Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Arizona is Sasha Stair. And she has a book called The Inside Job: Master the World Within to Lead the Future of Corporate. Good day to you. How are you doing?

Sasha Stair
I'm doing well, Greg. How are you?

Greg Voisen
Good, it's good to having you as a guest. And before we contacted one another, we didn't know that we had a mutual friend. And it's really kind of interesting how that all evolved. And it's one of my questions for the interviewer. But I want to let the listeners know a little bit about you before we dive right into the inside job, which I think most of us are working on all the time trying to find our true north and our compass. So Sasha is known as a spiritual warrior leader who has a passion for helping people in companies grow through conscious and transformational leadership, with significant experience facilitating business transformation, from conception to execution. She brings emotional, intelligent leadership across people, processes and technology to deliver results and drive innovation. She's also known as a risk taker. She's often chosen roles in her career, that require self-transformation and reinvention. She offers a unique set of what I want to say just opportunities, spanning relationship cultivation, management, service delivery, strategy, sales, business growth, consulting, it business operations, and experience across that what we call multiple interest industries. As an emotional intelligent leader, her transparent open communication styles provided critical framework for cultivating trust, teamwork and collaboration, and has been an essential component of the program or performance. You can learn more about her by going to her website, where you were going to put a link to that as well. And we want to thank you for taking this time to be on the show. And I want to give my listeners a verbal age, so I do it. It's www Sasha Stair, s-a-s-h-a-s-t-a-i-r.com. And that's where you can learn more about her. Well, you know, I said to listeners, when we started that you and I had a mutual connection, I'm going to start off right there. Because this spiritual teacher who we both kind of aligned with very deeply. I touch both of our lives deeply and is no longer with us. And I didn't know that till I actually had talk with you. You told me a lot about your journey. And you wrote in the introduction is book about Cindy. And Cindy Silbert. By the way, can you tell the audience about your encounter with Cindy, and why you decided to write this book? I think that's always a great place to start. Because, you know, a lot of people think about writing a book. They don't ever get it done.

Sasha Stair
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question on both fronts. So I met Cindy in a yoga studio in Del Mar, which is a small town and on the coast of San Diego, for those who don't know, it, arguably, if not my favorite place, one of my favorite places on earth. And she and I were both in a yoga class. And at the end of class, they made an announcement that she was going to be hosting a workshop that weekend, around I think something related to authenticity, and like finding your purpose. And at the time I was in my early 20s. I was in medical device sales, I was very successful, very heavily in my masculine energy. And I when I heard about it, it resonated like on an intuitive level. But my mental conception of it was like, What the heck is that? Like, I don't understand what she's talking about. And so I went up to her and I kid you not I literally looked at her and said, If I come to this workshop, what am I going to get out of it? And she just laughed, right? It threw her back on her heels, because I think in that moment, she knew of all the people in that yoga studio, I probably needed the workshop the most. And that was the inception of our relationship. And I'm one of those people that doesn't really do things small or one toe in the water. So I dove right into the deep end. And after that workshop, though, it was very uncomfortable for me. Because there's a lot of topics that start to come up when you're looking at yourself in the mirror. I knew intuitively and in my heart that I needed more of that work. And so I ended up doing one on one coaching with her signed up for a retreat that she hosted on Maui. I eventually I ended up CO hosting that retreat with her for years. And the rest is history. We just we became immediate family. We used to call each other soul sisters. We both have heritage back to Croatia and so he's To always joke that there's probably some lineage there. And the book itself, you know, it wasn't a direct result of working with her. But most certainly an indirect result, I don't think I would have ever come to a point where I would be able to share my journey without having started that and having her be the catalyst to the beginning of that what I call spiritual path and spiritual walk. And I it's funny, you mentioned that people want to write a book, but don't always get around to it, I wanted to for a long time, and I started a couple of other books. And I never did finish it. And at some point, a friend of mine started a publishing firm, she had me co author, a couple of books, and I just started to feel like I could do more. And I had gone through enough of my healing journey about 15 years at that point that I felt like there was there was something inside of me bigger that needed to come out. And ironically, I chose to go back to the Island of Maui, which was a special place for Cindy and I, and I sat down with a cup of coffee, actually a macadamia nut latte To be specific, and I just started writing. And it was as if the words poured out of me from another source, and it was a very beautiful experience. One, I often hear from other authors that they feel like someone else is writing through them. So that's seem to be the and I came to me, you

