I’m proud to announce that my good friend Dan and I will be hosting our own live show (and podcast formats of the show once that’s in the works) called “The Grounded Campfire”. 🔥⛰️
Our discussions will revolve around our own journey as life happens—a perfect reminder to show up as we are.
The goal is to create a space for all participants, including you the listener to comfortably be YOU in this campfire!
Lives will happen every Wednesday at 9:30AM PST / 12:30PM EST on this page or Dan’s page.
On our first episode, we will discuss about what the “grounded campfire” means to us and how life took an unexpected turn for the both of us this 10 days into the new year.
We welcome participation and interaction, so if you have any questions for us, please let us know!❤️🫶🏻🥰
We’re SUPER excited to have you sit in around the campfire!!🤩🔥⛰️
Show Notes
[00:00:00] Jennifer Lau: Hello everyone. Welcome to our very first episode of the Grounded Campfire, hosted by myself, Jennifer Lau, along with my good friend, Dan Blackman. Dan, how are you?
[00:01:16] Dan Blackman: I’m good. How are you? Excited for this first episode. Words that will live on for years and years.
[00:01:24] Jennifer Lau: I woke up, as you mentioned earlier in the, in our pre-show. I’m a little bit nervous and I will admit that because this is the first time for everything. Testing out, seeing how all of this technology and how the episode is going to go. But I’m really, really excited. So if you are watching this on live, be sure to give us a hello or a hi.
If you are watching this on replay. Please be sure to hashtag a replay and we will be here and you are most welcome to be in our little campfire today. We will be discussing about how we started this show in the first place, and then we’re going to get into a little bit of how life threw us a curveball.
[00:02:20] Dan Blackman: Let’s do it.
[00:02:21] Jennifer Lau: There was a question that came in on my LinkedIn. It reads: What was your mindset when you started the grounded campfire show? So Dan, let’s start off with that.
[00:03:16] Dan Blackman: I’ll tell you what, what’s present for me now, now that you put me on the spot. That the mindset was what we had when we did sort of the pilot of this and our journey to the point of where we are, where we decided, okay, you know, where are we, how do we show up as we are?
And when we did that, there was kind of something that happened. It just was like, you know, we should show up as we are more often. And it, that mindset turned into a presence practice, which turned into a mindset and here we are. Like, it was like, let’s do that again. That’s my short answer.
[00:04:01] Jennifer Lau: You and I, we both were on this journey of really discovering, rediscovering ourselves to put it that way. The Grounded campfire show, how it all started was. I think about maybe around last October or so. I had this idea of wanting to do a show that we can just escape from. From our everyday lives.
I am a designer by trade. I do a lot of UX/UI design, website design. And for me to create a space like this. To escape and just unload our minds or beings, whatever is present within myself and whoever was going to be the co host. That was the intentional for this was not to be alone. Cause I, for so long have been doing stuff on my own that I thought I was the jack of all trades.
And this particular space was meant to be, okay, whoever is going to be my co host. It was going to, or our code, we’re setting this up, right? Whoever is going to be in this space, we’re going to learn from each other and we’re going to do things as it goes. So, around the middle of October, the first person that I thought of was Dan.
[00:05:32] Dan Blackman: Glad you picked me
[00:05:33] Jennifer Lau: The reason I chose My friend and I’m not saying that oh my gosh, like I’m choosing some random person No, no, no, no. No, this person has been through my journey or been along with my journey For a good two years and has understood and it seems like and I you could jump in down at any time where I am Very fiery system.
I go in hard. I’m an action taker and to have this gentle soul of a human being That I can template his ground off. You could like, once you start to dive into the show a little bit and hear how Dan speaks and talks, he has a very, very mellow system, which for my system, I need something like that to slow me down.
[00:06:27] Dan Blackman: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I need a system to fire me up and as a professional success drafter, I call it in corporate or I’ve just watched the C suite kind of evolve up and through where I’m at. And I’m always there for the water cooler conversations and the, you know, what’s going on and people trust me with gossip and.
Like I’m just, I’m that guy. Like I am that guy. There’s one in every corporate that’s me. So you’re not going to find me out here busting it. Like, you know, like so many of us, like people are out there hustling as coaches and doing that kind of stuff. Like. I was looking at a post this morning that was talking about how there’s like, and there are all these methods to the madness of, of using people psychologically and manipulation.
We were talking about that yesterday. Um, and authenticity is just huge for me and I get to learn on my journey from that place of being grounded and witnessing and watching success, um, fiery people. So I have always watched and admired fiery people because it’s something I don’t have. It’s well, I shouldn’t say that it’s there.
It’s just different. So like the grounded camp, like the two year journey for us has been, you know, activating parts in me that are fiery and for you activating parts in you that are grounded and gentle and like the yin yang there has been, has been marvelous for both of us.
[00:08:02] Jennifer Lau: it it’s been, it’s been a. Speaking on my end because after remember after four to six weeks, I think around November I was like, okay, okay, bro Let’s let’s do this We didn’t have a name yet for I believe the granite campfire was the initial name and then we had Wanted to do like ember and ground or something like that Then we jumped back to the granite campfire because we wanted to cultivate this base of, of this, right?
It’s this of learning from each other, learning from, well really, for me, learning from you and your, how you’re so gentle with yourself and how you are kind to yourself. That was, that was what was really missing for me. Through my my 35 year journey on this earth and on this planet so Having and discovering or rediscovering myself again through What I understood myself to be at that time and having someone like you to To give me that permission to go.
Hey, it’s okay to be grounded Even though my fiery parts are just like no, no, no, Jen. Don’t do this. Don’t don’t do this or else or else or else or else I mean it was like that and so to have someone like you Be like hey space is all yours You could burn the you could burn the for the for the force.
Remember that? Yeah.
[00:09:37] Dan Blackman: all there for you to burn the forest. It really, I mean, and, and that, that lets you lean into your strength. So, and for me, that lets me lean into my strength, which is, you know, I can, I can hold that, that space. And I guess like to anyone who’s listening and we’re going to nerd and geek about like our growth thing and some of the language we use may be like.
