How the Synchronistic Events of Life Mirror Our Choices

[00:00:00] I’m really interested in understanding the sense of connectedness and the sense of isolation that we have in our culture. I think that there’s a deep sense of we’re surrounded by people. We’re connected all the time to each other in various ways like you and I are right now. But that doesn’t mean that we feel connected and it doesn’t mean that we’re, we’re able to get down to shared, you know, connection.

The feeling of connection happens when we share things that are in some sense of vulnerable or authentic. And the more we can recognize our authentic feelings and and share them with each other, the more we can have experiences of connection. But there’s a sense when we don’t do that, we can start to feel really isolated in our life.

Really out of control And flow, again, is not about being in control, but about being in relationship.

Welcome to the Onward Podcast. This is Emily Harmon, your host. In this episode, I [00:01:00] interview Sky Nelson Isaacs. I’ve interviewed him before. If you haven’t listened to the episode on Living in Flow with Sky, please go back and listen to it. I will put a link in the show notes. This episode is even better.

Well, maybe because I feel like it’s almost. Like a counseling session for me, sky’s using some of my examples that I give him, some of the challenges I face in life and others as well. But using these examples to explain synchronicity. Now, sky’s a really smart guy. He’s a physicist. But he’s able to explain it in a way that I can understand, and a synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence, an unexpected situation that falls in place meaningfully.

You’ve experienced this in your life. I know you have. When you listen to this episode, you’ll think, oh yeah, that’s what that was. [00:02:00] Now I understand. So I mentioned Sky’s, uh, physicist, but he’s also a musician, a teacher, a parent, and an activist. I really love Sky’s songs, the music that he’s written. You can listen to it on Spotify and I’ll put a link in the show notes.

He’s also developed a course on synchronicity that I could say I’m in the process of taking it, but I’m really not. I’ve bought the course. I haven’t made time to take it yet, but I’m really excited to take this course. Skye has studied piano and guitars since childhood, and he’s an in-demand performer among the nationwide new thought community and in his native San Francisco Bay area community.

Skye’s songs Tell of the positivity and wellbeing that comes from delving sincerely into the quest for self-knowledge, and I feel that’s what I’ve really been doing since I retired, is really trying to understand myself, why am I the way I am? And the things that I don’t [00:03:00] like about myself, how can I change them?

And I’m learning so much. So here we go. Let’s get to the interview with Sky. Sky. Welcome back to the Onward Podcast. Thanks, Emily. It’s great to be here. I love this show. Yeah, and your episode that we did earlier on, living in Flow was such an awesome episode. People really enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to talking with you again and you’ve said you’ve been researching for your next book and you’ve got a class out that we could talk about.

So, Yeah, the, the research I do ties together science, which is a discipline that I come from, and the, the path of inner growth or spirituality or what, what I would say is like the course that I’ve launched, the Living and Flow course that’s online as of December. He is aimed at helping individuals, uh, recognize patterns of behavior and become more effective at changing themselves.

Find what it is that’s blocking us from changing [00:04:00] in the ways that we want to, and being able to free ourselves to be less compelled by our fears, less compelled by the things that are making us, um, react to life and more available to our inspiration and the things. That we, we can do in our life to move our goals forward.

So tell us about your class. How does it work? Do the students get to interact with you during the class or is it just all online or how does it work? It’s an online course that students can log into and there’s 18 videos that comprise seven modules. That each of those has a exercise attached to it.

That, and some, some basic idea that I’m trying to get across of, of how to recognize the way that your emotions may be getting in the way, or that you may be able to open up to new ways of flow in your life, and then practices that you can do to, to do that. And through those exercises. You may be practicing in your life and finding it’s actually impacting the way that your, your choices are being made or the types of experiences you’re having.

And then we have an online [00:05:00] Facebook group where we get together once or twice a month and just have the opportunity for dialogue around your personal experience. Okay. So what would a typical student look like or what kind of, can you give an example of what. Kind of thing that somebody might wanna change in their lives that, that would make them wanna take this class?

How can the class help them? I find that I get really frustrated by the same experience as showing up again and again in my life. And the research I’ve done on synchronicity is really aiming at the idea that, uh, the world that we live in is responsive. Like we don’t live in a world that’s just happening to us, and we’re also not in control, but we have control over our choices, and when we make choices and take action, we find that the world responds to us.

Now, the world we live in is really complex, right? I mean it’s, there’s just. Millions of people and lots of random variables affecting our day all the time. But I think that if we look really carefully, we can begin to see threads that connect the situations in our lives. Like if I find myself [00:06:00] devaluing myself at work with my boss, let’s say, and I, I, I say things that kind of undermine my authority or, and then I, I find myself doing that also when I’m talking with my parents on the phone.

But it looks different, right? Cause it’s a different relationship and I don’t notice the connection, but it, there is actually a similar source, like some feeling inside that I’m having, which is causing me to do that. And then I find myself a couple days later having a conversation with my spouse and the same pattern comes up of devaluing myself.

So what I aim to do is to provide tools that help people recognize the common threads. And when you start to recognize the common thread, which is in you. It’s some pattern of thought or a feeling that you’re pushing away, that you’re trying to avoid feeling. I don’t want to feel the grief of that. I may not be worth enough or that I was criticized as a kid and I felt devalued.