Greg Voisen
know, I've done three books. And I would say in almost all of them, two of them co-authored one of mine, the one that was fully mine. Definitely, that's exactly the experiences. It flowed through me, it came through me, you know, it reminds me a Sunday talking about, you know, my spirit animal. You know, was it the butterfly, and actually, the hummingbird is on my logo. And so we had lots of discussions about our spirit animals, which, at the time, you know, it was kind of like, I didn't understand even way back then much about all that. But now I definitely do after 17 years of doing this podcast and talking to people from all areas of spirituality and wellness. So it's really cool. Now, your book, you know, you speak about the relationship with ourselves. And, you know, just like you ask Cindy, when you took her web seminar, what am I going to get out of this, you know, the listeners are sitting out there right now going relationship with ourselves, I get that, what does that mean, Sasha, and the inside job, we need to embark upon that, if you would kind of address this self-inventory, which leads to greater self-awareness. Because, you know, we like to brush things as a species under the rug, just keep like, right, I'm surprised most people don't have mounds of stuff where the rug is just heaped in front of them, because they don't really want to address it, they don't want to get to the core issue of it. And that's really what you're talking about with our relationship with ourselves. It's getting to the core issue. Can you talk with us about a little bit about your journey? And how do we take the self-inventory to get clear about what's going on?

Sasha Stair
Now, they're great questions. You know, I, it helps provide a little context, being out in the corporate world, and watching people try to do things change things be things I noticed, so much of it is happens outside of ourselves, right. And a lot of people act out from a place of emotion. And I did a lot of work, I ran a nonprofit to prevent sexual violence for a timeframe. And I did a lot of work during that time to really research and get to the root of why do people act out in violence to begin with, whether it's against themselves or someone else? Right. So whether you're bullying somebody or whether you're cutting yourself, whether it's sexual violence or otherwise? And was

Greg Voisen
that when you pardon me, but was that when you were speaking to the sororities or fraternities in San Diego State?

Sasha Stair
Yeah, I continued that work long after but yes, I that's where that started. You know, I think it was really critical for people to recognize that it starts from within, right. And if we don't have an ability to look within and to understand what's going on inside of ourselves, then we're not going to be able to fully understand why we respond to the world outside of ourselves. And so when you think about our relationship to self, what we used to talk about our genes for justice, which was that nonprofit, is if you can't have a healthy relationship with yourself first, it's going to be very challenging for you to have that with others. And it does sound a little ethereal, but the more you get to the root of it, the more it makes sense. And I'll dive into that per your other questions. So being able to take self inventory, I call it like a snapshot in time, right? Because we're always evolving, we're always changing, but being able to look in the mirror which is really hard for people to do and I say look in the mirror, but it's really a metaphor for looking within like go fully deep past what you see on the surface level. And understand, okay, how am I in this moment, emotionally energetically, if I feel Think about how I respond to the world where I get triggered, why I get triggered, I start to dig into, okay, I might have some wounds or some stories or some traumas from my past that I haven't fully processed. And as a result, I act out in a certain way that's not necessarily becoming of my true self, and is certainly not a healthy way to interact with the world. But again, in order to address that you got to go within, right. And so when we start to take that self inventory, or that snapshot, and we start to really do that work and ask those questions, get introspective, get really quiet, and listen and trust that we know within ourselves the answers that we need to hear, even if we don't like hearing them, then we can start to do that work to become more self aware and identify, Okay, where do I have opportunity to change and grow. And it's a hard practice because people, typically you have the type of people and there's all walks of life. But generally, the two extremes are going to be either I'm not going to look at it, I don't want to face it, it's too painful. And so I'm going to create this ridiculous mask and go out and be in the world of someone I'm not, or I'm going to beat the crap out of myself, treat myself terribly, speak to myself terribly and kind of cower back into a shell. And there's variations right, and people can have both, but you do usually see the more gregarious outward mask or the more timid shy hiding from the world mask. Both are signs.

Greg Voisen
I think for a lot of people sashes, pardon for interrupting. But I find, especially with men, I'm not certain this is 100% true for women. But they'll they'll have an issue, like we're talking about a deep seated, hurt or issue. And they'll say, Oh, it doesn't matter. It meaning it doesn't matter. Because they don't really see how the behavior, they're acting out the behavior of that hurt with other people through anger, a lack of compassion, self love, self nurturing, and care. So instead, they'll beat up on themselves. And they'll just say, well, that's the way it is. That's the way I'm going to be because, you know, I'm not gonna say corporate America, I'm just gonna say business and general, we have grown up in a society, which is a capitalist society, which is around success and prove your success, right? You've been there in many jobs you already know. And for the guys, it's about how do we prove ourselves? And so if you wouldn't, because you have one, where for many women listening, and even some men, you had to heal wounds and hurts associated with sex or sexual abuse, and you write about it in the book. Can you give the listeners who may have experienced this kind of hurt this, this kind of pain, how you would approach healing from a trauma, and I, you know, I work with Brian Allman adverse childhood experiences. He's a deep, deep, good personal friend. But I know when you take the ACE test, and you score high on it, you realize that at Kaiser, this is him, there's a little offshoot here, for my listeners, that most of the women that come in that are hugely overweight, have had some kind of sexual abuse, and they're trying to get obesity down, right. They're saying that's a bigger problem than the sexual abuse, because their lifespan is going to be cut by 15 years. Right? So I know, you know, all of this, this isn't new to you. But to some of my listeners, I need to make it aware that, you know, if you haven't ever taken that ace test, I encourage you to go to the ACE test and see maybe what it is that caused where you are.

