're inside of a paradigm, a worldview, a reality, we just. Take it for granted that it is the way that it is. We're just assume we just it is the way it is We don't question it and one of the biggest things that Paradigms that were our whole world is designed around right now is actually win lose And lose win, which is ultimately a lose lose situation.

So, like you were saying, like the top 2%, yes, maybe, you know, it'd be easy for them to be happy and to get their needs met. And that's often the assumption, right, that, that the people who are on top are the ones who are winning and everyone else is losing. And, and so the, the solutions that we come up with are.

Kind of like what you were saying, that the only way would be now for the people who are winning to start losing. And, you know, the people who are losing to start winning, like there would, it's still within this paradigm that of win, lose and lose, win. And so the whole, the paradigm shift is out of that whole mentality of scarcity.

That whole mentality of there's not enough for everyone, that it's not possible for everyone to actually have their needs met and be happy. That's all we've ever known is that there's people on top and then there's a revolt. The people who are. being oppressed gather together and they topple over the people who were in power.

And then the cycle just repeats itself again and again and again throughout all of history where the victims become the perpetrators and the perpetrators become the victims and then the victims become the perpetrators. And then the heroes try to come in and solve things too, but they're just, they're just making things work with every person on every side of every war.

thinks that they're the hero they think that they are the good guys. They're fighting for their, their safety of their loved ones, the safety of themselves, the safety of their country, the safety of their people, for their own, they're fighting for their own well being, they're fighting for their freedom, they're fighting for the things that they believe in.

Every single person on every side of every single war and conflict believes that that, that they are the heroes. And this whole pattern keeps perpetuating where it's just a continuous revolving people who are on the power downside go into the power upside and people on the upside go into the power downside.

But there's a totally different solution. And the different solution requires a radical shift. In consciousness, and it is win win, and it is something that, yeah, is going to be a, is a massive shift for how we normally think, because we don't think about things in terms, in those terms.

[00:45:45] Nicole: Yeah. Totally. I think what I think about with that is like, um, The ways that the patriarchy hurts men, right?

Like, yes, like the people who are, uh, men are suffering under that system too. But like the reality is the men had to give up power over literally everything. Right. So they did like, I just, I don't know if we can really get out of that. Like when you really think about the 1 percent and their ability to like.

Run life right now to such a degree that so many of us could never even fathom like there is going to have to be a loss of their power for the overall betterment of society. Right? I think right when we dismantle patriarchy, we're starting to see men cry and I think that's good. So I think like that loss of power that they have through the control is an overall good, but it is going to be some sort of loss, right?

Like, yeah. The 1 percent is going to need to lose and we are going to have to revolt to make that change. And I think they're going to go kicking and screaming and crying the whole fucking way, which is what they're doing, right? As many of us are getting angry and upset about the vast inequities of this world.

But I think, is it going to be for the better? Yes. Is it going to be into abundance? Yes, I think so. Because I think when you had mentioned that quote. Really, the word zest came from my studies of feminist psychology, which comes back to relationships, and so they would say that, like, good relationships give us the five good things, which I get a little, like, five, like, any sort of restriction, you know, like, there's probably more, but, uh, one of them being zest, like, this zest for life and how good relationships quite literally bring that together.

Yeah. life force for us. And so yeah, I feel like the people who are in bad relationships, whether it's to larger society, earth, right? Spirituality, the divine, you're not thriving when you're not in good relationships. And I think power over dynamics like that, I think those people are. Suffering to in their power up there, right?

Like the patriarchy. So I hear what you're saying. And I do think there's going to have to be a radical like revolt though for, and they're going to cry when you take that away. Right? Like, but you're right. It's a paradigm shifting of seeing like what's on the other side. I just don't think that that fight is going to go easy.

Literally look at the five day work week, like literally people died so that the people who own business says stopped requiring us to work seven days a week. And then they had to change. The, the labor that you were paid to compensate for that. Like if we go to anything like that, there's literally going to be bloodshed.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know how else to see it any other way, just because of how much power they really do have when we really think about the 1%. I don't know. I dream of a world where it's not like that, but I just don't know what the realities are of that lived experience. Yeah.

[00:48:35] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah.