I don’t wanna feel that. And so I’m gonna do these things, which I avoid that feeling, and I’m gonna do it in my, with my parents. I’m gonna do it with my work, and I’m gonna do it with my my spouse. And when we begin [00:07:00] to see this thread, we can say, oh, I get the common source there. It’s in me. It’s this thought I’m having.

And I, once we see it, it begins to have less power over us. Uh, can, I’m thinking of two examples. Let me just say ’em both. First one, yeah. Is I’m always really busy and I feel like I never make the time to. You know, I could say never have the time, but maybe never make the time to like straighten up a mess that I make.

So like I might start out with a clean place that I’m living in, but then at the end of the week, I didn’t finish putting this way, didn’t finish putting that way, didn’t finish putting this way. And I thought to myself that once I retired, That and I had more time. That wouldn’t happen to me, but I retired and that’s still happening.

And so there’s something there. And then another example, great example, might, yep. And another example might be a friend of mine who felt like they would be happy if they moved to California, cuz they lived in a warm. [00:08:00] They lived in a very cold climate, wanted to move somewhere warm, get a different job, and then that would make them happy.

Cuz those are the things that they, they needed. Mm-hmm. But that happened and they’re still not satisfied. The job’s not the best yet, may be warmer, but they’re working so many long hours, they don’t have time to enjoy it kind of thing. Yeah. There’s common denominator there. And that’s that person, right.

In both of those situations, So, right. Is that, are those good examples? Those are great examples. And how frustrating is it to feel like, if only this happens in my life, I’m gonna feel better, I’m gonna feel differently, and then to have it happen and you realize it’s not the thing and you’ve been counting on that for years.

Yeah. So yeah, it’s, it’s very powerful if we can have more capacity to actually change. And when, when I say change, I don’t mean become a different person. I mean peel back the things that are in the way of us being really ourselves. So there’s an exercise that is useful in this regard that we can walk through.

Drill [00:09:00] briefly. Okay. I call this synchronicity as a process of healing. And the core idea is that we’re always. Creating the circumstances for ourselves to be able to heal and that synchronicity is a synchronicity, is a meaningful coincidence. We didn’t define it yet, so I, I better do that. It’s a situation that shows up in life that is unexpected, and yet it seems to fall into place meaningfully.

And so we might scratch our, scratch our heads and say, well, how did that unfold in just that way? Just this time it seems like meant to be. Well. These situations can show up to actually reflect to us. Our own choices and our own inner state of being. So in the case of you, you know, having this feeling that when you retire, you’ll have more time to, you know, that it’s the time factor and the busyness factor that’s in the way of being able to, you know, have the kind of a neater environment that you’re, that you’re craving.

Is that right? Yes. Yeah. And to synchronicity did, I’d like to help people see synchronicity in their life as a process that’s giving them [00:10:00] again and again and again, the opportunity to change and to grow. And again, we’re not changing, to be better people, we’re changing to recognize what are the patterns that are in my way of experiencing who I wanna be.

So in this, in this process, we start with a hidden feeling and I think of healing in general as. Dealing with the hidden feelings that guide us. A lot of times the reason I’m creating difficulty in my life is cuz I’m compelled to react to something and I’ve got some hidden feeling that’s compelling me to react to it.

And that causes problems in my life. And that’s, that’s what I want to heal. I wanna get rid of the compulsion to act and, and regain freedom to act. So I’ll, I’ll start with an example for myself. I noticed recently I was at the dinner table and I checked my phone for some reason briefly, and I got notification like some email that a particular project from my.

Business was not gonna work out. You know, somebody wasn’t gonna engage with me on it. And, and before that I was feeling very confident and excited about where I was going. And suddenly after [00:11:00] that email, I had this emotion that arose, that just shot through my body right at the dinner table. Yeah. Like, oh no, I don’t have enough opportunities.

I gotta figure out how to solve this problem. But here I am at the dinner table with my family and having this emotion and what it, what it’s compelling me to do is, Leave them behind and do something about my problem, like disconnect and disengage with them and do something about my problem. And so I pulled out my phone and I found myself.

I just kind of watched this thing happening in me, like I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. I went on meetup.com and started looking for what events do I have coming up that I can go network with people and build some more contacts. I’m trying to solve this anxiety in myself by doing something. Now that would be fine if I was actually working, but I’m actually sitting at dinner with my family.

Right. And that has, that has an impact on them, you know? So I’m, I’m feeling compelled to do something about this. And in doing that, so this is the hidden feeling, right? The, the insecurity and the anxiety about my future. It’s a hidden feeling and. I have an experience of that and I do something about it.

I, I go [00:12:00] online to try and immediately solve the problem, but then I start to create a dynamic with my family where my wife looks up and says, well, what are you doing on your phone? Like, we’re trying to have dinner here. What’s so important that you have to leave us behind right now? And I realize that, but I’m, I’m torn between my need to solve the problem and my desire to be present with my family when we’re all together.

And so I create a, a dynamic that’s, Not ideal where we’re, we’re in a place that we don’t want to be. We’re frustrated with each other and arguing. Now, I’m sure that must have been there. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is, this is the place that we look and we say, okay, this is not what I want to create, but something I did has brought me here or something in my choices has created this situation.

