Why Chasing Success Drains You More Than Failure
Emily Aarons
(YouTube Transcript)
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (00:03): Emily, welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast.
Emily Aarons (00:07): Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to dive into this conversation today.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (00:12): I'm so excited to have you here and I'm so curious about so many things having done the research about you. But the first thing I want to ask you about is your farm because I know that when I read your bio, which is so amazing, and then I get to the end and it said, and she also lives on a hobby farm with her husband, her boys and animals. So tell me a little bit more about the farm, where it is and how guys decided that you wanted to live on a farm.
Emily Aarons (00:41): Well, I will say it was initially my husband's dream to have a farm. And so we got together about 13 years ago and our first day he came to my house with a little tomato plant that he grew, a half a dozen of his own chicken eggs from his hens, and head of lettuce that he grew. And I was already like, okay, I like this guy.
Emily Aarons (01:02): And he was my next down the street neighbor. He lived a quarter mile down the road from me and used to ride his bicycle to my house. and he grew giant pumpkins in his backyard in a city that nobody has a yard. And if you do, you definitely don't grow giant vegetables. And so I always knew when we were looking to buy a house together, that he wanted land, he wanted property to have a farm.
And I was like, great, also can the house be in this century because we live in New England and there's some very old antique houses that are essentially like a couple of sticks tacked together. So, we found this house and it's in this town that his grandparents had a home here.
And at the time it was like a summer camp that they would go out into the middle of nowhere and have this beautiful little house. Now it's more populated, but not that much. And we have two stoplights in our town. And we got to this house, and the house is beautiful, but there was this big open field and it was the middle of winter about 10 years ago. And we happened to have had the worst winter with record-breaking snowfall, and it would all freeze, and then more snow on top of it.
So we feet of frozen rock hard snow. So you really couldn't see all that this property had. But when we got here, his mind just was blown, and he already had visions for what he wanted to build. And we moved, we built a farm here. I was pregnant, so I'm up on a ladder, super pregnant, holding poles, he's putting up fencing, we're getting baby chicks, we're like having babies, we're planting seeds. And I remember by the time my first kid was old enough to eat food, I had grown and harvested a butternut squash to cook for him to eat. And I was like, mind blown. I've grown food for my baby. This is amazing. And so it's kind of just continue to evolve over the years.
I've hosted yoga mimosa brunches in the backyard so people can sit with the chickens and the ducks and do yoga and walk around the garden. And I don't do those anymore, then we have goats and people are always like, well, why do you have the goats? Do you milk them? And we're like, no, they're like dogs with hooves. That's just fun to have. And about a year ago, I got into baking my own sourdough bread.
So that's like a whole another venture. So I do a lot of fun things that are about growing our own food and sustainability. And I love gifting people my own homemade jams and our vegetables and things like that. And my husband does still grow giant pumpkins in this past fall, he grew and sold 17 giant pumpkins over anywhere between 200 and 800 pounds, which is a lot of pumpkins. Yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (03:43): Wow. I love pumpkins, so I think I'll have to get some of those pumpkins, but that sounds so amazing. So looking back, I know that you started in the wellness space very young. Actually, I couldn't believe it. I was like, is that a typo? She started her wellness clinic at center at the age of 22. Going back life that you're living right now to when you first started, share a little bit about your journey. What possessed you to start a wellness center at the age of 22?
Emily Aarons (04:13): The funny thing saying it and me answering this question, at the time, I thought I was behind.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (04:23): Wow, what did you think you were behind?
Emily Aarons (04:25): Because my friends had started college or some of them had graduated from associate degrees. ⁓ behind. I went a different route. They went to college right after high school. And in high school, I remember thinking at our five-year reunion, I'm gonna be a business owner. And I was always entrepreneurial growing up. I always knew I wanted to have something that helped people.
Emily Aarons (04:51): As a teenager, I was into weird like astrology natural healing and like psychic abilities. It was like the writing was on the wall. So it was just a matter of me pursuing that and realizing this is what I wanna do and I wanna help people in this way. And so when I had my business at 22, I was the youngest out of the partners that I had started it with. I, as a 22 year old, I wrote the business plan that also ended up winning a student business plan competition.