Not in your vocabulary and that’s okay. And I would just want, like for me, I would just want to encourage anyone who’s there to, if you hear a word and you don’t know what it is, drop it in with a question mark and like, we’ll be glad to speak it. Cause although we’re doing a lot of energetic transmission and hoping you receive, you know, their, their linguistics are important and words of double meanings and triple meanings and energy behind them.
And so. Like, you know, you’re sitting around the campfire and you tell a ghost story and everybody has a different perception of that ghost story. And, you know, you look up at the stars and you feel it just kind of the presence of the energy and everything that’s around you. That’s kind of what, what I metaphorically tie into when I hear ground and campfire, when I feel into the space, it’s like, just, if you want to scream to the wolves, if you want to let out a wolf howl, Jen’s here.
You know, to how long with you. Yeah. James is was with us on the pilot and, you know, has a couple of comments. Um, and yeah, very, we’re, we’re kind of in that creative space, that sacral chakra, the, the musical creation, um, all of that space. That’s what I’m hoping this will be too.
[00:11:21] Jennifer Lau: It’s now that I read this question, this particular question going and reflecting back on my journey a little bit here around, I believe maybe around 2015, I started the personal development work where I want to discover what Jen was.
Why is she complaining? Why am I so looking to other people for other advice while I can’t figure it out for myself. And. When, when I was going on with this journey, mindset, mindset, the tools, you gotta, you, you, you, you have all the books, you should be doing this, there’s, there’s a guided step to how you could get to the place with a set of tools that you have to learn, and maybe if you don’t sharpen these tools, then, oh, you are so out of alignment, that is okay, that is okay, it served a purpose on that, On that journey now when I read this question now, I go i’m really grateful that I started With that because going into something where Doing our own inner work and having to do our my own inner work I don’t want to throw words in in your mouth, bro Having done my inner work now Looking and reading every single question or every single post people talking about how you should control your mind or Or here’s a set of tools that you should be using to, to, to get a more positive mindset.
I’m like, sure, that can go as far as you want it to be. There is going to be that ceiling point though. And part of my journey and really rediscovering myself as my former coach put it is, is, is, is understanding. The feelings that are occurring. Like earlier, I told you that I was feeling nervous and it’s not to bypass any of that or shove it away.
Cause back then, before doing my own inner work, I would bypass. And what I mean by that is I would be shoving that nervousness as intriguing myself as to, Oh, Jen, you are not nervous. You can do this.
[00:14:10] Dan Blackman: Right. How to better manage your emotions.
[00:14:13] Jennifer Lau: Exactly. So I’m kind of curious on, Dan, on how you view your journey as to where you started before and where you are now, you know, no,
[00:14:25] Dan Blackman: So interesting. Um, I would say my official launch point of my journey started at probably the second or third recognition of a dark night of the soul moment. Um, a couple of them came out of I came out of them with religious connections. I got baptized outside of one of them. I got divorced out of another one.
Um, you know and all the, um, What I’m sitting here now with my journey looking at the present as opposed to going back to the past which Like literally was just choking up my third chakra. Just like Like I started to go back into that old pattern of like describing myself by my past, um, which is, which is not who I even was then it was just a definition of, um, circumstance which so many of us fall into, like being a victim or an ego imprint on our circumstance so, but from 2022 hitting this energetic work, I really, Started training my intuition and learning what, that I had it and experience it from the point of witnessing it and seeing it.
And, and, you know, awareness teaches itself all of those things that I’ve discovered from the programs that, that we were in for the last two years. So. As far as the mindset connection goes, it’s been this interesting unpacking of books that I’ve read that I now no longer read, like, for, in the same way, um, books that I couldn’t read before that talked about woo woo things that make sense to me now, um, Because I, I have a felt sense and experience of my intuition and I’m living from that place more than I’m living from the mind.
So, like my growth has been a mixture of this is another way to look at something which is also from the mind and, um,
I don’t, I don’t really know how to find the words, just experiencing it and being in the present moment just over and over again. I was sitting with my daughter today who ended up taking a day off. Um. Because she was sitting with sad and she has, you know, five personality patterns, know it, love it, don’t know it. She has something called an enduring pattern, which is, you can just call it, stuff it down, take the emotions and stuff it down.
And, um, sitting with her, her today, and she was sitting with sad for about two hours. Um, she’s about to be 14, um, lots of emotions there, or divorced family. , I’m divorced from her mom and separated by mileage. And we switch it, um, at, at Christmas. And she came back from that as she always does with a little extra emotional stuff.
And she does what a lot of people do and bury it. And. She said something beautiful to me that it’s just easier for her to let it build up and have it all come out at once and I was like, I’m not teaching her that like in words. I’m not doing this from a mindset perspective. If I read this book and here’s the teaching and this is the way you should do something, trying to stay on thread with your, with your Your question, um, so to sit with her and have her see that in herself is like, I’m templating that like a safety for her to be a safety for her to have those emotions and in presence, just sitting with them.
And that’s, that’s really how everything in my life has changed. with presence practices.
[00:18:38] Jennifer Lau: it’s interesting that you mentioned presence practice, because how often do we go around? The world interacting with the world and we somehow just bypass All that is happening Well, all that is happening with it is oh my gosh. Okay, so I gotta go to work now gotta get ready I am i’m feeling really tired right now, but no no, no, I can’t I can’t I can’t be tired right now I I I gotta go to work from point to point b and And this is going to, to, to be my, my, this is the story for the day, right?
I’m, I’m, I’m fucking tired. I am, I got to go work. And what’s crazy is that in that moment, what you’re not being present of is being tired.
[00:19:33] Dan Blackman: Yeah.
[00:19:33] Jennifer Lau: that you go into a situation and you, you start off of being really tired. And then maybe when you get to your destination. You you head into the meeting and you carry that tiredness heavy In you into that meeting you You you make everyone in that meeting really uncomfortable because you’re tired and take care of you’re tired Not blaming or anything like that, right and that carries on throughout the day so the point that I am making here is In the moment of us being a presence, right?
It can be really difficult In that moment like what I honor you And what I want to do to do before getting into my response here is I honor what you And your daughter had shared in that moment Where oh, hey dad i’m i’m really sad right now. You you got to sit with that with her, right? and And how often do we, do we, do we stop and pause and take a look within ourselves and acknowledge what we are actually feeling inside of us?
