264. Harnessing the Power of Intuition for Personal and Professional Growth - Jennifer Takagi

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata Hello, everyone and welcome to today's show. This is your host, Sandee Sgarlata and I am so happy you're here. First of all, I want to thank each and every one of my listeners for all the five star reviews and I'm so proud to announce that because of you, happiness Solve podcast is now in the top 0.5% globally and growing. We just had our biggest month ever with over 85,000 downloads.

00:00:45
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00:01:59
Jennifer Takagi. How was that? That was so close. So close. Hello, Jennifer.

00:02:10
And hello, everybody who's listening today. We were laughing beforehand and she told me exactly how to say her name and I was like, if I don't say it right, I'll probably just say, this is Jennifer. But I thought I would try. Hey, that was so close. I'm not going to be offended.

00:02:24
Thank you. Thank you. So I'm so excited to be speaking with you today. Jennifer is an intuitive business coach and energy healer and she has been guiding entrepreneurs towards success, clarity, alignment and holistic success. I love what you're doing.

00:02:40
I want to talk more about this because I love that in your bio it says that you blend intuitive insights with practical business strategies because I think a lot of business owners don't recognize their intuition and how they can use their intuition to help them grow their business. So I want to come back to that. But first, what is your story? Because we all have that pivotal moment. I was just sharing with you how tomorrow is the last day of my six figure corporate job that I'm finally and I reached that point this year.

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It was just like, now is the time you reach a point where you're like you just know that you have to make a change. So what was that moment for you and how did you get to where you are today? Well, those are two very different questions and answers. Yes. Got me here.

00:03:33
So we'll start with the most recent? Well, no. Okay, cat, stop. My cat wants to just knock everything down. He hasn't been in here all day, and you hit record and here he comes.

00:03:44
Of course. So I worked for the federal government, and so my story is often, how did you go from federal employee to woo? Because that's kind of what happened. And I was asked to work on a special project, but I was going to have to travel for a year. And I was like, no.

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And anybody who's ever been around the federal government, you can say no all you want, but you end up doing whatever they tell you to do in the end. But I like that power of saying, no, I'm not going to do it. So I traveled the country for a year, training my colleagues and then management and upper management on a new, better way of doing business. And I got back to the office on a Friday, and I found out wednesday I had just worked myself out of a job. It was a major reorganization, and I could retire or relocate.

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I'm born and raised in oklahoma city. I have lived other places, but I always come back. And this is home. I'm not leaving again. So after a number of weeks of what do I do?

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Retiring so young. And it was like I loved training. I love speaking to people. And I went into some pretty hostile environment because change and federal employees aren't always the easiest blend. And so I was like, yeah, I'm going to do that.

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And I did, and I had some success. I'm really good. I really enjoy training. I train a lot for the state of oklahoma, so that's all good. But it was very hit and miss.

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And I started hiring business coaches. I didn't even know that was a thing. And at this one event, they brought in a spiritual healer. I didn't know what that was. And of course, I had to start working with her, too, so I start working with her.

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And that just started me on this personal path to all these different modalities of tapping into your intuition and knowing what's best for you. And I'm just learning all this stuff. It's so great. And it's only for me. It's only for me.

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And one day I was in a paid facebook networking group, and I put a post in there, and I said, I just got my certification. I'm a certified soul care coach. I didn't even know that I signed up to become a soul care coach because I just wanted to learn the stuff. And I was like, who wants me to do a session with me? And I put five times on there that I would be available.

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And I was like, who wants what time? They were taken up in an hour. Well, that had never happened in anything else. I had offered paid, free, anything. Like it was not interesting to people.

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So the first session I had with this gal, we got to the end of it and she said, wow, that's amazing. Can I write you a testimonial? Well, for an entrepreneur, that's like mana from heaven. Yes, of course. I was like, video, audio, and can you give me a couple of clips?

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I can make social media posts with like yes. Well, the next several people that I read had the same response. I didn't even have to ask. They were throwing testimonials at my feet. So it took a couple more months because that's a big leap from leadership development to woo.