[00:48:36] Nicole: I hate being the pessimist.

Fuck. You know,

[00:48:38] Jessica McDuffee: I think you're giving voice to all of our concerns. I mean, I definitely go there, too. Absolutely. And it's hard to maintain a sense of optimism and hope when it seems like these patterns are so deeply entrenched and so impossible to change. But I really truly think that it's because when we are trying to solve the problem within the paradigm that is creating.

The problem, no matter what solution we come up with, it's just going to recapitulate the problem. And so it is a radical shift into a new paradigm and to seeing something different, radically different that is possible, not doing it the same way, but doing it in a different way, which is. That every single person on the planet is inherently valuable and has inherent worth just for being who they are, whether they are a billionaire or, you know, a criminal or a poor person, or, you know, An ideal citizen, I don't know, whatever, every person on every from the top to the bottom throughout all of society from the lowest to the low to the highest to the high and everything and everyone in between has inherent worth and has inherent value and that.

We have a shared humanity, we have a shared humanity and a shared needs around our basic needs and for love, for emotional, spiritual, physical needs. And so it's really a radical shift into valuing every life. And so it doesn't make sense from the new paradigm that we would want to harm anyone. That we would need bloodshed, that what it would require people to be in pain, it would be the exact opposite.

How can we do this? Not just the outcome, not just the outcome of, you know, we think that through war and through violence and through revolt in these violent ways that somehow someday that's going to bring us to peace. That somehow, someday that's going to bring us to more equality. And yet the goal is the path.

Like there's a quote, there's no way to peace. Peace is the way. Yeah. The new paradigm, the new way of doing things is that the path is the goal. And so if we want peace, we practice peace. If we want love, we practice love. If we want compassion, we practice compassion. If we want generosity, we practice generosity and kindness.

All of these things, the goal is the path. And so the new way of doing things isn't a violent way. It isn't a way that is about tearing other people down so that now you can be on top. It's about finding our commonality and our common shared humanity and shared deep needs, not superficial needs for Amazon package being delivered tomorrow.

We're talking about our deep needs that we all share.

[00:52:22] Nicole: Yeah.

[00:52:23] Jessica McDuffee: And we can meet those deep needs. And when those deeper needs are being met, a lot of the superficial stuff falls away. It's not as important. That's not where the happiness is,

[00:52:36] Nicole: right? Be found. Totally. I agree. I feel like the more you have like thriving relationships, connection to land, the less you're wanting of capitalism and the goods, you know, the pretty bag of symbol and status or whatever the car, you know, I guess I just like.

Yeah, because I don't want to, I don't want violence either. I guess I just try to like, think about the realities of like, I'm not a pacifist if someone's attacking me, right? Like, I'm going to fight back. Um, I don't want to lead with that, but if I'm starting to be assaulted on the street, I'm going to scream and fight back and hit that person.

And I think that's where the interesting conversations of climate change start, right? Like, Oh, like, our world is being actively harmed actively, like. Attacked. So what does it mean to have to respond to that? Right? I do think that's really an interesting space to where people think about, um, like violence, violence is occurring to the earth.

And so what does it mean to respond back, especially when you're not being listened to in ways of the government being broken and that not being effective enough? I again, I don't have the answers to these problems. I just like, you know, I'm just sitting here feeling it and just Just thinking about like, yeah, what does, I don't want it to be violent, but if they're not listening, what do you do?

Right? So, I mean, amen. That's why I started a podcast and I have conversations. That's my path, right? Is here is my pessimism piece, right? Like let's talk, let's talk, let's get excited. Think about it together and move that so that we don't have to have the bloodshed. Um, and cause that's not what I want, but yeah, what happens when you're repeatedly being attacked?

Um, I, I think it will be very interesting to see how this like monopoly game, particularly of capitalism, as we continue to get towards like the last rounds, you know, where if you've played, you start to see, oh, like someone has all the money. Oh, oh, this is not fun no more, you know? Like, so, and I think part of this conversation too, is very like large scale and I've.