Like yesterday for me, I was
[00:20:56] Dan Blackman: we have time for it, right? Like only when we have time for it or when we make time or when we Pomodoro this or when we, we schedule that and you know,
[00:21:07] Jennifer Lau: Exactly. It’s, it’s like, like, like what I was going to say yesterday. And I had a busy day too yesterday. I was sitting with anger I was sitting with anger. I got to sit with you, right and I don’t remember how how Bye james. Thank you. I don’t remember how it all started for me other than I believe I read a comment and it triggered me And it had nothing to do with the person.
It’s an old pattern that I’ve carried for many, many years of when I would see something that did that my little girl, it did not align with me. It would feel like an attack to me, to my system. And of course, when it felt like an attack to me, all these emotions of frustration, anger would rise up.
Immediately though, I didn’t go now. It used to be, Oh my goodness. I’m really, really angry right now. I’m going to keep on doing my work and keep on doing whatever design work I have to do to bury all of this emotion.
[00:22:16] Dan Blackman: yeah, It’s an enduring pattern.
[00:22:19] Jennifer Lau: right, to bury all this emotion, so no, no, no, no, how I’m going to go about this is I’m going to put it all within myself, be angry with all within myself, and we’ll sit with this.
I’m gonna sit with this by myself. So, I chose not to do that, and of course, this took me a while to, for me to realize that I can’t do this. All on my own. I really cannot do this all on my own. Cause once we are so caught up in our heads, we cannot go into what is actually arising here. So,
[00:22:55] Dan Blackman: Yeah.
[00:22:56] Jennifer Lau: so I mean, reached out to my support, reached out to you, reached out to every, every Tuesday I always sit with my, my former coach to, to, to just ground ourselves.
Right. So, it’s that, it’s, it’s, it’s okay, it’s teaching me to be like, it is okay to feel within myself. I, at times, will ask my little girl, because I love being visual here, I would ask my little girl and be like, hey, how are you doing, little girl? Like, Are you feeling okay? Are you feeling down? Right? So I want to be able to within that of what I’m creating for myself, I want to keep on building and establish that trust and relationship and connection towards myself.
Once I started doing all the reps, can I now start to begin to, to realize that, okay, I, I’m building all this trust within myself and In case something like yesterday happens, it is a lot easier for me to be like, Hey, I’m, I’m in my part right now. I, I don’t feel like reaching out, but I’ll just reach out to you anyway, because it wasn’t, it was not like that.
So going back to your story. Or the the what happened with your daughter and with you because you held presence with her I mean imagine imagine if we could do that for Everyone that is living regardless of what age It is right children, especially I mean, I don’t have children myself So I would love for you to jump on here children, especially I find that they’re still trying to navigate figure out their the world around us around them and when you do have a more grounded presence With them to have them feel and acknowledge what they’re actually feeling guess what that happens It’s kind of similar to what we started with right?
I’m a fiery system. You’re a grounded system It’s like we were teaching each other without any words Of how we get to, okay. Really understand what the heck is going on in this skin suit, as I put it,
[00:25:21] Dan Blackman: so, so let me throw you a curveball, which would then we can dovetail into the curveball part of the
[00:25:26] Jennifer Lau: I love it.
[00:25:27] Dan Blackman: Yep, um, got, I’ve gotcha. Um, so the curveball I’ll throw you is that every child is different and there’s no right one system. And I have two kids and any parent who has two kids will know that your kids are different.
And they’re like completely different battle simulations in terms of how you operate with them. They, my youngest is 14. She’s a lot like me. We have a lot of the same patterns. I see them. It’s super easy to drop into ground and hold space for her. Um, my oldest daughter is different. She has, she’s just different.
Like her mix of my DNA and their mom’s DNA is just, it’s just a different salad. Um, hers has, um. They both have different, I would call them DSM five or six or whatever. They both have labels. I don’t like to use any of them because you know, they, they are just ways that society views them, their lenses, society views them.
So I find that I find them all kind of dehumanizing. So I hate to use them. Um, But in terms of my oldest daughter, she is a highly sensitive being much like me, but it operates in an anxiety mode most of the time both nature and nurture. So sitting with her as a grounded presence doesn’t always help, and communicating verbally makes things much worse.
Um, giving her instructions often has the, yes, I want to do that and no, I can’t affect. So with my oldest daughter, you know, we just went through a thing where she lived with me for a year after she got thrown out of her mom’s, she lived with me a year, I got her stable and I can’t have her as a roommate.
I love her dearly. I love her just as, I love like my kids both, just as much. Um, the skills that I have to work with her depend on her willingness to accept those skills. That’s the other piece of it. So, the, the curveball is, was, there’s, there’s no one right answer. And Accept presence, really, allowing what’s there to be presence and letting them develop the skills that they need, just like anyone else around you, you can’t change that buffoon at the water cooler who’s destroying every meeting, you know, and coming in super overtired and amping up everything and, you know, they get to be on their journey too.
So that, that’s my answer with a little curve ball.
[00:27:58] Jennifer Lau: They do. They, they do. And thank you for sharing that perspective. It’s just like any other children out there, right? It’s now anyone that comes into the space. I open, I welcome them with open arms because before I would have this preconceived notion of they got to be like me, if they’re not like me, then they’re out of my circle. And part of which now that I’ve been doing so much of my own healing and inner work, that’s whenever anyone enters my space, I really do welcome them with open arms. I mean they’re carrying so much. Whether or not they are working through something or they have already worked through something, everyone’s different.
Everyone’s different. Everyone has different systems. To your point of the curveball, everyone is going through their journey and what I find that anyone that I come across, especially so I’m on threads right now. So hi to anyone that is watching from threads or on a separate channel because live stream is not available there yet.
I love connecting with people. I love all the perspectives, whether or not you are starting out this rediscovering of yourself, or you are well into your journey, and you’re starting to, I guess, adapt with the world navigates around the world. I’m like, you are so amazing. Everyone is amazing.