Like I didn't know how much business acumen I actually possessed. And then I later started college. I was already running my own business full-time. Then I became a full-time college student making Dean's List and graduating the top of my class. And I was literally learning business management in school, applying it to the business that I was running, learning press releases.
Writing press releases for the business that I was running. And so a lot of it, as many entrepreneurs know, it's kind of a blur when you're just figuring out like one foot in front of the other. And where I've come in this journey of doing it now for 25 years, like, I mean, I can't even believe because I really started right out of high school. I really started my entrepreneur journey out of high school and
This has been more than half of my life at this point. This is all that I really knowing. I've had some stints in corporate jobs, working for other people, but the majority of my time I've been a business owner. And I can definitely say the climate has changed. When I started, massage, energy healing, Reiki, breath work, it was not a thing. It was very like non-mainstream.
Nobody really understood it. Like they could understand what a massage was, but all the other stuff was very fringe and really outside of the realm of normal conversation. Today, I can talk about energy. I can talk about intuition. I can talk about shockers. I can talk about vibes. I can talk about crystals. And everyone's like, yeah, next. Like, how does it get weirder than this? And so I can have weirder, deeper conversations that I couldn't have had 20 plus years ago, it is more mainstream.
And the part about social media has really broadened reach because when I was starting my business, I was doing like old school, let me print this thing on a piece of paper and put it on your windshield or in your coffee shop. Businesses starting in the last decade, like you don't understand, even last 15 years, you don't understand
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (07:22)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (07:30)
the pain that we used to go through to try to get a reach locally or even beyond our local reach, that social media just takes that completely out, which it's lowered the barrier of entry. A lot of people with an internet access are like, I'm a business owner, I'm a business coach, I'm a leader, I'm a healer, I'm whatever. So folks like me who've been around a while are like, excuse me, I don't know if you are qualified actually.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (07:41)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (07:56)
Part of what I'm learning how to do is to stop proving that I'm different, better than other people and just living as proof that we can thrive and do wonderful things and be successful when we're in alignment, when we're really trusting our gut, when we're really doing what makes us happy.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (08:15)
Yeah, it's really interesting because even within the last couple of years now with the AI tools, in addition to the internet, in addition to lowering the barriers to entry, it's just become so much easier to really run a business professionally with more profit, less expenses, because you could do a lot of these things on your own. There's globalization. You can find virtual all over the world.
Emily Aarons (08:31)
Yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (08:40)
So starting out of high school, I just have to say that's pretty amazing. And the fact that you knew what you were going to do, how did the business evolve? What were some of the early services that you did? And then you said, there's energetic work, breath work, there's somatic. So even within the last few years, somatics has become more common. So what was that evolution of services from what you originally offered how it expanded over time?
Emily Aarons (08:52)
Mm-hmm.
I had my brick and mortar, it was primarily in-person healing. Massage, energy work, polarity therapy, acupuncture, aesthetics, yoga. And at the time, I also cultivated a networking group for other local practitioners. And so I was always in this
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (09:09)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Aarons (09:24)
business of like gathering people together and networking. I never saw my neighbors as competition. I always just wanted to be this collective of how can we refer. I used to dream of a one day I'm gonna have a brick and mortar where we house all the specialists under one roof and we can internally refer so people can get exactly what they need for their healing And now, so I've been in the online business
almost 10 years. And when I transitioned into online business, that was mind blowing. Because while I was formally trained in advanced energy work, where you don't have to physically touch somebody to move their energy, I knew I could do it because I had been doing it for a decade or so. But I had not done it online. And so I started to
certification Records, and part of the certification was doing 50 practice sessions, virtually. And so that was my first I can do this thing on Zoom. And then I had my in-person clients still. So I still did it with them in person. And then I was like, well, if I can do it for somebody on Zoom, I can really help people anywhere in the world. And if I can help
one person, I did this thing in my brick and mortar where I would have like six patients at once and I would do this virtual group healing for them. And I was like, well, I wonder if I could do that virtually in a group. Then I did that and it worked. And then I started to think, I wonder if I could record these energy healings that I'm doing with individuals, but pre-record it if it would be as potent and powerful as a pre-recorded energy healing.