And what’s beautiful about this situation is that it actually inspires clarity for us. Like is suddenly I’m arguing with my wife about whether I should be on the phone or not, and I’m also trying to solve this problem for work, and I realize that I don’t want this to be my reality. I really want to have.

Connection. I want to have space for my [00:13:00] anxiety enough to, to enjoy my life. Yeah. And so it, it inspires this deep core desire to heal. And so from that place, this is where the science, the what I think the science of synchronicity comes in. Synchronicities are become more likely based on the. The experiences that we anticipate.

So when I anticipate an, an experience of feeling joyful and spacious in my family dynamic, I also create, i I place apples on this tree. And we talked about this in the last interview, that there’s this tree of all the possibilities. Yes. And I’m create, I’m placing apples on the branches that have the experience I wanna have.

So I’m anticipating feeling healed basically from the circumstance, less anxious and more connected to my family. And that places apples on all the branches that have that experience. Now those apples way down the branches that they’re on, and so the path gets filled in by life. The apples themselves are sort of make it more likely that situations will happen, which leave me there, right?

And so now what I should expect, because I’m anticipating this healing, I should expect situations to [00:14:00] show up. Which helped me heal, right? That’s how I think synchronicity shows up in the process of healing. But why this is so hard to see in our lives is that those situations that show up are often gonna be a recurrence of the trauma.

It’s not like, oh, I, I’m seeking to heal and so I’m never gonna have any more work problems again. Right? And that’s how I’m gonna heal. Or my wife is not gonna insist that I’m present at dinner anymore. All the circumstances outside of me are gonna say the same, and I’m gonna get another opportunity to react differently to them.

So how does your course help with that? Well, the course provides techniques like this one to, it is a graphic that comes with this that shows how now I will experience more likely another situation, which brings up the same dynamic. Yeah. So it’s time for bed. My daughter has, you know, 20 minutes to read before bed and I, I get another text and I wanna deal with it right away, or I wanna spend time with my daughter at bedtime and I have to check in with myself about what can the, the anxiety wait for half an hour while I take care of.

Doing this thing that I want to do while I can with my daughter. And so [00:15:00] when we become able to see, you know, to repeat these, these cycles and gradually make different choices, it allows us to have more space from the things that we’re worried about in order to be in flow with the things that we want to experience in our lives and get, we get both.

We get both the time with our family and we get to solve the, the problems at work, but we don’t have them conflict with each other if we do it in flow. And maybe the more you recognize that and make a better choice, then that helps get more apples on the tree and, and you’re easy. It’s easier for you to make that choice because your brain knows that.

Even that anxiety can wait. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s another practice I use, which has to do with just what you’re saying, reprogramming worry. Like, when I’m in this situation and I’m anxious about dealing with the problem right away at work, but I’m able to push it aside, like this particular round of the cycle, I, I have the, the strength of mind to push it aside and say, I’m gonna wait.

I’m gonna be in flow with my daughter right now. And then I come [00:16:00] back to it later and I solve the problem and it all works out. Well, what I can do is in the moment when my I, I do later solve my work problem, I can take a minute, picture myself back at the dinner table where I’m actually feeling, not just picturing, but feeling what it was like to be in a moment of anxiety where I just felt like I had to react and let that feeling really enter my body as if it’s really happening right now.

So my chest becomes filled with whatever that is for me. And then, I connected to the fact that in the moment I’m sitting here, I’ve solved the problem and it actually worked out fine with me taking space to be with my family. I can reprogram that initial anxiety with a new feeling that is based on evidence, the evidence that I actually was able to manage all of it in flow just fine.

So then the next time I’m sitting around and I get this rush of anxiety around something at work, I have a different feeling, which is a little bit more evidence in my body. This is gonna work out fine. I can take my time, I can respond carefully and not react. Does that make sense? So [00:17:00] yeah, it does. So for me with how would you apply that for me with making time to straighten up and not just sing so busy that I never make that time?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I would want you to identify what it is that is happening for you when you have a chance to create the, the situation you want and what choice you’re making. Mm-hmm. It’s really comes down to the first step in that cycle. What, what am I choosing to do that’s creating the experience?

Be more conscious of that and what’s the hidden feeling. Underneath it. So why don’t you state for yourself what is the outcome again that you wanna have? I want you wanna have. I, I don’t want to have all these little, like, you know, I start paying bills, then I move to something else. Then I get so busy that I can’t get the dishes put away in the sink, you know, and I might clean up everything on Sunday and start clean, but by the middle of the week, I’ve [00:18:00] got half a pile here that I didn’t quite get through.

Mm-hmm. I’ve got, mm-hmm. Right. Think that I didn’t finish and I’m sure I could make the time to do that stuff, but I just convinced myself that I’m too busy and that I just never have time and I’d rather be feel calmer and have finish up my different tasks. So do you have a sense of why it’s valuable to you to feel busy?

Yeah, I think so. I think I need to work through that more, but I think it has to do with feeling like I’m accomplishing something. Maybe I don’t value the clean place as much as I value, like the feeling of accomplishment or something. Mm-hmm. So do you get a little bit of a rush from the feeling of accomplishment?

