Episode 291: Understanding How Intimacy Impacts ALL Areas of Your Life with Allana Pratt

Jon Berghoff: This is the amazing Allana Pratt. I met Allana for the first time last year at an event of high-powered women entrepreneurs, but I want to finish telling Allana, everybody, about this summer. My wife, Mara, and I along with 10 other couples were at a couple’s retreat. Hal and his wife, Ursula, were there as well. And at this retreat, Allana, you lead several experiences and one of the experiences that you lead, as soon as it was done, Hal and I B-lined towards each other and we said, “Wow. Allana’s ability to invite people to very quickly discover really deep, important things about themselves is exactly what Best Year Ever is all about. And so, we then went up to you and said, “How on earth can we find a way to bring you and your gifts to 450 amazing Miracle Morning makers from all around the world?” And we’re so lucky to have you joining us in San Diego. So, Allana, I’m super glad to have you.

[INTERVIEW]

Allana Pratt: I was super stoked. Thank you. That experience in with a couple’s retreat was so deep and so flattering to be able to share what we did together with even more people. And it’s so important to people that really want to grow themselves and live their best life ever. Like, I can’t see my blind spots to save my life. I have like three coaches but when I can shine a light on their blind spot, it’s like a catalyst for them to take what they’re already doing to the next level. Like, that’s what I’m going to be showing up for to give people so thank you so much.

Jon Berghoff: Yeah. I love that. I love what you just said too. And so, I want to ask you about the work that you do, the journey that you’ve been on. By the way, if you’re watching live, then you get like an extra special treat which is if you want to fire any questions through the Facebook chat group, and I can read them to Allana or even just comments or feedback as we go through this, please do. Sue, really good to see you. Alexis, great to see you. Kathy, great to see you. So, Allana, I want to start by giving credit to your experiences is incredible. You’ve been featured, you have a weekly column on the Good Men Project. You’ve been a guest expert through the Huffington Post, People Magazine, Forbes, CBS, Fox, the Jenny McCarthy show. You basically been all the way through the multiverse sharing your wisdom, and you’ve got millions of viewers on YouTube. So, you don’t just have a lot to share but you have a lot of people who have benefited from what you have to share and we’re super pumped to have you join us in San Diego this year.

And I want to just jump right in and ask you a few questions about some of the topics that have been really interesting for me to learn from you. We could start maybe with the idea of receiving. I know that so many members of the Miracle Morning community are entrepreneurs and one of the things I have found really helpful that you’ve really magnified is understanding what goes on inside of us as entrepreneurs and the relationship that has with our ability to receive abundance in our businesses and in our lives. So, I’d love for you to start wherever you want and go wherever you want with this topic or frankly, you can ignore this question and share whatever feels like appropriate right now.

Allana Pratt: Screw you, Jon. Let me talk about what I want to talk about.

Jon Berghoff: That’s great.

Allana Pratt: No. It’s perfect. It’s perfect. So, I’ll just back up a little bit. So, like I call myself an intimacy expert and that isn’t just about bow-chika-wow-wow even though I really enjoy sex and all the rest of it. Intimacy is really this umbrella in which sexuality arises but same with our parenting, same with our entrepreneurial businesses, and most importantly, same with our relationship with ourselves. So, this intimate relationship with our self, with our intuition, with our feelings, with our knowing, we can hear divine guidance if we can hear our uh-huh, uh-uh or if we’re just spinning our head trying to look good, do it right, stay in control, freak out all the time, while making everybody think we’re happy. Right? So, it’s that inauthenticity that literally repels money, ideal clients, deep love. And it’s that internal exhale, coming home, able to love your wobbly parts as much as your badass parts like truly unconditional love. When there’s that rest on the inside, something really magical happens. You become irresistible, approachable, welcoming, for deep connection, deep investment, all this depth that we really crave.