And so I started to play with that and I would give it to my business friends or people who I was in masterminds with it's probably gonna be a waste of your time, but it's eight minutes. Would you just give me eight minutes of your time? Like, listen, let me know what you think. Give me your feedback, be honest. My voice is probably terrible. It's probably not gonna work. I don't know. I was like so self-deprecating. And they would listen to my meditations and go, I feel so much better.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (11:22)
Yeah
Emily Aarons (11:28)
I am so alive right now. I just attracted a new patient. I just made 10 grand without even blinking. I just made another sale. I just attracted a new customer. All of these crazy results kept coming in and I'm like, well then I will keep doing that then. And so it shifted from my brick and mortar, that one-to-one model into the online one-to-many. I would have
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (11:45)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (11:56)
⁓ at the time, think it was like Facebook group that I had tens of thousands of people in and I would host energy healings. And then I would have a group program and then I would do a course and then I do another group program. And it was just like bam. And everything just kept getting bigger and blowing up. And at the time, that was really my goal was to scale and just to keep scaling. And my first year in online business, I scaled 10X.
And then I was like, well, that's cool. Let's keep scaling. And so 3X, 2X, 3X, every year, year after year, until about three years ago where I was like, I don't think this is sustainable anymore. This is too much. It's taking too much. It's costing too much. This is all just like not feeling good anymore. And so a few years ago, I actually started to scale back. Instead of scaling up, I started to realize I was really burnt out.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (12:42)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (12:51)
I didn't really love what I was doing anymore. I didn't really love the folks who I was serving anymore. And it just wasn't scratching the itch like it used to. And I evolved, all this work that you have to do on yourself to create external success, I had become a different person in the process. So from 22 to even 42, it was like, okay, there's so much that
is evolved and changed and how I view myself, my own self confidence, my belief in myself, the evolution of business and online business. But ironically, which I know you didn't ask this, but I'm gonna say it, ironically, I feel like the future, because you mentioned AI and yes, AI is coming for you all, like it's coming for us. It's taking jobs now, it's gonna be taking jobs within the next couple of years.
The world is changing rapidly and you better be ready. And I also feel there's this calling back to go back to the way it used to be, to go back in person, to get back in community, to get back with our authenticity and not this perfectly polished brand with the perfect messaging, but like maybe some typos once in a while. Maybe we just share like our messy middle and our process a little bit.
And I feel like that's what's coming. I think we've been from this side, we've come here, and I feel like we're gonna be making a little bit of a shift in our future.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (14:20)
Yeah, I'm with I know personally, I want to continue. I love using tools to make life easier. And there's a ⁓ really great way and purpose to do it. But I don't like it's not going to replicate me. I would never want it to put to pose as me. And I think that from an energetic perspective, AI doesn't have that it's not human. doesn't have a soul.
Emily Aarons (14:27)
Yeah.
Mm.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (14:44)
It doesn't have the essence of who we are. And I think that you're right. People are seeking deeper connection, real conversations, more authenticity, a little bit of the imperfection that makes us human. The fact that we have to say, is this real or isn't it real? Yeah, I don't like that. And so I think that people are looking for us to be in our human state, not to be perfect. And I think that's what really starts is going to resonate.
Emily Aarons (14:57)
Mm.
No.
Mm.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (15:13)
And for many people, it's already starting to happen. So I'm glad you brought that up. Now you mentioned something that I think is also really important is that as practitioners, it's so important that we do the work that we continue to make sure that we have the energy that we keep our frequency high, that we are doing all of the practices are the devotion that we need. So what are some of the things that you do for yourself? And especially because you said that you could found yourself starting to get burned out. So what did you do to
Emily Aarons (15:25)
Mm.
yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (15:42)
to fix that and to bring yourself back to a place where you feel like you could hold space for others.
Emily Aarons (15:48)
was such a gift when I look at it in hindsight. In the moment of feeling that and struggling with low energy, not sleeping well, skin irritation, my hair falling out, weight gain, like all of that, that I was like, what is actually happening? That caused me to look at my world, my whole ecosystem very differently.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (15:51)
Mm.