Sasha Stair
Yeah, and I haven't personally taken that test before. Now You've piqued my curiosity. But, you know, for me, personally, I do share about it in the book, I was molested at a very young age five years old, and then raped at 18 and 21, all different men, and then ended up in an abusive relationship in my early 30s. And you know, that the thing that I recognized throughout my whole healing journey is that abuse is cyclical, right? And until we address and heal the wounds, those patterns are going to keep showing up in our life. And that was a very hard thing for me to see and to admit, I'm a very strong person. And so the fact that I, you know, in my mind sometimes say like, allowed the incidents to happen when that's somewhat of a ironic statement, but it did for a while feel like Gosh, you're such a strong person was how could you have allowed this to happen to yourself? How could you have not stopped it? And then how did you allow this pattern to keep repeating, but the truth is, when we don't do that healing work, it will continue to show up in one form or Another and so for me personally, I had to get to a point where I pretty much hit rock bottom and almost took my own life to realize, okay, it wasn't that I wanted to stop living. It was I don't want to keep living the life I'm with thing, which is, in part denying that these things happen to me letting go of the shame around what had happened to me, and really seeking out the support systems and structures, I needed to move through it and ultimately passed it because you can't go around it, right. So it's hard because each, each person's healing journey will look different. And there's different modalities available. So I can't give you a silver bullet or one prescription that I can write on a card. But the things that worked for me, for one, surrounding myself out or not, and I started volunteering at the nonprofit before I ran it. And it was me being able to silently give back and contribute towards a cause that I knew touched my heart. And then when the day came, and the time was right, I recognized it was time to share my story. And I did and from that point on the floodgates opened, and again, back to that I don't dip my toe in the water. You know, I went into traditional therapy, I did EMDR therapy, which for those who don't know, it's like light and vibration therapy to help work through where the trauma is imprinted in your body and learn to release that. I went through Al Anon my dad was an alcoholic, he unfortunately passed away this year and forth on my 40th birthday. That's okay. But he and I had quite a challenging relationship growing up, he was not one of the offenders just to be fully clear. But that relationship also created trauma for me. And so going through,

Greg Voisen
were you ever able to address the offenders themselves? It's

Sasha Stair
a great question. The one that happened when I was younger, no, the one at 18. I did. And the one at 21. I did. But it was limited in the sense that they didn't fully understand what they had done and how bad it was. So when I addressed them both, it was very short lived. And then it was kind of done. And that was that. The gentleman that that did what he did at 18, did eventually reach back out to me years later and apologize on Facebook. And it was, it was nice to have that. But you know, I was not in a great place to receive it at that time. But I appreciate that he did that. And for the record, I hold immense compassion and forgiveness for all of them. Because like I said earlier, sexual violence is cyclical. So something happened to each of those young men that cause them to be in a place where they act it out. And that doesn't mean it's okay. And that doesn't mean that I have to forgive them if I don't want to. But in truth forgiveness is for yourself more than it is for them. Right holding on to that in my body is not healthy for me. And so I chose to forgive all of them and to move past and to let go because that was part of my healing journey. Not everyone is able to do that. And it's to each their own. But yeah, I did confront the two older ones. And it like I said, it was probably not as healing and holistic as I would have liked. But it was the best I could do in that moment.

Greg Voisen
So Sasha, do you ever think about because I know you're very spiritual person, you couldn't have been with Cindy and gone through all this? And I mean, spiritual, not religious. Do you ever think about the karma of those events? And if so, you know what? I mean, this is a great thing, because I see what you've learned from it. Right? You've learned so much writing this book, being part of these nonprofits taking affirmative action in this area. Do you ever think that, hey, no, I didn't cause this. But because of this, I've become this, which is so much better than maybe what I could have become before. Do you ever give that any thought?