And one fundamental misunderstanding that leads into this idea of receiving is that most of us in the personal growth world, or at least me, we’re really good at spiritual bypass, like, okay, so I’m just going to focus on the good and I’m going to go to the good feelings and I want more pleasure and more money and more feeling good in it. But that’s only half of life and the other half of like science tells us life is equal pleasure and pain, day and night, up and down, balance, equilibrium. There is equal challenge and support in all moments. And at the retreat where I was with Jon and I’ll be telling them a longer story in San Diego, but just briefly, the idea is like the moment my mom died and I’ll go like little deeper into the story later but there was pain, hurt really bad, but also in that moment, there was relief. She was out of pain. She was on the other side and then my son being born. On the one hand, there was bliss to look in his eyes and on the other hand, “Holy shit, how am I going to keep him alive? Oh, my God.” Fear, right? So, if we really slow down and really feel in every moment is equal challenge and support and we have this misunderstanding in the metaphysical community that pain is bad and anger is bad and sadness is bad and shame is bad. No, it’s not. It’s an invitation to grow.

And so, most of us can’t receive life. We only want to compartmentalize, receive the good stuff and then simultaneously, we push away the bad stuff. But energetically what that does is the money’s on its way but then we push it away. The love is on its way, but it’s getting a little too vulnerable, so we push it away. And what I really want to give people the experience of at the event in San Diego is a true transformational integrating experience where you can receive it all. No, I’m not saying you’re going to love pain or challenge but you’re going to have a new relationship where you don’t close your heart, you don’t push it away, you lean in like a badass and go, “Okay. What’s the gift here?” Not as a cognitive analysis of the situation and embodied evolution of your badass-hood so you become stronger, maybe more compassionate, maybe more patient, maybe more grounded, maybe more present, maybe more forgiving, maybe more courageous. I don’t know what it’s going to turn into for you because it’s going to be a unique experience for your life’s evolution but I want you to be able to receive it all. Because when you can receive criticism, rejection, failure, messing it up, and not criticize yourself, not blame the other, not shut down, not hide, not give up, you’re unstoppable and you can have the life, the best life that’s truly yours to create.

Jon Berghoff: I love that. I love that. And you know, Allana, what’s interesting is what you’re sharing is actually it’s a continuation, maybe a deeper expansion of a theme that we had it last year’s BYEB. And I know that you know Christopher Lochhead. He was at BYEB. In fact, you had an awesome conversation with him on his podcast. I encourage everybody…

Allana Pratt: And he’s been on mine as well. We’ve had a couple and we didn’t drink whiskey at all. Can you imagine?

Jon Berghoff: I find it hard to believe on his end but everyone should go listen to those. And you know, last year the theme of Entrepreneur Day that Christopher really brought to life, Chris Ducker brought this to life as well, they’re both named Chris and they both had completely bald heads. That’s a whole other synchronicity. Yeah. But the theme last year was about finding what makes you different in celebrating that. And I remember so many of our participants at the event, the breakthrough that they had was realizing that some of the very things that they used to struggle with or get in trouble because of as kids or that they were even ashamed of were actually some of the very parts of themselves, that they realized they should actually allow those parts to be fully alive so they could best thrive.

Allana Pratt: I love this superpower or your wrongness is your strongest. I love that point of view. Perfect.

Jon Berghoff: Yeah. You said to me a few weeks ago the idea that and I quoted you inside of our Quantum Leap Mastermind Community, I should share this with you because the engagement and responsiveness to this quote was really, I was surprised. And I quoted you and I said, “Our ability to receive money is in proportion to our ability to receive rejection.”

Allana Pratt: Yeah. Exactly. And if your worth is not inherent on the inside, you’re going to give away your power to another’s approval of you and you’re going to resist your being rejected. And that’s another exercise I’m going to take people through on day two in San Diego is what does it really take to have your own back and to not reject yourself and to love? And this is normally we think we can only love ourselves if we’re perfect but that’s the BS. That’s the rub. That’s the illusion that keeps us in fear. No. What does it honestly take to love your rejected self as much as your triumphant self? Because if you’re going to wait around to love yourself until you get it all perfect, which is impossible to start with and even if you get it for three seconds, you’re going to lose it so it’s a no-win game. It’s impossible. And so, many of us wait to like love ourselves and wait to have worth just because we friggin exist. We think we have to accomplish in order to be worthy, achieve in order to be worthy. We wake up unworthy, need to do something in order to be worthy. It’s BS. You’re coming from lack the whole time, which is a very low vibration and you’re only going to get more of the same. And I’m not saying we all sit around just eat bonbons and loving ourselves and jack off all day so what I’m saying…

Jon Berghoff: Once in a while, that’s our thing.

