Episodes

This week we talk about our dreams, our deepest hopes, visualizing them and having the faith that we will succeed (through all the ups and downs of life). We not only discuss holding these dreams for ourselves, but how to hold dreams for others. We are joined by our friend Beth Hewitt who is sharing her insights on visualization as we celebrate her book, “The Power of Scripting.”

Breaking the Sound Barrier with Michael Joly On this episode we explore sound and how it changes and connects us; how to hear, listen and distinguish the truth in our hearts and souls. We also have a three minute Tone Therapy session with the use of Michael’s invention: the N.O.W. sound device which when you listen for 3 minutes and 20 seconds has the similar outcome of a long meditation.

This episode is about leadership. Matt explains the concept of servant/leader. We discuss true leadership and what that truly is. We discuss tantrums. In all aspects of life and culture, we are here to take care of each other. We are creating each other. Creativity - creative energies are brewing and are very strong.  I always think about collaboration and creativity; the way we influence each other in conversation, our experience with one another and how they create an imprint; I can be imprinted by your behavior. My behavior could be imprinted on you.  Your behavior towards me can create and impression of you that will be forever imprinted.  It happens in relationships, in business, with leadership, with friendship; all of the ships.

This episode, we are visiting with our lovely and talented friend who travels around the country teaching kindness to school children (and people of all ages, really). He is a phenomenally kind, beautiful human being, writer, publisher, musician, husband, father, great friend, Barry Lane! This episode will calm your senses and make you feel way better about the world! Barry even sings to us! And we discuss the way of kindness. Enjoy this very important episode.  to contact us: www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com or www.ourfriendlyworld.com To contact Barry: www.forcefieldforgood.com

Episode Sit Still! Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica: Petite Sensei  (Francoise Petite)– make yourself at home in the uncomfortableness. We talk about being comfortable in the many forms being comfortable and uncomfortableness exists. Fawn brings up her friend Eowyn and the subject of being comfortable with money no matter where you sit in the financial realm. How does being still and not being still; multitasking contribute to loneliness? How can the alarm clock help you? Capacity is a big factor in the loneliness epidemic or in people having their relationships fractured. We don't have enough capacity to be able to offer anything to anyone else.  When you have so many things vying for your attention, you end up with a piece of over here, a piece of you over there, and you're not there.  You’re not present. You're scattered throughout all these other places and tasks.  And that's where you are fragmented all over the place. So you're not able to totally be with your kids a hund…

Show notes Episode 33 “Capacity - moving to expansiveness – neuroscience, neurobiology and the social engagement system” with our guest Pamela Stokes There is a connection far beyond our bodies. There is a part of the neuroscience and the neurobiology that is called the social engagement system. And it's a grouping of five different things in our physiology that allows us to connect with ourselves. But also to connect with each other This week we get into the neuroscience of our connections with one another and we figure out how to begin the healing process for our society.  Some topics include: the science of brain and body, trauma based therapeutic movement and brain training, movement and neuroplasticity, mindful motion, the insula cortex and how it is the key that allows us to connect with others. This episode is really big on more than one level. It’s a little over 90 minutes, but it’s packed with techniques that will help our world. Trust me when I say, you don’t want to miss …

We talk about rituals in life from big rituals to small rituals. We can develop connections with people when there's a ritual, and it can be the ritual having a cup of coffee, taking a walk, going to the farmer's market or sharing a table is a beautiful ritual. And that's one of the things I would like to say is, we can benefit from getting  in the habit of sharing what we're not comfortable sharing until we're comfortable at it; for example, sharing a table with a stranger. This brings us to this episode’s nugget of wisdom from our mentor, Santa Monica. Today’s topic stems from Musashi Miyamoto and the “A Book of Five Rings” as we discuss the fifth rule: “Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.” Capacity. We define it. We analyze it and we come to the conclusion that love has infinite capacity.

Episode 31 “Unseen Forces” Perceive those things, which cannot be seen. Understand what cannot be seen by the eye. How do we access this information undetectable to the human eye? How do we access information beyond the five senses? That's because we have a six tenths and everybody, every human on the planet has a sixth sense. “Be patient with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for answers. It cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present, you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day. -  Rainer Maria Rilke  Letters to a Young Poet. Rachel: “Science is huge. It's a big world, science. Everything about being human; of frequency, frequencies, you know, there are hundreds of thousands, if …

2 nuggets of wisdom from Santa Monica: Calmly and reverently carrying on, holding your center in love, no matter what is going on around you in the outside world. It is an honor to be invited to someone’s home. Treat it as such. We also talk about “entitlement” and what that means. What are we entitled to in life? This leads us to the topic of appreciation. This week we travel to different countries (via a book and our kitchen table) to discuss how we’re supposed to behave in different countries. If we are in quarantine and can’t travel for now, might as well brush up on etiquette from different countries. Which countries do you greet with a handshake? Who kisses once on one cheek and twice on the other cheek, hold hands, not hold hands, late or punctual, to gift or not to gift when visiting someone’s house, where to not use your hands for gestures as you speak, eye contact or no eye contact, to say yes or no thank you when you are offered something, to use a fork or spoon, to complim…