Emily Aarons (16:12)
To see how I could start nourishing myself back into whole health. And so I went from different supplements to help address my adrenal fatigue, my stress, hormonal imbalances, making sure that my food was really clean, which I'm always eating very clean, which is annoying because people who cut out soda and they lose 50 pounds and I'm like, come on, I wish I had something that I could cut out and just drop that kind of weight. Not that I
think of myself as overweight, but I have a very healthy, very clean lifestyle. I don't drink. So adding things into my field that helped me to feel stronger, better, hypnosis, meditation, walking outside in nature, earthing, cold plunging, not cold plunging, saunas. You name it, I was doing it, but what I really think shifted everything for me
was redefining success. What does success look and feel like for me? Because like I mentioned, scaling and growth and exponential numbers growing on numbers on numbers was what I used to look at as successful. And shifting that into, well actually, how can I have more joy? How can I have more fun and more play in my life? And so that became a new measure of success. If I had
a quiet morning walking my dogs in the woods or even in the neighbor's backyard, which we have access to like 30 acres in my backyard. So it's amazing to be able to walk that every single day. Have I had time, quality time with my kids? Not I'm in the same room with them and I'm responding to work emails and not even in the conversation wholeheartedly. Being able to really do the practices that I want to do like,
exercising, but doing workouts that I really love doing, not because I have to, because I get to. I mean, I just listed a number of things that I did to help me through burnout. But I think it's part of that is just finding my joy again, having that unbridled joy, finding my fun again, because I think we all become too adulty sometimes. And we take ourselves so seriously, and we get so focused And we the whole point of this is not
just to stack coins, but to really enjoy ourselves and really grow as people. And I think that having fun is a really big part of my day to day. And there are days where I'm like in it, I'm anxious or I'm stressed out and will literally put myself on time out. I'll go outside, go walk, go look at some things in nature, play with my dogs, something funny, shift my energy and just come back. Like, okay, don't take yourself so seriously.
Just relax a little bit, have some fun.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (18:49)
I love everything that you just said. And I too went through this period in my life where I made big changes, ⁓ moving from corporate into entrepreneurship. But it really began with the questions of like, what do I really want? Because you can be very successful building a life that you thought that you wanted that was based on others expectations, your and authority, your boss, whoever it is.
Emily Aarons (19:03)
Yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (19:15)
And yet still get to the point where you just think, I don't love this. what is wrong here? So when you redefine success and you shared fun, obviously that's one of them, but what are some of the values that you still hold today as being really an identifier of like, if I am true and honest to these values, I know that I'm living in alignment.
Emily Aarons (19:38)
Well, one of them for sure is integrity. And that has always been like my number one core value. And to be able to not have a front of my image on social media, and it's totally in conflict with who I am behind the camera. So there's always that, authenticity that comes throughout, whether it's in my personal life or my brand, to just be fully myself and to share that.
Another value that I recently unveiled for myself is really impact. And being a positive impact in the world is one thing through my coaching, meditations, through mentorship for sure, but also I live in a backyard, I have a backyard farm and what that impact means. When I am like growing or harvesting food for other people,
and how else can I give back into my community? What is the positive impact I can make in my close proximity or my larger community? And the impact piece for me was something that I didn't quite hit on the nose previously. Like I'm impacting people on a large scale, but not that deeply. And there was kind of a seedling of an idea that popped up. I was recently a volunteer soccer coach for both of my kids' soccer teams.
last season and it was really fun and I really love that camaraderie and giving back and being part of the community and with kids and I thought it'd be really cool if we had a youth community center in my town and to maybe cultivate arts and culture and working. That kind of got me excited and lit up so that's that impact piece that I feel is sometimes missing from coaching
high achieving leaders and helping other businesses achieve success where it's like, okay, yeah, you're successful in this regard, but what kind of impact can we make in the world? How can we take this success and really amplify it, help other people, lift other people up? And one thing I'm always telling my son who's 10, which is, how to be kind. I talk about, bullies push people down because they wanna feel above somebody else, but leaders
find qualities in others to lift them up and raise them up. And I feel that impact piece is really important for me, but I also feel like as a whole in a business, it's really become a huge core value of mine.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (22:03)
Absolutely. So how has your clientele changed? You said that when you were originally online and scaling and maybe working with a lot more people, you didn't love necessarily clients you were working with. So tell me a little bit more about what shifted when you shifted and when you started placing a focus on the things that were most important to you.