Yes. Oh yeah, I can check stuff off. Maybe I need, I can check stuff off on my to-do list. Yeah, I do. So that feeling that you have, that you’re, you’re seeking, sounds like, is getting in the way of, is it getting in the way of you accomplishing, [00:19:00] fully accomplishing one task before moving on to another task?

Sometimes it does. Yeah. Or just scheduling too much. Yeah. I need to schedule some more white space. So what would be a different, in that moment, like picturing that moment where you choose to move on to a different project and you don’t complete the one that you’re on? Like let’s say you’re paying your bills and you’ve got a stack of bills or responding to letters, and you, you decide to put it away for a while and do something else.

What, what’s the thought going on for you? It’s probably just not being present and just like, all right, maybe I get up and I go into the kitchen to get something to eat. I take a break and then I see the dishes that have to be done. So I start there. It’s probably just like not being conscious enough every mm-hmm.

All the time. That, that’s probably So the beauty, the beauty of synchronicity is that it will show up again for you really soon. Yeah, I know. Daily. So, yeah. Uh, it’s uncomfortable. And when we. It gets really uncomfortable cuz it keeps happening and we, oh my God, is this happening to me again? Right. So if you can identify [00:20:00] as you have, what is the experience, what is the key choice point where that experience is diverging from one path where you finish the project and you experience a com, a clean kitchen table with no papers on it, and the dishes are still in the sink and the, the mo lawn still isn’t mowed, but the kitchen table is totally done.

Right. It’s not, wait, not waiting for you anymore. What’s the divergent point where you choose between, between that and something else and then just, and then be watching? Because it will come up probably in the next half an hour. You’re just repeating the same routine that you call Emily, that I call Sky.

I’m, I’m repeating that routine over and over again and we begin to say, oh, I can, I can see this a little more clearly now. Yeah, I think I just need to be more present and more conscious, and I think that’s gonna really help. What about the situation where somebody thinks if they move or if they switch jobs, everything’s gonna be better, but it’s not, same thing, I guess they’ve gotta figure out what it is that they keep getting themselves into.

I feel like yes, [00:21:00] it’s, it’s what is it that I’m doing that’s, that’s making me feel. Dissatisfied. Yeah. With the current, current situation. And what is the feeling there? I think that ultimately it comes down to some feeling that’s hidden. You know, I’m, I’m not happy because I want to be more comfortable outdoors more of the time, so I want to be in warmer weather, but why is that?

Maybe, and here I’m, I don’t know this person, so I’m just elaborating on my own fantasy of it. Maybe when I was younger. My family really valued being outdoors a lot, and so when I don’t get to be outdoors exercising a lot, I feel a sense of inner critique that I’m having. So actually, when I’m imagining moving out to California where the warmer weather is warmer, I’m actually addressing this sense of self-criticism.

If only the weather was warmer, I get out in it, exercise more. If we can really get down to what it is, the emotion we’re having. Because when we don’t get down to that emotion, then we’re just acting to try and solve this problem. I’m gonna move my house, but [00:22:00] really what’s happening is I’m just criticizing myself for not getting enough exercise.

Yeah. Got it. It’s a very, very different problem to solve. Right? You gotta really understand the problem that you’re supposed, that you’re trying to solve. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve found that very often the problems come down to some emotion that we’re trying to avoid. So a big part of the teaching that comes outta my book and in the new work I’m doing in the course is the avoidance of grief or the avoidance of disappointment in life is really a strong motivating force for getting out of flow and contrarily.

The more we can just pick ourselves up and recognize and feel a sensation in our body that is whatever that is the grief for us, if we can feel it without pushing it away. We can get right back into flow. We can identify what it is that is stopping us from diving into a project, is making us procrastinate, is making us self-sabotage.

All those things are based on some feeling we wanna avoid having. And the quicker we can identify that and allow ourselves to experience it, [00:23:00] we can move right through it and get back to work. And that’s maybe part of the reason why sometimes our New Year’s resolutions, we don’t really keep, cuz we’re not getting down to the, the root of the problem.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s my experience. If we don’t. Know what the core feeling is that we’re feeling. We’re very unlikely to be able to change our behavior, cuz the feeling’s gonna keep coming up. Yeah. And I find that those feelings for me, they come from my childhood, like, or from some point previously. Some, some traumatic experience that I had.

And when I say traumatic, I mean it may just be I, I made a joke and someone didn’t laugh at it, but it stuck in my memory and it, it formed my behavior. It was a, it made me make choices moving forward. As to how I interact with the world. Yeah. For me, I think, you know, the being busy is, my mom was just always busy and she doesn’t really know how to just relax and just be, and so I grew up around all this busyness.

[00:24:00] Busyness. She’s neat. And she up after herself too, but, and I even noticed that now when I spend time with her, I’m not criticizing her, but she can’t sit still and meditate. She can’t sit still and just be. She always doing something. So I’m still trying to teach myself how to be, and retiring isn’t the solution.

Right? Right. I have to work at it harder than that. It’s not, okay, I retire now all of a sudden I’m gonna have all this time to be, no. I’m figuring out other ways to fill up my time and I’m not just. Being right. And that, that is in the moment of, it’s like, rather than the concept, an overall concept of like, I’m gonna have more time now for things.