Sasha Stair
Yeah, in fact, I, in some ways didn't have a choice. But to if you are familiar with the 12 step program, whether it's a or Al Anon Al Anon is for those that are loved ones of addicts or alcoholics, there is a step in the program, where you have to be willing to admit that there is a higher power, whatever that is for you. And that everything that has happened in your life has happened for a reason. And it's a very it was it was the hardest part for me to admit that I could believe whether it be God or a higher power out there that would allow all these things to happen to me. That was the biggest threshold I had to cross over. To keep going in that program. That's, that's the kind of the pivot point like that's the inflection point. You don't really get much of a choice if you want to really get to the other side. And so, um, things

Greg Voisen
so so some things as Cindy would say, our spiritual teacher one of them, you know, sometimes you can't make the invisible visible. Yeah, you know, and you have to kind of go with the whole concept around karma. Sometimes we can't explain it. But we can learn to coexist with it. And that brings me to you dealing with these issues of self worth. Because usually you go through this and the struggle with being enough, right? It's like, okay, I've gone through this. Now, it doesn't just have to be sexual abuse, it can be all kinds of things that affect our self worth, we have a failure someplace. Well, you could say, well, I had a failure as it related to relationships with men, but no, you really didn't. You had acute success. So how do you suggest finding power of our own self to dig within knowing we have what it is required to heal this misperception, and men are underlying that this misperception around our own self worth? Because we live in a world, we I'm a graduate of USM. And I always say, we used to say, you don't have to worry, you don't have to believe everything you think. Number one, and we do a lot of times we walk around, we think something and we go great, and we make shit up. And then we believe the shit we spend our life, figuring out how to undo the shit that we made up in our mind that was so you know, we thought was so important. So speak with us about this misperception? Yeah, because it is a misperception.

Sasha Stair
It is. And it's interesting, I write a newsletter on LinkedIn every Monday called the Monday magic. And this week, the quote was from CS Lewis, and it was humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. And I talk a lot in that article about the difference between self worth and humility, because we do sometimes get them confused, right. And I think having self worth means that you you value, who you are, and your unique gifts and what you bring to the table, you are willing to accept what's happened to you in your life, and meet it with as much grace as you can, and not judge yourself or if you're going to judge yourself, because it is a natural human tendency to learn to hold as much compassion for yourself as you can. But ultimately, that you're not allowing someone else to define that worth, that you really focus on what that looks like for you, and how to get to a place of having enough value in who you are and what you bring to the table. And then on the other side of that, it allows you once you have worked on on that for yourself, then you can put self aside and you can focus on that humility and being a bigger space for others. And I think those two things are so critical, and they go hand in hand because we get wrapped around the axle, on worthiness and being good enough. And as a result, we sound somewhat get a little bit self centered, right? Because we're so focused on the negative and the victim mode. And we're not really looking at the ability to step into being empowered and to really owning our truth and really valuing what we bring to the table, which again, allows us to be in servant leadership sound.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, no, it it is a dance that we're playing. And it's so valuable to understand that, you know, if we're waiting for and I said this on another podcast earlier this morning, if we're waiting for someone else to make us happy, we're going to be waiting forever. We need to, we're responsible 100% responsible for our own actions, our own thoughts, and how we perceive happiness in our life. On the other hand, there's this as you know, this anger side, which is angry about lots of things because we're so attached to an expectation, especially in the business world. And I think that we see men act out of anger, maybe more than women, as a result of the expectation not being met the way that they thought. And the more those that happen, the more angry they get. I would ask you at this point, you have a self awareness exercise in the book. Would you like to take a moment in this podcast to guide people to a place to center and experience what it's like to be alive? Awake, present and aware?

Sasha Stair
Thank you for that question. So to clarify, one of the things that I like to walk, coaching clients, or anyone that wants to support through is how to become generally aware. So that then as you look at self awareness, it's a little bit easier to digest. And so the exercise is really just about getting in touch with and aware of your senses so that as you do the self awareness exercise, you have that at your fingertips. So what I typically do, and I will, I'll do it right here, is I asked people who are joining me to find a way to sit comfortably. I love doing this outside, but we're inside, so we're going to make it work. But I ask people to, if they're comfortable, put your feet both firmly on the ground, so you can feel the ground underneath you. And then to softly close your eyes. So I'm going to do that as I walk through it. And I'm gonna walk through a little bit of context before I dive right into it. But ultimately, what we're going to do is we're going to bring forward all of our senses, so that we can become hyper aware of what those senses are and what we're feeling in any given moment. And what that really does is it helps us create presence. And when we're present than we have the ability from a grounded centered place to do the self awareness work. So with that, if you have your eyes closed off and your feet on the ground, first thing to do is whether you're sitting down or you can be laying down to, if you prefer, is just to really get comfortable and feel where you are with the earth. For me, I'm sitting in a chair, I can feel the weight of my body being supported and held by that chair, I can feel the ground underneath my feet, and it feels very stable and very secure and supportive. And as I'm sitting here, I'm going to take a few deep breaths, just to let go of everything that has been in my space up until this moment. So I'm going to just do that and feel free to join me.