At that point. And I mean, this is what it’s like to live as a human being. To have this sort of freedom. Right. And so, going back to the curveball, right? So having this freedom and I’ll relate back to the curveball, a moment for me that happened. Each and every single time I don’t have, and this is going to get really deep, each and every single time I don’t have an attachment to a person, a situation, myself even, I feel a lot more freedom within myself.
Like that liberation of I can just be from this place just be from this place and the beginning of the year that curveball moment that I had which I wrote about on my LinkedIn was I was putting so much attachment onto people like my own against my own conditions onto anyone that came across my space, my family, my friends. Anyone you could think of and when new year’s hit I went Okay I’m letting go of all of this right now and I was bawling my eyes out too because what I discovered during that process right? It’s not this like overnight I’m, I just figured this out. This took a lot of time this progression as to how it got me to new year’s which was the discovery of the only person that can help myself.
I mean the only person that can help me is myself.
[00:31:53] Dan Blackman: Yeah.
[00:31:54] Jennifer Lau: And I want to be clear that I’m not saying that Oh if I really do need help as in if let’s say for a lack of I’m doing a design project And I need web, uh, web, I guess, web development. I’m going to go ahead and reach out to someone because that is not my skill set.
That’s not what I mean. What I mean by what I said about the only person that gets to help me is myself, is on this path and journey of discovery, we’ll put it that way. Or for me, it’s loving myself. It doesn’t matter how many times Dan will sit with me and I’m reaching out for support. The only medicine that can give, or the only person that can give me the medicine I’m looking for is myself. Cause what my little girl is needing at that moment Is me and that was the harshest truth that I Can ever see for myself and I bawled my eyes out during that new year’s and I struggled a ton I think two weeks after that and I was with I was on a call with my friend for I think a good four hours just pouring whatever was in my system onto her.
She also is very loving, kind, caring system that she carries. I poured that onto her and what I discovered, we discovered during that process was I was able to. guide people. I am ready to go out and do and, and, and do this show too. Cause that was also part of this, this whole struggle that I was with for those two months or so.
So I haven’t figured anything out yet. I’m still on this discovery journey
[00:33:48] Dan Blackman: Well, your,
[00:33:49] Jennifer Lau: figure anything out. So yeah,
[00:33:52] Dan Blackman: your, your keyword that I’m, I’m, I’m surprised that you didn’t use, and you must’ve been throwing it up for me to use back to you as a reflection was, um, honor. You taught me from the get go what it’s like to model honoring yourself. By seeing your truth for one thing, you do that better than any of the folks that I, that I’ve met in terms of seeing truth, like splitting the fine line of what’s in the middle of the tree, truth structures, like when you see and honor your truth, that’s when you step into your fire and use it for you.
And, and to watch you do that and do reps of that has been instructional and is the way you lead and is the way people will follow and perceive you. Because that is your truth. So when you show up and honor that you’re having a cry fest and you pull out your best friend in your tissues, there’s, there’s no put on there.
It’s, it’s like, this is how you roll and you show up as you are. And that’s how we started this thing. And you know, so from an honoring perspective, that’s. To throw another word into the mix that that’s what I’m feeling transmission wise.
[00:35:08] Jennifer Lau: Thank you. Uh, thank you for that reflection too. I mean, I obviously don’t want to make this all about me in my journey and honoring, and I would love your viewpoint too on the stand of honor. Let’s go, let’s talk about that a little bit. Honoring. Yes. Because that is a big one. It’s a huge one. I
[00:35:31] Dan Blackman: Honoring what’s present is like self care personified, like it, it is the honoring what’s present and your participation in it as it is allows you to trust in your own ability to be present, like it’s very tightly self referencing. And I don’t know how to communicate it other than the way it feels.
There’s like this subtle awareness that you have to self, when you embrace what’s fully present or what you’re fully present in, that allows you to see your gifts and your path forward. What almost whatever it is. Like when I got up today, I did not expect to have a two and a half hour sit with my 14 year old about near 14 year old about crying and to realize that.
I had the intuition, this has gone on a long time. I should see what time it is. And it was 1120 and it was complete panic from there to get to the show. It was like, I had to do my hair. I had to make sure she didn’t go to school and that was okay. You know, we did breakfast. We did all the things cramped into a little period and I jumped in at 1210 and we’re like, does this thing work?
And here we are. Um, That, that’s not, I didn’t plan my day that way. And I didn’t also like use all kinds of skills to manage my day into this, to be successful in this, you know, in the, in this process, I just continued to show up to every second that was there, the way I needed to be present to it. And that’s really honoring yourself and honoring self care.
Like, yes, definitely. If you’ve got goals and you have habits that you want to form. Um, that is another form of self care. You’re shifting your, your being to another place of wellness, you know, through, through action, that’s definitely another way to go. I’m not exact, not saying like, honor yourself by going and sitting in a cave and letting whatever be present, be present, although it does have some of that feel to it, so yeah, thanks for the, uh, the tag team on that one.
[00:37:33] Jennifer Lau: I, I also want to mention too that when I started, when we started our journey, cause I feel that’s, I feel like it’s, it’s something that is brewing in me at the moment too. So when we’ve started our journey together, right. I, I remember we attended an event on my events and I coming into this event, I participated fully.
[00:38:08] Dan Blackman: Yeah. You
[00:38:09] Jennifer Lau: in that,
[00:38:09] Dan Blackman: you were all out.
[00:38:11] Jennifer Lau: I was, I was all out and what I mean by that is I was crying and I was permissioned to, to be as is, as, and as I was on that call, it was a two day event. The following day, I don’t remember exactly what the words or reflection I shared on day two, but I remember. He’s sharing something along the lines of, of I honor myself.
[00:38:41] Dan Blackman: Yeah,
[00:38:42] Jennifer Lau: honor myself. And I remember you messaging me that that was more or less like the highlight point for you That was a
[00:38:49] Dan Blackman: it was.
[00:38:50] Jennifer Lau: for your journey and looking back into that now and where I am at the moment Honoring myself. So if I am telling myself and yes I am honoring myself that I’m sitting in front of the camera right now.
We’re doing this live stream. I am honoring that that pause whenever I tell myself that I honor myself. It gives me that permission to just take a pause in your everyday life or your busy life to maybe reflect, maybe see what’s going on within, inside of you. ’cause what that allows me to do, it gives me a lot of space around me.