00:07:05
It's a leap, people. So I went ahead and did it and I was like, yeah, I'm doing it. And so after that, that just started even more. So that's kind of how I got there. My most recent rendition, but to back way up.

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I was born on a Monday. My first time in church was the next Sunday. I've always been a believer. I'm totally good with other people's belief. My church was very liberal, so very accepting, so I don't have like, hard lines on that.

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But I always got little messages from above. And you can call it God universe, your higher self doesn't really matter to me. I'm open to all of it, whatever you want to call it. And I'd get these little messages and sometimes I would listen, sometimes I wouldn't. And I was probably in my mid twenty s and my Godmother, who's probably the strongest Christian woman ever made, just kind of randomly one day said, Jennifer, if God is talking to you, it doesn't make sense at all.

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But it's gentle and calm and it's not scary. But if it's the devil talking to you, it makes perfect sense. But it feels horrible. So again, translate wording. It could be the universe gives you a sign, your higher self.

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It doesn't make any sense, but it feels kind of good. Flip side your ego, because that's what gets in a way, our ego will be harsh and ugly, but it makes perfect sense. So on this one morning, I woke up sick. And when you're now in your early thirty s, you go to work every day. It doesn't matter how sick you are, you go to work.

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So I woke up, I'm hacking up a lung, I have bronchitis, I'm so sick. And this soft, gentle voice said, stay home. Take care of yourself. And I thought, that's really OD, like, you don't stay home and take care of yourself in your 30s. That wasn't even a thing.

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And then this very harsh voice says, you need to go to work. And not only do you need to go to work, you need to do the following. And just like listed my to do list. So I sat there for about ten minutes and this little narrative was going back and forth and I thought, I'm going to stay home I'm going to stay home. So I called in and my boss's secretary Teresa answered the phone.

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And I was like, Teresa, this is Jennifer. And she went, oh my gosh, you sound terrible. You're not coming in, are you? And I said, well, if I feel better, I think I'll come in about nine or about noon. And she was like, yeah, we'll see tomorrow.

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And I was like, okay. So that was 7715 in the morning, and less than 2 hours later, the whole house shook. And that was April 19, 1995, the day that's become known as the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. Oh my gosh. And I worked in the Murray Federal Building.

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You worked in that building? I did. And that was the last time I ever talked to Teresa. Oh my gosh. My boss was killed, 35 from my office.

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But my little area where I sat, everybody was killed. And had I been there, you would. Have been holy moly, Jennifer, I was not expecting this. That was not in your bio girlfriend. No.

00:10:44
You know what? I'm glad because now there's that element of surprise for me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, wow.

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That's kind of like very similar. And I hadn't heard any stories from the Oklahoma City bombing because it was so long ago, but we hear the stories from 911 and there's so many stories like that where people forgot something, turn around, went home to get it and was late getting to the building and little things like that. And so that's incredible. Okay, please go on. Well, I have to point out it was so long ago, but it was 95 and 911 was 2001.

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Those aren't that many years. They're not that far apart. That's right. Feels very different. Right.

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Because they were different events. So as a result of that, people will ask the question, how much survivor's guilt did you suffer? Like you had to have felt so guilty and no, I never had one moment survivor's guilt because I was told to stay home. That was it. I was told to stay home.

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And I honestly believe that everybody else who perished was told to go somewhere. But you can't hear the messages, intuition, God, higher self, unless you're quiet. That's right. Had I been at work, I would not have been quiet. I would have been on the phone.

00:12:11
I would have been in a meeting. I would have been in the middle of something. Right. And it's hard to hear in those situations. So from that point on, you would think it would have been a quick leap to go way into spirituality or religion or something hardcore.

00:12:28
Right. Because it saved my life. But one of my top values was security and stability. So working for the federal government, there's a lot of stability and security. So I stayed.

