How I’m Leaning into Love (and Business) in 2024 (and a PSA)
Subscribe Now: Apple Podcast | SpotiFy
This week’s podcast episode is a little bit different from my usual episodes in that I’m talking about leaning in in a way that I’ve never done before.
This is a bit more of a personal episode, but I truly believe that how you do one thing in life is how you do everything, so in leaning into my relationship this year in a new way for me is also bringing up opportunities to lean into my business in new ways.
In Episode 104 I’m sharing with you:
My very exciting personal news
The challenges that I’ve faced in my relationship in the last 12 months and the growth that I’ve experienced within our relationship and love
The shift that I’ve gone through in my approach to my business and relationships
How making changes in one area of your life can bring about changes in other areas as well
As always if you have enjoyed this podcast please hit SUBSCRIBE and leave a REVIEW so together we can ensure more and more visionary women create impact in the world.
LINKS:
Join the waitlist for my NEW Live Launch Method HERE.
Download your How to Scale at Every Stage of Business handbook HERE
Find out more about my masterminds for every stage of business HERE
Check out my free resources to support your business growth HERE
Find me on Instagram @pandorapaloma_
Transcript
Welcome to this episode of the podcast, where I am going to be sharing a little bit of a personal story and a personal announcement. Now, this is the first of the recordings that I am doing in 2024, which feels really good knowing that at the end of last year, I recorded enough podcasts to last us four weeks.
And if you missed the previous episode of the Magnetic Women Podcast, I speak to how I am simplifying and amplifying my business this year. So it feels so good to know that today I'm recording enough podcasts for the month and all of this juicy, delicious time and space that I'm creating because of the way that I will be batch recording.
So if you haven't listened to the previous episode, I do recommend it. I'm going to be talking about that and also other ways that I'm simplifying and amplifying the business. Now, today I want to talk about something a little bit more personal. So, I would like to share today how I have learnt about leaning in, in a way that I haven't before. And because I know that how we do one thing is how we do everything, I'm going to be talking about my relationship and knowing that how I'm leaning into that is also bringing up some opportunities for me to lean into the business in new ways as well. And not just those two things, but leaning into many, many things.
So let's backtrack, and I will share that I met my wonderful partner Nima in May of 2022 and instantly felt very, very connected to him.
And we just had a beautiful few months of falling in love, as you do. Over the course of the 18 months, there were some, let's say, core things that would come through. One core thing, really. And we decided to work on that together with a counsellor. I adore him, that he's so open to growth and development and all of the things, and we worked through it.
Then in September/ October of 2023, we had a really sort of bigger struggle, let's say, that I'm not going to go into the detail for personal reasons. We really struggled with something that came up for us and it was really interesting for me because I realised how aware I had become in just really understanding myself and where things had come from and how sometimes you get triggered by something and you don't really know why. Well, I knew why. The morning that I was due to go to a retreat in Glastonbury, we had one particular very sticky moment, and I left my home and him and drove to Glastonbury for a five day retreat. On that retreat, I experienced some beautiful things, I was really held by the woman who was hosting the retreat.
I had done some medicines that had really expanded my awareness, and I left that retreat feeling like I had been called to go it alone for a while; and what I mean by that is the download was you need to be celibate, you need to not have a partner, you need to just be on your own and look after yourself. And so that's what I thought I had been called to do, and what unfolded after the few weeks after that was such an incredible experience and realisation of how easy it is for us to stay in a pattern.
So let me explain. I am a very devoted, very all in kind of person. I am a double Leo, manifesting generator. For those of you who are many jennies, what it does mean is that we are great at starting things. We are less great at finishing things. Thankful for my team here who often scoop in and finish things that I haven't for me, but we are really devoted people and I know myself, I’m a very positive, happy, all in kind of person.
I always see the bright side of everything, and when it comes to business, I've always been deeply, deeply devoted.
I'm very devoted to the mission that I have for myself in this lifetime. Supporting women, empowering women, supporting gender equity, etc, etc. I'm a real kind of all in person when it comes to the business and one of the areas that I find It less easy to be devoted to is relationships and you know for transparency here, I’ve obviously had some great relationships in my nearly 40 years on this on this earth but I do struggle or have struggled with relationships to date.
And the reason being is because I'm so fiercely independent I don't really need anyone, I don't need anyone's money, I don't need anyone to fulfil me because I'm very deeply fulfilled by my life, my friends, my daughter, my work. It means that I've always sort of struggled in finding and keeping a partner. So that person really has to give me something that I can't give myself. And I know that this is a pattern of mine and I know that it's something that really hasn't served me in the past.