Emily Aarons (22:24)
That's a great question and I'm still in the process. a few years ago, I really shifted into serving, first it was spiritual entrepreneurs, this very wide net. And then it became coaches and healers, narrow net, very narrow. And when I did that, I became like,
⁓ wow, I'm helping the old version of me. Wow. Okay, that's a lot. I did it really well. And then from there, I realized actually, no, a couple of years ago, I wrote an email to my list. And I said, I love you and appreciate you. And I'm so grateful for you. And my calling and what my higher self and my guidance are leading me to is to say, No, actually, you're a leader for leaders. So I can't
keep doing these courses or programs or these offerings because it's really not me serving at my highest level. And so I personally deleted tens of thousands of email contacts that I spent a lot of money to acquire and nurture for years. I actually asked people to unsubscribe. I said, don't be here if this is not you. And I love you and thank you for being here for as long as you haven't been so dedicated, but
this is not gonna be a space that really serves you unless you're a leader, aspiring leader for some folks who are still audience. But it took a lot of courage to tell people to leave my email list when usually you're invited them to come in. And I'm still cultivating that. I'm still looking at, who are the outliers of the clients that I work with privately or within group mentorship that I
love and actually just coached somebody on this last week because she's a corporate coach and I said, focus on the attributes and the aspects of the people you love to work with and really like Obsess about it. Write it down. Call that in the universe when you see something that you love like yes universe more of that, please. Thank you. Be very excited and be very specific attributes. I love these people more of that, please.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (24:16)
And.
Emily Aarons (24:24)
And if there are people who are just like not your people, not your vibe, talking down, you're feeling frustrated, you're feeling like, why won't they? You know that that's not your person. So let those people go. And fortunately, a lot of people have just fallen off by the wayside, but there's still people who are hanging in. I mean, we were just looking at my list this morning and it's like, this person has been in my orbit for seven years? What?
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (24:50)
Wow. So long.
Emily Aarons (24:50)
That's like all of
the evolution. Yeah, it's crazy.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (24:55)
It's amazing. And what has shifted in the containers and in your community as these people, some have left and new ones have come in because everything is energetic. Do you feel differently? Have your programs changed? How has the community changed as a result of all of that?
Emily Aarons (25:13)
Yeah, I've definitely changed. I love to try different things based on where I respond to what I'm observing. Like, okay, these people obviously need this, or I'm personally going through this, and I wonder if other people want to go through this too. So for example, around this time last year, I was at that place where I was like a year and a half into my burnout recovery, and I was feeling good again. I was like,
more people need what I've got right now. Like they need to go through this healing process and this burnout recovery and redesigning their life and feeling fulfilled again. And so I offered this program, was a six week program for quantum flow, like finding that flow state again. And I did it, it felt great, they did great. Then they're like, what else do you got? At the end of the program, they wanted to stick with it. And they're like,
can we keep playing And so I was like, well, tell me more about what do you want? And I had an idea for how I could work in some content of really bringing the energetics into play every single week, talking about different chakras and how it's impacting how you run your business. And I did that, that felt great. And then...
I brought back an old retired program of mine, the Phoenix Mentorship at the sort of this year. And I did something I'd never done before, which was the non-launch launch. I didn't do an event, I didn't do a webinar, I didn't do a sales page, I didn't do diddly squat, other than a handful of emails.
And connect energetically to the vibe of the person who I wanted to work with. And I basically was like, listen, universe, I am not hustling anymore. And this was really pushing up against my need to prove myself and my worthiness. It was really pushing up against some of these old wounds of abandonment. It was really pushing up against overworking and proving my place. So it was a lot of work for me internally just to go, okay.
If works, it's gonna be mind blowing. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And so I just connected, I did a handful of personal outreach I made a list of like, I would love to work with these individuals because I know them from past programs and I think they would be cool. And I would personally, selfishly love to work with them. And then I just allowed it to happen organically. I made a Google form.
People to just throw their name in the hat and I got to see which ones were a good fit. And then I filled the program without efforting.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (27:50)
Ugh, how many people?
Emily Aarons (27:51)
There are six people in the program. Yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (27:53)
beautiful and is it
like it's the perfect complete circle of people? Yeah.
Emily Aarons (27:57)
It's so great. It's so great.
we have a small group. We have these really intimate conversations. We go really deep. It's been wonderful. It's like I don't even really prep for the calls. I've given them homework, so they're doing some work. So then we come back and we're just like, let's have that conversation.