In my, in my work, I noticed that, like, sometimes when I do this large scale conversation, like we mentioned earlier, I start to go into the, uh, fight, right? Fight, flight, fall, and freeze. I'm in trauma right now. I don't know what to do. These systems are so large. I don't know what to do. So I'm thinking maybe it'd be helpful to come back to, like, the grounding of our, of our, like, local and community base.

Like, what does it mean to come back into sacred pleasure and work on a local version so that we can kind of, like, stay within at least what's within our control right now?

[00:55:10] Jessica McDuffee: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, two things come to mind. One is that I think you're absolutely right. It is very important to have it grounded into what can we do now?

What is, what is like a step that we can take in the right direction? And I think it is very important to have the big conversations to open up new possible ways of seeing things in a really vast, from a really vast view, from a really different perspective. Reality from a very different perspective. And so feet on the ground action wise, it comes back to design and having an experimental mindset and being willing to not know.

Okay, don't know. Here we are right now with the world we're living in and the amount of extreme pain and suffering and poverty and despair and violence in our world and being able to see a vision of what is possible because if we can't even see it, if we can't even imagine it, we can't even hold that in our mind.

Nervous system and in our being, you know, it's very unlikely that we're going to move in that direction. And so yes, this is the arc of healing. Let's acknowledge where we're at right now. This is what this is. This is the path. Let's acknowledge where we're at right now. What is the truth in our own life?

What is causing us suffering right now in our own life? And how are we creating suffering for other people? In our life, and how are they creating suffering for us? How can we be on, have those honest conversations, but without the shame and the blame, because that is not, we think we need shame and blame to learn like that's the sweetheart message underneath that is if somebody's hurt and it gets punished enough, then they'll learn their lesson and they'll stop doing that bad behavior. If I punish myself enough, then I'll learn my lesson and I'll stop doing this, my bad behavior. But that shame and that blame and that punishment keeps the cycle perpetuating itself.

And so. Instead, we can learn without that and actually we can learn much more because it's safe to actually look and be honest, you know, that's the acknowledgement piece. Like you're saying what they're not listening. They're not, they're not hearing us. Right. And so how can we make it safer? How can we make it safer to have the honest conversations about what is causing suffering in our own life and in our world?

Ends. How do we begin to do the repair that's necessary? How do we make amends? How do we heal? How do we acknowledge the harm that's been done and that we've done? And repair that. And it can be as large scale as you want, because it's the same process, whether it's you're working on your relationship to yourself, you're working on your relationship with your partner or your child or your parent or your boss.

How can we repair that? How can we find forgiveness? Through love and compassion and understanding and reconnect with the goodness in each other to actually see that, to look for the positive intent behind our dysfunctional behavior of acting out in the stress response of fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

Right. How can we see that? As something that has kept us safe and something to appreciate, not, you know, and to recognize the harm that it causes, not to ignore that or deny that, but to also see the sweetheart message behind it. What is the positive intent there and then get creative? How can we get that need met for safety?

How can we get that need met for love and connection in a new way, in a different way? And then this is where the create the experimental mindset, the growth mindset, they're calling it the progress paradigm is what we call it. My husband and I, he's writing a book about it and contrasting it with the punishment paradigm.

Sure. And The punishment paradigm is kind of the way in which we go about doing a lot of things. We motivate ourself through fear and pain and punishment. Yeah. And it's in all of our systems in society. It's in, we've internalized it and it's in our relationships and it's, you know, a larger scale in our society, in our world.

And there's a new way. Is the progress paradigm and there are principles guiding principles that my husband outlines in his book that give us direction of. Okay, this has got like eight anti principles of the punishment paradigm, and it's a way of doing things in a stressful way. We do things in this way, and it leads to stress.

This is part of the acknowledgement. Okay, when we go about life in this way or relating in this way, way. This creates pain and suffering. And when we go about it in this other way, it creates joy and aliveness and vitality and a deep win win a sacred pleasure. That's not just a superficial pleasure, but a deep soul enlivening pleasure of Having the freedom to be our full, authentic self and having the freedom to express ourself and to follow our joys and follow our passions and follow our heart, reconnecting to the part in all of us that wants.

To be happy and wants other people to be happy at the deepest level when we can really get through all wade through all of the garbage and are all not garbage, but all of the protective mechanisms and really get to a core place in our heart that. It does have a deep love for all of humanity and start to design, start to create from that place, start to make decisions in our life.

