Permission to Heal Episode #67 - A Conversation with Christian de le Huerta about Humanity & Personal Power

Christian de la Huerta

Christian de la Huerta is a sought-after spiritual teacher, personal transformation coach, and leading voice in the breathwork community. He has traveled the world offering inspiring and transformational retreats combining psychological and spiritual teachings with lasting and life-changing effects. An award-winning, critically acclaimed author, he has spoken at numerous universities and conferences and on the TEDx stage. His new book, Awakening the Soul of Power, was described by multiple Grammy Award–winner Gloria Estefan as “a balm for the soul of anyone searching for truth and answers to life’s difficult questions.”

Christian’s book, Awakening the Soul of Power, the first book in the Calling All Heroes series, rethinks what heroism means in the 21st century and reveals practical tools to help you embark on a journey to personal freedom.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. And welcome to permission to heal. I am Marci Brockmann, and I am thrilled that you are here. Today I have a really inspiring and delightfully spiritual guest Christian de la Huerta. He is, he's just enlightening.. That's the only word I can come up with. Right? The second he is a sought after spiritual leader. He is a personal transformation coach and a leading voice in the breathwork community. He has traveled the world offering inspiring and transformational retreats, combining psychological and spiritual teachings with lasting and life-changing effects. 

[00:00:41] He is an award-winning critically acclaimed author has spoken at numerous universities and conferences and the TEDx stage. He has a book called Awakening the Soul of Power, which I have read now twice. It's just really wonderful. He was described by Gloria Estefan, the multiple Grammy award winner, "as a balm for the soul of anyone searching for truth and answers to life's typical questions." 

[00:01:08] Christian's book Awakening, The soul of Power is the first book in his Calling All Heroes series. Rethinks, what heroism means in the 21st century and reveals really practical, usable tools that you can use immediately to help you embark on a journey of personal. So if you long for healthier relationships and, of course, who doesn't? And a life filled with meaning and purpose, that is the reason that we are on this earth. 

[00:01:35] Then this book holds the keys to unlocking the secrets of personal empowerment and unleashing your inner hero. Focuses on personal empowerment and the reasons why we do the things that we do on intergenerational epigenetic, trauma, relationships, power dynamics within relationships and so on and finding out who you really are and what you really meant to be and helps you give yourself permission since we're all about that permission to unleash all of it and be your absolute truest, most heroic, beautiful self. 

[00:02:13] So I hope you enjoy this episode, And that you give yourselves the permission that you need to be all that you can be.

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm so excited to share with you the new permission to heal bookshop on bookshop.org. We all know how important it is to support our local and independent bookshops. And I've created a podcast dedicated bookshop on bookshop.org. So you can have access to the entire catalog of books. By my expert guests, you can just click an order from the independent bookshops and, and Support everyone. It's pretty awesome. I've also put a bookshelf with my own permission to land books on it and all sorts of books for inspirational help and books that I love. So join me on bookshop.org with the permission to heal bookshop.

[00:00:00] Marci Brockmann: Welcome Christian. I'm so excited to talk to you again.  

[00:00:05] Christian de la Huerta: Good to see you again.  

[00:00:07] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. Your, your original interview with you was one of the best interview conversations for this podcast that I've ever had.  

[00:00:17] Christian de la Huerta: Wow. I love that. What a, what an honor. So  

[00:00:21] Marci Brockmann: wonderful. And it was also the source of my greatest fo paw as a podcaster. 

[00:00:29] Marci Brockmann: I forgot to hit record.  

[00:00:32] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. Yup.  
 

[00:00:34] Marci Brockmann: So it went poof. So I was so embarrassed. Oh my God. 16 shades of chartreuse and Crimson, but you were so much of a mench about it and you were just like, well, the universe just wanted the conversation for you. We'll just come back and do it another time. And I was like, thank God. 

[00:00:55] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah. Stuff happens.  

[00:00:58] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. You know, it was my first season. So, you know, you learn a lot in the first, in the beginning, so, okay. So you are an amazing guy. You've got all this stuff going on with your book that we can see behind you. I love that dynamic poster. It's very awesome. Thus weakening the soul of power. 

[00:01:25] Christian de la Huerta: So why don't you tell us about yourself? Tell us about who you are, who you are, where you came from, what made you decide to choose this career and write your books and so on I'm I'm always interested in career journeys, huh?  

[00:01:42] Christian de la Huerta: Well, I've been, I'm an author speaker retreat facilitator. I've been doing retreats and events and coaching people individually for over 30 years, which is incredibly humbling and fulfilling the, you know, to, to, to know that what I do actually has an effect in real human lives. 

[00:02:02] Christian de la Huerta: That makes a real difference for me. There's nothing better. That's what gives my life the most meaning I'm Cuban. Originally I was born in Cuba, came to the states when I was two. Which was not an easy thing to do because I didn't speak a word of English. And we first landed in a small little town in Georgia, Milledgeville, Georgia, and central Georgia, where I didn't have anybody in my class that spoke the language. 

[00:02:27] Christian de la Huerta: I mean, that spoke Spanish. And so it was a, it was an interesting and very harrowing experience that there was sort of like sink or swim, where I had to learn how to speak English. And I was a good student growing up. You know, it's one of the benefits of having been raised in a communist country for my first 10 years is that we had a TV, but there was nothing worth watching. 

[00:02:48] Christian de la Huerta: So we grew up reading books and creating and inventing our own games and pastimes. Cause there were a few toys to be had. And for that, I'm really grateful, but here's so here's, what's interesting. I was really shy to as a teenager, to the degree that looking back on it, I was ahead of a 4.0 in high school except for one B. 

[00:03:06] Christian de la Huerta: And I got that  
 

[00:03:07] Marci Brockmann: beat by last.  

[00:03:10] Christian de la Huerta: My last semester and I didn't set out to do this intentionally, but looking back on it, I know that I did it some consciously sabotage my GPA because at that point in my life, there was no way, no possible way that I could have gotten up in front of an auditorium, filled with hundreds of people to deliver the valedictorian speech. 

[00:03:32] Christian de la Huerta: There's just no way I wasn't even close to being ready to do that. And flash forward to now, you know, where I've spoken a lot with the world, I'd spoken to dozens of universities on a TEDx stage. And I only share that too, to illustrate that all the stuff that happened to us when we were young, although traumas, all the challenges can all be overcome and can all be transcended. 

[00:03:56] Christian de la Huerta: It can all be healed. And so using that, I use a lot of that in the processes of healing and empowering people in my life.  

[00:04:06] Marci Brockmann: It's a beautiful story. I think that we're both testaments to that, to the logic of that. You know, I was exceedingly shy as a child and I remember, I don't know how old I was, but I remember very clearly my mother telling me a story about how painfully shy. 

[00:04:24] Marci Brockmann: She had been her whole life and how limiting she felt that that was. And I saw it keep her out of doing things with my dad, because she was still married to my dad at the time. And it affected their marriage and it affected her friendships that affected the things that she would allow herself to do. 

[00:04:45] Marci Brockmann: And that sort of sat in the back of my mind for a little while. And then I got to high school. I was 14 years old as a freshman in high school. And I just had this light bulb moment where I realized that if I stayed. Being the shrinking violet, the pick, the girl holding up the wallpaper and what do they call that? 