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And I was a stellar employee. I did great things. I'm super proud of the career that I had but after I retired and after I got on this really direct spiritual path, it was like, this is where I'm supposed to be. And I've already helped so many people in so many ways with the different modalities that I've learned that I can't imagine if I hadn't landed in this particular arena of energy healing for people. And so kind of the joke is that I was at an event and somebody goes, wow, you went from federal employee to woo.

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And I was like, I hadn't thought of but yeah, that's exactly what I did. And intuition is a big part of it. And you asked about that, like at the beginning. I'll circle back a little bit. Let's talk about Henry Ford.

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Okay. He invented the automobile, right? Automobile. But the assembly line. The assembly line, right.

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And they were all black because that was the fastest, most efficient way. All cars were black. He could make them black cheap and fast. And he wanted a six cylinder engine. And he kept telling his engineers, create it.

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And they kept saying, it can't be done. And he kept saying, it can be done. Do it. How did he know it was possible? His intuition in her voice.

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It was the intuition oprah. How did she go from a poor Southern girl moving to the north and then all the horrible things that happened to her as a child? How did she know she was going to step in to be an oprah and have a massive impact on people? That was that inner knowledge. Right.

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And she kept following it and she kept taking action, which is what Henry Ford did. You have that nudge, and you can't just sit on it. You have to actually say, okay, what is the next right thing? What is the next thing I need to do? Yeah, I love it.

00:14:54
So that's kind of where I'm marrying. Intuition, which is kind of the woo, the spirituality with strategic business plans. You have a brilliant idea, you think it's going to work, and then you look at all the pieces you have and try to align them differently. I think Steve Jobs said creativity is just putting things together in a different way than had been done before. That's a terrible butcher of it.

00:15:27
But you get my.

00:15:33
Because you're going to have people listening whose ego is going to be stepping in and hindsight is 2020. Yeah, we can always look back and say, okay, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have do this. And I have to be honest because I have a very strong intuition and I don't always trust it. How do you get past that?

00:15:50
Because I never know when you're getting so much downloads. Like, I call it downloads. I'm constantly getting downloads and I don't know what's real and what's not. And I'm still working on that because it's a practice like anything else. And I don't have a lot of time to practice my intuition.

00:16:05
I'm practicing a bunch of other things, right? But when it comes to that, what is the best advice you can give to differentiate between and I liked what you said in the beginning. You've got that strong voice. You've got the gentle voice. Yes.

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But sometimes I can't tell the difference between the two. Is there any way? Right? Yeah. So I'll give you two examples and run with those.

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So once upon a time, I was driving down the street. It's not a fairy tale. It's a real life story. I'm driving down the street about 40, 45 miles an hour, and there's a car to my left, and I can see out of my right side, a car going the other way, I mean, perpendicular to us, and our light turns green. And I saw, and I knew in an instant that this guy was going to run that light, and I was going to hit him, or the gal next to me was going to hit him.

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I'm really big at screaming and freezing, but I'm not really big in a panic of actually doing something. But instantly, I knew to stand on the brakes, literally both feet, as hard as I could and put both hands on the horn. And when I did that, it scared her so bad, she slammed on her brakes and missed hitting the guy by inches. It was going to be catastrophically. Horrible car wreck.

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So we inched to the next it's an OD intersection with, like, half a block is the next light. And we ended up at a red light at the next one. And she rolled her window down and leaned over, and she's like, oh, my God, you just saved my life. And I went. I did.

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I say that jokingly. I know I did. But that was intuition. Like, I could have not listened. And it was in a split second.

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It wasn't a conversation. It was, hit the brake. Hit the horn. Do it now. It was, like, screaming at me, right?

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So in those kind of situations, just do it. Like, you just do it. Just do it. The other one, I was going to my girlfriend's house. I'm going down the street.

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It's 05:00, traffic. Another friend taught me, just go ahead and turn on your GPS, because it'll tell you where there's a wreck. So I've got the GPS going. I'm driving to my friends, and I call my GPS, Lola, after Robin Williams movie RV, and Lola says, Turn left at the next intersection. I was like, I'm not turning left.