And then our relationships from that place and how we talk to ourself and how we talk to our partners, our kids, our, you know, our bosses, our employees, our everyone in our life. Um, yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:58] Nicole: Yeah, yeah. I, a couple of things I was thinking about were like, and starting that we go to the body, right? When you're in the fight, flight, fawn, freeze, where's your breath at?

How shallow is it, right? Or are you breathing into that belly? And if you start there, We can at least work from bottom up processing to slow down and be present. And when you are sitting with that person across from you, like you said, assuming good intent, right? And sometimes that can be hard. And then remembering hurt people, hurt people, and then going even further, like, okay, I'm really struggling right now.

I'm trying to now see this adult human. As maybe their younger self that hurting inner child and sometimes that makes it a little bit easier for me to connect with of like, okay, yes, I can see where this is coming from. And then from there, we're moving in a different space. Now we're interacting differently.

Um, and of course, there's space for self protection. If your boundaries aren't met and met and met, you do have to enact that, but what does it mean for us to slow down enough so that we can start from an embodied space of assuming good intent? My brain's thinking, um, nonviolent communication, great book, plug that, right?

Like, how do we actually start from that space of embodiment so that we can assume the best intent? And how, yeah, how, what a different world it would be. So many of us hear something and immediately, oh, they're trying to attack me, they're this, or that, let me yell back, right? What a different world it would be to just slow down enough and have some curiosity first.

Again, if they are attacking you, we can use boundaries and step back. However, many of us leap, right? Particularly if you've had past experiences where relationships have patterned that, where you need to leap faster because maybe that person did do that in the past. So like, new opportunity, jump, right?

Versus, okay, I'm gonna take this deep breath. What did you mean by that? Before I make assumptions, I'm curious, what did you mean by that? Oof! Different world. Different world.

[01:04:03] Jessica McDuffee: Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

[01:04:09] Nicole: Yeah. And then trusting the ripples of that, right? Like trusting the ripples of like, again, the large scale stuff, so hard, so hard, not for us to give up, but sometimes it can feel literally outside of our control.

And so the ability to trust that like, your community needs you, right? Like Our communities need us to have this level of embodiment so that we can love and show up and the ways that that sort of relational holding can ripple out. Maybe you are that first friend that is modeling that to someone. You know, typically what ends up happening is it's in the therapy room, right?

Or a healer, a spiritual healer who can kind of hold that. But the more that we can actively do that, oof. Oh, I see that future world. I do. I do see that future world.

[01:04:56] Jessica McDuffee: Yes, yes. Good, good. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing, right? Like, we don't know what the future holds, but our minds do have the capacity to kind of Uh, weave possibilities for the future based on pattern recognition.

And so when we think about the future and we project our view of the future based on the information that we are, um, Sorting for in our own mind. So if we're sorting for looking for all the negative intent and all of the bad things, and that's all I think all that we're seeing. That's all we can see.

And we think about that. And we, we look and get all of the examples because there's so many examples. Everybody knows, like, all everybody can go there.

[01:05:51] Nicole: Right.

[01:05:51] Jessica McDuffee: And you project that you weave that into the future. You project that into the future. Oh, if we keep going in this direction, we keep doing the same things that we've been doing.

It's going to lead to mass destruction and, you know, just more horror and misery and pain and violence. But the opposite is true, too, what you just, you just glimpsed that you just, you just got into the experiential sense of what it's like to do things in a different way, in a radically different way.

And as you start thinking about, we can do things in a radically different way, and you start weaving that into the future. And it's like, oh, right. If we all keep, if we all like do these various. things that weaves a very different future that creates a very different future for humanity that is moving in the direction of win win, a deep win win of everyone's needs being taken care of.

You said hurt people hurt others. And so if we really, really, really understand that, it doesn't make sense to hurt people who are hurt. It doesn't make any sense at all to hurt people who are hurt.

[01:07:14] Nicole: Right. It's, it's, yeah. If that hurt person is trying to hurt me though, that's where it gets tricky, right? It does.