Sasha Stair
As you're taking those deep breaths, something that I love is the fact that when we breathe in deeply and we release those breaths, this is something you can do at any time, it tells our nervous system to just take it down a notch. And I like to use the words calmed down, because those can be triggering, but it just relaxes our body and tells our nervous system we're safe, we're okay. And we can experience whatever's next. So next, I invite you to think about what you hear. So for me, I can hear my air conditioning running, can hear the humming of it, the vibration of it against the walls. I can hear slightly, the birds outside even though my window is closed. Just start to presence, anything else that you hear. And really listen to all the little finite details of what you hear. And then move on to what you taste. For me I can taste the better after flavors of coffee can taste a little bit of the granola bar I earlier tells you what I had for breakfast and then start to feel things so what what do you feel I feel the slippers on my feet, the softness of them the warmth of them, I can feel my hands on my size and the warmth that they're creating underneath me. I can feel the imbalance of my chair because I tend to sit on the right side of it. And so it puts me at a tilt. And as you continue to work through all the different senses, just really lean into again, what you hear what you feel what you taste. And ultimately when you're ready, I'm going to ask you but not quite yet to open your eyes and I want you to really pay attention when you open your eyes to what you see and just take a minute to look around. And notice if things are a little bit more clear, a little bit more sharp. Perhaps you see more color than you did before. Perhaps you notice detail that you wouldn't have otherwise. So when you're ready, just softly open your eyes and look around. For me the brightness after having my eyes closed from the beautiful sun shining in is so much brighter than bougainvillea and my front yard I can see the beautiful fuchsia popping through the bright green leaves. Just so much beauty and wonder and nature So through that exercise, what we did is feel into our senses, become more aware of that and be really conscientious about what we hear what we taste, what we feel what we ultimately see what we smell it and do smell, and I forgot one. And ultimately, hopefully, it grounded you. And when I say grounded, what I mean is your energy that can be buzzing, especially mine, because I'm a very extroverted person is now softer, right? It's deepened, it's calmed down a little bit more sunk into my chair. And from this place, I can operate more steadfast, but from a slow, intentional manner. And I highly recommend doing this practice, not just as you think about being more self aware, but also because it helps you approach your day from a place of rooted, grounded calm, rather than that energy that's buzzing around us, right, it brings us into our bodies, centering.

Greg Voisen
And it was a great exercise for myself. You know, all morning long, I've been on pre interviews or interviews with people. And you, you get a pace, right. And that little break that we took was really good. And I appreciate I hope for all my listeners out there, that if you were sitting in a chair someplace or at your home, great. If you're in your car, I'm glad you didn't close your eyes during the

Sasha Stair
closing as well driving, please don't

Greg Voisen
do this while driving. Now you know, you and I talked about this. But you know, your your grandmother in the book, who was a fashion designer and a model. She used to do your measurements you did your best your hips, your waist, your hips, and when you're 18. And she finally admitted, and in her eyes that you were perfect. That's what I read. I know you and I talked about this. Because she was kind of waiting for you to mature to that kind of things. What it seemed like to me when I read, What did this experience do to create, if any more doubt about your own image as a woman? Yeah. And how long have you had those memories that maybe you carried? About that? I know, this was maybe a little bit more of a controversial question for you. But or one that you didn't maybe didn't remember, but you know, it was your grandmother's intent was fine. The question is, is what was the experience for you?