Allana Pratt: Once in a while, it’s a good way to start the day but if you start the day full, I’m going to tell you a joke about this funny thing that happened with a client yesterday, but I was holding an ice cream cone like this like two hands on the ice cream cone and she’s like, “Are you doing handjob right now?” and I’m like, “No! I could.” Anyways, back to the worthy thing. If you really can love and maybe allowance is a good place to start if you’re actually in a high level – you’ve been raised by a critical parent and you only know how to motivate yourself from criticism and fear, maybe going all the way to love is a little bit of a big jump. Could we at least just be an allowance? That doesn’t mean you have to prefer that you failed in closing your last client. That doesn’t mean you have to prefer that you’re single or getting a divorce, but it means you’re un-friggin-willing to judge yourself one more day. Done. Draw a line in the sand. And instead, “Okay, I might not like you yet but I’m not going to hit you over the head with a 2×4 today. You’re doing your best. Come here.” Give him a noogie, give him a kiss, like start to love this part of you, have compassion for this part of you and before you know it yourself is not disassociated trying to hide this part and shine on this part and people resonate with this.

They’re like when you’re doing the two different parts, they don’t trust you. They might buy from you. They might use you but they don’t trust you, nor do they respect you but when we have these disassociated parts together integrated, “Here I am the wobbly hotness and here I am the magnificent badass. This is all of me and I’m ever evolving and there’s nothing to prove nothing to justify,” we become integrated and people are like our field changes like on a scientific measurable level. It’s like coherence, harmony, trust, compassion, safety. I can be myself around this person. They don’t judge themselves so they’re not going to judge me. And believe me that works so well in making a prospective client feel safe with you to trust you, not just shining on and closing another deal and I need the money and same with making love or dating with your partner. You’re just trying to manipulate them, so they take care of the kids and clean up the kitchen, not you or her, or just so they’ll give you a blow job or jack you off like is there a manipulation and a strategy here? Or is this true authenticity and depth of intimate connection which I think is what we really all desire?

Jon Berghoff: Wow. It’s a lot to think about. One thing I’d love for you to share that I think I first heard you talk about this maybe at the couple’s retreat, you showed us this piece of artwork that I think it was originally something that was built at Burning Man, I could be wrong, but it was this image of these two adults that are sitting with their backs against each other and it’s this look as though they are like defeated and alone even though they’re right next to each other, but inside of their adult body, you see their inner child that’s trying to reach out and connect with each other’s inner child. And you took me through a process a while back and in no way am I going to try and recreate this in a way that gives it justice but you effectively had me connect with a place deep inside of me even if that place initially was a place where I had experienced pain or shame. And you’d asked me a series of questions so that I could maybe open up a new relationship with this place. And I remember specifically where I was because I was in a really beautiful place. I was just outside of Yosemite National Park. And as you walked me through this conversation, you helped me to generate a certain not just awareness, but even a new relationship between myself and this like deep, deep, deep inner child.

And I’d love if there’s anything you could share with anybody who’s listening or watching right now to give them some version of that even though you’re not one-on-one with them, but a way for them to reconnect with this inner part where maybe there’s things that are being blocked or there’s a certain pain, even if they’ve not been consciously aware of this that maybe right now they could become aware, so that they could start to evolve their relationship with this place deep inside themselves, that might be blocking their personal relationships. It might be creating blocks in their businesses or in many other areas of their lives.