It’s in this moment right now. Like as soon as you end this call, there’s gonna be a spaciousness, right? Right. What am I, what am I gonna do next? And, and a chance, chance for something to fill in that gap. Oh, yeah. What’ll fill it in is like, I gotta take my dog for a walk and then our call’s over in a half an hour and [00:25:00] I have a half an hour between our call and another meeting, so I’m gonna take my dog out.

And then there’s, you know, so I don’t allow enough downtime for myself. And I think what I’m trying to get at with the teaching that I do, Is we can intellectualize about what that’s like. You know, I’m gonna have a certain period of time and I’m gonna figure out what’s gonna happen in that time, but it’s the experience of that time.

Which is where change happens. If you can identify what you feel in an experience and actually be in the experience, then you begin to have more choice over that moment. Cuz when we get to that moment and we experience it, that’s when the choices happen. So the more we can embody and be present with our experience in the moment, the more we can see these patterns and actually make different choices and really think about what we’re feeling and you know, understand it instead of just covering it up.

You know, my grandma was the way that you talk about it, and she passed it on to my mom and to me. Um, very busy. And she told me this one time I met her. It was a very special time. I’m, I was in my twenties and it was one of the last times I [00:26:00] saw her at her, the house where sh where I experienced her as a grandparent.

You know, that grandma’s house, you know, that special place. Right. And we were there alone, which was not that common. Just me, not none of my cousins were around. And she said to me, you know, I always was really busy and I always thought that at some point I’d finish all the tasks I was doing and I’d get some time to sit back and enjoy it.

You know, she was, She ran a business, a small business out of her garage that sold things. And, and she created this incredibly beautiful plot of land that was like on the cover of Home and Garden Magazine. And, and she just said that she was very active all the time and she said, someday I figured I would just be done and I would slow down and like to enjoy it.

And that never happened. And it really struck me that, that I have the same pattern of when I finish this project or when I finish this paper or this book, I will get to sit back and enjoy it. Yeah. But I don’t, because in the moment that that happens, I’m immediately drawn by an internal feeling of anxiety of what else do I need to do [00:27:00] to prove myself?

Yeah. Or what else do I need to do to satisfy the feeling of being adequate, being enough? I think that’s partly me too, just. Wanting to stay relevant now that I’ve retired. Prove myself. I just was on a short vacation in Toronto with, um, my friend, uh, Debbie. And when I was gone I really took some downtime and I really enjoyed that and I.

I texted my daughter, I said, you know, when I get back, I’m not going to stay as busy. I’m going to really slow down and just enjoy life more. And she said, and mom, you’ve worked so hard for it. I really think you should do that. But then when I get home, the anxiety starts picking up and I question that feeling of that message I sent her.

And I think, well, if I just do this one more thing and one more thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think it does boil down to ego. And am I good enough? Just as Emily, and what do I have to prove to the world still? Who am I trying to prove myself to? My kids are happy with [00:28:00] me. You know, I don’t need to prove myself anymore.

Right. And I’m sure that there’s other people listening that feel the same way. Yeah. And I wanna bring that conversation back to the sense of compulsion. Like I, is there a place. In your listener’s lives where they feel compelled to do something in, in your case, you’re saying you feel compelled to take care of a a task.

And anytime we feel that compulsion, it’s a sign that we’re not free to really choose. It’s not that taking care of the task is the wrong thing to do. But it’s the feeling, the experience of being compelled to do it by some inner dialogue that is, is really the, the key or the, the pathway to the freedom.

Because we say, oh, I see myself being compelled. I have to go empty the dishwasher right now. And then I just stop moving just for a moment and say, why do I feel that way? What’s gonna happen if I empty the dishwasher? That’s gonna make me feel, what am I gonna feel that’s different from what I feel now?[00:29:00] 

And practice noticing the inner experience. I think that it will begin to become apparent through the cycle of it happening again and again. It’ll begin to start to see, oh, the commonality is every time this happens, I feel like if I don’t take care of all the tasks around the house, I start to criticize myself and then I see the criticism, oh, great, I can see it now.

It’s not compelling me from this hidden hideout in my brain. It’s like right there in front of me and I can see it, and then I have more choice and I have more relationship with it. And I think healing is not that complicated. It comes, we don’t have to change those hidden feelings. We just have to make them not hidden anymore.

Right? The more they become evident to us. To recognize ’em. Yeah. And we automatically start to choose differently in our lives when we start to see all the feelings we have. We don’t make them go away, like you said. Very interesting. So how do we recognize what momentum we currently have and then follow through on the directions which are about to pay off?

[00:30:00] Well, a lot of times I think that there’s kind of a threshold with synchronicities. So synchronicities show up in order to help us move along our path that we’re setting for ourselves. They help us heal and grow and evolve to a higher level, whatever the next level of accomplishment is for us. And I think of ourselves as living in this sort of virtual reality that’s helping us grow and bringing us new experiences to help us grow.

And there’s sort of a threshold. For, you know, we can’t just start doing something and then walk away and expect it to pay off. There’s a threshold of investment. We invest ourselves in a project and we start to place apples on the tree, on the branches, where we have the experience we want to have. We start moving in that direction because situations get filled in, in the path for us, which move us closer to that outcome.