[00:05:09] Marci Brockmann: A wallflower. If I stayed being that girl, I would miss out on all these things that I wanted to do, like join the crowd of kids, talking and having fun instead of sitting in the back or, you know, try out for the school musical or whatever the things were. And so I just, I had this a moment where I just, I said, so what is the worst thing that could happen if you walk over to that group of kids and you just start talking to them, what's the word. 

[00:05:35] Marci Brockmann: Worst thing is they, they don't talk to you. They make fun of you. They don't laugh at anything that you said, you know, like I could be ostracized though, but that's the worst thing. I'm not going to die. I'm not going to get sick or it's not going to swallow me up. There's going to be no cataclysmic thing and I'll just walk away. 

[00:05:52] Marci Brockmann: And they welcomed me with open arms. Oh, we were hoping you'd come chat with us. And I said something that I thought was funny and they thought it was funny and I was, oh, I can do this.  

[00:06:02] Christian de la Huerta: That's great. But what a beautiful story. That you just work. You've worked through that in your own mind. For me, it took later for me, it wasn't through, like I got through college without getting up in front of a room and speaking, I could do okay. 

[00:06:17] Christian de la Huerta: From the classroom, you know, from my, from my desk, but getting up in front of the room, that was some kind of psychological stuff. I just couldn't do it. Like many people have that. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but I always had this sense of mission now, the sense that I had work here to do in terms of helping other people, helping, helping humanity, that thought,  

[00:06:37] Marci Brockmann: I mean, not everybody has a thought like that. 

[00:06:39] Christian de la Huerta: I always did. I always did. I don't know where that came from. And it showed up in different ways at different times in my life. Like I grew up in a very Catholic environment and I'm one of nine kids. Wow. So further evidence that the Vatican roulette is not very effective, but you know, in those days I thought I wanted to be. 

[00:06:59] Christian de la Huerta: And that's how it showed up. You know, it didn't didn't come to be, but  

[00:07:04] Marci Brockmann: later, later I could have the same kind of impact.  

[00:07:09] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. Well, you know, that religion, as it turned out, didn't have enough room for me. So we eventually discovered that. And so late, you know, so I studied psychology. My dad was a psychiatrist, so I think maybe that it wasn't influenced, but so, but, but that was always there. 

[00:07:26] Christian de la Huerta: And then, then I got to the point that psychology was not enough. It just didn't. It didn't involve all of us, all humanity, all, all aspects of being human, because it doesn't address the spiritual. And so eventually I got to a place in my life where I, where I was balanced, where I found the balance between the physical and the spiritual and the psychological and the mental. 

[00:07:49] Christian de la Huerta: And so my work now is balanced and addresses all of who we are. Not just part of who we are.  

[00:07:57] Marci Brockmann: That's very interesting. I'm sort of, I've been on this path, this quest myself, as I think so many of us are, you know, we're not just one thing. I used to think that we, that people were just one thing, but I think that was just the people that I had known back then that were just one thing. 

[00:08:16] Marci Brockmann: Or my, my view was limited anyway. So I, I do so many, so many different things that confuses other people, but I've just decided December 1st, I woke up with this epiphany that the next. Step in my path is to go back to grad school for the third time and become a therapist. Wow. I, in June, I'm starting a, another master's program in mental health counseling clinic, clinical mental health counseling. 

[00:08:46] Marci Brockmann: So I love that you're doing the me too. I'm very excited. So, you know, I've seven years. Well, I have seven years left as a teacher and I'm not leaving before my pension is full. Like I'm not leaving any money on the table. I've worked too long for that. And  

[00:09:03] Christian de la Huerta: I was teaching high school. Yikes,  

[00:09:04] Marci Brockmann: yikes. Right. So it's going to take me probably four years to get done with the coursework and all the hours of, you know, that I have to put in before I can even take the licensing exam and all of that stuff. 

[00:09:15] Marci Brockmann: So I figure, you know, I'll work. I'll do that part of the time while I'm teaching the last three years and then do that when I.  

[00:09:24] Christian de la Huerta: That sounds good to me. And I don't mean in terms of like knocking, you know, high school kids. No, no, no. It is just what I know from teachers, friends who were teachers that were teaching high school can be really challenging. 

[00:09:38] Marci Brockmann: Well, I find it it's a much more natural fit for me than middle school was. I started as a seventh grade English teacher when I first started. And I was really, they were very, they're still very little, you know, they're young, they're 12, 13 years old and there was limited with what I could talk about and the, the literature we could read and, and so on. 

[00:09:56] Marci Brockmann: And I really yearned to get into MIDI humanistic topics with kids. And so high school, 11th and 12th grade is the perfect fit because I get to really talk about emotional intelligence and help them understand and get to know themselves through the literature that we read so  

[00:10:17] Christian de la Huerta: I can pick it. And thank you for doing that work. 

[00:10:19] Christian de la Huerta: I have teachers in my past who. Who deeply impacted my life. So, so I know that the right teacher can really make a difference in somebody's life. Absolutely. Yeah. And the fact  

[00:10:33] Marci Brockmann: that you're addressing can make an impact on a teacher's life.  

[00:10:36] Christian de la Huerta: Of course. Seriously.  

[00:10:39] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. So, so tell us about your book awakening, the soul of power. 

[00:10:44] Marci Brockmann: It's a, if I remember correctly, the first book in a series called calling all heroes that you're intending to write. Yes.  

[00:10:54] Christian de la Huerta: I'm halfway done with the second book, which is on relationships. Okay. This one came out last year and I wrote it because, you know, in my retreat work and observing the people who, who go through my retreats and that kind of stuff, they're challenged by. 

[00:11:12] Christian de la Huerta: The situations in life that they struggle with. I've, I've come to realize that most of us have an ambivalent relationship to power, maybe even conflicted, like part of us wants it. Part of us is afraid  

[00:11:24] Marci Brockmann: of it. What do you mean by power? Can I interrupt?  

[00:11:27] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. Well, I'm talking about personal power. You know, the, our, our ability to, to exert our agency are our preferences or dreams or thoughts or beliefs in the world, right. 

[00:11:39] Christian de la Huerta: In and within relationship dynamics. And so what I think what happens under, you know, under the surface of our minds is that we believe that if we really step into our power, into our potential, into all who we are, that other people may not be able to handle it and that we might end up rejected and alone. 

[00:11:57] Christian de la Huerta: And, and I think we also fear that we might have been. And I wonder, like how many times have we witnessed abuses of power? All we got to do these days is turn on the news to witness at least one abuse of power.  

[00:12:10] Marci Brockmann: Look toward Russia right now.  

[00:12:11] Christian de la Huerta: Oh my God. Oh my God. And that's representative of what we're facing that dynamic that we're facing as a species. 

[00:12:18] Christian de la Huerta: Like how do we want to be with each other? And how do we want to be in relationship to power? What kind of relationship do we want to have in this world in relationship to power? And so, and so when you add to the mix, the fact that we've been conditioned to believe that power is a bad thing, power is negative now with quotes, like how  

[00:12:38] Marci Brockmann: power corrupts, absolutely. 

[00:12:40] Marci Brockmann: Right.  
 

[00:12:40] Christian de la Huerta: Exactly. But who wants to be corrupted, but what the, what they didn't tell us about that quote is that Lord Acton, we're speaking specifically about politically. Not personal power that we're talking about. And so when you add to that mix, the fact that we've also been conditioned to believe that the emotions are weakness, that, you know, especially men, you know, a little boys don't cry and you know, that's a whole other conversation about the faulty assumptions about why we were taught that. 