Show notes #29 Friends with Money with Farnoosh Torabi We have Farnoosh Torabi, an honored friend, American journalist, author, television personality, and personal finance expert, as our guest this week. With Farnoosh’s wisdom, things are illuminated! As Matt, Fawn, and Farnoosh converse together, Fawn realizes that some of us (she and some of her friends) live in a state of purgatory with money. We are trapped and confined to a memory or experience with money that unless we switch our thinking and snap out of, we’ll stay in hell instead of moving on, thriving, having fun, enjoying life, and creating the lives we want to be living. We explore the concept of friends with money, by not only talking about how friendships affect economy, but also how to make friends with money as an entity in Fawn’s case, because she feels mad at money (like money is this friend that has shut her out and she wants to be in that inner circle again), longs to be friends with it and get over a world of pain…

Fawn shares her experience on one of her photoshoots in India and explains the correlation to the beginning of moving back to Santa Monica and a very unusual message she received (a tiny little message that normally may have gone unnoticed) that was the first of many from this city that became her mentor. This pearl of wisdom leads us to this episode’s topic of paying attention to TRIFLES. Trifle definition: noun, 1: something of little value, substance, or importance 2: A small quantity or amount of anything. 3: Pewter of medium hardness. 4: a dessert typically consisting of plain or sponge cake often soaked with wine or spirits (such as brandy or rum) and topped with layers of preserves, custard, and cream Verb, 5: to deal lightly or without due seriousness or respect. 6: to amuse oneself daily 7:  to play or toy with 8: to act or talk in an idle or frivolous way. 9: Nine to waste time to idol, 10: to pass or spend time idly or frivolously Fawn and Matt discuss A Book of Five Ri…

This episode features our friend Paul Martin. He songs to us and IT IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!! He IS AMAZING! First: Santa Monica pearl of wisdom from 5th floor quiet painter neighbor. You never truly know what someone’s life experience is until you are invited in, or you invite THEM in.Sometimes you may look at a person you think, “Oh my God, I am probably not their cup of tea. They will probably hate me”, or you can see major differences between you, and that “there's no way that this person will like me”. Give it a chance. You never know! Fawn and Matt share their difficult weekend as Fawn pushes back the tears of her sadness and anxiety, and tells how she had to type the words “I NEED A FRIEND” to her friend Beth Hewitt (of the podcast “Visualize You w/ Beth Hewitt). Fawn describes how that changed everything and reads what Beth wrote back to her, out loud for any of you to receive Beth’s words to help you feel better as they helped Fawn. All the tears and emotions happen before …

Show notes #26 Prosperare Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica – receiving a treat through your window, just exactly when you need it. Prosperity – PRO= towards Spera=hope spera. sperare Verb = hope for, hope.  Looking at prosperity. Pro pro means towards. Sparity Comes from Spera it's  Latin, Spera means hope. Prosperity, if we break it down means towards hope.   My question is how can we look towards hope? What is prosperity? Fawn: “Prosperity is a universe inside of you. Do not look outside at other people. When you find yourself looking at your friends and feeling like you're left out, that right there is the opposite of prosperity. That is scarcity.” ???:  How can we go from hopeless to hopeful? How can we go from feeling left out, shut out and uncared for to realizing a muffin flying through your window? Fawn: “You can use scarcity as a tool. You can use it as anger for fuel, enough to get you to a point where you're realizing you're not where you want to be. That's okay. When you…

Show notes #25 “Peculiar” Nugget of Wisdom: Jesus and the Bread Guy – Fawn recalls “… two things, two, if you pick two things in the neighborhood, within the community that are a constant, you never thought about together at the same time; in the neighborhood, you never thought had a connection. If you take two things or two people that are consistent in the neighborhood that you never connected; like they are not going to cross, or it didn't even cross your mind, but when you see it, it makes total sense. Have you ever had an epiphany like that?” This story is about two main fixtures in the Santa Monica/ Venice neighborhood that one early morning Fawn became aware had a divine, spiritual connection to one another that brought her a deeper understanding of our connections within our community. PECULIAR - pe·cu·liar  /pəˈkyo͞olyər/  adjective strange or odd; unusual. Similar words: Strange, unusual, odd, funny, curious, bizarre, weird, uncanny, queer, unexpected, unfamiliar, abnorma…