So let's go back to October of last year, 2023, when I came back and decided that's it, this is what I've been called to do. I have never felt in such flux. I have never felt so discombobulated and like I was oscillating between two parts of myself. The one part that was like, this is what you've been called to do, Pandora. This is what you're going to do. You're going to be celibate for a year. You're going to focus on yourself and your business. The other part of me that's like, but you always focus on your business. You're always devoted to this and are you just in that same pattern of giving up? Because when things get hard, it's really easy for you to walk away, isn't it Pandora? And so I oscillated between these two versions of myself, both true and false simultaneously.
And I spent the next few weeks in kind of a deep hibernation of really understanding, like, is this the truth? Is this my truth? Or is this just my pattern?
And a few weeks later, in the November, I went to Portugal, I went to Lisbon to Sofia Sundari's live event. I feel really emotional, kind of just even remembering that weekend, because I had invested in the Sundari year, which meant that I was able to be part of a VIP experience where I was able to sit in a room with Sophia and be coached and mentored, seen, held by her, and I, in this circle, very sacred circle of these incredible women, I shared my deepest truth, my deepest vulnerabilities, and was really held in that moment. And Sophia asked me a question, or gave me an observation, like it sounds like you don't know what you want. It sounds like you don't know what you want. What do you want in a partner? And it really sat with me. And it sat with me for, you know, a few weeks after. And so I took to my journal and I wrote down all of the qualities that I wanted in a partner.
And I had some quite messy, sticky memories that came up as I was in this process. What I realised were two things. The first is that I had grown up always feeling like there must be something wrong in people in relationships. So the people around me that I grew up with, my caregivers, were very much like this person's not good enough. Look at that person. They're not doing this. This person's not doing this. This person isn't doing this. This person I'm not happy. And what I realised is that I had basically learnt to pick. To pick at everything that that person in my life wasn't doing versus all of the things that they did. And so when I looked at my list of qualities I desire in a person, I realised that everything that my former partner gave to me, the qualities that I desired were already in him.
And So I realised over those, or that period, that timeline, was that in me saying, no, no, I need some time away, I need to be on my own, that's what I need to do for me. It was very simply my pattern, a very deep rooted, default pattern of running away when things got hard. I don't know if anyone listening to this can resonate with that, but I think it's very normal for those of us who maybe grew up in environments that weren't safe, or didn't feel safe, or environments where the partnership, or partnerships, the relationships that we grew up around weren't divine, weren't rich in fulfilment.
It has sort of given me a really skewed way of looking at love and actually what a divine partnership is. So I sat with it a little bit more, and what was fascinating to me, like I shared at the beginning, is I believe that how we do one thing is how we do everything. And the next sort of biggest thing in my, in my life, aside from my daughter, of course, is my business. So I looked at all the ways that I hadn't fully leant into my business, all the ways that maybe when it got hard, I Just decided to do something else. And it'd been interesting, right? Because I remember I just finished working with a wonderful coach, my lovely coach and friend, Ellie Swift. And in the last sort of three months I was working with her, what came up quite a lot was everything just feels really comfortable.
Everything feels really comfortable. And actually, I correct myself, it was sort of the last three to six months. One of the things that came through was that I really wanted to learn more about Facebook ads. So I said, you know what, I'm going to go do that course, that's what I'm going to do because I think that's going to be the thing that's going to feel hard, right? Like learning something new often feels hard. And I said to her, I’ve been to two events in person and as an introvert, that can be quite a big deal for me. So I said that these are the things, these are the things that feel quite hard for me.
They're stretchy, they're stretching me because everything else just feels really easy. And when I took some time to really look at all of the ways that I wasn't fully leaning into the business, there were so many beautiful, realisations of how I could lean in just that little bit more.
And various courses and various things that I have been doing in the last few months that I've decided to invest in because it's the stretchy place to be have made me feel like I know everything. And I know nothing simultaneously, which I felt before when I was at the cusp of my next sort of big leap.
I've had this many times in my years in business. I remember when I first hired my first coach I was all like, yeah, I know this and I know this and I know marketing. I know all the things. And I met this coach and she was like, do you have this in place? And do you have, and what are your values? And all of these things. And suddenly it was like, so I do know things, but I also know nothing. And so in the last sort of two to three months, I've I've been experiencing the same thing of, ah, okay, I'm at the edge of that next big leap and this is the opportunity, not for me to lean out, but to actually lean in and to lean into the discomfort of not knowing stuff, right?
That can feel really, really awkward. I'm full transparency. I know that I'm a great coach for my clients, but I also believe that we must always be open to learning more, open to being both teacher and student. And what has been what I've experienced in the last few months has been just learning a whole load of other things. Has been nurturing my own business, but also nurturing my clients as I'm able to pass down, these teachings and trainings and ways of working to them.
It really has got me thinking about the patterns that we stay in because they are actually our comfort zones.