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That's not how you get there. The next little block. I mean, like, every little block, it was like, Turn left, turn left. And I was like, no, the highway is right here. No, I was being critical of the GPS telling me how to go.

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And guess what? As soon as I got on the on ramp, there was nothing but a sea of red taillights and the GPS was saying, you need to turn, you need to turn. You can go around and miss this. And I was going, no, I can't. No, I can't.

00:19:11
So when you have an idea, a thought, even your GPS telling you what to do, when you start trying to second guess it, that's usually when you're not paying attention to your intuition. Yeah, I had a client say I was leaving the doctor's office and they said, we're going to call in a prescription. And I got off the elevator and I walked halfway to my car and normally I would get in my car and drive home and I thought, I bet my prescription is ready. I'm going to go back in, turn around, went back in. And just as he crossed the threshold, his phone beeped, your prescription is ready.

00:19:53
That is a prime example of your intuition. Had he not listened, he would have been on the highway and then mad about trying to turn around and go back to get back to the doctor's office. But he was like, I think they're going to have that ready for me right now. And it was so it's paying attention in the smallest ways and then you can start trusting in bigger ways. But being open to the possibility is probably the biggest, most important piece, being curious.

00:20:23
I'm curious if this is going to work. I'm going to try it every time. I have this one parking lot. I'm Oklahoma City is where I live, and I'm an Oklahoma City thunder basketball fan. I have season tickets.

00:20:34
It's so much fun. And we go to 1 bar and restaurant before the game every time. Toby Keith's, by the way, I get to park in the front row every single time. I was an hour late meeting my friends Monday night for the first preseason game, I parked right in front. Why?

00:20:55
Because I set my intention. I park in the front row and that's where I park. And every time I thought, man, I'm never going to get to park in the front. I should park on the back row because I'm never going to park in the front. That's my ego.

00:21:08
I am never going to this is never going to work. No, Jennifer, you park in the front row. And I did. And I love that. I love that and how let's talk about setting those intentions and feeling it versus only thinking it.

00:21:28
So how much when you say because I want to make sure that the audience there's a distinction there because we can think, oh, I'm going to get the front row. But if you're not really believing it and feeling it, it's not going to happen. So how much does that play into when things like that happen for you, what are you feeling? Because it's not just the thoughts, right? There's a little bit more to it than that.

00:21:50
There's got to be an emotion attached to it because you're emitting that energy, right? Yeah. It's that frequency that's going up. Yes. So I love to make up words because it makes me very happy.

00:22:01
So I love the word excitable. What is it called? Excitable. And excitable is a correct word. I just use it inappropriately.

00:22:11
And I have a degree in French, Spanish, and almost a minor in English, so I know how to use it appropriately, but it's super fun not to. And now I have people that are mimicking me and they're using excitable incorrectly, too. So you can too. Please feel free. I don't have the trademark on that, but when I pulled up and I got that front row parking spot, when the parking lot was full, I took a few seconds to be very excitable about it, and I was like, oh, my God, I got to park on the front row.

00:22:43
And once you create that emotion of excitement and thrill and gratitude, if you don't have gratitude, people, it's not going to happen. But when you feel all of that, the universe, God, whatever it is you believe wants to give you more of that, and you want to feel more of that. So I kid you not. I don't know how many hundreds of times I have parked on the front row at Toby Keith in downtown Oklahoma City, and every time I am grateful and happy that I got that parking spot. So it doesn't end most of the time in the past, before I became more aware, I would be grateful the first time and then just kind of assume it was going to happen again.

00:23:29
But you have to keep being excitable about it. Yeah, well, because you can't have gratitude and bitterness, whatever. They can't coexist. No, you can't be grateful and bitter or resentful right at the same time. Yeah, that's right.

00:23:51
I just wanted to throw that out there because I think it's an important distinction that people need to understand that that's how you show up in the world. That's when you're going to be creating these miracles, if you're showing up in that way, like you're describing. Yeah. I had a friend, a professional matchmaker, and she had a client say, there are no good men. And so the matchmaker said, froze for a second.