[00:13:08] Christian de la Huerta: But when you put all that into mix, what happens is that we, we avoid conflict. We hate confrontation. And so we stuff ourselves. We say yes, when inside we feel now. And the sad part Marcy, is that we do it for kind of lane reasons. We, we sell ourselves out in our own personal power on our preferences or dreams or thoughts or beliefs or desires for an illusion of security, for a false sense of acceptance and for crumbs morsels of pseudo love. 

[00:13:40] Christian de la Huerta: So, so what this book talks about.  

[00:13:43] Marci Brockmann: I  
 

[00:13:43] Christian de la Huerta: know, I know I I've, I mean, I speak from experience myself. This isn't something that I read in a book. And so what the book guides the reader through is like, how do we step into power into our own power in a way that's not about hierarchy control, abuse, force domination. 

[00:14:04] Christian de la Huerta: That doesn't require that we push anybody down, step on them in order for us to feel powerful. Like how do we do it in a different way? That is a match for who we are. And, and it's for everybody because we all struggled with issues of power around power, but it has a particular message for women. And that comes from my belief. 

[00:14:25] Christian de la Huerta: My conviction really that the empowerment of women is the single most important thing that needs to happen in the world. And it's not to put women up on a pedestal. It's not to idealize women, women also abuse power, but because as a, as a world, as a species, we've been what we've been functioning. So off-kilter so off balance between the masculine and the feminine energy. 

[00:14:51] Christian de la Huerta: And I believe that when women are in 50% of power in this world, and we're not even close to that, not even in this country, that we're going to have a very difficult Congress. I know that's exactly my visual. That's exactly what I go to. And you know, the number of governors, the number of CEOs, et cetera. 

[00:15:12] Christian de la Huerta: And when women are in 50% of power, we're going to have a school principals. Well, there are a lot of women school principals there's more balanced there. I don't know about the numbers, but there seems to be more balanced there and you would definitely know more than I do in that area. But, but anyway, when women are 50% of power, we're going to have a very different relationship to war and poverty and hunger and social justice in the distribution of wealth and how we treat the environment and to all of it. 

[00:15:40] Christian de la Huerta: And so that stems my, my conviction in, in, in, in dedicating the book and giving a lot of examples that will be supportive to.  

[00:15:49] Marci Brockmann: I agree with you. And I believe that even if you go down to the micro level, to the family level, that empowering women to, to be more powerful in their own families, to be more powerful in their own bodies, in their own communities, that it would lift up families and lift up groups in communities and teach children in the next generation. 

[00:16:17] Marci Brockmann: How to be more powerful and how to go after what they want personally. And so on. I think it's not just a big macro thing for the culture. I think you could take it down to the individual level.  

[00:16:32] Christian de la Huerta: Definitely. And I think they've done studies of that. I think that's, we have evidence for that, that if you want to make a difference in either a family or a village or a society, it start by educating women. 

[00:16:44] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard statistics about, I don't remember them, but about even companies that were giving microloans to indigenous communities and that they specifically gave micro loans to women, to moms so that they could lift up their entire families and their whole villages and all of their indigenous communities that way. 

[00:17:05] Christian de la Huerta: And yeah. Yeah,  
 

[00:17:06] Christian de la Huerta: exactly. That's that's that's the first time that I read about that, that information was where the micro loans.  

[00:17:12] Christian de la Huerta: That's a very cool thing. Very cool thing. So the next book then builds upon this personal power idea and how we use power in our relationships. Yes.  

[00:17:25] Christia de la Huerta: I th I think biggest part of, part of, I also do a year long coaching program, which sounds more challenging that it is because people think, oh my God, I have to commit to a year, but it's, but it's piecemeal. 

[00:17:35] Christia de la Huerta: It's bite-size content that I deliver every week. And what I've discovered, because I've been doing weekend retreats for, for a long, long time, over three decades. What I've, what I saw was. In some cases, people would come for a weekend and have this amazing transformational expansion. And if they didn't have a support system, if they didn't have a practice, if they didn't have like where to hang up in their lives, whatever that, that learned, I fit in, have a, a structure of accountability. 

[00:18:06] Christia de la Huerta: It's easy to get sucked back into the day-to-day and the demands of life and the infinite distractions of life. And then pretty soon the old voices of fear and self doubt, the self-defeating behaviors, the self-sabotaging of our relationships, all those behaviors would start sneaking up again and dragging them down. 

[00:18:24] Christia de la Huerta: And then they'd have to come to another retreat. What I'm loving about this structure is I separate and deliver the content. Bite-size just a little bit each week, but with two key differences, one is interactive. Which I'm not really not able to do on a weekend. So I give their homework and simple stuff that you can do in 10 minutes or that you could just live in that question for the, in the back of your mind throughout the week. 

[00:18:46] Christia de la Huerta: But, but keeping, making sure that those concepts don't stay at the level of information, because we don't need more information. We've got an information overload  

[00:18:55] Marci Brockmann: visibility.  

[00:18:58] Christian de la Huerta: It's about applying it to our lives, integrating it so that it becomes transformation, not just information,  

[00:19:05] Marci Brockmann: transformation, not just information. 

[00:19:08] Christian de la Huerta: Yes. And, and so, so the other thing that, the other way that I can support people this way is, is accountability. So coaching calls with me for both. And accountability, keeping us doing what we said we were going to do, because again, we're so easily distracted there. So many things grabbing our attention, that to stay at, help us stay on track. 

[00:19:28] Christian de la Huerta: That's where those biweekly coaching calls come in. And I think I forgot your original question.  

[00:19:34] Marci Brockmann: So did I, so it's fine. So let's just go with this. I love the organic of all of this. This is great. I, I usually prepare questions, but most of the time I they're just in the back of my head and the ephemera and we just go with what we go with. 

[00:19:49] Christian de la Huerta: That's funny. Yeah. That's I, I liked the, the, the natural flow of the back and forth.  

[00:19:53] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. It's otherwise it's too, you know, structured. So, so the coaching program, is it live? Is it video? Is it prerecorded? Is it other people? Is it one-on-one I want, I'm interested in this.  

[00:20:10] Christian de la Huerta: It's virtual. And I remember the question it was on relationships. 

[00:20:12] Christian de la Huerta: So we'll go back to that. Yeah. So, no, it's, it's virtual. I haven't started live events yet. I'm hoping to this year. And so. So,  

[00:20:23] Marci Brockmann: yeah, virtual or prerecorded  

[00:20:25] Christian de la Huerta: live virtual recorded in case you can't make one of the weeks it's it's recorded for you, but, but most of them are live. I mean, they're all live. Not everybody can attend that particular live event that particular week. 

[00:20:38] Christian de la Huerta: So then they get the recording and I get to the other thing I'm loving about it is I get to use the themes from all my different retreats. So first quarter we focus on understanding the mind, the ego mind and what that means and how it works and why we do the things we do and how we sabotage ourselves and how we can and, and how we free ourselves from the self-made prison of fear and lack and limited thinking and defensiveness and judgmental judgment and, you know, victim consciousness and all that. 

[00:21:09] Christian de la Huerta: And all that stuff. Second quarter, we focused on empowerment, like what we're talking about today. Third quarters relationships, because I think that's where most of us give up, give away our power. Yeah. Yeah. That's that seems to be like,  

[00:21:24] Marci Brockmann: I still  
 

[00:21:25] Christian de la Huerta: do it with some people it's more with authority, figures, bosses, parents, coaches, that kind of thing. 

