Badass Is The New Black (Season 4) Episode #14- Biz & Life Lessons Learned From The Quantum Level Up Retreat

mindset May 18, 2022

This week I am chatting with my sister Claire again about our recent trip to the Quantum Level Up Retreat with manifestation coach Ashley Gordon. We wanted to share with you some of the amazing experiences and lessons we learned during this trip and let you know about something awesome we are planning for our people.

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Biz & Life Lessons Learned From The Quantum Level Up Retreat

I brought Claire back on the podcast this week. If you don't know my sister, my business partner in all things is here to chat about the recent retreat that we went to. This is going to be a super casual conversation, maybe it'll feel like you are eavesdropping on a conversation.

A couple of episodes ago I threw out there that I was going on a retreat with Ashley Gordon and some other women. Ashley is someone who I had never met before but had formed a friendship with online. I met her originally in a mastermind to give you a little context, but everything was virtual. I just really wanted to meet her in person. I knew that she would draw in just an amazing group of women and I was not wrong. I hope that by sharing this you gain a few insights or maybe you get excited to attend a retreat like this yourself one day.

Ashley is really into manifestation, her podcast is Badass Manifester, so I knew that there would be some spiritual energy stuff at the retreat. I didn’t know to what extent that would be, but I was pleasantly surprised. Let’s just say we started the retreat off with a Cacao Ceremony!

The Cacao Ceremony

I had never done one before. I had baked with cacao before but I didn’t understand where the spiritual element came from. The cacao is ground, from the bean, from Guatemala, it’s an ancestral cacao. It was like a bitter hot chocolate. There weren’t any psychedelics in it or anything. These very warm, grandmothers would cook with it and pray over it and really put this almost feminine energy into it. So we would drink that, and absorb it. It was a really interesting experience of being conscientious of what’s going in your body and how it’s nourishing you. We all wore white or light colors to the ceremony, which Lauren, who was running it, had requested. We have links below to go follow all of these amazing women.

The purpose of this ceremony was to set the intention for the weekend and get into that space of turning internally and asking why are we here? What do we want to get out of this? We each had to own our own energy.

Own Your Energy

That was the big theme for the weekend and to just get out of the experience what we wanted. I thought it was really cool. She had drums and little maracas so we really got into this space of going back to how ancestral women would gather and howl and play music and just be together. We were all just letting go, it felt like such a safe space. I’m not sure how to explain it any better, women just dancing and being open and feeling free, not caring what people think and if anyone was looking at them. It’s so easy to forget that child in you that just doesn’t care. They do their own thing. It was a good reminder to just let it go and literally do whatever you want in that space.

At the end of the ceremony we put our hands in rose water and then we grabbed a rose quartz crystal and we used that to set our intention and then we grabbed a card from her deck. I haven’t done a lot with Tarot Cards before but we just grabbed a card and read it and everyone had a different card and it just felt so on point. It really helped us get in this space of leading with intuition and just trusting. We had to trust that we got the card that we were supposed to pick and there was no overthinking or second guessing. It just felt so freeing to live in that space.

All About Business

Day two was all about business. We shared about our businesses and really opened up about our big goals and going a lot deeper by asking what is holding us back. What do you need to let go of in order to reach your goal? It got so much deeper than that, for me it was more needing to let go of this rush, this feeling that I have to rush everything. I want to write this book and I want to do my own summit and I want to do my own retreat. Just letting go of this rush and feeling like everything has to get done right now and to allow myself to actually get done what I want to get done. For me that is writing this book by the end of the year. So I really want to do that and I wanted to do a summit as well, like a live in-person summit and just my kind of takeaway after this whole weekend was that, you know what, this is my time to let that go and trust that over this year, you know, maybe even next year, like this is the time where I'm meeting the people I'm supposed to meet that are going to be standing on that stage.

For others it was very, really internal and realizing maybe they had relationship conflicts that were getting in the way, or like causing these subconscious thoughts, holding them back. I think the takeaway also that I want to point out is that business is so much more than just some business strategy. Like it's often those super inner deep things that are really what's holding us back. That's why I think personal development is so important. I've loved having the mindset coaching that we've done,because it's really when you do work on yourself you can make transformations in your business.

What were your thoughts on it, Claire?

Well, two major thoughts. If anyone out there has a business partner, this experience with Krissy was probably one of the most transformational things for our business. I think we'll be moving forward. I tapped into some things that I have ignored and haven't worked through and haven't shared with Krissy for fear of disappointment, guilt, letting her down, all these things and being able to enter a space with a lot of these people were coaches as well. Ashley has a Quantum Coaching Academy so a lot of them were from that and they were so good at just holding space, not trying to fix you but just holding space for you to figure out what it was that was holding you back, keeping you from moving forward in your path. They were so respectful in allowing you to talk in through and asking questions so you could sit and think. It was therapy.

Holding Space

I'm kind of like every business owner needs to find their therapist, whether it's someone who's of a more spiritual nature or someone who is a therapist or someone who's a mindset coach. All of that internal work to me is like therapy. We’re not going to rescue anyone. If people start crying, we’re not going to run over and try to hug them, we’re going to hold this space for them to work through it on their own and figure it out. She also stressed the importance of asking permission. Ask permission before hugging someone or ask permission before engaging. “Can I ask you something?” or “Can I share a story?” I thought that was really powerful and really respectful of communication and allowing people to say no.