Allana Pratt: It absolutely does block all the areas physical, mental, spiritual, vocational, financial, social family, romantic. It blocks everything. Why? Because we are holistic creatures, we are energy, we are light, ultimately, so it’s going to block everything. And when you don’t see it, I call that like an intimacy blind spot where you don’t understand that you’re literally disassociated from a part of you that’s actually running the show. Everybody else can see it, but you can’t and that’s why we call it a blind spot. So, I’ll give you like a little, I don’t know, three, four or five-minute version of something I’ll go much deeper into in San Diego and something I’ve done one-on-one with you exclusively with your particular challenge. And so, the idea is at some point, we got miswired and we thought that in order to be good enough, we needed another’s approval, we had to get their agreement, we couldn’t be rejected, and just being us wasn’t okay anymore. We had to be somebody we weren’t and so we took on a false identity. We’ll call it a false aspect of self and this false aspect is scared, mad, ashamed, terrified. And that feeling as a human as we grow up, maybe we started to express ourselves as kids and they’re like, “Boys, don’t cry,” or, “Be seen, not heard, little girl,” and we stuff it away and so it builds. What you resist persists.

So, this is an actual energy of an identity that’s building within your body and most people will feel it like, “Oh, my God, I get nauseous. I feel like my throat is I can’t speak like there’s a noose around my neck. My heart closes,” like there’s a physical sensation if you really slow down that happens when this aspect gets triggered in your body. And so, what I do is I take people through a process and it works with brain science, works with the quantum field, it works with your central nervous system. I’ve been highly trained in all of these processes for almost 20 years and I’m able to also with my own level of intuition and ability to sense energy, help people through to find the core. I’m always going for the biggest bang for the buck. I want to find the biggest kahuna in there, the biggest enchilada, and if I can get that shifted, all the other minor ones will just fall with grace and ease. And so, the idea is let’s imagine a moment of shame or a moment of failure or a moment of rejection, something where it did not go right. And if you just slow down and breathe and feel into your body, you’ll probably sense constriction on the throat, maybe heart contraction, maybe nauseous in your stomach, maybe it’s all numb. Maybe you’re just spinning like a million miles an hour in your head going, “I need control. I need control.” Whatever it is it’s perfect.

And so, let’s just imagine that that is where, I’m going to call it little you, this aspect is hidden and every time it speaks up with these emotions, it’s saying, “Help me,” but we haven’t learned how to navigate intense emotions so we generally push it down, go on Facebook, take an antidepressant, stuff our face with food, go for a 5 million mile run, whatever we need to do to like escape. We’re not going to do that right now. We’re going to do the opposite. We’re going to do what’s actually effective. We’re going to lean in. So, I just want you to, not if you’re driving obviously but close your eyes if that’s appropriate and start to breathe in and feel into this epicenter of where this contraction is, this emotion is stuck. And then I want you to imagine that me and big you, the one who’s listening to me right now we’re going to get really small and fly into your body, kind of like superheroes, get really small and fly into this epicenter. And as we get close, I want you to imagine that it’s a dark hole, like a dark void. And as we get really close, there’s a little door and it’s locked, and I ask you to put your hands on the door because only you can love this part of you. I can say everything I want to say but it’s not going to make a difference.

Another person could love you or sign up with you as a client. It’s not going to make a difference. The only one that’s actually able to heal this aspect of you is you, big you becoming a little you. So, big you puts the hands on the door, all the locks and chains fall away, the door opens, and we have to crouch down, in we go. Two little chairs are there. We sit down. And as our eyes begin to adjust, its little you. It’s the one who you’ve been rejecting, criticizing, making wrong, maybe going in with a strategy to fix them and change them and put them in a better mood so that we don’t have to be rejected anymore. Maybe you’ve just been avoiding them and abandoning them for decades but there they are. And let’s imagine they are in black and white and their back is turned to you because they don’t like you. They don’t trust you. They’re afraid of you. But simultaneously, they want your love. They want your unconditional love. They want a hug so bad. They want it to be okay that they’re sad, and you still love them, or they’re terrified and you still love them, or they’re ashamed and you still love them. And they want an apology. They want an apology. They deserve an apology.