Sasha Stair
Yeah, now it's a it's a good question. And, you know, she, that was her world, right? I mean, she being a model and a fashion designer, she was used to having those measurements taken of herself. So it's not surprising that she did the same 100% sure what her intent was behind it, we never really talked about that. But for me growing up, it felt like I was meant to fit into a certain box. And if I didn't fit into that box, and I wasn't good enough. And as I got older, we actually went to a modeling agency once and they wanted me to sign a contract that would require me to not gain even a half of a pound or a half of an inch anywhere on my body. And I walked away from that and did not sign it because it was kind of a moment of liberation of going you know what Enough is enough. I'm enough I'm done being measured by a box. I do not fit in a box and not fit in a cage. For those that know and love me, I think they would know that it would be a crime to to cage this bird who likes to fly all over the world. But it really impacted my self image and my body image and and you asked me you know, how has that journey been? And where am I? It's ongoing I wish I could tell you it's done. Not done. I think also going through sexual abuse and trauma especially from such a young age. You're not quite sure what is okay what is right what is safe what is healthy. You wonder whether or not your body has value aside from being an object that's used and that's a hard pill to swallow. You know, it's one I still battle with and I have I look in the mirror and I talk to myself a lot and try and talk myself up and just accept the aging primary turn 40 This year right? Things are they're starting to change they will continue to change. And so I'm working through that as with as much grace and compassion as I can but I'm not gonna lie I still look in the mirror and I criticize I still put on clothes. I don't feel good enough. I find myself hiding.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you mentioned in the book kind of like tossing certain closes Oh, yeah. Not feeling good about it. But and I'm not saying that every woman because it's not. It's you know, but as we mature and as we age, we begin to understand that purposes for this happening to our body. And the purpose is to be of greater reflection internally. And to understand I know this year I had in July at my 69th birthday, right? And so for me, that's like, Wow, are you still of worth? Do you have value? You know, you start to question a lot of things as you age, and I think it's important, the questioning, but more importantly, the answers that you derive as a result of that. And as you said, you know, Sasha, the rebellious one, kind of I like that, because that shows the kind of person that you are the character that you are. And that brings me to this Inspector Gadget series, and about unpacking our past, and our patterns and our behaviors allowing us to go down wallowing lane, as you called it. You have a list to help us navigate our self judgments. Can you speak to this? Because there was a long list and a long list? Yeah, very, it's a very long list. And we don't need to cover them all. But our point is, is that I was just talking about aging, and coexisting with what it is that my mind is telling me about that. I could go down wallowing lane and go, Oh, my God, am I ever going to be back to where I was? Whatever, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm unhappy the way that I am. And I think that's what we're talking about the self judgment needs, if we're going to navigate it, let's navigate it to a place where it's positive. So to speak about some of those that list you had, which must have at least been 15, or 20.

Sasha Stair
Sometimes I go off on a tangent. Yeah. So first and foremost, judgment is a natural human tendency, like we our brains judge things very quickly, without us really having the ability to bring into consciousness how to stop it, right? It's a subconscious thing that happens. And by the time it gets to our conscious brain, it's a little too late. So I like to start off. And I think the first one I say in the book is like accepting that judgment is a thing that we do, helps you immediately disarmament because now it's no longer I have to stop judging, it's okay, I know, I'm going to judge. So if I'm going to judge now, what do I do to manage and navigate to your point around that judgment. And you know, one of the greatest things that we can have for ourselves and for others is compassion. Right? We don't know what's going on in anyone else's life at any given point in time. And remembering that is extremely important. But also for yourself, right? When you take a snapshot, and you look at where you are in a moment in time, you may not love where you are, you may not love everything you see, but you have the ability to shift and to change. And that starts with having compassion and acceptance for where you are. And I think that's a really important starting point with judgment. I also think looking at do you have the tools that you need, right, and a lot of what we've talked about thus far, I wasn't taught any of these concepts growing up, right? Maybe I learned them through experience, but I didn't have anyone sit down with me. And you know, even in business, we hear a lot about human skills or soft skills, right. But we didn't used to talk about that even in business. So though it's becoming more prevalent, it was not, especially when I was growing up. And so we don't always know what tools we need. And I found them through self exploration through, you know, a little bit of serendipity, being in that yoga studio and meeting Cindy, but then also diving into different modalities and looking at different books and learning from other people's stories. Learning how to process not wallow is one of the key ones and it's a hard one. And so what I've really leaned into for myself and when I coach others is give yourself time to wallow, it's okay to not be happy, it's okay to have a moment where things aren't great. And depending on the severity of what's happened to you, right, if it's a significant grieving item that you need to work through, it could take longer, but if it's just a bad day, bad moment, it might be five minutes, it might be an hour, but allow yourself the time to wallow, because you need to get it out of your system, right and you gotta roll around in it for a minute. The point is, don't stay there. So, you know, pain is inevitable suffering is optional, right? So experience the pain Don't try and hide from it don't try and push it down experience it, process it give yourself that time box and then when you're ready move on. Right and that is key for judgment as well because if we stay in judgment forever, we're just gonna go round and round and us in that wallowing lane. Circle and that's that's not healthy either. The other viewpoints is like someone always has it worse and you're never alone. Right? And I know those are such cliche statements, but it's so true. And I have pictures of my ancestors sitting at my desk so that on days when I feel like life is really hard. I can look at them and go yeah, what they went through, it was way worse than anything I'm gonna go through, right my mom's parents immigrated here from former Yugoslavia during a time of war. And it was not a pretty story. And they didn't see their family ever again. And most of their family died in Yugoslavia, and the circumstances that they had to face to survive, to get to America to have to two daughters abroad, in Germany, and then eventually two daughters here in America and to have no money and speak no English. And ultimately put those four girls through college and come out of it with no debt when they both died. Successful business owning multiple homes, I mean, it is the most inspiring story I could ever learn to live by. And so having things like that, to help put in perspective that could always be worse. And that you're not alone. And everyone goes through these journeys, I think really is supportive. And then the last one I'll say is just because I loved the way that I sometimes I have a way with words. I love the way I worded it in the book. And I think the way I said it was don't let the darkness define you let it illuminate you. And I love the concept of like use light to shine truth onto things. And it's okay that it might be scary for a minute. And it's okay that you might not like it. But truth. Truth is all there really is. And if we allow light light to illuminate it, then we have a pathway forward.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's funny you say illuminate as the name of my company, my company is illuminated. Yeah. You know, and I think that you address a very important issue. And that is you said, you know, the Buddha said, there's pain and suffering. And then there's the end of pain and suffering. The key is getting to the end of pain and suffering is just a choice. Right? Now, I know that we could make it more complicated than that if we wanted to, and go through all that. But really, it's a mental choice to stop the suffering to stop the wallowing to stop the complaining. I know that I just did an interview with a doctor David Hanscom. And he said people that have here's a back surgeon and he quit doing it because he didn't believe in it anymore. And this goes right along with where we are. If you would ask somebody who is having back pain, the first thing they'll start talking about is the back pain. And that's aggravating your whole nervous system, which is actually wiring from the brain to send down to the nerve endings, more pain to the area, because you're constantly talking about it. What I tell people is yeah, there are certain things you want to talk about. There are other things that you don't need to keep bringing up. And I don't mean burying it, I mean, understanding when it is, when is the end of this? When am I done with it? Right? No matter how you released it, maybe it had someone come in your house to do sage and run around and do whatever you were going to do or you ran that some Ayahuasca somewhere. And that was the end of the pain however you did it, it doesn't matter. But you have to stop at some point. So that leads me to a really good question. I love this chapter on attached to nothing connect to everything. And coming from the business world, which you do selling medical devices, and I'm consulting a medical device company right now. So I understand how attached people get to what they believe is supposed to happen with their device or whatever. Can you speak to our listeners about the challenge of being attached to an outcome, or the expectations that we have, that can become disappointments versus us staying in our spiritual state, and be connected to everything because this is a big one. That's a big one. It's a hard one for most people to let go of. Okay.