Right. Am being assaulted on the street. I'm gonna bite back. And that's where like I'm trying to walk this ground of like, literally what does it mean to live in this world of like hurt people, hurt people. And when do we come back with actual violence for self defense? Like, Oh, what a complex, I feel like we're like really like writing that line of like Yeah.

The new paradigm of what does it mean to put predominantly love forward as the step when we know the system is so broken, when we know hurt people hurt people, and use violence as the last resort of, you know, because you have to, you have to, right? And so that. But like, oh, yeah, so many years of that being the forward foot.

What does it mean to make a back foot of of of last last, you know, pieces? I just get worried about the like super like Pollyanna, like we can just love everybody into the world and like,

[01:08:17] Jessica McDuffee: I don't know.

[01:08:18] Nicole: I do believe in that. I do believe

[01:08:21] Jessica McDuffee: embodied, embodied. Yeah, I think it comes back to what you're pointing to, though, and how you were able to start seeing.

The possible world could look like when you were thinking about it in this way, because it really is about embodying these new principles. So just a brief overview of the eight principles that my husband's writing about in his book, which is called the joy of doing how to make work work for everyone.

Um, so it's very specifically applying these eight principles, you know, broadly as a philosophical. You know, thing that can be applied to all aspects of life on this large scale, but also specifically, how do we make work so we don't, we're not having the Sunday scaries that work is actually something that can be in soul enlivening instead of soul sucking, right?

It's how we do everything. It's how we relate to everything. So the first principle is. Instead of forcing ourselves and others to do things, we are increasing our sense of choice. And so it's a non forcing approach, and this is a radical shift, but it's something we can start to embody, something we can start to practice within ourself on a very small, moment to moment scale of Getting out of this paradigm of forcing, always forcing ourself and not listening, not actually honoring and respecting somebody's no, not honoring and respecting somebody's autonomy, not honoring, respecting our own.

No. When our body, when our mind or our soul or spirit is saying, no, don't do that. Don't go in that direction. And we override that. And we try to force that. that instead practicing, listening to ourself and respecting our own no. In fact, enthusiastically welcoming our no and enthusiastically welcoming other people's no, because that's the feedback we need to.

Develop our internal GPS, which is our guidance, our guidance system based on the nose and based on our full enthusiastic yeses. And so that's really the most fun. One of the most fundamental things, too, is the switch out of like a half to forcing mode into actually don't have to. We actually have choice.

We actually can say no. We can actually do something different. And then the second principle is the anti principle is deleting the possibility. So not even seeing that anything else is possible. Just the only way we can do it is through violence, or the only way we can do it is somebody wins and somebody else loses.

And Instead, the principle of seeing, seeing the possibilities, opening up to more possibilities, being willing to step outside of the box of what, how things have always been done, even if they've been done, that's all we've ever known. We can still step out of the box and see something else that's possible.

We can see and envision a better world and a better way of doing things that is deeply honoring and respectful of everyone's consent and autonomy. And. see that we could create a world that would be in alignment with that and deeply respectful and beneficial for everyone. And then the third thing is, um, the anti principle is taking in the bad.

So it's that always scanning for the bad in life and assuming negative intent. And that creates a whole different way of relating like you were describing so perfectly. And the opposite being taking in the good and being able to see the positive intent, but also being able to take in the good of life.

Like how we started this conversation with taking in the beauty that's all around us. And we always, instead of just take only taking in the bad, the taking, learning how to build that muscle and take in the good and see the beauty in ourselves and each other and the world and in the divine. And the fourth one is, The anti principle is to deny failure and ignore feedback and punish mistakes.

And so, that's what we tend to do. We tend to not want to acknowledge when we've caused harm or other people have caused harm. We want to be like, you know, put our fingers in our ears, nah, nah, nah, not listen, you know, don't want to look, don't look that way, don't, don't talk about that, you know. But instead, the principle Would be to transform failure into feedback through this process of acknowledging the truth and forgiving and learning and iterating and improving and just making it safe to fail because we all fail and we're going to fail a bazillion times as we try to create a better world and we've already failed a bazillion times, you know, it's like, okay, let's just acknowledge Transcribed How far we've come taken the good at least a little bit to like we have actually made progress.