[00:21:32] Christian de la Huerta: But I think for most of us it's in the intimate, romantic sexual relationships that we were were stuff just really gets our deepest stuff, gets triggered or deeper, deepest wounds get triggered. And that's where we stop ourselves. And two small little packages. So,  

[00:21:48] Marci Brockmann: and I both have childhood trauma and although very different childhoods in very different families of origin, the wounds from them are similar and we're both so hyper aware and both such kind people that we frequently joke that we're going to kill ourselves or kill each other with kindness. 

[00:22:10] Marci Brockmann: And like, we don't always say what we mean because we're afraid of how it will land with the other. You know, we don't want to hurt them. We don't want to make eat, you know, neither one of us wants to make the other one feel bad or feel guilty or feel self-conscious or, and so I think I find a lot of times, or I feel that we're not really getting to the heart of. 

[00:22:37] Marci Brockmann: Is really going on because of that. Yeah.  

[00:22:40] Christian de la Huerta: And so many people like, like that, Marcy, I definitely used to be that way, you know, just being nice and not wanting, also not wanting to rock the boat. That's another one of the reasons that we say yes, when inside we feel no. Or that we fall short of fully communicating what we want and what we need. 

[00:22:58] Christian de la Huerta: And or of that, the reason we way we don't have clear boundaries. And, and so that's part of what we do, because, so we talk about how to approach relationships, to begin with how to approach them consciously. Right? Because if we're approaching a relationship, like hoping that they're going to make us happy, forget it, hang it up. 

[00:23:17] Christian de la Huerta: Nobody's going to make us happy and, and how unfair to put that responsibility on somebody else. So, so yeah, like only we can make ourselves happy. That's what this whole podcast  

[00:23:29] Marci Brockmann: is about. Exactly. Exactly exactly your own way.  

[00:23:36] Christian de la Huerta: Exactly, exactly. Precisely. And that's and then, and then, all right, well, why don't we look at stuff because if we don't bring this stuff to consciousness, it's still having an impact on us from the subconscious. 

[00:23:50] Christian de la Huerta: So although, you know, all the previous breakups all the times that we've felt betrayed or were betrayed or cheated on or abandoned all that stuff, unless we really deal with that. And not only a therapy, but in something even deeper, like breathwork, that handles the stuff that that's not any more in the mental level, but that has been semanticized and lead and listen to the body. 

[00:24:15] Christian de la Huerta: Now, all that stuff, doesn't go on. Right. What used to be spiritual teaching that everything is energy. Now we know from quantum physics, it's all energy. That means that this desk, that I'm, that's chair, that I'm sitting on this desk where my computer is setting my body, my emotions, it's all energy. And we know energy cannot be destroyed, can only change forms. 

[00:24:35] Christian de la Huerta: So whenever we stuff, all those negative feelings, all those traumas from our past all the times that we didn't say something because we were being nice or didn't want to rock the boat, all that stuff just gets suppressed and suppressed and suppressed, and we keep stuffing it and stuffing and stuff in it. 

[00:24:53] Christian de la Huerta: And here we go. We're already, we're trying to have a relationship in the present and it's all getting filtered through that lifetime of suppressed emotions, unhealed past traumas, like, yikes. I don't know how any relationship. Can work because we haven't been taught how to hold them, how to approach them. 

[00:25:11] Christian de la Huerta: And we certainly haven't, haven't been taught how to clear ourselves from all that repressed emotional baggage. And so that's part of, part of we're doing this year long. It's clear that stuff.  

[00:25:23] Marci Brockmann: Where do you, where do you even start with that? You know, I've, I've only recently in the last few months become aware of the intergenerational trauma. 

[00:25:32] Marci Brockmann: Like when I was originally writing my book permission to land, I was thinking only about the intergenerational mental illness and addiction abuse. And so on that I had inherited from my mother, but now I've gone back to my great grandmother who emigrated from Russia during the programs of the early 20th century and carried all of that through with the depression and infant mortality and dah, dah, dah, and world war II and my grandmother, you know how it goes and. 

[00:26:03] Marci Brockmann: And I've realized I sort of, it has allowed me to look at myself much less as a victim and more as just another person in this long family line. And it's liberated me from the whole thing.  

[00:26:17] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. That's beautiful. And what you're also pointing to is that now we know that trauma gets passed on epigenetically. 

[00:26:24] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah. The studies that they did with, you know, not only with mice with humans, I think it was the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who exhibited some of the same patterns of behavior that their grandparents did. So, so yeah, we've got, we've got our work to do. And the first step, like where do you start is making, becoming a. 

[00:26:46] Christian de la Huerta: Right, but becoming self-aware because we can't do anything about what we don't know what we can't see. It's just running us and getting in the way of our relationships and our happiness from the subconscious. So the first step is becoming aware of why we do the things that. And so that's part of what we focus on on this year long too, is it's like, and part of the beauty of doing it as a group, and I keep it intimate for, for, for that sense of, of, you know, like maybe 15, 20 people just for sense of family. 

[00:27:16] Christian de la Huerta: But it's also really beneficial because you learn from each other, like this person has an insight and then we're over here. It's like, oh, wow. I never thought about it, but I do a version of that in my own life. So it's like people stop popcorning with insights and people having amazing, amazing results in this format. 

[00:27:34] Christian de la Huerta: So I'm, I'm personally without minimizing the tragic part of it or the, the, you know, not only in health wise and death wise and economically, but I'm grateful for the, for the pandemic because it just, it helped me for a finished this book that had been brewing for 10 years. And B forced me to create this, this program that I've known for years, I needed to create virtual programming it, but it was, I didn't. 

[00:28:01] Christian de la Huerta: Yeah.  
 

[00:28:03] Marci Brockmann: Amazing.  
 

[00:28:05] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Wow. 
 

[00:28:12] Marci Brockmann: My mind has a, I have a thousand questions. So why are you calling this calling all heroes? Can you connect the dots here between the personal power and the heroes?  

[00:28:22] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah, and I, and I write about that in the beginning of the book, what it means to live heroically in the 21st century, when we don't have a horse hitch outside or most of us don't and we don't have the Armours and the demons display, except the ones that are on heads. 

[00:28:38] Christia de la Huerta: And so. And that's another thing that I'm actually deep endemic has benefited us all. It's, it's, it's forced us to, it's expanded the way that we think about heroism before that we used to think, you know, we heard the word here, or we thought of superhero, or maybe a first responder or maybe a warrior or something like that. 

[00:29:01] Christia de la Huerta: Now we include in that word, in that category, you know, our doctors, our nurses, our respiratory therapists who really behave heroically and citizen, many of them committed incredible sacrifices in order to save our lives. And I think we even included in there, the delivery people and the grocery store clerks who made so many personal sacrifices to keep us running and fed and supplied. 

[00:29:27] Christia de la Huerta: And what about the rest of us? That's what got me thinking about this stuff. And, and also over the years, noticing that this work that you and I are talking about, um, It really, it takes courage to look inside and to feel stuff. And to remember stuff that isn't pleasant is not fun. So this process of becoming self-aware and transforming ourselves and stepping into our power and having the kind of relationships that we long for and the kind of lives that have meaning and purpose, it all begins with that becoming aware. 