It gives me space to feel whatever’s around me what what’s inside of me. And reset in a way. Oh, do I need to reach out for supportive? My feeling a lot of, of tightness around me, my throat or my chest. It doesn’t matter. Honoring myself, as you mentioned, is a form of self care of, Hey, hey, hey, Jen, or, or in your case, Hey, Dan, how’s it going?
Right? So in a way, when you, again, going back to the interaction with your, your youngest. In a way, you both were honoring one another, taking that pause, and, and sitting with whatever was present, and we’re always going to go back to this, being in presence of what is in front of us, so, it’s, I don’t know, I love honoring myself, it, it, it, I mean,
[00:40:32] Dan Blackman: it’s a great, like you described, it’s a great place to view life from, and it, it builds in things that you might not have, like self love, you may not have confidence, you may not have a belief that it’s there. Where you are is perfect. Like, that’s a big one for me. I’ve got perfectionist training in my, in my nurture, my nature in life and my nurture, like just growing up with it and having it as part of my DNA.
There’s sort of a perfectionist mathematical quality to the way I try to one plus one equals two, my life. Um.
And, and from that place, it’s very hard to feel perfect from the external reflection of everything that you’re doing, which could very well be amazing. Um, you don’t always get that reflection because people take you for granted. You’re somewhat invisible. People don’t understand where you’re coming from. You’re always having to play, you know, explain context to, to get seen. You’re looking for, uh, attention. Um, affirmation it, when you’re folk, it just, it’s very easy to imagine someone in a perfectionist, uh, area going to, um, needing a lot of external validation. So what’s, what’s beautiful about honoring yourself and that presence practice is you get to see what’s perfect about the situation and realize you’re part in it and that.
That’s pretty glorious when you can do that, I would say over the last two years, that has been how energetics has helped me the most, how really being present to the things around me, you know, allowed me to sit for two and a half hours and when the worries came by, like, I don’t know if I’m going to be late for this first podcast.
I was like, no, the universe will tell me. Like I’m doing what’s perfectly needs to be in the moment, which is being present for my daughter. And I’m not thinking, yeah, in the last week and a half, there would have been more convenient times for us to have this conversation. And I tried to prompt it because I saw it happening and it failed. And maybe I need to try and prompt better next time. It’s that level of perfectionism. Sure. Those things are available maybe next time, but in the moment I just sat with, this is perfectly where she and I need to be.
[00:42:59] Jennifer Lau: I wanted to highlight, I wanted to highlight
[00:43:02] Dan Blackman: I saw that too. I appreciate it.
[00:43:04] Jennifer Lau: I wanted to highlight this because, and it’s great that we have people watching this so that it’s feedback for us as to what we’re talking about and what relates to you. Loving the conversation around perfectionism. That is a big one for a lot of people.
And I do hope that we do talk about this a lot because that has run my life. Oh my gosh, that, and I’m sure you can relate to that perfectionism has run my life for a good chunk of my entire life that I can remember, it’s not to say that where I’m at the moment going into honoring that perfect side of me.
I want everything to be perfect. Like, I wanted this show to be perfect. I wanted to have a website done before we started this. And, and coming into today, I don’t have it designed out and I’m totally fine with that. Why? It’s going back to giving myself grace and giving myself or rather letting myself know.
That I am just one human being at the end of the day I wish I could just duplicate myself and complete all these tasks Like one of my superpowers growing up besides wanting to be a pyro connect. Can I kinetic? You know
[00:44:35] Dan Blackman: Oh yeah.
[00:44:36] Jennifer Lau: bending
[00:44:37] Dan Blackman: actual firebending,
[00:44:39] Jennifer Lau: Yeah actual fire bending I wanted to duplicate myself because I just had so many ideas that I want to complete by a certain day And that in itself was a form of perfectionism.
[00:44:53] Dan Blackman: Yeah,
[00:44:54] Jennifer Lau: So, so I mean, it’s,
[00:44:57] Dan Blackman: to be your superpower. My daughter’s is teleportation, but duplication’s a good one, too.
[00:45:02] Jennifer Lau: it’s, it’s, it’s crazy that that, and we could go into superpowers another day too. Cause I sort of was just like, Oh my gosh, I think I just discovered something with superpowers and
[00:45:15] Dan Blackman: Yeah,
[00:45:15] Jennifer Lau: certain superpowers relate to us
[00:45:18] Dan Blackman: Yeah, I felt that. Yep.
[00:45:20] Jennifer Lau: So. Perfectionism going into that a little bit here, honoring perfectionism, I mean, it’s never gonna go away.
That part that’s just like oh you gotta get everything perfect So that and you don’t have any explanation you just go for it
[00:45:38] Dan Blackman: Yeah, that one plus one equals two equation lifestyle that I have is always like well I can tweak the scoring function and then it would be perfect or I can tweak the way I measure myself and that would be perfect or I can bend the metrics to make it look perfect for someone else and it’s like Yeah, but can you sit with the imperfections?
Can you sit with failure? Can you sit with failure as failure, not failure as a twisted success that you then have to rejigger your mindset to do the thing with, that’s so exhausting. It’s like, can you just sit with anger? Like when you came into that. Intuitive mind and you were angry on day one and you, you, you, you were angry.
You were sad. You were just like, ah, emotions. Yeah. Let me show you all the emotions I have. I got this one. I got this one. I got this one. And I was like, wow, look at her go.
[00:46:35] Jennifer Lau: I mean going back to that day, too. I I wanted I wanted everything to be perfect, too I wanted to control my anger Just so that I could show the people that are hosting that that oh, I got it together
[00:46:48] Dan Blackman: Yeah, and I was doing a similar thing from the place of, like, I kept listening to what Guy was saying, and I kept listening to what they were doing, and I kept participating in the chat, and I kept, like, trying to be like, oh, I understand, look at how much I understand, and do do do do do, you know, and it’s like, eventually, after you do this stuff long enough, all of those parts get seen, all of that parts, parts get heard, and you, you, you’re Just you start to release into the moment and honoring the moment.
