891. 7 books every woman needs for self-awareness + personal growth

0:00And I remember like a week later, I got this early inheritance from this uncle that like I didn't even really know. I think it was at that time like 10k, which was like crazy for me. You know, my paychecks were like$2 ,000. And so it was a crazy amount for me and it just like came out of nowhere. It was super random, never expected it. I was at a job I didn't love and I wanted to go off on my own. I was a corporate girly for quite some time and I was like, I need to manifest money to leave this job and also to move to New York. One of the concepts and core ideas from The Big Leap that I love and I use all the time with my clients is that most people sabotage themselves when things get too good.

0:35They have this kind of energetic set point, this like temperature thermometer of how good it can get, how much love they can receive, how much money they can receive, how much abundance they can feel, how much joy they can feel. This showed me that my sabotage and self-sabotage wasn't random, that it was patterned, and it usually happened right after I expanded.

1:10Hello and welcome to Almost 30 Podcast. My name is Krista Williams and I am almost 30 on the other side. On the other side of almost 30, because we've been doing this for 10 years at Almost 30. We are OGs in the space. We have been pioneers. It was the wild, wild west when we started. We started Almost 30 on our closet floors. We had full-time jobs. We had no intention of this becoming anything. And here we are today. It's an aspect of what I do. It's a full-time job. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it was a crazy surprise to me that I'm with you today on this show, but I feel so lucky and grateful.

1:47Almost 30 is a place and space. We always want to be open and curious and bring you conversations that are cutting edge and maybe people aren't having them in other places and always bring different perspectives and ideas and interesting leaders and teachers in the space of personal growth and spirituality and wellness. And we also do solo episodes. So myself and Lindsay, my best friend and co-host, we will do solo episodes where we'll talk about things that are on our mind and on our hearts. She'll talk a lot about motherhood and that sort of journey and process. I'll talk about things related to body and spirituality and timelines and 10X is easier than 2X, one of my favorite books that we're going to talk about today.

2:29And one of the episodes I was thinking about doing, no one asked me to do it. So, you know, let's just get that out of the way because I think all the influencers are like, everyone's been asking me to do this. Not one soul requested or required this. My soul had the thought and the intention and the inspiration to do an episode of the seven books that have changed my life. I really love to get book recommendations from people. I think books are are and always will be portals to transformation and growth. They can change your life and, you know, change you in ways you never thought possible. And I think some of the biggest shifts I've had in my experience have been finding books like the ones I'm going to talk about today that have just brought a completely different texture of thought and a completely different energy and mindset that I really never had.

3:18And so I wanted to share my favorite books. You guys can buy all of them. You can buy the ones you're excited about and you like, but I thought we'd have like a little book club today in talking about some of our favorite books because it can just be super, super helpful. So for me, just a little background, I've been reading and in the spirituality space for like 15 years now, I think maybe a little bit longer. My first spiritual book I would say that I read was the Bible. Grew up in a small Catholic town. But after that, it was The Secret. And this isn't one of my book's recommendation, but The Secret was really the first book that was like a portal for me.

3:55And I think for a lot of people of my generation of spirituality. The secret was kind of the gateway, the gateway drug, if you'll say, to a lot of spirituality, a lot of learning, a lot of lessons, a lot of things that I've been through. But I'll never forget reading that book and understanding the law of attraction and understanding manifestation and understanding the laws of the universe and understanding that our thoughts create our reality. And, you know, we could ask for things and we could, you know, co-create with the universe on things. And I first got that book and I was kind of figuring it out.

4:34I was like sussing it out. I'm like, okay, what's going on here? A little story about the book that sort of affirmed for me how powerful it was. I remember being like, okay, I need to manifest money right now because I wanted to leave my job. I was at a job I didn't love and I wanted to go off on my own. I was a corporate girly for quite some time. And I was like, I need to manifest money to leave this job and also to move to New York to be with my then boyfriend. I was like, how am I going to do this? Okay. I'm going to try the secret. I'm going to write myself a check. I'm going to say the affirmations.

5:04I'm going to visualize it and do all the things. And I remember a week later, I got this early inheritance from this uncle that I didn't even really know and got, I think it was at that time, 10K, which was crazy for me. you know, my paychecks were like$2 ,000. And so it was a crazy amount for me. And it just like came out of nowhere. It was super random, never expected it. And I was just like, wow, this kind of stuff works. And so I started my journey with reading and acquiring and procuring more books that have been transformative in my life. So let's dig into some of the books that have changed me, that have changed how I operate, that have changed how I teach, that have given me language for patterns, but more importantly, they gave me like responsibility for my life.