Sasha Stair
It's very hard. And it is a yet again, one of the ones that I do still struggle with. And I think everyone will always struggle with because we're constantly being given opportunities to learn to grow, to evolve, or to stay the same. And you know, a lot of times those things come in the form of something you can get attached to. But ultimately, when we attach to things, one of my favorite offers paint authors, excuse me, payment children talks about impermanence, right? There's a lot of authors that talk about it. Right, Nothing stays the same things are always going to change. And so even just the idea that you could get attached to something in a moment, is a little bit of an illusion, because the next moment that happens, that thing actually does change. And so if you can learn to understand that life is always changing and always evolving, and that if we try to attach or hold on to something we're holding on to something that's no longer in the present than it starts to help you understand how to build these muscles and these mechanisms to not get attached to things, whether in the workplace or otherwise. And that attachment is what sets that expectation. And when we have an expectation of things, and it doesn't go exactly the way we want, which nine times out of 10, maybe more usually doesn't. Even if it looks like it does, it usually doesn't go exactly how we wanted it to we get disappointed, right. And so we're essentially creating a self fulfilling prophecy by saying, If I I'm going to attach to this expectation, and it needs to happen exactly from A to Z the way I want. And when one little thing goes wrong, or a lot of things go wrong, I'm going to be disappointed. And it's like, well, I can tell you that from the start, right. And so we have to learn to, again, I love that term you used earlier, and I use a lot to do to dance and you got to ebb and flow with it. Because it's not easy, right? We, we like our comfort blankets, we get attached to things because we do want things to stay the same. And the irony is we also like change, even if we resist it, most humans don't love change. But I think we like it. It's exciting. And it gives us a reason to try something new or to have a new experience or to feel new, exciting things. But we also get scared of it. Because we may have a moment in time. That's so wonderful and so special, and we just don't want to let go of it. We don't want to lose it. We want to get back to it. But you can't because it's in the past.