And even for someone like myself, and I see myself as someone who is so devoted to spiritual growth, personal development, business growth, how fascinating it was for me to see how I was still so stuck in this pattern of comfort of this is what I know, and I know everything. So, I'm sharing this with you because I think when we decide to be really radically honest with ourselves, there can be so much that comes from that. And the question that I have been asking since is, am I really leaning in right now? Like, am I really leaning in? And what does really leaning in look like? And also knowing how to discern. So, when I'm leaning out because that's the right thing to do, versus leaning out because that's my pattern. You know, we all have patterns, sabotage, self sabotage, patterns of destruction, patterns of addiction, patterns of habits, patterns of ways of working, like.
What do we know about, about growth? We get to change, you know? We master nothing new unless we choose to master something new. If we're getting the same results from the same action and we're not happy with those results, we have to change the action that we're taking to get the new result. So, we get to all look at, how are the patterns in my relationship? The patterns with my children, the patterns with my parents, the patterns in my relationship to my body and my health. All stemming from the same place. Or how I'm doing one thing is how I'm doing many things, and health is no different here for me.
I'm very consistent with how I exercise, but I tend to do the same things and get the same result. I love my body. I feel good. I'm a healthy person. But I also know that I would like to be stronger. I'd like to be able to run further. And again, what's been fascinating just yesterday, after not really being able to push past 3k running, I did a 6k run. Now what changed? I decided to go all in and I got support; my partner who can run 5K in his sleep, I said, I want to do 5K, I need you to help me. What I identified, what he helped me identify is that my strides are too, too small. So I'm putting in all this effort, I'm really not getting very far.
And instantly, I just slightly widened the stride. And I was like, God, this feels so much easier. Oh my God, I'm going so much faster. And I hit a 6k. How you do one thing is how you do everything. You get to lean in. So, how is this, or what does this look like in terms of my relationship, you might be thinking. So, I realised my pattern, and I had this very strong sense of this is not the direction you're meant to be taking, Pandora. This is your opportunity to lean in. And the love had not gone away, the communication had reduced, but we decided to meet up. And the moment that he walked in the room, it was like it had been every time since.
Like, you're my person. And, so here's the public service announcement.
On New Year's Eve 2023, I decided to ask him to marry me and he said yes, so we are now engaged and we'll be planning our wedding for 2025, which I was so excited about because obviously, you know, I adore him and love him and the union that we have co created has been amazing.
So enriching, so beautiful. Such a lesson for me. Such a lesson that he stood by me through my wobbles. And again, it's a huge deal for me, having trust issues with men. Thanks, Dad, for leaving me at six months old. As soon as I identified that pattern and was able to really sit with that and know that I got to choose a different way, just so much has changed.
So much has changed even in our relationship. Many incredible opportunities are coming into the business, having the best month we've ever had, January of 2024. And I just know it's because my energy is that of all in, my action is that of all in. And I'm actually moving forward towards the direction of the life that I want to live, not the life that I have been living where I feel like, you know, I have to do everything on my own.
There's such a beautiful truth and exploration in allowing the masculine to hold me, or to be held by the masculine.
And that is what I have chosen in this union and in this engagement. So, there we go. A love story. What it is to be leaning into my business, leaning into my relationship, leaning into love, leaning into everything in a different way, I think, this year.
And I'm really excited to experience and explore what's ahead of me with this new frequency, with this knowing that everything gets to be done differently, without fear of not being held, without those thoughts of, I must be independent, I must do this on my own. And also knowing that, you know, I get to allow that masculine to hold me and be held by another human heart just feels so incredibly delicious. I do not do everything in a normal way. So I proposed to him. He was going to propose to me in and around my 40th birthday next year, so I beat him to it, um, but he said yes. So there we are. I hope today's episode has been helpful. I don't feel like I've done an episode like this in such a long time, or if not ever, really.
But it felt really important to me to share with you that whatever is going on in our lives is an opportunity for us to look at how that pattern, or that process, or that belief system that we have in place is affecting other areas of our lives because it's always interconnected, always how you do one thing is how you do everything.
And I also just wanted to share my news with you. So thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions at all, please do come and find me at @pandorapaloma_ on Instagram. I'd love to know what your biggest takeaway is from the episode. And of course, if you do love the Magnetic Women podcast, please do hit the subscribe button.
Please do rate and give me a review. It all helps to get more and more women listening in and feeling inspired to create more impact, more. freedom, more multidimensional wealth in their lives as well. Thank you so much for listening. Lots of love and sending love and magnetism from my corner of the world to yours.
Recent Episodes
.
Recent Episodes .
IF IT’S TIME TO MEET YOUR NEXT-LEVEL IN BUSINESS, WELCOME TO MY WORLD
Whether you’re new to business, got a side hustle that you’re ready to make your full-time reality, building to your first 6 figures, or scaling to a million, I have a coaching container to hold and support you