5:53I'd say the first book that I'll recommend and I love to read and I'm so grateful that we've met before is the, and I'm so glad we met the author before, but it's called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. Gay Hendricks is a psychologist, he's a coach, and he's a personal development teacher. And one of the concepts and core ideas from The Big Leap that I love and I use all the time with my clients is that most people sabotage themselves when things get too good. So people have upper limit problems and people have capacity problems. So there's this concept in therapy you might've heard where people have this window of tolerance.

6:30So if someone is going through something and it's really hard and something else happens and something else happens, they're really stretching and hitting their window of tolerance, their window of capability and ability to hold and go through hard things. But for a lot of people in life, they have this kind of energetic set point, this like temperature thermometer of how good it can get, how much love they can receive, how much money they can receive, how much abundance they can feel, how much joy they can feel. For a lot of us, it's almost like genetically encoded and genetically, you know, given to us from a young age.

7:06And we really only allow ourselves to be a little bit happier than our parents, be a little bit richer than our parents, be a little bit more abundant than the people that we've seen growing up. This is a lot why the concept of expanders from To Be Magnetic is so powerful from Lacey because it really gives you this concept of expanding your capacity, of really helping to see examples through your reticular activating system, so supported by neuroscience, of what is actually possible and expanding your capacity for good in your life. For a lot of us, especially when we think about our romantic relationships, you might have this deep-seated understanding that you will never be loved for who you are.

7:46And so that set point that you have, that temperature setting that you have that they can love me, but only this much is kind of like your default factory setting for your life. And then you might, if you kind of reach close to that point, you might self-sabotage because you want to affirm the belief that you cannot be loved for who you are. Of course, we're not doing this consciously, but there's aspects of our subconscious that are trying to affirm the subconscious beliefs that we have. So you might, you know, not answer the phone. You might not show up. You might be a bitch to him. You might do these things that sabotage the relationship because you don't actually believe that you can be loved just as you are.

8:27So when we can look at our self-sabotaging behaviors as aspects of us that are, you know, trying to help us or support us, but also kind of keeping us small, it can be really powerful. And I think for a lot of my clients that have done a lot of work and are really looking for the next level, it's really great to have the big leap as a resource because when you're trying to go from good to excellent or epic, you're going to have to work with your temperature because for so many people, you know, this was my experience. I was so mentally unwell. I had anxiety and depression when I was in my early twenties and a lot in high school.

9:01And so I was just trying to freaking not hate myself, not like spiral, not be sad all the time. I was just trying to get by. And so once I got to a baseline of mental health, I kind of had a new set point, a new temperature setting. And then I could expand a little bit more and more. And there was sabotaging behaviors that happened in the meantime. But so many people have more so than negative behaviors, they have upper limit problems because each person has a thermostat for how much success, love, or ease they can tolerate before you unconsciously create a problem to return to the familiar. This is a weird story, but it makes sense here.

9:46So there's a channel on YouTube called Soft White Underbelly. And this is a marketing executive that goes to Skid Row and interviews people on Skid Row to bring humility and life and interest and yeah, just a lot of compassion to the people of Skid Row. Homeless people, crack addicts, drug addicts, pimps, hoes, like all these, and they call themselves that. all these types of people and he found this woman that was a um sex worker on the street and he really wanted to help her and so he got her an apartment got her set up with a job all of these things and what ended up happening was she ended up giving all of her money to her pimp and sabotaging and like ended up trashing the apartment and ended up leaving because it was almost like She hadn't had the energetic set point of love, of receiving, of compassion.

10:36She had only really had horrible things happen to her, so she couldn't receive all of that love. She couldn't really receive that support, so she sabotaged what she received. But when you understand upper limits and you understand that there's a part of you that wants to keep you small because it thinks keeping you small is safe, you can really work with your edges and expand your capacity for all good things in life. One of the quotes that I love from that book is, your upper limit problem is the amount of success, love, and creativity you are willing to tolerate. I also love the quote that he says in there, worry is a misuse of imagination.

11:15Worry is a misuse of imagination. I just, I can't get over that. It's so good. So this showed me that my sabotage and self-sabotage wasn't random, that it was patterned, and it usually happened right after I expanded. And the deeper work really became increasing my capacity to feel good, not just chase more. So that is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. So really thinking about this, can you let the things be good in your life without creating a problem? Can you allow yourself to feel better, be better, live better each and every day without sabotaging the good in your life, the relationships, the job, the body, et cetera?