00:24:18
The matchmaker said, Go to this bar at 05:00 and stay for 30 minutes, have one glass of wine, and then report back who was there, what you saw. And the next day, she called the matchmaker and she said, there was no one there. I went, It was just terrible. There was nobody. And she said, oh, really?

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Did you have a glass of wine? She goes, yes, it was just terrible. And she goes, oh, I was there. I was there sitting in the back. I watched you walk in.

00:24:49
I watched you walk up to the bar and I watched you leave five minutes later. You had no space, no room for the possibility. And she said, I saw several very nice looking men having conversations with people that, had I not been taken, I would have possibly had a conversation with. So the woman went into the situation with the assumption that there was nobody there for her and that it wasn't going to work out. And then she lied about it.

00:25:18
She didn't even get that glass of wine. So you have to set the intention. You have to pretend that it's that whole childlike curiosity, how am I going to feel when I get it? Yeah, I love it. I love conversations like this and we could talk for hours, but I want to respect your time.

00:25:39
And of course, the audience is we've got to keep their attention span going too. So what is a good example of how you've helped a client use their intuition and how you've helped them to strategize in their business? Well, a lot of it has to do with what thoughts are going through your head on a regular basis that are holding you back. Because if you've got negative thoughts running all the time, then that's going to block you from stepping into your greatness. So one of the things I suggest is paying attention for a day and think about those little things.

00:26:21
You say to yourself like, you made a mistake and you say, I'm such an idiot, or I'm terrible at tech, or clients don't come to me, nobody wants to work with me. What are those things? Come up with three things that you're saying to yourself consistently that are negative and harmful that you wouldn't say to your best friend, right. But you say to yourself in your head all the time and then flip those around in a positive, I'm not an idiot. Right.

00:26:52
But you have to throw the negative out. I'm smart, I'm capable, I can figure tech out whatever it is. Because once you start focusing more on positive things, more positive things show up. And then when you have this intuitive feeling of, this is going to be a great idea for my business, then you can start looking at how that strategically would work, how that fits, how it is a good fit for your organization. So a specific client, I had a client the other day and she said, I think I really have trapped emotions around stepping into my next piece of my business.

00:27:35
And so I do emotion code work, which is clearing trapped emotions that you don't even know are there quickly, easily and without reliving trauma so that you can move forward. So we cleared the trapped emotions that were coming up for her and about a week later she texted me and said, I finally did it. I stepped into it, I clicked the button. I got a website template within my platform that I use and I went live. So my new platform is up, it's going.

00:28:09
And I would have never done that if I hadn't worked with you. And so it's kind of a both. And we had the conversation about what she really wanted to do, and then the first step was letting anybody know she was doing it. And she had a platform, they had a template. It didn't even take her long once she stepped into that.

00:28:32
So you've got the little nudges, you've got the little messages, and you might even start writing down, when did I have a thought and I didn't act on it and regretted it later. Yeah, and then you can start acting on them, but it's not like you don't have to just up and quit your job tomorrow. Right? That's not the point. The point is, how can I show up and be the best person I can be today?

00:28:59
Right? Oh, my gosh, I love that. And I just want to add to what you were saying, because we all do it, and I always like to make sure that the audience and I always want to preface things to the audience that we're not here to make you wrong for anything that you may currently be doing. What we're doing is we're pointing stuff out so that you can be like, oh, my gosh, I do that too, and then make those subtle changes. And I think that for many people, it's easy to say or to recognize that you're putting these negative thoughts and you're thinking these negative thoughts and how it can be detrimental.

00:29:37
Right. It's the little things that sometimes we don't always recognize. And let me just give a quick example. For months now, for years, I've been saying, and I actually say it out loud to people, yeah, I just don't sleep well. I don't sleep well.

00:29:50
I don't sleep well. Yeah, I didn't sleep good last night. And a couple of weeks ago, I was like, what are you doing? Like, you know better. You're manifesting that now?