[00:30:01] Christia de la Huerta: And it's a journey of discovery and not, not all of it is fun. In fact, some of it is  

[00:30:06] Marci Brockmann: hard. No, most of it is not fun at  

[00:30:09] Christia de la Huerta: all. Yeah. Like even what we were talking about before, like saying, learning how to say no learning, how to, how to create healthy boundaries, learning how to stand for ourselves. It's it's heroic stuff, you know, learning how not to react and, and. 

[00:30:25] Christia de la Huerta: Be developing that skill to take a pause and take a breath and choosing how we respond to a situation rather than automatic. You heard me. So I'm going to hurt you right back, which we all know how that ends. It does. It never ends well, the ability to bring a choice choice as to how we're going to be. 

[00:30:43] Christia de la Huerta: And how are we going to show up in a given situation that is nothing short of heroic, you know, the willingness to take the higher road, even when we're right. That's nothing short of heroic.  

[00:30:56] Marci Brockmann: So how do people figure that out about themselves? I mean, it's one thing for us to sit here and say that, and, and in one way or another, a lot of my guests have similar messages, you know, they different modalities, different language, but you know, we're all talking about giving ourselves permission. 

[00:31:16] Marci Brockmann: To heal, giving ourselves permission to figure out who we are and unwind the traumatic knots that are in our heads and hearts and souls from the past and so on. But how do we, I know how I started it, but how to most people begin the journey. I don't know if what I'm asking even makes sense.  

[00:31:42] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, usually, no, it makes total sense how we usually begin. 

[00:31:46] Christia de la Huerta: Life throws a curve ball our way, you know, we lose a job, like many people have in the pandemic and it's sucked, but how many people are really discovering who they really are and what they want to do with the rest of their lives or, you know, illness or divorce, death in the family, some shock that then forces us to ask the difficult existential questions. 

[00:32:09] Christia de la Huerta: Like, who am I, what am I here? And where do I want to go? And what I want to do with this brief, like sh briefest of life that we have, whether it's a blessing of a life, how do I want to make the most of it? So usually that's the, that's what gets us going on, on the heroic journey, on the hero's journey, which is what we're talking about too. 

[00:32:29] Christia de la Huerta: Like, so, all right. So that already happened and you're like, all right, I gotta do something about my life. I think once we make that choice that we want to do something about our lives. A teacher, a book shows up. And one of the ways that I've thought about this book is precisely for that to walk somebody by the hand, right? 

[00:32:50] Christia de la Huerta: The first step for me, as far as I'm concerned, whether we want to have relationships that have a chance at working or a sense of personal empowerment or a life that is filled with meaning and purpose. It's like we have to understand that ego mind, and we don't have the time to get into it here. I spent probably the first quarter of the book getting into it and in practical ways so that we see how it's impacting our lives. 

[00:33:13] Christia de la Huerta: But here's a quick visual. If you put a baseball in the center of a stadium, that's what the ego is, who we are. It's actually the stadium and we've allowed this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of who we are to think that it is all who we are and to make really important, critical consequential choices about our lives, about our relationship. 

[00:33:36] Christia de la Huerta: From the level of, from the perspective of the baseball from its very limited and always fear-based perspective. So that's what we get into trouble because we're coming from a very limited part of who we are. So I mean, so much to say about that metaphor. Yeah. The ego is the, is that part of it? Is that, is there a sense of individual personality? 

[00:33:58] Christia de la Huerta: Like th this is Christian that's Marcy, it's both very helpful in terms of human evolution and in terms of evolution, we're probably the only species that we know of that has a sense of self, like a sense of individual personality. There are some theories about the higher apes about the elephants and the dolphins and the whales, whether they have a sense of that, they know who they are, but we don't know that they are well, but you know, nobody, but here's the, here's the thing though, like you we've seen the videos on YouTube, you put a dog or a cat in front of a mirror, they interact with that image. 

[00:34:32] Christia de la Huerta: If it was as if it was another dog or cat. If you put a, like a higher private it Chimp gorilla in front of a mirror, you put Ash on their shoulder. At some point they do this, right. They, they touch their shoulders, letting us know that they know that stem, that is just not, not just another one like them. 

[00:34:52] Christia de la Huerta: So something's different going on in the higher primates. And the elephants do that too, but we don't know whether they have a sense of individual personality, which is both. So again, a huge leap in terms of individuality and evolution, but it's, it's also the source of all our suffering, because that individual sense of who we are. 

[00:35:10] Christia de la Huerta: It's the reason that now we feel separate. We feel alone, we can feel abandoned, we can feel rejected, all that kind of stuff. We can have a sense of our own mortality. So there's a price to pay for that sense of individuality. And, and so, but again, critical that to me, that step one, understanding the mind, the ego mind, so that we know why we do begin to understand why we do the things. 

[00:35:32] Marci Brockmann: Yeah, that's huge. So that our behaviors aren't unconscious and just reactions from, from our primitive brains or whatever  

[00:35:42] Christia de la Huerta: exactly. And, and call you. And the psychologist said, I might be paraphrasing that the process of enlightenment is making the unconscious conscious, right?  

[00:35:54] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. Yeah. I see, I see so much of, so much of these behaviors with my students, you know, like they make choices they're 16, 17 years old, so that the idea of cause and effect isn't really wired into their brain yet. 

[00:36:12] Marci Brockmann: And I see them. Some of them make the right decisions most of the time. And this was one kid this year who just, he says, he knows what he wants and he's committed to doing the right thing. And he can't keep himself from falling off. And self-sabotaging every single time and oh  

[00:36:29] Christia de la Huerta: no. How many adults do we know who keeps sabotaging the relationships? 

[00:36:35] Christia de la Huerta: Sometimes even before they get, go by attracting the wrong people, by falling for people who are, who are not a match who are not available, you know, they're either already with somebody else or they live in the other side of the country or something, they're just not there. But so why do we do that? Why? 

[00:36:51] Christia de la Huerta: Because from a logical perspective, why would anybody do that? So, so it, that's why it's important to understand the subconscious motivators and why we do the things we do so that we start doing that kind of stuff to  

[00:37:03] Marci Brockmann: ourselves. Yeah. For a very long time in my life, I was dating. Men that were narcissists, that that was just their key personality trait. 

[00:37:15] Marci Brockmann: And it was, it was like I was dating men who were like my mom in a way to try to, I guess, figure out why my relationship with my mother was the way that it was.  

[00:37:29] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah, no, for sure. I have a friend who was also an author and a yoga teacher, and I love, I love his quote that it's important to heal. So going back to your, your permission to heal, it's important to heal our relationship with our parents so that we can stop dating them. 

[00:37:47] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah,  
 

[00:37:47] Marci Brockmann: exactly, exactly. And I got to a point where I sat down, I was really quiet with myself. It took a while, not just like one sitting, but quite a while, over a period of time. And I made a list of all of the things that I want that. In a life partner. And in some cases they were literally characteristics that were diametrically opposite of my mom. 

[00:38:17] Marci Brockmann: So I was using her as like what not to look for and, and, you know, trial and error, past experience. What do I want my life to look like with somebody? What do I want this relationship to feel like, what needs do I have that I need met? And then from that list, I then created a subset list of things that were absolute deal breakers, that if a man did not have these, you know, two or three or four, it was a much smaller list than then we couldn't even finish dinner, you know, like  

[00:38:51] Christia de la Huerta: sure. 
 

[00:38:52] Christia de la Huerta: And that's a great, we do versions of that process in the quarter on relationships in the year long, because that's really clear, like we have to get. What we want and be proactive rather than just reactive to, in relationship to life, we have to get clear and send the message to library. This is what I'm  

[00:39:09] Marci Brockmann: looking for. 