Another part of that is not having this need to fill the silence. If you are talking to someone and they pause you might feel the urge to interject something so you don’t have an awkward pause but really that’s where the transformation happens. When I would do mindset coaching with Brandon he would just sit there and I would say something and I would stop and he would sit there and I would wait and then go deeper because he wasn’t saying anything. That’s where the rawness comes out, that’s where you really go down deep. You start to ask why am I feeling this way? Now I constantly ask myself why am I feeling that way? If something makes me upset, you know, why am I feeling that way? If I start getting defensive, why am I getting defensive?

That was probably my favorite part of the retreat, it allowed us to build relationships and have conversations outside of that experience. It was the times in between, being able to have individual conversations and just tap into different things.

Human Design

It was during those in between times where we got to talk to Jenna. I cannot wait to bring her onto the podcast. We learned this concept of owning your own energy. We were like what do you do? And she said I own my energy. But what’s your business? No that’s my first and foremost, to own my energy, that way I can show up and help other people own their energy. I’m going to say that to myself all the time now, I need to own my energy in this moment. I need to setup my day so that I’m ready to hit the ground running and tackle all the things I need to do. I’m going to let myself slow down in the morning, maybe hit the snooze, have a cup of tea, start slow so that I can own my energy.

Jenna also taught us a lot about human design and I want to bring her onto the podcast to go more into that so we won’t share too much here. Basically it’s similar to astrology in that you enter your birthdate and it’s like a personality assessment but it more how you function, how you think. I was a manifesting generator. We won’t go into all the details, but it feels super on point for me and who I am and how I show up. Claire, you were a projector, maybe you could give an example of what that means.

Well before Jenna put my date of birth in or we even started talking about human design I was telling her how I sometimes feel resistant to work. I’ve struggled my entire career path to find something that I want to stick with. Something that lights me up. Once I found out I was a projector I learned that it means it’s okay to not want to do work all the time. I like to sit back and enjoy the simple things. I always thought I was lazy for not putting in the work or not showing up successfully.

It turns out projectors are just really efficient so we can get something done in an hour that would normally take all day but we feel guilty like people are going to view us as lazy so we’ll stretch out a task over many hours so it looks like we’re working. I tend to compare myself to Krissy but she isn’t my human design. She is always working but for her work is play and I would just feel guilty that she was working so much and I wasn’t doing as much. So what I took from that is that I shouldn’t give myself permission based on someone else’s work ethic. I need to figure out how my day should look and how I can show up and finish the things I need to do. But then also balance it, the things I finished, the things I want to do with my job and balance it with the things that really truly bring me joy and allow me to feel like I'm living in a state of play. Owning your energy.

Content Creation Day

Sunday was content creation day. We all struggle with needing more content right? So it was great that included with the price of the retreat we had access to a professional photographer, a videographer etc. So we had some extra time and Claire and I were able to do a photo shoot which was really great. Based on what I had learned about myself and owning my energy, I was able to really give myself the space to get into that fun energy that normally takes me a while to warm up for photo shoots. And the photographer was great at directing us. A good tip for photography is to find someone who will direct you and give you ideas. You really want to look for someone who's going to help in that creative process because they know what it's gonna look like on camera and have ideas. So that was super fun.

So to end the weekend we had a sort of closing ceremony with a sit down dinner. There was a chef with us the entire time that made the most amazing food for everyone and we had sound healing for dinner, with singing bowls, it was an ocean drum and she brought in a gong and we all just settled into the space. We all just lay down like a slumber party, I felt like I was a child, we had couch cushions and pillows. We closed our eyes, we had to set our intentions for the night and taking with us after the retreat. It was really powerful and relaxing and a perfect opportunity to work through some internal stuff.

It was such an amazing experience for us and hard to really describe in words but we felt so honored to be a part of it and share the weekend with so many incredible women.

Thank you guys so much for just being there to support us. It was just magical. And Claire and I hope that one day we can, you know, for you out there listening that we can bring and open a space for you as well to hold the space for you to allow you to open up and get vulnerable and make transformational shifts in your world that will not only be transformational for your business, but for your life. My intention moving forward is to keep doing what I'm doing, keep owning my energy so that you can live in yours.

We have a link to share with you below that's going to give you the opportunity to put your name on a list for one of mine and Claire's retreats that we have set the intention to bring to you so that you can get the information when that happens. I would also be curious to know what of these pieces that we experienced would you love to see on a retreat hosted by us?

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https://www.instagram.com/thequantum.coach/

https://www.instagram.com/imcourtneytaylor/

https://www.instagram.com/jennaenergy/

https://www.instagram.com/orderlyaccountingbykatie/

https://www.instagram.com/gracem.love/

https://www.instagram.com/heycalliemarie/

https://www.instagram.com/clairemarievb/

https://www.instagram.com/thealchemizedspirit/

https://www.instagram.com/sarahwinkzfit/

https://www.instagram.com/enchantedflowerhealing/