Let’s say we’re looking for a new job, and so we can, we revise our resume and we start investigating job opportunities, and we do some research and study on the field that we wanna be in, and their synchronicities will start to show up, which give us, you know, oh, here’s a course you can [00:31:00] take to get better at this field.

Great. Oh, that leads me in, down the path in that direction. And here’s a, a program that helps you revise your resume and make it really snappy. And so you, you realize, oh, I can do that. And you, and that’s leading you further on this tree of all your possibilities in the direction of the apples that you want.

And so at some point you’re, you’re now moved to a different section of the tree where there’s a lot of apples around you. And each of these apples represent some way in which your, your desired experience happens. Which is feeling the experience of getting a job or feeling confident in your career, whatever that is.

Now, before we actually get to that job offer, we might hit a point where we’re pretty close. There’s lots of opportunities around us, but none of them has has come through yet. And we might feel really discouraged because we’ve done a lot of work and because circumstances of life I think do create doubtful situations where we start to doubt ourselves.

And these are hidden feelings that are making us doubt ourselves. Like, oh, it’s never, it’s not gonna work out in the end because that time when I was 20, it didn’t work out in that time when I was, you know, 15, it didn’t work out. And I, I [00:32:00] programmed that in myself, and I, I can see that happening. The more I can see those routines happening in my mind, in my, in my feelings.

The more I can keep the momentum going and instead of getting distracted by the dishwasher, let’s say, or distracted by some other flashy thing that could be, you know, a another, another direction we could take to say, okay, I’ve spent the last two weeks really working on this project and I remember all the things.

I reflect on all the things that I’ve done. To get me here, and it hasn’t paid off yet, but I, I can see this picture of this tree above me of all the possibilities, and I see that I’ve moved in that tree to a place with a lot of apples, and I believe that they’re close and I, I’m gonna keep going. And so it provides a sense of recognizing what you’ve worked towards and what, what, what you want to experience.

And being willing to push through that place of lack of evidence where you don’t have the evidence that you want, that you’re being successful, but it, it creates a sense of faith to live and flow and to allow synchronicities to guide you. It creates a sense of faith that I think is really [00:33:00] powerful.

Yeah, definitely. Do you have any other exercises or stories that you wanna share? I have just a couple funny stories of synchronicity, which I think can be useful to give a sense of what synchronicity is. Yeah. People like in your last interview where you shared some together, I had a friend of mine tell me a story about a, a ring that they were.

They had had for a while, a special ring and they couldn’t remember what stone it was. And so they were getting kind of frustrated. They called their jeweler finally one day to ask what the stone was. And this is not something that was at like the top of their list. So it kept getting deprioritized, but every time they looked at their ring, they’re like, what is that stone?

And finally they called their jeweler to ask what the ring was, and they left a message. Well, that afternoon they went to the salon to get their nails done and the salon. Person said, do you have a frequent visitor card? We can stamp it for you. And my friend said, oh yeah, let me look at my purse. She was looking at her purse in rummaging through her purse.

She found a business card from the original jeweler who sold of the [00:34:00] ring, and it had the name of the stone on it, written in handwriting blue toe pads. Wow. So she got the information she was looking for in a totally unexpected place. Right. Just by looking through her purse. You know, the information was there, but she, there was no way for her to know where to look, except that when she went and got him to flow and went to this appointment and, and looked in her purse, there it is.

It was, so that’s how we can start to pay attention to, you know, setting a target for ourselves. I wanna find out what this stone is, or I wanna get this job, or I want to experience more spaciousness in my life. When we have an intention and we do some planning around that, and we take a steps in that direction with, with action, what we’re doing is we’re setting a target.

In the future, and the key idea here is that once we set that target, it starts to fill in the path for us. And so situations will show up, which get us closer, like. I’m gonna go to the salon today and the person’s gonna ask me for my frequent stamps card and I’m gonna reach my person. Oh, that’s where the information I need is.

So the path gets filled in [00:35:00] for us. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s a good, that’s a really good story. And is it kind of also putting it out in the universe? She started putting it out in the universe more, made that effort to call her current jeweler. Yeah. That helped set things in motion because there, where she had that purse and whatever, you know, but your think, your, your thought is, is that with synchronicity by, by making that call to the jeweler and starting down the path of.

That tree limb of really finding it, instead of just thinking, I’ve gotta do it. She actually started to take, make some progress, but that’s what led to her finding that in her purse. Right, right. It’s, it’s like this treasure hunt and we have to start the hunt ourselves by taking an action. And that’s very important.

It sets the stage for, it defines for ourselves what it is that we’re trying to get. Mm-hmm. Because without that, we, we haven’t really defined it. And I think of the physical world we live in, the life we have is really about, Deciding for ourselves what it is we’re seeking and taking a step in that [00:36:00] direction, and then we live in this responsive cosmos that brings us opportunities to have that experience, but it starts with us.

Yep. So I have another story, which is kind of on the same boat. This friend was. At the grocery store, and they were infatuated with this Moseley, right? They, they got this, this cereal, which is kind of a funny thing to be really excited about, but they got this cereal, which was like a high-end Moseley, and they were riding their bike to the store.

And so they, they rode home with this cereal on their bike and on the way home they had a doctor’s appointment. So they stopped the doctors with their bike and she locked her bike, but she couldn’t lock them easily. So she left her MUAs in her, in her Satchel Uhhuh, figuring no one’s gonna steal MUAs, right?