It’s just, it’s pretty amazing.
[00:47:18] Jennifer Lau: Yeah,
[00:47:19] Dan Blackman: excited. So I, so I jumped
[00:47:21] Jennifer Lau: for it. No, please please and and feel free cuz it’s a big one Perfectionism is a big one for a lot of people and as you had pointed out Perfectionism comes with fear of failure fear of look good having to look good Maybe even perhaps a conversation within the mind Or from other people that you don’t even know that these voices exist in your head of measuring success from other people too, which
[00:49:15] Dan Blackman: The curveball for me was, um. Yeah, you know, I flew on 7th of January and I came back on the 8th, and my daughter’s going back to school for the first day, and I call her at noon, and I’m like, I just checked myself into the ER. I’m having an appendix appendicitis. And so I had to put all my battle plans in motion in like a four-hour period because I realized sitting with my body that something was wrong, that intuition was like, you go, you go now, and it was before most of the symptoms, but it was just that awareness of the presence of what’s there being off that I had a really smooth appendectomy like they, they, they went, I went at the, I followed my intuition to the minute.
I was like, I don’t have everything figured out. Um, I mean, that was a curveball. I hit, I hit that curveball, hit that darn thing. Um, And, you know, we look at, like, my experience, I’m like a week, a week past it, it was a week ago, and, um, I remember last week we were talking, like, do you still want to do the show last week?
I was like, I was like, yes, on Monday, and on Tuesday, I was like, I’m in the ER, and you’re like, what? So,
[00:50:30] Jennifer Lau: yeah, yeah.
[00:50:31] Dan Blackman: Total curveball. Um, what I’ve noticed from this and the gift that goes to the perfectionist thing is so often when we have a setback, what the glimpse that I got was so often when we have a setback, we try to get back to what, what was right.
We try to reclaim what was those, what, what was in this case, literally not having an appendix. I’m not going to go. Get somebody else’s and have it added. So I’m not, I’m going to live life without an appendix at this point. And it just sort of hit me in a, in a moment that was like, how can I honor my new homeostasis, my new equilibrium and where I’m at now without this, you know, without this.
You know, maybe it’s a non-needed thing, um, but it definitely changed my physiology in a way that I’ve noticed. I had, for about the last 12 to 18 months, I’ve had recurring sciatic pain, and I’ve come to realize that it was probably acute, probably chronic appendicitis most of that time. Um, so do I regret the 12 months leading up to the emergency appendectomy?
Do I wish I had done something different? It’s like, Now I showed up with what was there and honored what was there. I mean, so often we go back and retool our past. We, we rewrite it because it’s like, well, I should have done this differently. And maybe I did some things along the way that led to this thing that I’m doing.
Now it’s going to be amazing. It’s all the ego talking, you know, it’s all trying to frame things in a linear way that, you know, um, Just to help you explain it with the mind, if you can step out of the mind long enough to be present with what is, there’s a lot of beauty there. So that’s the last week or so has been being present to my new homeostasis, as opposed to, I need to heal, I need to get back, I need to get my 2024 started.
Believe me, I have a list of things from 2021, they’re still on my damn to-do list. And it’s like And they’re not present right now. So when they come back, you know, honor yourself enough that you will take care of them instead of beating yourself up for being a procrastinator or celebrating your awesome procrastination attitude, you know, like, like just be, be present and honor what’s there and know that if it’s important for your future being, it’ll come back.
You can let things go. Those are all kinds of things I’ve learned the last couple of years. Yeah.
[00:53:17] Jennifer Lau: this so much. And how you’ve been honoring that journey, because, I mean, we were going back and forth with when do we start the show? When we, when are we going to, to You know, really, when are you going to start the show and are you okay, bro? Are you not okay? And I was dead worried for you because I wasn’t gonna go I wasn’t going to start the show or anything like that Unless we were both present with whatever is happening in our lives And so to see you in your journey and to witness And observe your journey as you are going through The journey that you were was this last I believe that was this was last week, right when you’re going
[00:54:01] Dan Blackman: Yeah, it was last Tuesday.
[00:54:02] Jennifer Lau: yeah, so I I want to say i’m so I’m, so honored to to witness your journey and you gave you taught me again What it’s like to give yourself grace and be gentle with yourself despite you going through something that crazy Last week of you honoring yourself in that you are being with it’s not I feel it’s not easy to To be in your position where you’re going through this, right?
You’re contacting everyone and you’re there’s gonna be delays here and there yet.
[00:54:42] Dan Blackman: SOS while I’m in the ER, like, it’s, it’s like literally the messages are only going out because they’re sneaking out through wifi only to Apple phones and not to Android phones. So I’m adjusting accordingly. Like none of that was phasing me and I got to be energetically influential when I was in there because I was so calm because I was the perfect air quote patient.
I was just like, yeah, I’m having an appendectomy and they’re like, everybody was chill around me. the lady, the nurse who gave me the, um, the, the stick for the, um, you know, for my IV and all that kind of stuff. It was the best one I’d ever had. Like, absolutely. And I know that’s partially because I was chill. Like, yes, I have good veins. Also, I was like really relaxed and like, yeah, this is happening. Like really surrendered to the moment. I got to experience surrender as part of my appendectomy. And then the last thing I’ll just say, cause it’s funny is, um, I told all energies that weren’t part of my sovereign journey going forward to report to my appendix for removal. I don’t know whether that happened or not, but it was just a fun little play thing that, that, that occurred to me during, during the surgery moments that I just thought I’d share. It’s, it gets to be not so serious. Like, I hope, you know, you have a sense, anyone listening that I am, I have a mentor side and I have an inner child side and the inner child side is really giddy about, like, learning how to be present and learning how to be more human.
And, um, so I, I’m, this is not something I could have put together the grounded campfire. Um, and, uh, like. The bits and pieces and everything that you’re doing. It’s just not in my, in my thing. I have always wanted to show up in a container like this and just be. So I’m, I’m with gratitude. We’re at the, uh, almost the hour mark.