It's been really easy and really great. And so on one hand, I'm like, okay, that's cool. Maybe I'll have 12 people next time because my brain is always kind of working at that, like, let's scale this thing mentality. And a few weeks ago, I led a live event called Intuition, Income and Impact. And I was really sending a lot of emails out, really getting people to sign up. And I was like,
really find that place, like pause, stop pushing, you're going to do a live event. Who's here? Who's here? It's great. And I was going for 500 to a thousand. was like, that would be awesome. I ended up with about 375 signed up. And I also realized, wow, I actually haven't hosted an event of and caliber for almost three years. That's how long I took myself out of the game.
And the people who showed up showed up with so much energy. And as I was doing that, like, should I get more people? What could I do to get more people? My guidance was like, you don't need more, more, more. You need right, right, right. So it doesn't matter the volume of people. It matters the people who are in the room, who are taking up space, who will have those seats, who want to be there and to do this work. And so that kind of phrase has stuck with me a bit too of, not
this mass quantities of people, but the right people in the room, the people who want to be there, the people who are going to do the work, the people who show up. So, I'm constantly growing and learning and evolving. This industry has changed so much as well. And I've even talked to people who have these huge companies, huge businesses that have, 25,000 people in their membership and they're like,
thank God I have this many people, we grow this much, but then we lose this much, and then we grow this much, and we're staying at status quo. We're not actually gaining, we're maintaining. And I think a lot of businesses are doing that, barely keeping their heads above water right now, finding what feels light and flowy for them. Social media used to bring in thousands of organic leads for me, now it doesn't. So we have to pivot, we have to innovate, we have to
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (30:16)
Mm.
Emily Aarons (30:20)
get the pulse however we can and not take it personally, but also try to follow our own energy patterns, our strengths, and listen to what people need.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (30:30)
And I think people appreciate the emails. I think they know thinking of them, I think they can feel the energetic pull if you're inviting them into something that feels perfectly aligned for them and not just like a mass message that we send out or a paid ad. And I'm with you. I'm this the idea of vanity metrics and just thinking about every subscriber is a human being is a person.
Emily Aarons (30:44)
Yep. yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (30:56)
And
so just redefining what impact really is and redefining what you can make in terms of impact with one person, you think about the ripple effect they then can make in their families and their communities and their work environment. It's really quite humbling to come back to that and not just think about things on a really mass level in big numbers, because you can make a huge impact through one person, through 100 maybe
Emily Aarons (31:10)
Hmm. Hmm.
For
sure.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (31:24)
depending
on the transformation. So when it comes to energetics, I know that this has definitely become much more common. People are not so scared maybe to hear about energetics. They've learned a little bit more. More are seeing practitioners. for someone may be listening and maybe they are a high achiever, but they've never experienced any energy work. What are some practical
Emily Aarons (31:34)
Mm-hmm.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (31:45)
tools or tips or something that they can do right now just to give them a sense of what this feels like and the benefits that they can experience.
Emily Aarons (31:52)
I think energy work is always working no matter if you think you're working it or you're not. It's the day where you're stressed out from the office and you go for a walk to clear your head. You innately know what your body needs to find equilibrium and balance and calm and stability and safety. I mean, my husband doesn't meditate the way I meditate, he gardens.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (32:17)
Mmm. ⁓
Emily Aarons (32:17)
That's meditation for him. For some people,
it's cooking. For some people, it's running. And so I feel like we are already doing the practices that our body and our soul needs. Could we do more? Sure. We could add in a one minute practice of just scanning from the top of our head down to our toes, adding some breath, imagining white light, just letting go of the stresses of the day. I think that part of what we are
built to do as humans is align our energy with our vision of our happily ever after, our future self. And so a lot of the times with high achieving leaders, we have an idea of what success looks like. We have an idea of what happily ever, ever looks like. And so one of the practices that I love to do for myself and share with clients is to feel that vibration. In your mind's eye, what does it look like?
Who are you? Like when you connect with that part of you that's successful, that she's high achieving, she's done the thing, what is it like to be in her presence? What is her energy? What is she wearing? What is she doing? What is she eating? How is she spending her day? What does her free time downtime look like? What does her work time look like? What are her relationships? Like you're hearing me really open up and dissect these different parts.
