 I remember I was going through something difficult in a relationship situation and kind of feeling this kind of broken heart kind of scenario that now I realize my mind created more so than anything. And I had this epiphany where it's like, well, if I ever have a situation in a relationship that doesn't go well, or I lose a job or something happens to my health, or some like, do I have to go to therapy for the rest of my life? You know, I just have to go and talk about it. And that led me on to this whole kind of other search and different spiritual teachers came on into my life. A popular one was Don Miguel Ruiz, he's popular for a book called The Four Agreements. And one, and I like his other book more, it's called The Voice of Knowledge. And what I learned through his work was kind of fundamental truth that I had no idea is how we human beings experience life and function is that when we as human beings look out through our lives, we don't necessarily see the world as it is. We see our story about it. And when I use the word story, it's equivalent to thought or belief about it. So if I say, hey, Johnny A.J., you guys are the most loving, nice people in the world, well, that's my story about you. If I say, hey, Johnny A.J., you guys are the worst, despicable human beings on planet Earth, that's my story about you. And that originates in here. And one of the things that I learned through his work in particular is that a lot of what goes through the stories that I believe are lies, but they feel real. They feel truthful. That really served me in that realization. And the more and more I realized it, I was like, OK, I feel my suffering is getting lighter, but I would still react in the world. You know, I might get angry or blow up on someone I cared about because and then afterwards, oh, it was a thought, it was a story, it was a belief. I didn't know what to do with that. And then eventually a process called the work of Byron Cady came along in my life. Byron Cady, I think, is in her late 70s now and she's been spreading her particular meditative work where you can learn to give your emotions a right to life on paper. And when you're able to do that, you identify the stressful thoughts that you're believing and thinking behind the emotion. Because we're much more aware, as human beings, like, oh, I feel this fear, I feel this anger, I feel this anxiety, I feel this disappointment, but we're not necessarily conscious of the beliefs that are behind it or that the beliefs are the primary influence of those feelings that you're having in the first place. That was very foreign to me. I had to go learn that because quite naturally go, I feel the way I feel because of my mom or dad or friend or lover or I lost my job or I have this thing going out my health. That external thing is causing me to feel the way I feel. And it feels very logical when you when you're in it. But when you kind of take an inward journey, you begin to realize, well, how is it possible that some other human being could be in the same situation, yet they don't experience it that way? And what I learned is that the stories and beliefs that I have that are conscious, some most not conscious, are running the show and that we can actively learn as a skill to take power back from our mind, step back from it. And the more and more I did that in my journey, the more literally the more clarity, freedom and inner peace I had. And, you know, there's other parts of my journey. I have an autoimmune condition where I live with chronic pain and, you know, have a skin condition too because of it. And I've been crippled at the age of 28, walking with a cane, you know, it was 125 pounds. And so I've been in these really difficult scenarios where because I had these skills to question my mind or step back from it and take my power back from it that I experienced, even in those difficult circumstances, a bit more clarity, freedom, inner peace and a deeper sense of wholeness that didn't rely on the external, because especially with my health issues is like, well, I might not be able to walk out of bed today. And so there goes the idea of getting the girl, so to speak, or a career, or at least previously, or something on the extra to validate me or make me feel a whole. And so I was kind of forced to by life to touch into a D word sense of who and what I am beyond that. Now, I'm OK today and I'm on to medication. It's help helps and don't know how long it will. But because of this inner journey, now the expression of whether it's relationships, work or other avenues in my life can come from a more heart centered, authentic, discovering who I am, placed on a deeper, deeper level. Rather than I need to feel a hole by getting that that thing because I learned a long time ago that doesn't work.