I think people forget that, but we have we have made progress and it's not highlighted in the news, but there have made tremendous progress and we can continue to make progress. We can continue to iterate and improve. And if it's safe to fail, if we're not severely punished for our failures, but it's it.

Okay, to experiment and to try things. Oh, okay. That didn't work. Let's be honest about what the results were and learn from that. Forgive ourselves. This doesn't helpful to beat ourselves up or beat each other up and punish ourselves. It just gets in the way of our learning. So if the whole goal is to learn and to get better and to improve so we can create a better world, like that is essential.

And then, The next anti principle is making it hard work. We have such an orientation in our world towards things having to be hard. Life has to be hard. Life has to be so painful. We're also kind of touching on this in the beginning of our conversation or, and The principle, the new principle would be to make the difficult easy.

It doesn't mean that we just skate by in life. We don't do anything that's hard because challenge. We all love a challenge. Actually. It's kind of exciting, right? To do something that's challenging and really requires you to. Have all of your courage and all of your resources and all of your strength and to grow like it's exciting and interesting to challenge ourself.

But when we make it so hard and so painful, we're not very successful, right? We just get we create all these obstacles. And so part of user experience design is recognizing that. We can be so much more successful when we design for ease and enjoyment, so we can actually accomplish what we want to accomplish.

Like, what if we could accomplish creating a better world that is more peaceful and more equitable and more based on win win for everyone, but we didn't do it in a hard way. That's the old paradigm, doing it in a hard way, in a painful way, in a violent way. That's the old paradigm, punishment paradigm. The new way is finding a way, even if we don't know how yet, finding, experimenting, finding a way to do it.

In a way that is peaceful, that is loving, that is kind, that is healing to all of our deep wounds. It's getting to the root of the problem and making the difficult easy so we can make this process of making our life better, making the world better, easier and more enjoyable. And then the sixth anti principle is doing everything all at once.

This is where we often get caught to, and especially with world problems, big, big stuff. It's like, it's never going to be so overwhelmed. We're trying to take it all on at once. Like we have to figure it all out right now. But if we expand our sense of time and we think, start thinking about things in deep time, in generations, And we think about how far we've come in generations, and we think about how far we can go so that future generations are born into a totally, radically different world.

Like, that motivates me. Maybe we make a little progress right now, but that's great! At least we're not going in the keep going in the direction that's causing more pain and suffering. We've at least stopped. That's progress. Turn around. That's progress. Start taking a tiny little step in the right direction.

That's progress. And so we do one little thing at a time. We take one little step at a time. That's moving towards more peace. That's moving towards more love and kindness and compassion for everyone. This expanded sense and circle of care to extend to the entire world and to the entire cosmos and to every single part of ourself.

And we don't have to do it all at once. And then the, the seventh principle is, the anti principle is doing it alone. We think we have to do it alone, like it's all up to us and the weight of the world is on our shoulders and we'll never be able to do it. It seems impossible, right, if we think about having to do it alone.

But we don't. The, the new way and the progress paradigm is that we do it together. We seek support. We can absolutely do it together. We can make so much more progress together. And we're not alone. When we get into contact with the deepest desires of our heart, we all want to be happy and safe and free to be ourself and to be loved and to be able to share our, pursue our gifts and share our gifts with the world and have that wanted and appreciated.

And. A benefit to the whole world. We want that, like, and we can support each other in doing that. And then the last principle, the anti principle, is dominate or be dominated. This is the win lose or lose win paradigm of only thinking it can be one way or the other. And the new paradigm of optimizing for win win.

Even if we don't know how to do it, we don't know how to do it. We don't have a lot of practice doing things that way. But we can experiment with all these other principles in place through honoring people's consent, through really having a choice. Through seeing all the see the possibilities through being able to take in the good and the pleasure and the beauty of life and to be able to have it be safe to fail and make mistakes and to just try things and to keep iterating and improving and learning and growing.

And it's an ongoing process. It's not going to end. There's no end to it. No end to how good it can fucking be. I'm sorry. You can curse in this space.

Go for it. It can be so ridiculously good. And so we can learn how to stand that much goodness and move in the direction and move through whatever, heal whatever needs to be healed so that we can hold that much goodness in our life and create that much goodness in the world.

