We are all conditioned to focus on the concept of giving, but what if the concept of receiving is just as important? In today’s episode, Jennifer Cassetta shares a story about finding a crystal and the resistance she felt to accepting it as a gift. This leads to a discussion about receiving being the flip side of giving and the importance of being open to receiving from the universe. Be open to receiving compliments and gifts with a simple “thank you” and a smile. Jen encourages you to shift your focus; instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, expect good news and unlimited possibilities. This episode is your nudge to embrace receiving and open yourself up to a world of abundance. Be ready to become a badass receiver, and tune in to this episode to get inspired!
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A Boost Of Badassery With Jenn Cassetta
The Art of Receiving
Welcome to the show. I am going to do a little episode that I’m going to start calling Boost of Badassery. I’m here to do a little solo episode, not to teach a particular lesson but to dive into things that are happening in my life that I feel like if I shared these things, they might help someone else as well. This will have an update, little stories here and there, and, hopefully, takeaways for you to bring out your own badassery in your life. I am always open to your feedback when you read this. Let me know if you enjoyed it. Let’s dig in.
The first topic seems to be this occurring thread for me. It’s about receiving. A little story. I was on a bike ride with my husband. We were riding back from the beach and stopped in Venice, by a store that a friend of ours owns. Outside the store, I noticed that there was this crystal on the floor. It was a big chunk of crystal with a price tag on it. It said $38. I look around and I’m like, “Oh.” I asked my friend Kelly, “Did this come out of your store?” Right away, I think someone tried to steal it out of the store and they dropped it. She was like, “That’s not mine. Maybe ask my neighbor in the next-door store.”
I walk in there and I’m poking around. It’s a tiny little store. No one’s even there. I come out of the store and he’s coming around in his car to the front of the store. I say, “What’s your name?” Pitango is the name of the store. I said, “I found this crystal of yours. Here you go. Is this yours?” He was like, “It’s yours now.” I said, “No. I found it on the sidewalk. It had the price tag on it and everything.” He was like, “It’s yours.” I stood there stunned. I was like, “This beautiful crystal? I can’t accept this.” He was like, “I do that sometimes.” This is Venice, so you meet people like this. Things like this happen.
The Act Of Receiving
It was really a special, beautiful moment where I had to take a breath and say, “Are you sure? I feel like I need to give you something in exchange for this crystal. I can’t take it.” He was like, “I sometimes will put a crystal out somewhere. The person that finds it is meant to be its owner. Sometimes, the act of receiving is better than giving.” I was like, “That’s interesting.”
Sometimes, the act of receiving is better than giving.
We’re so conditioned to think about giving, which is a beautiful concept and something that we all need to think about all the time, but I started to think about it on a different level. I started to think about the act of receiving as the flip side of the coin of giving. It’s equal and opposite energies, like the yin and yang theory that I learned in martial arts. Yin and yang. Soft and hard. Masculine and feminine. Giving and receiving.
All of a sudden, when I started to really get into that a little bit more, it became easier to accept gifts. I don’t know about your reading, but I feel like we’ve been conditioned not to accept gifts, even in things like compliments. That’s my first takeaway for you in this little episode. The next time someone gives you a compliment, instead of brushing it off or saying, “No,” or, “You’re so beautiful,” say, “Thank you.” Take a breath and accept with your whole heart. Accept with your mind, body, soul, all of it. That’s what this crystal has been teaching me to do. Thank you, Pitango.
Back to that moment in that day, I even automatically said, “I’m going to go back to the store,” because he was closing down, “and I’m going to buy this sweatshirt that I saw.” I saw a sweatshirt there a few days before. It was this purple sweatshirt that said, “Heart On.” Sometimes, I have the humor of a fifteen-year-old boy. I thought it was funny. You have a heart on your sweatshirt. I said, “I’m going to go back and I’m going to buy that sweatshirt from him.” I still have it, mind you. I still will, but not in the vein of having to return this favor, but because I like the sweatshirt. I like to buy things from people and companies that are good people, giving people, and kind people. We need more of that in the world.
Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself
I got fluorite. I did a little bit of research. If anyone out there is a real crystal fan, I’m not so into them. I don’t know too much about them. He told me that it was about receiving, but when you read online, there are so many things that you can read. If anyone out there knows specifically what the fluorite crystal is good for, send me a message.
The other big theme that’s going on in my life is this Dr. Joe Dispenza work that I’ve been doing. I leave in less than 48 hours for a 7-day advanced retreat with him and, I believe, 2,000 other people. I am beyond excited. If you’re familiar with him, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, that’s okay. I’ll explain. I started reading his books during the pandemic. The first book I read of his is called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. I loved it. I highly recommend it. He really goes deep on how we can change our thoughts, which eventually change our lives. Thoughts lead to feelings, and feelings lead to experiences.
His story is incredible. A few decades ago, when he was starting out as a chiropractor, he got severely injured in a bicycle accident. He was doing a triathlon in Palm Springs. He got thrown from his bicycle and hurt himself. I’m not going to say exactly what happened to his back or his spine because I don’t want to quote it and be wrong, but if you read his books, you’ll find out his story,
He was in the hospital. He was in bad shape. He couldn’t walk and was told by the surgeons he must have this one particular surgery to put steel rods in his back, etc., and he’ll never walk again. He took the 2nd opinion and maybe even a 3rd opinion. People in his life, some of them were telling him, “You should do this,” but the doctors were very serious like, “You need to do this surgery.” Something in him said, “No.” He believed that he was going to heal himself.
I don’t have all the details, but he found out about some Eastern philosophy and started reading this pamphlet. He was starting to put these steps in place and was visualizing his spine coming back together. He was healing himself through visualization. Little by little, he started to get movement back. He started to crawl. He started to go in the pool. The next thing you know, he’s upright and walking. The man has no pain and his back is completely fine.
That’s one small story of how his work has changed people’s lives. It’s his origin story, which I always think is important to learn about when you’re learning from someone in particular. Where did this inspiration come from? It usually comes from a huge, massive takedown in life. That is the reason why embracing the suck is the white belt level in the chapter of the art of badassery because usually, that’s where it begins. That’s where things start to change. It’s when we can truly embrace the sad, mad, and bad things that are happening in our lives, the trauma, the drama, the disappointments, all of it. If you use it to your advantage, you can change your life.
Things start to change when we truly embrace the sad things happening in our lives.
Back to his work, during the pandemic, I read that book first. I love it. During the pandemic, I also started listening to books on Audible and not just reading them. At first, I read his book, and then I started to listen to it on Audible. When I’m listening on Audible, I’m usually out walking, which is why I’m able to listen to so many more books and finish so many more books than if I were reading. I used to read at night in bed or throughout the day, a couple of pages here and there. It took me a lot longer. Now, I walk every single day and hit my 5,000 steps, if not more. I usually do that while listening to an Audible book.
The point is I tend to listen to a book multiple times. Since I’m more of a visual learner, reading the books was important. It helped me remember them. When I’m listening to them, it’s more difficult. Hence, listening to them multiple times. Those are little hints there in case you want to switch from one modality to the other. We all learn in three different ways. Those are through reading, which is visual or seeing the words, through hearing, and through kinesthetic, which is touch and feeling. Usually, one of those modalities is stronger in each person. For me, I believe that’s visual.
I’m listening to his books. I then listen to the second book, which is Becoming Supernatural. It’s mind-blowing. People who are doing his work are healing themselves of things like cancer, lacking mindset, and all kinds of disorders and diseases in people’s lives. I started to get really into it. I always do a digital vision board that I plaster on all of my screens. In addition to that, I have a dry-erase board that sits next to my vision board. There, I have words. Instead of the visual representation, these are words that say the different goals that I want to accomplish that year.
On that board, I wrote, “Deepen meditations. Dr. Joe Dispenza Retreat,” and then a little bit of his work or a line from his work. I honestly didn’t think it was going to happen in 2024. That’s the thing with vision boards, at least for me. I’m putting it out there even with the intention that it’s supposed to be this 2024, but I’m also open to the fact that if it doesn’t happen this year, it’s going to happen in the near future.