[00:56:45] Jennifer Lau: We’re here we’re here and I feel this is a great great Great way to end the show this episode and after after our little conclusion We’re going to do our little after show. So if you have time to please stick around if you are Meaning to go we totally understand and thank you very much to james lindy and karsten to to For attending the show and I am going to I’m going to I am going to pin this Surrender is so important.
I’m learning how to embrace the same thing I’ve seen your journey to on on threads and so it’s so great to to see People embrace who they are and as they are and thank you missed for for attending too. So maybe we’ll leave that for after show Bro, starting is so important. Yeah. Alrighty. So bro, Dan, where can people find you?
[00:57:48] Dan Blackman: I five. Um, here next week for now. , you can find me here next week for now
[00:57:55] Jennifer Lau: On socials, on socials.
[00:57:57] Dan Blackman: on socials. Um, I’m on LinkedIn. Um, uh, I wasn’t prepared for that. We need like a, like a thing like, um. Yeah. I, I T Dan Blackman on, on, um, on LinkedIn because I, you know, IT is information technology. That’s sort of like previous identity, but definitely a part of my future coaching germ journey is to take, uh, information technology, um, protocols and things and knowledge and use it towards coaching.
Um, and, uh, I’m Dan Blackman on, uh, Instagram and all the grounded campfire neat things that Jen has set up. And I’m also on Facebook. I think also it Dan Blackman.
[00:58:48] Jennifer Lau: Perfect and You can find me on i’m jen lau all of my socials are i’m jen lau now So you can find me on threads linkedin and Instagram at the moment and i’ll be setting up more of the ground campfire socials Towards I don’t know when i’m going to set that up. I’m hoping that we have a website pretty soon I already have the domain already so I get that set up and maybe perhaps Once we start getting to the episodes a little bit more then i’ll be posting some of the episodes up there So yeah, so oh my gosh So thank you everyone for Yeah, no, go ahead.
[00:59:32] Dan Blackman: I said, we did it.
[00:59:33] Jennifer Lau: We did it. We did it I was going to say thank you very much everyone for tuning into this segment of the live We are going to be doing our after show right now
The Grounded Campfire After Show
[01:00:42] Dan Blackman: For me I was aware in the show of quite a few times where I had something to say and Was really excited and pulled into your fiery, fiery parts.
Like all my fiery parts and yours were like having this like giddy little thing around. They’ve just running around the campfire doing their thing. And I was like, dude, you’re so not grounded right now. Like, like be present to it’ll have its place. It’ll have its time. It’ll have its moment. It’s, you know, so I w I would drift back into that and I found it interesting that I then found myself in a meta way, speaking that in part of the show.
It was like, I, I was. That, that whole part where you, where you honor yourself and you find your ground and you view from your perspective and sit in your own seat of truth. And you, you, and you witness instead of the parts that are just like, Oh my God, we’re geeking about this stuff and we’re doing the show.
You know, it’s like that there’s a, and then allow the toggle and then all those other things that, that we’ve learned to do over the course of our.
[01:01:48] Jennifer Lau: we, we are and And there there was just so much so i’m gonna highlight you guys again Thank you so much. James lindy karsten misty for and and anyone else that that has Viewed this or watch or was
[01:02:04] Dan Blackman: Lurkers are welcome.
[01:02:06] Jennifer Lau: they are well most welcome Especially what, especially the ones that have comments, I wanted to highlight all of you.
So I wanted actually to get into, well, first, uh, Carsten Carsten’s, uh, comment here. Surrender is important and I’m learning how to embrace the same thing. Same here. Same here. What about you Jen? What is your reaction to that?
[01:02:34] Dan Blackman: seeing that, um, what it basically prompted that like I read it and I was like, Oh, good. And we talk more about perfectionism. So, um, you know, that was just, that’s what I like about the format and the comments on the side is you can just see something and incorporate the end, you know, that. The energy from the question just right into the flow.
Um, yeah, it just, that word, even just mentioning that word, it, it’s so charged,
[01:03:05] Jennifer Lau: It is.
[01:03:05] Dan Blackman: there’s so much in society that. Is centered around a perfectionism, not even the perfectionism. Like if you change the article in front of the word, English is funny. That way, if you call it a perfectionism versus the perfectionism, or you capitalize the P they all carry different. energies and ways of looking at it. Like, what’s your perfect? When people say like, you’re perfect as you are, you know, it’s an invitation for all your parts to scream. No, I’m not. I suck at this. I suck at that. I’ve never been enough here. I can’t possibly do that. Imposter syndrome, you name it. There’s just so much packed into somebody saying, even praising you.
You’re perfect when you’re not feeling it yourself, and it’s that’s the key when you feel it yourself, you can receive it. Like we didn’t even talk about receiving, right?
[01:04:00] Jennifer Lau: Oh My god, that’s a big one.
[01:04:02] Dan Blackman: it’s another add, add that one to the list when we get there. But
[01:04:05] Jennifer Lau: There’s a lot. Yeah, there’s a lot.
[01:04:07] Dan Blackman: learning to receive, you need a ref, you need a self reference point.
You need a good stable self reference point. And even grounded systems like me, I, There’s no one way. I don’t always have that. Um, like I said, I get into places where I look at for, uh, validation from others and, uh, approval from others and, um, purpose from others, especially purpose. Like, why am I here? You know, and all the perfection around that everybody’s got a scoring function for perfect for you.
If you want it.
[01:04:44] Jennifer Lau: I have a sense If we want to we could definitely talk about the five personality patterns
[01:04:55] Dan Blackman: Yeah.
[01:04:56] Jennifer Lau: that was
[01:04:57] Dan Blackman: No, it’s funny. I’ve never read the book.
[01:05:00] Jennifer Lau: You’ve never read the book, but you know I
[01:05:05] Dan Blackman: read the cheat sheet online. Like I went to the website and I read what they all are. And then I, that way I could speak the language when we were going through our program. I was like, I just need to know what these things mean, you know,
[01:05:18] Jennifer Lau: Yeah, I I was the complete opposite. I read the entire so I I bought the book. I bought the kindle I had to read the entire book And the reason why was, so in the book, the five person, I’m laughing right now, but back then it was like, it was, it was not fun at all. I’m laughing now because, so in that book, The Five Personality Patterns, it’s a map.