[00:39:10] Marci Brockmann: Right. So I was like manifesting the right thing. If, you know, if you're thinking about that, like sending that out into the universe. And I had it typed on my cell phone and I remember very boldly on a first date with a guy just handing him my phone with the list on it. And I said, so check them off.  

[00:39:29] Christia de la Huerta: But it's funny. 
 

[00:39:30] Christia de la Huerta: That is funny. Yeah. Yeah. And, and to. So, so, and you know, so that took, that took, that took effort, right? That took work. And so that's what I mean by heroic, it takes work to work on ourselves and to get free, but the rewards are infinite. It's so worthwhile because we that's how we free ourselves from all these subconscious patterns. 

[00:39:52] Christia de la Huerta: That's how we can bring choice back into the equation. That's what we can stop sabotaging ourselves in our lives, that our relationships, but going back for Scott to start by becoming aware of even the patterns and why do we get triggered by certain people in certain situations when other people don't and why do we keep attracting certain kinds of people to get in relationship with that sometimes feels like, like, like you were saying, it's like, it's like the same old, boring movie, just with a different actors that the co-leader is different, but it's the same boring movie, the same arguments, same stuff coming up. 

[00:40:26] Christia de la Huerta: Same old crap.  
 

[00:40:28] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. And it wasn't until I learned how to. My needs to assert my own healthy boundaries and, and filter out all of the, the old repeating phrases, all the old repeating behaviors that I was even capable of, of my half of the healthy relationship.  

[00:40:55] Christia de la Huerta: That's right. That's right. And then to realize that a lot of this stuff isn't even ours, like you were talking about like a lot of the, you know, these beliefs and these behaviors were just, they're not even ours. 

[00:41:06] Christia de la Huerta: We just took them on from our parents and our grandparents. And I was just been passed on. And from that,  

[00:41:12] Marci Brockmann: there was the one who gave me dating advice initially. And so she was giving me dating advice from when she dated my grandfather in the late 1930s. Imagine. And so in the eighties and the nineties and the early two thousands, I was still. 

[00:41:28] Marci Brockmann: Using grandma's dating advice and it worked for her, but I wouldn't want her marriage. I mean, she and my grandfather found happiness, but they were still a lot of strife and a lot of passive aggressive bullshit that I would not want to live with. And so that's where that got me was my grandmother's marriage. 

[00:41:51] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. And that's the stuff that you were even aware of, like a lot of this stuff that we believe in and take on and we're not even conscious of like, yeah.  

[00:41:59] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. Well, I didn't know that that was what I was doing until I got to my forties and I was already divorced and I was dating for 10 years and I was like, well, where the hell am I getting this idea? 

[00:42:11] Marci Brockmann: You know, this is bullshit. If I pretend to like sports, because the guy I'm dating like sports, then I'm going to be stuck being a sports fan for the rest of my life. And I'm going to resent watching every freaking game because I don't really give a shit, you know, unless my kids playing in the game, I don't care who wins. 

[00:42:31] Marci Brockmann: Right.  
 

[00:42:31] Christia de la Huerta: And then that resentment just doesn't go away. It starts building. And it turns into what you were just talking about. It turns into passive aggressive behavior.  

[00:42:38] Marci Brockmann: All right. And then the guy thinks he's dating a woman who loves sports. So I'm not even a real person anymore.  

[00:42:47] Christia de la Huerta: Right. And so how can we expect to be loved authentically for who we are if we're not presenting ourselves, if we're not showing up authentically as who we are, that's a set up for failure. 

[00:42:59] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. So the version of me that I became when I was married to my first husband is a character in a fantasy novel. She doesn't exist. And 12 years in or 11 years in. And I was just like, what the freaking hell am I doing  

[00:43:16] Christia de la Huerta: at a fantasy novel from the 1930s?  

[00:43:18] Marci Brockmann: Right. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And I had this epiphany one night and I realized I was miserable and I was lonely and we had no connection and we had nothing in common. 

[00:43:29] Marci Brockmann: And the days that he said he was working late, or he was otherwise occupied with other things that he wasn't going to be home until later I was liberated and happy. And what the hell kind of relationship with that. And I realized I had this epiphany, I don't want this marriage for my children. I wouldn't want them to grow up and have a relationship like this. 

[00:43:49] Marci Brockmann: And if I don't get out now, this is going to be the template they have for relationships for their whole life. Unless, you know, they meet Christian Taylor Huerta and they can change it  

[00:44:01] Christia de la Huerta: well, and mercy let's, let's focus on that, that choice, because that was horrible. In your, in your courage. I mean, that took courage for you to say, I have to get out, not only for my own freedom and my own happiness, but for the sake of my kids, I'm not passing this shit on, like the DNA chains of stops here. 

[00:44:21] Christia de la Huerta: Right.  
 

[00:44:21] Marci Brockmann: And the idea, you know, like so many people say I'm staying in the marriage until my kids graduate high school, or I'm staying in for the kids. Well, what are you teaching them by doing that? If you're miserable enough to have that thought creep into your consciousness. Yeah. I'm going to curse right now. 

[00:44:37] Marci Brockmann: Get the fuck out of that relationship because it's not what you want to pass on.  

[00:44:43] Christia de la Huerta: Exactly. And that's what I told, you know, people who come to me with that quandary, with that conflict, and it's tough. It's incredibly. Tough choice. But when I say like, look, the greatest gift you can give your children is to be the most that you can be. 

[00:45:02] Christia de la Huerta: And to be the happiest that you can be, that's where they're going to take from you more than anything else.  

[00:45:08] Marci Brockmann: And I've heard both of my kids, my, my they're going to this month, they're going to be 21 and 24. So we've come a long way. But both of them have said to me at different times, that from me, they've learned that that change is possible. 

[00:45:25] Marci Brockmann: That if they don't like a situation or they don't find themselves happy or fulfilled, or there's no, they're not getting meaning or their needs, aren't being met. That it's better to walk away. As soon as you realize that than it is to stay. That's priceless.  

[00:45:39] Christia de la Huerta: That is priceless.  

[00:45:41] Marci Brockmann: Exactly. I'm thrilled, you know, cause that's what I wanted to pass along, not the toxicity of a marriage. 

[00:45:50] Marci Brockmann: So.  
 

[00:45:51] Christia de la Huerta: And, and the prison, because it's, it's, we let ourselves be stuck in prisons of our own making.  

[00:45:58] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. Yeah. There's a point that I remember sitting with my therapist years ago and, um, I felt like I was in this situation, then I was powerless and I'm like, I am just stuck. I could not see a way out. And I felt like I was on the Titanic, strapped to the wall. 

[00:46:16] Marci Brockmann: I was just going to go down with the boat and, and she looked at me and she said, you know, you'll always have a choice. You might not like the choices that are available. They might be harder, more difficult or more painful than you want to deal with. You always have a choice. Yes. And I sat there on her couch and pondered that for a little while. 

[00:46:38] Marci Brockmann: It took me a few minutes to just let that sink in and.  

[00:46:43] Christia de la Huerta: And now you're now you take us to like the most heroic point in our journey of, in a heroic journey of, of empowerment and liberation, which is personal responsibility. That's the toughest one for people to really get that, no matter what happened in the past. 