00:30:00
I am manifesting not to sleep, because. I just keep talking about how I don't sleep good. And I even did it a couple of days ago, I'm like, yeah, I just don't sleep good. Stop. And it's something it sounds a little but it's a big deal to me because if I wake up every day thinking, oh, I didn't sleep good, it affects my whole day.

00:30:21
And I'm having to remind myself over and over, it's a practice. Right? We're not perfect here. It's a practice. And so I am practicing every day of changing that dialogue.

00:30:31
It's like, oh, my gosh, I slept so great last night. And I've said it, like, four times today. Usually by this time of the day, I'm ready to take a nap because I didn't sleep good the night before. And it's a thing that I'm telling myself, right? So it's just that little thing.

00:30:44
And you're like, wow. So just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah, it's just like a GPS. GPS. You're stupid.

00:30:53
I shouldn't turn here, right? I have a route I take every week and apparently there's construction. But let me tell you, I've never seen the construction. Why have I not seen the construction? Because my GPS said exit here and I exited there every time and I saw somebody post on Facebook, I'm so sick of this construction, blah, blah, blah.

00:31:16
And I thought, I have not been in that construction at all. So it's little things but at the same time I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. This is a practice. It's a journey.

00:31:28
It is absolutely not a destination. That's right. It's like turn left here, Jennifer, turn left here. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not turning left. I love it.

00:31:39
I love the whole GPS thing because we do have to trust that. And you know what? It's always right. GPS is so sophisticated if you have a sophisticated system. But if you're using a more recent iPhone or any of the other phones or in your car if it's a newer version, you got to trust that.

00:31:57
GPS get you there and your is your internal GPS. That's right. I need to turn back around and get that prescription. I need to slam on my brakes and honk the horn or it's going to be a really bad deal. Yeah, go home and stay down.

00:32:15
I need to do that. So one of the things is we're in such a fast paced, busy life, busy world. You have to be quiet for a couple of minutes a day to listen. I am not going to sit and meditate for an hour, people. It is not happening.

00:32:35
But I can sit still for two to five minutes and see if there's a message that I need to hear. So that's what I would encourage people to do, just spend a few minutes. It doesn't have to be you have to get up 2 hours early so that you can meditate before work if you like. That good for you. Exactly.

00:32:53
That's just not me. Say it. I don't know if I can do this. Two to five minutes and I promise. You can and ask for it.

00:33:03
Ask to be shown what it is because I'm telling you if you ask and here's the thing about that. You may not see it right away because you may not know what to look for because you've been so conditioned to be doing things a certain way. But keep asking to be shown every single day and I promise you you will get a message. And I like to call it miracles because when you see that unfold in front of you and you're given a message loud and clear, you're like, oh, my know. Thank you so much.

00:33:30
But it will happen. So before we close up, Jennifer, how can people reach you and is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we finish up? Yeah, I would just like to say, number one. Thank you so much for having me and just keep practicing. Pick one thing you would like to be better at and practice that one thing.

00:33:51
You don't have to do everything at once. Practice that one thing. And how people can get hold of me. My website is Jennifertakagi.com. Pretty simple, hard to spell.

00:34:02
It's not hard to spell. Takagi. Jennifertakagi.com and I have some resources there. I have a meditation you might enjoy. And it's for antianxiety, which often we don't sleep because we're anxious right, about what happened in the day and what's going to happen.

00:34:19
And my meditations are pretty much based on scripture. And so they're simple, they're easy, and most of them are just five to seven minutes because why? We like short and sweet. Yes, we do. All right, Jennifer, I will make sure your website is in the show notes as well.

00:34:38
Thank you so much. This has been such a great, delightful conversation. You are so much fun. And I'm sure we'll be talking again in the future because you're the perfect guest. Like, I like to have these conversations because we can just talk forever.

00:34:53
But not today. Not today. Like, I have to point. Yeah. All right, Jennifer, thank you so much.

00:35:01
And thank you, everyone, for listening today. Thank you for having me.

00:35:15
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care.