It’s just, I would. Some of us, uh, really, really like granola like me. So she left it there and she went inside and when she came back out, indeed it had been stolen and she was like scratching her head who would steal my cereal, but she was, you know, the truth was she wanted them and she could go back to the store and so she decided to go back to the store.

But she also [00:37:00] noticed when she looked through her bag that her sunglasses were gone. They were nice sunglasses. So she was pretty disappointed. And so she rodee back to the grocery store and. Got and said to them, you know, told ’em what happened and they said, oh, well are these your sunglasses? And she had left them on the counter, so the muley got stolen, but the sunglasses were left at the grocery store.

Uhhuh, she wouldn’t have found ’em if she hadn’t have gone back for the mu sleep. Wow. So the stealing of the gr of the muley was actually useful to her, right. In finding her or more important sunglasses. Right. And it reminds of me that we can look at the obstacles and the difficulties of life with a certain lens.

If we really see synchronicities happening in our life, then that lens allows us to take a step back and not jump to the reaction. There’s always some reaction in the moment that we have and the more power we have inside of ourselves to stop the reaction and really look at, there’s a SLX cycle that I use.

Listen to the circumstance, open our minds. Don’t [00:38:00] jump to the first conclusion you have reflect on the situation. So this is where we reflect and say, okay, what else could evolve from this that I haven’t considered? How could this be actually serving me in some way? And maybe I don’t even know what that is, but I just open up some, some possibilities and then release my attachment.

In this case, it might be releasing, you know, my anger at whoever stole my sunglasses. Because I actually don’t know what happened. And then the action is, okay, what, what I feel like doing is going back to the store to solve this problem with the, the groceries. And then from that flows the solution. Cuz when we get into alignment with our circumstances, we find that circumstances start to align with us and we find the sunglasses.

I know we all have stories that are similar to that. Just recognizing them, thinking of looking at them in a different manner, like you’re teaching us is, is helpful. It’s that delay between reaction and response, and that’s where the choices happen that change our trajectory from one direction to another.

So you’re, you’re working on another book? [00:39:00] Yes, I am. Maybe summarize your first book again and um, I’ll put in the show notes a link to your last podcast episode and then Okay. Tell us what your next book is about. So, living in Flow, the science of synchronicity and how your Choices shape your world was released in 2019 and it documents both my research into synchronicity trying to develop a science of.

What I call meaningful history selection. This is the apple tree model where you’re living your life on a tree of possibilities, and the apples appear on the experiences that you are seeking to have or that you’re anticipating, and you start to influence the direction of your life experiences through synchronicities that fill in the path for you.

And I connect that to the, to the experience of flow that Miha Chick sent, Miha wrote about in his book, and how when we start to pay attention to synchronicities in our life, we allow ourselves to get into flow with life. We release attachment to the way we thought things were gonna go, and we, we have a dance with life where we are experiencing [00:40:00] more ease and more fulfillment and we’re transcending the worry about whether we’re in control of life or not.

And so I, I really try and connect it to people’s lives and, and their experience of flow. And then your next, yeah, so that the next book is from that place. I’m really interested in understanding. The sense of connectedness and the sense of isolation that we have in our culture. I think that there’s a deep sense of we’re surrounded by people.

We’re connected all the time to each other in various ways like you and I are right now. But that doesn’t mean that we feel connected and it doesn’t mean that we’re, we’re able to get down to shared, you know, connection. The feeling of connection happens when we share things. That are in some sense of vulner, vulnerable or authentic.

And the more we can recognize our authentic feelings and and share them with each other, the more we can have experiences of connection. But there’s a sense when we don’t do that, we can start to feel really isolated in our life. Really out of control and flow is again, is not about being in control, [00:41:00] but about being in relationship.

And so I I, I’ve done research in the past year into the science of holograms and wholeness. So the book is really about how we can become more whole as human beings. And not filter out different parts of ourselves and hide certain parts of ourselves in certain relationships. And we can bring all of ourselves to work and bring all of ourselves to our relationship at home, all of ourselves, to our family dynamic.

And how actually the science, there’s, there’s science to back up the physical world we live in actually reflects this kind of wholeness. That you can’t just divide the world into pieces and analyze it and understand it. There’s a sense of wholeness to the physical world that is reflected. For instance, in rainbows, when you look at a rainbow, you can never see just part of a rainbow.

Right. The rainbow exists as a whole. So when is your book gonna be published? It’s just being written right now. It’ll be published in Spring of 2021. That’s exciting. Yeah, I’m really excited about it and I love the, what I’m writing about. It’s super fun. Do you feel like pressure to get it done by March?

Is that a [00:42:00] deadline that your publisher put on you or you put May Yeah. You put it on yourself? No, that’s the publisher’s deadline, which is great. I, I really love partnering with my publisher in North Atlantic books. They’re fantastic to work with and I love the experience of being part of a team with this.

Yeah. So this is your second book that you’ve will have written? That’s right. That’s amazing. Yeah. I feel really blessed to be able to do that. Yeah. That’s awesome. Thank you. So how do people find your course? Well, you can find my course at the website www.theletteruthrivehere.com/living inflow. And if you can’t remember that, just go to sky nelson.com.