So, I want you to imagine saying something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m here. I’m sorry it took me this long to come. I really thought being busier and being more successful was going to make you feel better but all it did was make you feel abandoned. And I thought coming in here to put you in a better mood and give you 10 more affirmations was going to make you better but all it did was make you feel the way you are is not good enough and I was judging you. Or maybe I came and I really did hit you with a 2×4 across the head just to shut up so nobody knows that deep inside I’m so insecure. All of the things that I’ve done, I’m so sorry. I’m not evil. I was really doing my best to try to make us have a better life. I had no idea that all you needed was a hug and for me to listen, and to stop trying to change you and to really practice loving you without condition, unconditional, loving you exactly as you are forever. Even if you never change, that would be unconditional.” Now, something will happen and I’ll take you through a much longer version of this so you can drop in even deeper but do your best right now. In your mind’s eye, what did little you say? “Yeah, I’ve heard this before. You’re always here manipulating me,” or can they feel your sincerity? Have they run and jumped into your arms? Or do they have a healthy skepticism?

“Well, that’s all nice. Allana is leading you through this today but are you going to do this tomorrow, next week, next year?” Maybe they need you to prove yourself by literally showing up for yourself and no longer criticizing yourself on a regular basis until this aspect, this little you is willing to come home into your heart. However little you is responding is perfect. Just allow it and trust it and we’ll go deeper in San Diego. But the idea is eventually, by repeating this process and doing it with sincerity one day, little you is going to jump into your arms, probably sob, and if right in this moment, you could literally feel what would somatically it feel like for a child to be in your arms, feel their weight against your body. Let yourself begin to slowly rock them. See if you can smell their hair, kiss the top of their head, and mean it from the depths of your soul. No strategy here. “I’m sorry. No justifications. I apologize. No excuses. And I’m willing to be with you here in the dark for eternity if that’s how long it takes for you to feel safe with me and come home into my heart so that we can be one.”

Eventually, if you practice with sincerity and regularity and consistency and you can gently open your eyes right now and kind of stretch your body, little you will come home and something will happen in your life where you no longer need to prove control, make something happen, and your energetic spinning energy will rest. And then money as if you are a merry go round, money can now get on. Love can now get on. You actually can receive because you’re still on the inside not resisting yourself so within as without. If you’re not home on the inside, you’re going to be scrambling and hustling and trying to make it happen on the outside, which just pushes everything away whether that’s professionally or personally or romantically. So, this inner work is basically putting your business on steroids, putting your love life on steroids, putting your self-growth on steroids. It’s the hard work. It’s the humbling work. It’s the courageous work. Most of us just want to not feel pain, do 10 more affirmations, and send five more emails and have a good attitude. And it’s exhausting and it’s not efficient or effective. One grounded, certain, clear, confident email or request to go on a date or invitation for date night done from this place of home and stillness will create exponential quantum leap results rather than all of the spinning. I call that sprinkles on top of the ice cream cone of shit. It doesn’t work.

Jon Berghoff: Allana, so as you were leading that, I chose to simply just follow along and take part. I’m hoping somebody didn’t try and do that while they were driving.

Allana Pratt: No. I said open your eyes. Don’t do it.

Jon Berghoff: Yeah. But that was beautiful and as I reflect on that experience and what you shared at the end of it, it reminds me of a few things that I think are so important for anybody. When I think of those folks in the Miracle Morning community who they’re all aspiring, they have a shared aspiration to be their best selves and really I appreciate and not everybody will agree with this. For some folks, there’s something you said here that I think flies in the face of what many. And in fact, I know Hal and I have even taught things that at times I think, “Gosh, I wish I could go back and take back advice that we gave.” We all can relate to that but the specific thing that you just said that I think is a big deal is how important it is to not run from or avoid or push away these emotions that aren’t always positive and pleasant. And you know, that’s consistent with Julianna Raye, who for years was my personal mindfulness coach and is still the person I turn to today in the area of mindfulness meditation. And one of the things she taught me years ago when she was coaching me, and I had asked her one day. I said, “Hey, would you help me to really, I want to nurture my ability to feel positivity? And she said, “Okay.” She said, “We’re going to do that but I’m going to do it only with one big giant footnote.” And she said, “For many people, the attempt to proactively nurture positivity can actually backfire and create the opposite effect.”

Allana Pratt: Good. We’re talking the same language. I love it.