11:56The second book that I really love is Women Who Run With the Wolves by Claudia Estes-Pinks. Just an absolute Bible on the feminine experience. It is just stunning. Every sentence in that book is a full meal. I could sit with and roll with and play with and decipher and discern and pontificate on every sentence in that book. It never ceases to amaze me. I've actually only read the book once through, and now I just open a page and kind of just see what it has to offer me. And really the core concept, I would say, one of the things that I really got from it was the wild woman archetype. So really bringing through and being with the wild woman within us, within all women, within the feminine, this instinctual, intuitive, embodied feminine that has been conditioned out of women through culture, domestication, and approval seeking.

12:55So many of us have this wildest nature. So many of us women have this wildest nature within us that we are denying, that we are suppressing, that we are controlling, that we are contorting, and we are not allowing ourselves to be in this process of being playful and juicy and all aspects of the feminine. One of the quotes that I love in the book is, within each woman lives, within each woman, there lives a powerful force. One of the quotes that I love in the book is to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others. And yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.

13:30So when we people please to please others, we're really exiling us from ourselves. We're really not pleasing ourself. And so reminding ourselves that there are aspects of their feminine nature with these feminine archetypes, with, our feminine that we've been so caught off from. We've been so cut off from our natural instincts, our natural bodies, our natural feelings, our intuition in our lives. And the more that we can reclaim that, the more that we can be with that, the better mothers will be, the better lovers will be, the better women for society and society to come. And this wasn't about becoming something.

14:06It's not about I read it and I was like, I am the wild woman. Here I go. It's like, It was about remembering these aspects of women and these aspects of our ancestry and this journey of women becoming more and more empowered in the world. And it's also about trusting the part of me that knows without validation. There's so much within me and there's so much within my psyche and I guess my intuition that I now feel like I don't need to confirm or perform or I don't need to, you know, explain to anybody. And I think that book really gave me so much permission. And it really helped me to think about where I'm betraying myself to stay liked.

14:45Because that's the thing for so many of us. And for so many women, we betray ourselves to stay liked. The third book is called Women, Food and God. And it's by Janine Roth. And if you know me and you know my books, you know that Women, Food, and God is absolutely a Bible to me in a way. It's a book that I recommend all of my Metamorphosis participants read. Metamorphosis is my body transformation program, my body liberation program. It's a small group coaching program. But in it, I always suggest everyone to read Women, Food, and God. The way that that book resets your understanding of your relationship to your body and your body as this vessel for divinity, this like beautiful instrument for your soul on earth, like the way that we have been taught to hate ourselves, to fight with our bodies, to fight with ourselves, to not be okay at any shape or size, to use food, to numb, to cope, to avoid, to, you know, not feel, to feel like we have just, I will say being pregnant again has made me even more intentional about the choices I'm making.

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17:58Start taking supplements your body can actually absorb. Go to absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for up to 35 % off your first order. That's absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for 35 % off your first order. I've been so disconnected from the truth of who we are in our bodies and from our power and from ourselves. And Women, Food, and God was just essential for me in re-patterning and reworking my relationship to my body. I love and honor and cherish my body so much. I have such reverence for it. And it's been a long journey. If you've listened to the podcast, you've heard me talk about my body journey and all the struggles I went with.

18:41But in Women, Food, and God, it was so helpful to understand that your relationship with food mirrors your relationship with life. So control, deprivation, indulgence, and an obsession with food are reflections of deeper emotional and spiritual patterns. So if you've met a woman that she's very beautiful, put together all the things, and she's super hypervigilant and controlling with food, y 'all know she's not just hypervigilant and controlling with food. Y 'all know that she's like that in so many areas of for life. I see so many women missing out on so much of their life because they are just controlling their food so deeply.

19:19And if you think you are not controlling every aspect of your life when you're doing that, it is insane. Like how you eat is how you live. And I'm not saying that you need to go eat fast food or like eat fricking cakes and bonbons all the time. It's like you being present and attuned and available for what your body wants and available for the moment and available for food to be something that you can be in relationship to and your body to be in relationship to. And the same with like women who run with the wolves. It's about trusting your body's deep intuition and knowing of what is good and what would feed it.

19:54It's basically a lot of the concept, you know, the way you do anything is how you do everything. And if you are numbing with food, you're probably numbing out on life. If you're avoiding your feelings with food, you're probably avoiding out on a lot on life. And so for me, I saw a lot of how I was gripping, how I was controlling and how I was negotiating, not just with food, but with desire, with pleasure and with receiving. There's a huge part. And we talk a lot about this in metamorphosis. If you want to receive more from life, but yet you're like literally eating a graham cracker for lunch.