I want to highlight that that is a map
[01:05:47] Dan Blackman: Oh, yeah.
[01:05:49] Jennifer Lau: yeah, that’s another topic for another day, maps. You hold that, the pattern very loose because some people, they go into, to a pattern thinking, oh my gosh, I am this pattern now and I have to live with this. No,
[01:06:02] Dan Blackman: Yeah, you turn it into another, yet another I am that needs to be fixed because you’re not perfect. Like, just keep tying it back to where you need to be more perfect. It’s,
[01:06:12] Jennifer Lau: yes. So, so the five personality patterns. So those are viewing cause for some reason I see four viewers. This is the after social. So we are letting loose here. We’re talking about the five personality patterns by Steve Kessler and that book, it goes through the five personality patterns.
So you got the rigid pattern, you got the merge and merge comp pattern. You got the. Enduring pattern, aggressive pattern and the rigid pattern. I won’t go through all of what it all means that that’s going to be like another two hours or so. So I’m telling Dan here that as the, the former aggressive pattern, cause that is, that pattern is a way to survive around the world.
So I, like I was telling you guys in the beginning of the episode of, Of how, how that pattern shows up for me. The aggressive pattern is when I am enraged, I am engulfed in
It is not a fun pattern to be in, and I’ve seen, I’ve seen, I’ll admit, I’ve seen people in my circle that run this pattern who, who, I, I believe for 24/7, every single day, that anger is literally eating them up alive. And I’ve seen it happen to one person in my life, and I’m still seeing it. It’s really sad to see that kind of reflection of, “Oh my gosh, if I didn’t take care of myself, that’s what I’m going to become.”
It’s frightening to me to even think about this now.
[01:10:30] Dan Blackman: You honored the possibility that running that aggressive pattern was not the way to go.
[01:10:38] Jennifer Lau: It’s definitely a gift within itself because it showed me a lot. It showed me a lot in that pattern. Anyway, that’s another story for another time that I would
[01:10:53] Dan Blackman: that you took that approach to reading the book, almost as if it was a Pokemon guide on how to survive everyone else’s, balance of, You know, rigid merge, endure like, I play this card for this one and that for that one. And this is how I’m going to survive and avoid and deflect and defend.
You made your own card game out of it.
[01:11:23] Jennifer Lau: pretty much and yeah,
[01:11:26] Dan Blackman: I took the exact opposite approach with it. I was like, I’m going to see myself in that map. Not make the map into myself, like it’s just turning everything upside down, really, for me, my journey was. I wrote it down at one point, the way I looked at my journey with my now ex, as I applied my integrity to a disempowering context.
I wrote that down. It was one of the key phrases early on. I sit with that a lot because it’s a powerful statement of then. But it still applies too much meaning to what was in the moment journey of what I needed at the time. It’s not what I wanted, what I would have asked for, how I chose to show up, it highlighted for me.
What resiliency I have, and how adaptable I am as a human, and how those gifts can be used. And that was really the speech behind the, I, part behind the I Applied My Integrity. The, to a disempowering context, is my ego saying, what the hell did you do that for? Why did you waste your time on that?
And the struggle to forgive for me. Everything that happened, that caused the divorce, like her assaulting me in front of the kids, the judges that showed up later, all those things that were very easy to fall into victimhood about, cause I was in fact a victim.
I was resilient and stayed out of that trap for most of it, but I didn’t really see the benefits to going through that experience until later. And. Now, now I get to show up for people who are going through that and say, I see you, I understand what you’re going through, and they show up, but it’s they know they’re like moss to a flame.
They know, Oh my God, you’re in that club. I don’t know how they know. But they do. I get on, Discord, and I’ll be on the server, and we’re talking about a hobby that we have, and the next thing I know it’s, I’m an abused spouse. We weren’t even talking about this. How do you know? And it’s just,
[01:14:17] Jennifer Lau: Wow. yeah.
[01:14:18] Dan Blackman: a show in and of itself.
The, the darker side of what this works. Can reveal, the choice between do you play the victim, the unwitting perpetrator, the hero, how that triangle plays out in your life and which you are at any given moment, it’s just honoring what’s there for you, to you, through you, that kind of thing too.
So, running out of gas on that thread, but.
[01:14:56] Jennifer Lau: you’re, I honor you for, everything and for showing you, I can’t say that enough that I honor your journey and how far you’ve come on this path and growth.
[01:15:16] Dan Blackman: I still want to go back and grab a play of the Christmas Sweater Days, what a, because it would look, it would be so funny because I look back on it as, I was like a chihuahua or something. I’m here and I’m an abused spouse and here I am and I’m, I’m tightened up with blue energy and I want to heal. I’m nowhere near there. I can see how far away that is. And I get to show up powerfully for people who haven’t had that experience and I get to speak that as a truth. So, thank you for letting me go there again. I feel like whenever I touch the surface of that trauma, there’s so much charge to it that it’s hard for me to ground and it just has to come out.
[01:16:09] Jennifer Lau: And the space is welcomed. You are welcomed in the space.
[01:16:13] Dan Blackman: I feel so safe here, so I’m gonna honor and share gratitude for that too.
[01:16:18] Jennifer Lau: and sharing what I got to share. This is what the show is about. This is us. This is our raw and real selves. There will be times that I will curse. I think I threw in only two curse words and it’s going to get fiery at times.
So in that fiery though, what we have learned through our journey is in this ground of campfire, in this space, we get to support one another and honor whatever that is within us. So deep conversations are most welcomed here is not going to be fun, even though we are having fun in business.
It is conversations yet it will be uncomfortable at times and, showing up in presence. Or in this space of allowing ourselves to be permissioning other people to go about their day, feeling that they are safe within themselves. That’s really important. That is really, really important.
Sometimes, as human beings, we will fall. We will like what I experienced yesterday and what Dan had experienced last week and today, right? It’s not going to be like this. Oh my gosh, I’m going to show up at this date. It’s life is going to happen. It’s how can you catch that quite fast so that you start to find ground again.
Within yourself. So that’s what the space is about. So we’re hoping that this will start to translate more as we dive into more of these and Dan, I am still excited for this. I am well well beyond so proud of us for us doing this.