And you’ll find it there. Mm-hmm. And you can sign up there for, um, the course and it’s an evergreen course that’s available whenever you want it, and once you sign up, you have access to it indefinitely. And there is a monthly get together where we get together on Facebook and I just make myself available for questions or discussion.

And as a Facebook group where we have prompts that people respond to if they want to. And, uh, just engaging with other people taking the [00:43:00] course. And myself. And then once you’re done with the course, you state you could stay in that Facebook group. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. And the co, the course goes in more depth into a lot of the topics in my previous book, but you don’t need to have read the book.

And actually, when you sign up for the course, you will get a free audio book. Of living and flow. So you’ll have the opportunity to, to hear the book as you go if you want, but they’re not, they’re not requirements for each other. So what does your future look like? Have you thought that far ahead, like past this next book?

Are you gonna develop another class or do you know? That’s a funny question because that’s exactly where my comfort zone is. Thinking about what else am I gonna create, Uhhuh. But actually what, what I’m trying to do in our, according to our discussion earlier, is really look at how can I be more present in my relationships to really experience what I’ve already created and to, to really make it impactful, to really show up in situations where I can help people embody some of these practices and really make use of [00:44:00] what I’ve already created.

That’s a good, that’s a really, that’s a really good point. So you’re, Your anxiety, your gut reaction leads you to go create something else. But really what you, you know, the best thing for you to do is pull yourself back and help people through what you’ve already created. Focus on your class, you know, more speaking engagements, podcast episodes, whatever, on what you’ve created.

Don’t just jump from one thing to another. Yeah. And I, I have so much to learn from doing that. Yes. That’s personal. My personal learnings. Right? Yeah. And you can learn from your students too, right? That help you make Oh yeah. Make adjustments to the class or help fuel topics for your next book, things like that.

Yeah, and, and I, I really do experience this whole process in flow where I. I just met with my sister-in-law yesterday, spontaneously at a cafe. She happened to be in town and was looking for a place to work, and I was there and then she started giving me ideas for the book. Yeah, she didn’t even really know what I was writing about, but there’s so much, there’s a [00:45:00] constant practice of being in flow.

And it’s so rewarding when we can be in that space, but it does require sort of planning at the same time. So there’s a dynamic balance between setting the stage for ourselves and then being willing to receive and be present for the opportunities that show up to be in relationship. Thank you very much Sky for this interview.

I really appreciate it. Any last minute, uh, we’re pieces of advice that you wanna leave with the listeners? I really encourage your listeners to take. Stock and take charge of the choices that you have. Start to recognize your choices. And choice is something that we are all given and we may feel disempowered in our lives, and there may be places in which we don’t have choice over a specific circumstance, but we have choices over how we respond to.

Internally to the aspects of our lives and to people. And I feel that we do have so much capacity to influence the world and influence our communities and influence our, the direction of our life. And I wish for each of your listeners that they find whatever it is for them, that, [00:46:00] that what are the choices that can really impact your life and who you want to be in the world.

And know that by showing up as who you want to be in the world, you will make a huge difference in the world out there. Definitely. Thank you very much, sky. Thank you Emily. Have a great day. You too. I can’t wait for Sky’s next book to come out. The title of it is Leap to Wholeness, how the World is Programmed to Help us Grow, heal, and Adapt.

And here’s a little bit of an overview of it. The unknown link between the physics of light and our journey towards healing, connection, and wholeness. The reductionism and materialism of our modern world make it easy to imagine. Everything can be clearly broken down in two smaller and smaller parts. Yet the straightforward example of light in a hologram, which can’t be reduced to its parts, points to an underlying interconnected reality, a wholeness.

So in this book, sky Nelson uses [00:47:00] numerous familiar examples like rainbows and music photography to illustrate a fundamental wholeness found in nature. Just as light is filtered as it passes through a film strip, sky points out that our human experience is filtered through thoughts and feelings. This view provides an explanation as to why in our daily lived reality, we can feel so broken.

And not whole. He weaves together cutting edge ideas into the nature of space and time and original research with a compelling message of urgency. The filters we use to make choices every day hide important information from us, leading us away from experiences of flow through synchronicities. We are led to life lessons tailored to our readiness for change.

And Skye can reconsiders the view of time itself, suggesting that we [00:48:00] live not just in this moment, but on a timeline of history, part of a wave, moving from our past into our future, and every choice we make shifts what is available to us. Can we learn to rethink our lives and reality, to remove our filters and realize the wholeness that we have inherent in ourselves and in our world.

Sky says yes, and once we do that, we can use the multiverse of possibilities to make choices that help us heal and grow into a greater sense of ourselves. I got that description that I just read of the book from the internet. The book is supposed to come out in March of 2021. I dunno if I can wait that long, Skye, but I guess I’ll have to, and once I read it, I look forward to interviewing you again.

Skye and Skye’s, a big supporter of the Onward Movement, so I’d like to thank him for that as well. If you haven’t joined the Onward Movement, please go to [00:49:00] Facebook groups and search on Onward Movement and check us out. It’s all about finding our authentic self, realizing that we are enough just the way we are.

It’s an awesome community and it’s really helped all of us that are in it through this difficult time as we’re experiencing Covid. It can help you too. Check it out. Thank you for listening today.