20:27What is that? Like you're literally telling the universe I am not able to receive nourishment, sustenance, and energy, but I'm going to just be like available for receiving everything else in other ways. Like you have to be in right relationship with the energetics of how you're running all aspects of your life to be available to receive the abundance, the magic, and the flow that you're really asking for. So I really was able to release the grip I had on food and I had on my body and just be in this relationship where I'm so grateful for the nourishment and the sustenance that I receive from food and through food.

20:59And I'm able to feel my feelings first. It taught me that feeling my feelings was such an access point to a deeper relationship with food because then I wasn't using food to numb, control, and soothe myself. So when we think about this, you know, one of the takeaways you can think about from the book is where are we controlling instead of allowing? Where are we being in a relationship with food? where we are controlling it instead of where we are allowing it. The fourth book that I've read is called Attached. And Attached is so great. And it's kind of an OG book in the space. It's by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

21:37And the book is really like the book for attachment theory. It breaks down attachment theories and relationships in a really, really practical way. So the core framework is secure attachment, anxious attachment, and avoidant attachment. And the whole premise is that a lot of dating and relationships isn't random. It's patterns really based on how you bond and how you feel safely with others. So I love the book because it makes relationship dynamics feel less personal and more patterned. And it really helps you spot incompatibility early on instead of over-investing. And it helps you give language to things people feel but really can't articulate.

22:19So you're not just identifying the pattern, you want to expand your capacity and rewire it eventually. But it really helped me to understand my own, you know, relationship pattern that I was avoidant in relationships in some ways and anxious in others. And now I'm feeling I feel very secure in my relationships. And I even used attached for my friendships. You know, I had relationships with friends where I would be anxious or I'd be avoidant. And I really wanted to be in a space where I could be secure with everyone and I could be secure enough in myself that all of my relationships then reflected that.

22:53And that was the work that I did beyond that book was created secure attachment within myself because then I could have secure attachment in any relationship in my life. It also talks about in the book how our nervous system really shapes how we give and receive love. So working in the nervous system here is really essential because a lot of times you could be so activated in your nervous system that you can't really receive the love or the relationship that's in front of you. And I know for myself that was true because I would often get activated or overwhelmed and my nervous system would then make sense of things that were not true or accurate.

23:29And so understanding how the nervous system played a role in this was helpful. I love the quote that they talk about in there. People are only as needy as their unmet needs. people are only as needy as their unmet needs. So if we can find the time and the spaciousness to meet our needs, we will no longer be needy to people. There's also the quote, effective dependency is the hallmark of secure attachment. So effective dependency. If you're someone that's had an insecure attachment or anxious attachment, whatever it is, you are scared to count on someone, remembering that you can be effectively dependent on your partner.

24:06That's what we really want in sovereign relationships is that effective dependencies. And really the book removed shame for me. It stopped making my patterns mean something that was wrong with me. And I started seeing that healing wasn't becoming less needy. It was really becoming more secure with myself. And so for us to think about, we can kind of think about what kind of love actually feels safe in our body and what attachment we're working with so that we can do the healing on ourselves outside of relationship to be the best possible person when we're in relationship. The fifth book that I love so much is A Course in Miracles.

24:39Oh, centered for peaceful living. I can't say enough about A Course in Miracles. And I've tried to read A Course in Miracles twice before. I think I tried to read it years ago. And I tried to read it again when Marianne Williamson was on the scene and popping. I was like, oh my gosh, I want to read A Course in Miracles now because she had written so many books based on A Course in Miracles. She'd gotten really famous with Return to Love. One of her most famous books was based on A Course in Miracles. She also has A Course in Weight Loss, which is the spiritual approach to weight loss. It's actually a really good book, radical title, but it's a really good book.

25:16But A Course in Miracles is so thick, it's so juicy. It's almost like a Bible to me. It's so pithy, it's so clear, it has so many maxims. It's so like radical. It's like, you are not special. Your ego wants you to be special. When you stop being special, you will then feel true love and reverence for your brother. If you think your brother is sick, then you are sick. It's just like you have insane thoughts. All of your thoughts are insane. You wish for hell. I'm like, fuck yeah. Like hit me with that radical truth, that radical honesty. Like I just love when someone really hits you. It's like Byron Katie as like works where you're just like, this is so freaking metal dude, but it's also so loving and it's so kind.

25:57There's been thoughts and beliefs that, you know, it was like Jesus's consciousness or Jesus's teachings really. But you know, that's some what people say, but the core concept I really would say is that perception is everything. How you perceive everything is what it is. How you perceive it makes the story of it, makes the truth of it, makes the reality of it. And the world you see is filtered through your mind and you have the power and the responsibility to choose love over fear in every moment. This is one thing, working with people one-on-one, you get real access to understanding how we filter and create our reality.