I tend to do a visualization that is three years in advance. That’s what I have everyone walk through when they build their vision board because of how life goes sometimes. Sometimes, things aren’t going to happen. Everything’s not going to happen all in one year. If you can build your vision three years out, that’s a really sustainable way to do it. That’s my way to do it. I’m not saying that should be yours. That was on the board.
I’m starting to do his work more. I listened to the books, then I got online and I started to download some of his meditations. I’ve been doing those for at least nine months. My morning routine always has meditation in the beginning. In addition to that, I was doing an evening meditation of his from his website. You can buy and download his meditations. However, I’ll get to that because I don’t necessarily recommend starting out like that because it’s wild stuff. It doesn’t make sense unless you understand his work. Maybe I would recommend doing a book first or his online course.
I started to have these really interesting experiences in those meditations and even had this very mystical experience. I haven’t told many people this because it could sound nutty depending on the person on the other side or on the receiving end. You’re on the receiving end of this, but I’m going to tell it anyway. I had one of those experiences where I did his meditation in the evening with this particular breathing technique that he teaches. I know he didn’t make this up. It’s an Eastern philosophy type of breathing technique that is used in other Eastern philosophies. He says that. It’s not like he’s taking credit for it.
The next morning in my regular meditation, I happened to linger a few more minutes than I normally would. All of a sudden, my mind and my heart opened up. Everything felt like this explosion coming out straight through my head of bliss and ecstasy. It was wild. People who are familiar with Kundalini Yoga, that is the experience that I had. He doesn’t really call it that, but I had that experience where you feel so connected to Source, God, Spirit, or whatever you want to call that. It was a mind-blowing experience. That was my sign that I was going to keep going with this work. I’m going to keep going deeper. I’m going to keep deepening my meditations and keep practicing. It was that big of a call. I’m finished with his online course to prepare myself for the seven-day retreat.
Back to the theme of receiving, I’m also reminding myself that I could be open to receiving gifts during meditation. I could be open to downloads of information or listening to my intuitive voice and trusting myself and the notions and ideas that I get as well. That’s another way that you can think about receiving in your life. It’s not necessarily gifts from other people. It’s not necessarily compliments from other people, but it sure can be. It could be acts of service from other people.
Here’s the other thing. It can also not be from other people. It could be gifts from the universe or unexpected surprises coming into your life and being open to those things. A lot of us are not super-tuned in there. Even when I talk about it, I used to be scared of surprises because they are the unknown. It’s the uncertain, living in uncertainty.
The more that I’ve gone into this work and the more that I’m trusting myself, the more I’m trusting that I can be open to receiving good surprises and that good things can happen instead of how I used to live, which was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That feels so heavy saying it. Does anyone else out there feel like that where you’re always waiting for something else bad to happen? That’s gone for me. Instead, I am open to receiving good, great surprises and unlimited possibilities. That’s the thing about this work. I’m happy to share if you want to look him up and get into it or ask me any questions about it.
The Meditation Retreat
By the time this episode airs, I’ll be on the other side of the meditation retreat. Who knows what I’ll be doing then? Maybe I’ll have my dream goal, which is to open a black cat sanctuary. Maybe that will spontaneously happen. Who knows? My point is when you’re reading this, I’m on the other side of it. I’ll have so much more to share in my next Boost of Badassery.
I want to leave you with these last few thoughts of what you could be open to instead of the worst-case scenario or instead of the bad things happening even in this country, the world, and all of the negative news. What if you were open to receiving some good news and expecting what could be the opposite of the other shoe dropping? You’re expecting a new pair of shoes in the mail or expecting unlimited possibilities for everything to turn out in your favor. That’s it.
Also, the next time someone offers you a compliment or a little gift, remember to say, “Thank you,” and smile. The smile is making you shut up so you don’t start talking. Smile. Close your mouth, breathe it in, and take it in. We have to build the muscle of receiving as much as we build the muscle of giving. That’s it for this episode. I hope this was helpful. Let me know. Stay badass. I love you.