Jon Berghoff: Yeah. And when she first said that, I thought, “How’s that possible? That’s not what this is all about. It’s not what I’m paying her for,” but I quickly learned from her and you just, in a totally different way, revealed the same learning which is so important, which is we need to learn how to work with everything that is going on inside of us. And that covering it up or putting it to the side or distracting ourselves or overindulging in whether it’s going to the gym or succeeding wildly in our businesses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have really addressed something that needs to be addressed. And in many cases, like you said earlier, that inauthenticity ends up repelling people.

Allana Pratt: It does.

Jon Berghoff: And so, we have to be willing to enjoy and seek out all the good that we can create and find and explore and we have to be willing to face these parts of ourselves that we might not label as joyful or super exciting because that’s what it means to be whole.

Allana Pratt: I was saying to a client last night, “We’ve got to savor and be braver.” She goes, “Ooh, bumper sticker.” And so, like savor the good times and be brave, braver, when the emotions come up that we don’t care for. Because here’s the deal people, we cannot scientifically create on top of an emotional trigger. We are in fight or flight or freeze, disconnected to our intelligence from our intelligence, disconnected from the divine. We are like reptilian robots and we’re just going to react from a very lack-based mentality and make a really bad mistake. And then we’re going to do it again and they’re going to do it again, okay, and we wonder why our lives aren’t working. And we have to work even harder to try to make up for all of that. Instead, what if emotions weren’t bad or good? What if they weren’t right or wrong? What if they just were invitations to sit in fires to be like an iron in the fire that gets harder and stronger over time? What if it’s like the phoenix rising from the flame? What if all of these are invitations because they are for you to evolve, for you to integrate something into the lesson?

Like some of you will know my story and some of you won’t but really long, crazy custody battle, lots of debt, legal debt, lots of reasons to be ashamed. My son actually lives with his dad. That’s how we’ve created peace, not fair, not fun, all this kind of stuff. I could have not integrated these emotions into allowance, compassion, strength, forgiveness. I could be bitter, I could be pushing it all down, not telling anybody about it. I could still be blaming my ex. I could make my son feel guilty. I could do all these things. So, the emotions were real: shame, humiliation, disappointment, unfairness, all this kind of stuff. So, I’ve learned through my own path to lean in, do these high-level quantum psychology practices that I’ve been trained in, to literally because you cannot create or uncreate energy. That’s science. You can only change it. So, we’re not going to get rid of fear. We’re not going to get rid of anger. We’re not going to get rid of insecurity. We’re not going to get rid of it, but we can change it and integrate it and it’s not with 10 more affirmation sprinkles on top of the ice cream cone. Okay. That’s a temporary hit, just like Facebook is or another pint of ice cream or some cam girls. Okay. That’s just a hit.

Really, what it’s going to take the integration is sitting in it. It doesn’t take a long time but it’s going to take bravery as you breathe and stay present and literally merge this lower vibration into a higher vibration. It’s like an alchemy into a higher vibration. That experience didn’t happen to me my own, whatever, custodial stuff and debt and others. It didn’t happen to me because I’m bad. It happened to grow me into a badass. It was there to turn me into a queen of compassion. So, I have to do my work and integrate all of these lessons into these new embodied capacities that I can now take into my world and support others and be a greater giver and be more generous to myself and to others. So, everything that’s happened to you, you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re not bad. You haven’t failed. It’s not your fault. You’re not broken. There’s nothing like that. The bigger the catastrophe, the greater the impact you’re apparently here to make, if you ask me. I don’t treat people like I don’t pity them. I don’t treat them like victims. No, no, no.

You have chosen this, your soul, maybe you don’t remember but I think it’s a great point of view to have that you and God and the Goddess were sitting around with scotch and cigars going, “Okay. Well, it would be really fun this time in this life?” And you come up with a plan of how you’re going to be giving certain gifts. Well, how can you become strong if you haven’t experienced weak? How can you experience forgiveness if you haven’t been betrayed? Like how can you become this incredible public speaker if your voice hasn’t been squelched? Hello? So, we’re just evolving. Nothing’s wrong here. And when you have that new point of view and you don’t push away part of you and criticize part of you, you literally empower, get up under this part of you, whew, it’s fun to be alive, you get a lot more results, you make a lot more money, make a bigger impact, you have greater sex and deeper relationships and real friendships. It’s all worth it. It’s all good.