And we can make the difficult easy. We can start to optimize and make the things that are really hard easier through that experimentation and we can, we don't have to do it all at once and we don't have to do it alone. We can do it together and we can do it in a way that benefits all that's my vision for the world.

That's what my practice. My work is all about is awakening.

[01:20:36] Nicole: Yeah, beautiful.

I really appreciate you sharing that with me and all of the listeners. I feel like there's so much there to really like. Think and reflect on and integrate into their lives of how we create this new future, this world together. I really appreciate you including those.

And I, yeah, love for people to get curious about like, what does it mean to start incorporating those into their lives? I think, uh, it's a very important piece to include for the listeners to like, take that next step in terms of the ripples.

[01:21:09] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just embodying it. I think that's the way, that's the way that we can do it.

That's what everyone has the power to do, is to embody these principles. Um, and that that, yeah, absolutely has a ripple effect. It helps heal the past. It helps heal the present, and it helps heal the future.

[01:21:32] Nicole: Yeah. So beautiful. Mm. Well, I want to take a deep breath with you, so I'm going to take that,

and I know we're coming towards the end of our time, so I want to check in with you and see if there was anything else that you wanted to share with the listeners, otherwise I have a closing question that I can guide us towards.

[01:21:56] Jessica McDuffee: Uh, you can go with the closing question.

[01:21:58] Nicole: Okay, Jessica. So the closing question that I ask every guest on the show is.

What is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?

[01:22:10] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah, my answer to this question is, I wish everyone knew that it was normal to not be normal.

[01:22:20] Nicole: Anarchist check

[01:22:21] Jessica McDuffee: yes. But I think that this is actually how we heal and awaken together is through the celebration of our diversity. And it's going beyond the goal of normal to uh, The goal of authentic expression and celebration of diversity.

Because in my view, there is no normal, there is no normal that everyone is different. Like that is the most exquisite thing, in my opinion, about. Life, like the magic and mystery of life is that not even two snowflakes are the same, let alone two humans, like there will never be another person just like you that was, has all of your lived experience and rich history and https: otter.

ai Everybody's unique gender and shape and size and color and, you know, just the richness and vastness of diversity, I think, is the most beautiful thing in the entire world. And so my, my wish would be that we go beyond the goal of normal and we go come into this place of celebration of diversity and that our difference isn't a threat.

Our difference isn't something to hide or to be ashamed of or to punish and others or to repress, but it's something to. Like support and empower and cultivate because it's our own diversity and listening to our own hearts and our own path and our own peculiar callings that is exactly what the world needs.

It's exactly what the world needs in order to heal. Like you are the medicine that the world needs in order to heal. And so, yeah, I would hope that it would be normal in the sense of just commonplace that we are all supporting each other and being our full, authentic, unique, diverse expression and loving and honoring and appreciating everybody else's unique, diverse expression.

That would be my wish.

[01:24:56] Nicole: Hell yeah. I love a good anarchist who deconstructs the question and says, no, no normal. And I say, good job. So you're in line with all of the anarchists. So absolutely. And yeah, I really appreciate you like sharing your vision, sharing your sacred pleasure and all the different ways that.

Uh, the listeners, myself, we can continue to meditate on what it means to step into this next version of both ourselves on the individual and the collective.

[01:25:26] Jessica McDuffee: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nicole. Such a great conversation. I really appreciate it.

[01:25:33] Nicole: Yeah. Such a joy. And I want to hold space for you to plug too for the listener who's connected with you, wants to work with you.

Where can they find your stuff?

[01:25:42] Jessica McDuffee: Okay. Yeah. Just my website, my name, jessicamcduffy. com and I do paradigm shifting coaching. So help people with this paradigm shift in their own life, um, so that we can create a world that works for everyone. And I've created a process called. Awakening together through collaborative dreaming so we can dream a better world into existence and heal and awaken together.

Um, so yeah, that's the work that I do.

[01:26:14] Nicole: Great. So I'll have all that link below for the listeners. They can just click in the show notes. So thank you, Jessica. It was such a pleasure to have you. If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. And head on over to modernanarchypodcast.

com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode. I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.