But the clearer that we can get on different components, it's like our brain becomes a 3D printer to print that into current reality. And so it might sound a little woo or esoteric just to imagine you're happily ever after life, but it doesn't cost you a dime. It takes you 30 seconds to two minutes. If you really want to get wild, you don't really need anything.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (34:00)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (34:07)
There's the excuse of I don't have time, I don't have peace and quiet, I'm not psychic, I'm not intuitive. You don't need any of that, you don't need anything. And I find that sometimes the best tools are free, they're inbuilt. And so if you're new to energy, you don't have to call it energy. You can just call it using your imagination. And what I find is that the more I can imagine how I want to feel,
in my body. And so when you're calling in that next level for yourself, spend a little time there and get cozy and just let yourself explore. That's it. No expectations and just see how your life starts to transform.
based on knowing how you want to feel. And I can say for myself, that was one of the pivotal moments in my burnout recovery, because my higher self showed me outside in my normal clothes, but in my garden. And I took that as a cue, like, okay, well, maybe I could take Mondays off as a chill day and a garden day, and I'll just start doing garden cleanup. More I did that, suddenly I would have an email when I came back of like, hey, are you still working with private clients?
But as a matter of fact, yes, I am. Let's do this. Okay. And I told my mother this once and she was like, don't you think you should be working more? And I'm like, I don't think I should be right now actually. And so when we listen to our higher self, she might give us a different cue than what might sound right to most people. And so we start to get that energy first.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (35:26)
Yeah.
Emily Aarons (35:38)
Then we get to embody. How does she feel? She feels really relaxed in the garden. Guess what I started to do with my actions? I started to garden. I started to feel more relaxed, started to heal the problem that was at the root of it and things started to shift. So it doesn't cost anything to start imagining. the risk is wasting two minutes of your day and nothing happens. But the reward is
spending two minutes of your day and then seeing your life turn into your wildest dreams and starting to see these beautiful synchronicities and amazing connections and new opportunities and wow, I get to do this. my gosh, I never could have dreamed of it. Wait a minute, I did dream of it and now it's happening.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (36:21)
It's incredible when we're able to just get quiet, get still, to really tap in, to ask ourselves, what do we want? How do we want to feel and to be able to do it? And I did a post on LinkedIn about this is like when we're making decisions too often, we second guess our inner knowing. And you can just ask yourself, tap into the body and just ask yourself, like, if I say yes to this, how does that feel? listen to, yeah, and to know. Yeah.
Emily Aarons (36:38)
Mm.
Yeah.
Simple.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (36:51)
And your program, what is it called and how can people learn more about it if they're interested?
Emily Aarons (36:56)
Yes, thank you for asking. It's the New Year's Karma Cleanse. It's a ritual that I do at the beginning of every year. It started off as a private ritual I did on my own. And then one day I was inspired to share it on Facebook Live and it blew up. And every year people would be like, you're doing it again, right? So now it's been kind of a thing. And I have this beautiful workbook that comes along with it. It's completely free. if you don't make it to the New Year's Karma Cleanse, I do also have a 21 day energy reset. You can just
Try out a few meditations. There's a workbook that goes along with it. Some easy rituals to just reset your whole energy field at the beginning of the year or whenever you need it, because it is available anytime.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (37:33)
That's amazing. And if people want to work with you, what is the best way that they can find you?
Emily Aarons (37:39)
Well, they'll find me on my website, they'll find me on social media, they'll find me here on this podcast, I'm sure my website will be linked somewhere. I am definitely up close and personal type of gal. So if you're still listening, and this is really resonated with you, just reach out to me wherever you are, if you're on Instagram, or if you're better on email, I would love to hear what really resonated with hit home and, how you feel I can serve you.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (38:04)
And we'll include all of those links in the show notes. I ask everyone a final question, Emily, which is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
Emily Aarons (38:07)
Thanks.
I feel like we've been talking about that. We've been kind of flirting with that, and for me, it's around doing more of the things that make me feel happy. And that's really the bottom line, doing the things that make me feel happy.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (38:24)
So good.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. I love it. Emily, thank you for all the great work you are doing in this world. It's been such a pleasure catching up with you today.
Emily Aarons (38:33)
Simple.
Thank you for having me. This is great.