Jon Berghoff: You’re reminding me of a time where I was interviewing for a leadership position for a company that I really wanted. And I ended up getting the position and the gentleman that was interviewing me at the end of the process, it was a long like several month process. He said, “Jon, I’m going to tell you the thing I’m most concerned about in us hiring you.” He said, “The thing I’m most concerned about,” and he said this with full sincerity and that I really had to let it sink in. He said, “I’m concerned that you have not had big enough failures in your life,” and it took me a long time to understand what he meant by that.

Allana Pratt: I knew of that.

Jon Berghoff: Yeah, and he was a pretty – he became a mentor and somebody who I really learned a lot from and it also reminds me Dr. James Kelly, who’s a fellow member of our exchange community of group genius facilitators, and Dr. Kelly wrote a book based on his interviews with 150 CEOs. And the thing that he found that that was most in common amongst all of these interviews and his show, by the way, it was all through a podcast. It’s called Executive After Hours. And what he would do is he’d interview these executives, Allana, and this is my interpretation, he refused to let them talk about their work and he asked them about their childhood and their upbringing and their struggles. And he ended up writing a book about what he learned and the book was called The Crucible’s Gift and it was the one – what he thought was the most important lesson that he learned from all these interviews was that it was the greatest challenge that everybody had faced that had given them their greatest gift that allowed them to eventually become an incredible leader, which is really what you’re talking about.

Allana Pratt: Yes, yes. I really love this, Jon, because I personally as a woman who’s dating, I don’t trust as much in a man who’s all successful than a man who’s been successful, lost it all, and rebuilt it because who it takes to succeed, you know, that can even be luck, right? You could be just given success, right, maybe from your parents or something. But if you had it, lost it, and had to process through the shame, humiliation, stop abusing yourself, see the lesson and it gets stronger because of it and get back up again, I respect you because life is going to give us another challenge. That’s life. Life is equal support and challenge. That’s science. So, who are you going to be if you’ve never gotten back up again? It means I don’t trust you. And so, if I’m going to be a female and surrender, and I don’t know who you’re going to be in a difficult time, and you’re going to react and judge and blame and pretend and scramble and hustle and ditch me and the kids and all their own. No, no, no, no thanks. So, I really love what your friend is saying there. And I also mean I don’t wish horrible things on you. But like, I wish you the humility and the grandeur that comes from falling down and loving yourself just as much down as you are up.

[CLOSING]

Jon Berghoff: That’s beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Well, Allana, before we go here, I just want to say again, we are super excited to have you bringing your wisdom to the Best Year Ever Blueprint. This is our sixth year we’ve done this event. Is it the sixth or the seventh? I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter. But for those of you, if you’ve been listening, you’re still listening, it’s Manchester Grand Hyatt BestYearEverLive.com and I was just telling Allana before the show, we’re not going to have a challenge filling the seats as it has been the last several years. We’re really fortunate that the global Miracle Morning community have at this point hundreds and hundreds of thousands of millions of people. They snatch up all these seats every year. It sells out usually a month or two in advance. So, I don’t know when this show gets published but if somebody hears it and they want to join us in San Diego, then go to BestYearEverLive.com and if there’s still seats, grab one. It’s going to be an amazing experience.

Allana, before we go, where can somebody go to learn more from you? You’ve got your podcast, Intimate Conversations. Where can they find you there or anywhere else?

Allana Pratt: Yeah. They can find me there. Also, my YouTube channel, a quick way to find that is simply AllanaPratt.com/watch and AllanaPratt.com is my website spelled A-L-L-A-N-A-P-R-A-T-T.com. Lots of free gifts and trainings there for you to let me love you and take care of you.

Jon Berghoff: Awesome. Allana, this was great. Thank you so much.

Allana Pratt: Yeah. Thank you so much. This is delicious.

[END]