[00:47:02] Christia de la Huerta: And I know horrible things happen to people that should have never happened. And I'm so sorry about that, but that no matter what happened, and no matter what happens going forward, we always get to choose how we show up in response. And from that perspective, Even from that perspective, we get to free ourselves from victim consciousness. 

[00:47:24] Christia de la Huerta: If only it hadn't been this way, if only mom or dad or the teacher, or the minister of society, sexism, racism, homophobia, not to deny that any of those things exist or that none of our traumas happen. It's not about denying that. It's about saying that if we want to be free, we have to, at some point, get to the point of saying like, you know what, that sucked. 

[00:47:48] Christia de la Huerta: And I wish it hadn't been that way. And what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do in response and Marcy, that is nothing short of heroic. It is.  

[00:48:00] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. Cause this is much easier to put your head in the sand and not do anything about  

[00:48:03] Christia de la Huerta: it and give our power away. Right. Because as long as long as we were holding anybody or anything outside of ourselves, whether it was mom or dad or, or a system societal's unfair system, As long as we're blaming that, which is convenient and it's easier to do, but we're giving our power away and we're never going to free ourselves. 

[00:48:25] Christia de la Huerta: Right. That's the pay off we get to say, well, if only it hadn't been that way, if it wasn't that way. Yeah. So it's a nice, comfortable excuse, but it keeps us in prison. We keep giving our power away sometimes even through the perpetrator. So I don't, I don't see a way around that.  

[00:48:44] Marci Brockmann: No, no. For, for me, I always think back there was a frequent listeners of the podcast will know that I've sort of touched on this before, but there was a movie that came out, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago called letters to Juliet and. 

[00:49:00] Marci Brockmann: In the letter to Juliet that we find out in the climax of the story that  

[00:49:06] Christia de la Huerta: you're going to spoil  

[00:49:06] Marci Brockmann: it. Well, the letter just used the powerful phrase. What if not like what if I do this? And the earth falls in an an and I get swallowed or the dragon comes and breeds fire and burns me to death. No, but what if I do this? 

[00:49:22] Marci Brockmann: And it turns out great. What if I risk this? And I get everything I ever wanted? What if I do this? And it doesn't work out the way I want, but I learned something the tray, you know, to me, the only thing, the only failure is not trying.  

[00:49:42] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah, I agree. And when we look at it from that perspective, there are no failed relationships, right? 

[00:49:49] Christia de la Huerta: As long as we're learning, as long as we're growing, as long as we're becoming better human beings and more empowered persons, then Hey, That's what it took to get us to where we are today.  

[00:50:00] Marci Brockmann: Exactly. So, you know, I hear people like I've had friends who, a lot of friends who are divorced and I hear them say things like, oh, you know, I wish I never married. 

[00:50:08] Marci Brockmann: So and so, and I'm like, well, at least you got your kids out of it. At least you learned to not be the person you were then, and you're now a different person now. And if that evolution needed that, you know, there always has to be some sort of negative circumstance or, or at least circumstance of lack or however you want to phrase that to, to push any revolution forward or evolution forward. 

[00:50:34] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the myths that, that we get into about relationships in the year long too. And in my book, the other one, you know, is that we have to be with somebody told death, do us part it's like, wait a minute. Who said, who made that up? Somebody made that up along the  

[00:50:51] Marci Brockmann: way. Well, that was much easier to do when the life expectancy was 40. 

[00:50:56] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, as long as we're growing and that's my measurement for how long do we stay? Because we can't go by the ups and the downs necessarily because every relationship is going to have ups and downs. And sometimes what we do, we're in one of the down cycles and we say, well, that's it, I'm out. 

[00:51:16] Christia de la Huerta: And I'm not suggesting staying in longer than we need to. So, but my measurement to determine how long to stay is, is growth happening. Am I growing? Am I becoming a better, more empowered, more fulfilled human being then that maybe it's not time to go yet? I don't know.  

[00:51:36] Marci Brockmann: And are you getting your needs. You know, we might not be getting all of your needs met all the time. 

[00:51:42] Marci Brockmann: Cause that would be ridiculous. But the majority of the deal breakers are you getting those needs met, you know, do you feel that your partner is kind and supportive and loving? Are you being loved the way you need to be loved? And is that other person allowing you to love the way that makes you feel good as a person? 

[00:52:03] Marci Brockmann: You know, if you can't answer yes to those questions, then don't stay.  

[00:52:10] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Yeah. And that's another good, really good exercise that we also do in, in, in my retreat. And then my, my year-long coaching program is what, what are the negotiables? And what's not negotiable. Right?  

[00:52:22] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. And it teaches us what boundary setting is, which I don't think I understood until I was like 48. 

[00:52:32] Marci Brockmann: And then I was like, oh, that's what they mean. I understand what's okay. And what's not okay.  

[00:52:38] Christia de la Huerta: What works for us, what doesn't work for us.  

[00:52:40] Marci Brockmann: Exactly. Exactly. So are you ready for some quick questions? Sure. Okay. So what six words would you use to describe yourself?  

[00:52:52] Christia de la Huerta: Wow. 
 

[00:52:59] Christia de la Huerta: Well, let me answer it this way. Somebody asked me recently, what are your greatest contributions? And I would say my capacity to love that's four words, what my capacity to love and the depth of my surrender. Wow. So I think I went over poetic. Yeah, I think I went over six, but I don't  

[00:53:25] Marci Brockmann: care. That's that, that wins. 

[00:53:28] Marci Brockmann: That wins. It's the best answer so far. What's your favorite way to spend a day? 

[00:53:37] Christia de la Huerta: All right. Depends. Depends. Sometimes where I feel most connected is an out in nature, whether it's a beautiful beach and I'm from an island. So I love, I love a beautiful beach and I've also got some incredible magical mountain spots. And there's some times if I've been working, you know, and the type of work that I do for an introvert is like, I'm burning extra energy. 

[00:54:00] Christia de la Huerta: Like, especially if I'm gone for three weeks and I'm on, you know, doing event after event, the way that I refuel and re-energize is by myself. So sometimes Netflix therapy. That's what I need. I don't want to think. I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't want to save the world. I just want to like tune out. 

[00:54:19] Marci Brockmann: Yeah. That's what I did last Saturday. I was so burnt and so exhausted that I got up in the morning and I had some breakfast and I laid on the couch and I walked old reruns of big bang theory. And I played animal crossing on my switch for like seven hours.  

[00:54:35] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. Sometimes that's what I need to just disconnect and not  

[00:54:38] Marci Brockmann: think. 
 

[00:54:39] Marci Brockmann: And I forced myself not to feel guilty about it because that's also my emo productivity always and some days, some days, no. Okay. Number three. What is your favorite childhood memory? 

[00:54:55] Christia de la Huerta: It's we used to go to this beach, this world, famous Cuban beach, Colorado every summer, and sometimes rent the house right on the beach. And those were like my most idyllic fun. And being, and being nine of us. Well, we were all born. Then the last one was born in Spain and exile, but be having so many kids, we were very self-sufficient. 

[00:55:20] Christia de la Huerta: We used to just have such a great time just playing, playing. And so I think that was the Mo when I think back about my, my life, that was, those were the years of innocence. When we, when we left Cuba that, you know, we had to grow up really fast, especially my, my oldest sister and I first and second, my mom, you know, understand that he was so overwhelmed with so many kids. 

[00:55:41] Christia de la Huerta: She left Cuba when she was eight months pregnant. So my sister and I had to grow up fast and take care of the younger we'll help take care of the younger ones.  