Greg Voisen
But you can but you are saying look that I hear what you're saying is that if people understand the ability to thrive in flux, yeah, right. So, you know, we're, we're in flux a lot of the time, right. And we can survive in this flux. And, you know, i April, really wrote a book that I did was it's called Flux. And I think that is really the state of kind of our economy. That's the state of business. That's the state of all this progression that people are having with technology, and now AI, and all these other kinds of things to understand them. They're saying, No, I need to understand the whole thing. No, you don't. You really need to be accepting of what it is and learn how to utilize it for your betterment. Right? Don't resist it, don't people say, Oh, AI is gonna, like ruin this gonna ruin that it's gonna read this. I'm like, No, it's not, it's going to be the best thing that ever happened if you're willing to embrace it. You know, which kind of leads me to, you know, you cover a lot of personal and spiritual elements in the book. And you guide the readers through exercise questions, journaling. Many of them probably already journal, they probably have gratitude journals. They've gone through exercise and questions, but what are three specific takeaways you'd like to leave the listeners with? Regarding the inside job, which it is an inside job? And how could you advise them to live this new life?

Sasha Stair
Yeah, that's a loaded but beautiful question. So first takeaway. And, you know, I talk about it a lot in the book, but also in everything that I write Life and Leadership go hand in hand. So how you live is how you lead. And it's it's all interconnected, our past our present our stories, our wounds, our victories, right, they all go hand in hand. And the reason I wrote the book was to give people a tool to reflect on that inner work to do that in our work, and to commit to it and be all in because if you truly want to, more successfully and in a more fulfilled manner, navigate with the world around you, you have to start navigating the world within you. And

Greg Voisen
I really good say that, again. The world around you, you have to navigate the world within you. Yeah,

Sasha Stair
and same, same thing with a lot of be your next book. There you go. You want to change the world outside, how to serve by changing the world within you to write it in hand. So So first and foremost, I would say you know, how we live is how we lead and committing to the Inside Job committing to the inner work is, in my mind, arguably the best journey you'll go on. The second is don't dim your light. I've done it for years. I'm still working through not doing it. But I see so many people out there struggling with that concept to the world needs our light. The world needs. Our stories are unique gifts, there's gold in our stories. And if we focus on making our light work, rather than allowing our light to work for us, we're robbing the world of the beauty of each of our unique expressions. So don't dim your light, find a way to embrace it. Some people will say that your light isn't good enough that it's too much that it doesn't work. It doesn't fit. Don't care. Tell the peanut gallery to sit down Shut up, figure out your light, find it, shine it, the world needs it. So that's the second one. And the third, which is not going to be surprising is that this journey doesn't end. And I think a lot of people that read books, you know, and want the silver bullet or the answer to how to fix things, and how to make things better, or looking for, like, what's the end goal, like? What's the finish line, but unfortunately, the finish line in this scenario is death. So I highly recommend you don't hurry to get to that finish line, but rather allow the process of healing and growing and evolving to be that journey that you embark upon and embrace and enjoy every step of the way. Get uncomfortable, right, like become comfortable with the uncomfortable. And if you have the courage to walk that path, I promise you, you're gonna find all the joy and fulfillment that you're looking for. And to answer your last question, I actually, I wrote the quote down because I will never get it perfectly. But the advice that I would give people is not my own words. And the reason I don't choose my own words is because I just I love this quote too much not to share it. And it's Elizabeth Gilbert's, if you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, and set out on a truth seeking journey. And if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue. And if you accept everyone you meet along the way, as a teacher, and if you are prepared most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then Truth will not be withheld from you. Hmm,

Greg Voisen
it's a beautiful quote, a really

Sasha Stair
great quote. And it's like, I can't hate better than she does. So might as well not try. Hey,

Greg Voisen
she covered a lot of ground in a few sentences. Right. And, and I think one of the things that you said to people was really about finitude, right. And, look, we're none of us. And I've said this on a lot of shows, is leaving this fiscal plane, what we would consider alive, what whatever you want to consider that. But there is a spiritual element of us which vibrates at a different level, which if you have a belief in it, and you understand your spiritual connection, you know, you are an eternal being, I don't know how many reincarnations I've been through to get to this point, where I've been so blessed to be able to interview people like you, and come on and be able to do this work to spread it out so that the consciousness and vibration of the world changes so that we can heal, right? Heal all these pains and suffering that go on in the world. And you are a light Sasha you definitely are light. And I want to let my listeners know, get a copy of the inside job. Contact Sasha through her website, www shot Sasha stare, just like at the bottom here.com reach out to her if you want to learn more about her, and maybe have her coach you. Please do that. That would be a great thing. Sasha thanks for being on insight, personal growth, and blessing us with your wisdom and your knowledge that you've gained in the short 40 years. I welcome you to another 40 plus years of just doing the same thing, and being who Sasha is, which is really a rebel. I like that. I like that. So take care and Namaste to you. Thank

Sasha Stair
you to Greg, thank you for creating such a beautiful space. Thanks