[00:55:51] Marci Brockmann: That must be a, you could write a memoir about that. That's an incredible experience. Okay. What is your favorite meal?  

[00:56:01] Christia de la Huerta: Huh? Wow. There's so many foods. 

[00:56:04] Christia de la Huerta: I love, I love Asian food. I love Mexican. But if, if I were going to have a final, if I got the memo go, you're getting transferred to another planet. My final meal would have to include at least a slice of pizza.  

[00:56:21] Marci Brockmann: Okay. That makes sense. Nothing beats pizza.  

[00:56:26] Christia de la Huerta: Don't toggle it.  
 

[00:56:28] Marci Brockmann: Oh my God. Yes. Yes. We had this whole argument in the faculty room at school. 

[00:56:34] Marci Brockmann: A couple of weeks ago somebody was selling chocolate and all of the dark chocolate was gone. And like, incredulously like, why are you all idiots, idiots eating the dark chocolate when the milk chocolate is here. And you know, it was like, we were all fighting.  

[00:56:47] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah, no, I don't. I don't do milk chocolate and white chocolate to me. 

[00:56:51] Christia de la Huerta: That's that's not even,  

[00:56:53] Marci Brockmann: that's not even chocolate. I don't know where that is. That's something else entirely. What, one piece of advice would you like to give your younger  

[00:57:00] Christia de la Huerta: self to hang in there and to smile and be hopeful because. Like, if I were speaking to younger me, it's like, you have no idea who are you going to become? 

[00:57:11] Christia de la Huerta: And you're going to get through all this stuff and you're going to have an incredible, magical life. And so just hang in there, it's going to get way, way, way better.  

[00:57:23] Marci Brockmann: That's very hopeful. And I hope your younger self would have listened to you.  

[00:57:28] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. And you know, what what's interesting is that my whole life, my whole life was my whole adolescence was one long depression with suicidal fantasies and, and flashing forward. 

[00:57:42] Christia de la Huerta: Like these days, no matter what happens in my life, no matter the details, the circumstances where their relationship works out, where it doesn't whether a project succeeds or fails in quotes never, ever, ever, ever do. I question my sense of self and that too, like myself acceptance my level of self-love or. 

[00:58:03] Christia de la Huerta: Established and unshakeable. And if that can happen to me, I know it can happen. I can happen to anybody watching this and listening to this. I agree. And that's what I guide the reader through in the book and in my, in my retreats and my coaching program to get to that place of, of freedom and empowerment and self love. 

[00:58:22] Christia de la Huerta: It's ultimately about that, isn't it  

[00:58:24] Marci Brockmann: ultimately? Yeah, absolutely. Well, this feeds directly into the next question. So what is the one thing you would most like to change about the world?  

[00:58:35] Christia de la Huerta: Hmm. I think that self-love and I think, but, but going back to what we were talking about before too, if we understand the ego, because the ego is the source of all conflict, whether it's interpersonal in our relationships and the reason we get stuck in power struggles and international or international, it all comes back to the ego. 

[00:58:59] Christia de la Huerta: So I think that if we understood, if we all understand. We would live in a very different world.  

[00:59:06] Marci Brockmann: I agree. A hundred percent. Okay. Now this is really trivial in comparison to how profound that was, but what a TV shows do you, are you bingeing right  

[00:59:16] Christia de la Huerta: now? That's funny. I've actually been bingeing on Netflix, Spanish language series, and there's some really good ones. 

[00:59:26] Christia de la Huerta: And the reason for that is Spanish is my first language, but I'm actually translating the book to Spanish and I hired somebody to do it. But when I started reading it, it was like, wait a minute. That's not what I meant at all. Cause he was translating literally. Right. And so, so the, you know, there's some things that don't translate. 

[00:59:45] Christia de la Huerta: No,  
 

[00:59:45] Marci Brockmann: there's a lot of idiomatic phrases that you can't translate translate later.  

[00:59:49] Christia de la Huerta: Yeah. So it just didn't make any sense. It's fantasy. It's like, no, not at all. I would never say that. So then it's folk. All right. Well, what I thought to myself, I mean, in, in life, you can get away with it because if you, you know, you do Spanglish, if you can't think of a word in one, then you throw in a word from another language. 

[01:00:06] Christia de la Huerta: But if I'm going to teach and do podcast interviews in Spanish, I don't want to do that. I want to be able to do it at least, you know, 95%, 99% in Spanish. So I've been consciously, it's been like Netflix, you write, I've been, I've been consciously watching it. And I watch it so that I can listen to it in Spanish. 

[01:00:24] Christia de la Huerta: And I do the subtitles in Spanish too, so that I can get it both visually and auditorily. And, and, and I am, I'm expanding my, I can tell already I'm expanding my vocabulary and my ability to express myself in Spanish. That's beautiful.  

[01:00:41] Marci Brockmann: I took Spanish in high school and in college and I took immersion weekends because I could not. 

[01:00:48] Marci Brockmann: I struggled. I could not get the vocabulary to stick in my brain and I could understand grammar the structure of a sentence in Spanish, but I didn't have enough vocabulary cemented in my head to be able to say anything substantive. And it was one of the most frustrating experiences.  

[01:01:08] Christia de la Huerta: I, the ability, you know, but it's in their mercy. 

[01:01:10] Christia de la Huerta: I think if you place yourself in an immersive situation where you had to, then that you would be surprised about how much of it will start coming back one day. And that's part of what, the reason that I went to Ecuador too. And like we were talking before we started recording about me, me being a nomadic face. 

[01:01:28] Christia de la Huerta: What are the reasons I, I, I mean many other reasons too, but what other reasons I wanted to be in, in immerse was to immerse myself in a Spanish speaking culture so that I was forced to express myself.  

[01:01:41] Marci Brockmann: It makes sense. I've had these on and off fantasies about moving to Barcelona when I  

[01:01:46] Christia de la Huerta: retire. Oh, it might be too. 

[01:01:49] Christia de la Huerta: There's no time. I love that city. What a beautiful city  

[01:01:53] Marci Brockmann: that would be immerse me into the whole thing right there. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, this has been wonderful Christian I love this. This is wonderful. So in the show notes, if you are listening and you scroll down, we'll be all manner of ways to get in touch with Christian de LA Huerta socials and where to buy his book and where to find him and to sign up for his retreats and his coaching program and all that sort of stuff. 

[01:02:23] Marci Brockmann: So as long as you're not driving, scroll  

[01:02:25] Christia de la Huerta: down. Thank you. Thank you for is for saying that, Marcy, but thank you. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm glad that we got it recorded this time. And thanks for having the show. I know that in your willingness to. To do that and to overcome any, you know, any other tendencies to not do it, whether fear or laziness or shyness or whatever that in your willingness to do it, you, you many lives are being touched. 

[01:02:51] Christia de la Huerta: So, so thank  
 

[01:02:51] Marci Brockmann: you. I appreciate that. It's still a small podcast, you know, um, it's very on the community level, which is totally fine with me. We just reached 41,000 downloads this week, actually. And thank you. Uh, you know, I have no budget, so it's just me and whatever money I throw at marketers to get the name out there and word of mouth and social media. 

[01:03:17] Marci Brockmann: And I am grateful for my listeners who keep coming back and keep giving recommendations and reviews and it's organically fabulous. I just love everything about it.  

[01:03:30] Christia de la Huerta: Beautiful, congrats, and keep on doing it. Thanks.