Episode #24 – US/THEM/SYNTHESIS  - Is it possible to have synthesis? How can we have Synthesis in society when there is so much of “us” versus “them”? Pearl of wisdom from Santa Monica: the light within can really touch someone out there that you may not know. What you do in your own home can seriously affect someone on the outside. SYNTHESIS:   1) the combination of ideas to form a theory or a system. 2) The production of chemical compounds, by reaction from simpler materials. Fawn: I have an issue with “simpler materials” for so many reasons. If you're going to take it outside the science scope (I'm going to talk about synthesis), like communication with people and culture, using the word “simple” is a mistake. If you look at something through a microscope, you can get more powerful microscopes and keep going and going and going and going as you look at any given thing. Does anything ever stop being or existing? Like numbers, is everything infinite? You look at something through a…

Nugget of wisdom from Fawn’s neighbor in Santa Monica, upstairs Joey – the lesson of the hot stove. Today’s episode revolves around the fable, “The Frog and the Scorpion” “The Scorpion and the Frog” Our super friend, psychotherapist KJ Nasrul joins us to discuss: the changing of minds; our belief systems, specially in times of argument. Can a person fundamentally change? How do you know when to reenter a friendship? How do you know when to end a friendship?

Episode 22  - Emotion Motion – the Good, the Bad, the Ugly Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica: Moses and the Ten Commandments – Why hearing a crowd chant your name is important. It is a healing. It is validation. We need that. My friend hearing his name chanted - that's a good thing. It gives you that strength and that validation, that power that says "I exist. I am powerful. I am loved". What is it about words? I always say words have vibration, words have power. There's so much energy associated with sound. The internal emotion logic works between two people. Two people are arguing and one person takes the emotional argument. The other person takes logical argument. We're working in a whole different system. We're working against imposter syndrome. We're working against everybody tells me whatever it is I want to hear, except for there's one person who says that hurtful comment. That's the only person (maybe I feel because I'm an imposter walking through the world because we all fee…

Your responsibility to party – How to be a good guest Nugget- The blind date – How to be gracious “To Be a Good Guest” When I was little, my immediate family quite honestly, was pretty stressed all the time and angry and kind of hateful. I was always surprised by how the relatives put up with. I actually had to cut them off. It's not something I did lightly. It took many, many therapists to get me out of that situation. As a whole though, my family and its dynamics was very much the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. It was exactly like that but Persian. The relatives would get together every week; parties all the time, get-togethers all the time; always in each other's business and very loud and the dinners are not just like quiet dinners with seven people. As a child, every time I had to go to one of these parties, (I mean, other people would call them parties for us, it was just a Friday night), the amount of stuff that would happen in our home that I grew up in was just not happ…

Fawn and Matt break out all their dictionaries and read all the definitions of friendship and have a good laugh. Then THEY break it down for real. Fawn feels a kinship, like a family type feeling about certain people, to which Matt says they are not friends because they don’t even know you! Fawn says we're all connected, at the risk of sounding way too woo woo. So yeah, this person doesn't know I exist perhaps, but they've touched my life profoundly. And because they touched my life, I shared how they touched my life with my close friends and so they also get touched and changed because of this person. Do they (the person that hasn’t met us) know how they changed lives? When I tell other people about this person and it changes their life, it's a ripple effect. My idea of friendship is getting a little bit more fluid, especially in the time of 2020, and the fact that we can't be together. Before 2020, our criteria was that to have a substantial friendship, you had to be together within…

Today's Pearl has to do with fine lines and the path that we walk on. We discuss having the intention, awareness, and the wherewithal of knowing how we walk in the world.  One of those paths we referred to as “A.W.O.L.” which in Santa Monica, California, stood for “Always West of Lincoln”. Then there’s the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) which is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. We talk about this path and Fawn talks about listening to Caroline Myss and her experience as she walked part of this path and the insight she (Caroline Myss) shared. There's a fine line to everything. We can walk on a path and if we veer even one step to the left or the right, we’ll have a completely different experience. As a photographer, Fawn is especially true in her field of art and how looking at the same thing, we will all have a completely differ…

Jennifer Lopez, (aka Jenny from the block, JLO) visits and shoots a movie in the neighborhood and comments about our little village by asking: “Does anyone work?” when filming the movie “Monster In-Law”. She was noticing our way of being in our community. The truth is we all worked but we didn’t all have traditional “9-5” jobs. We also knew how to luxuriate and enjoy every single day and to someone looking in from the outside, it appeared that we just hung and played all day. The Pearl of wisdom is to enjoy your life for God's sake. Just enjoy. Notice the trifles. There is really no need to rush. Put on your roller blades, roller skates, flip-flops, sit, sit at a coffee shop holding on to a cup of your favorite coffee, play, eat, watch the light change, drink a great delicious drink, ride a bicycle, feel the sand between your toes, feel the sun on your body, take a stroll, do a little dance down the sidewalk…you get the idea, right? The focus of this week’s podcast is on the alpha, …

Nugget and pearl of wisdom from Santa Monica Days: Iraq and Iran – the adventures of turtle/babysitting. Fawn’s Santa Monica friends (Anders and Liz), named their turtles Iran and Iraq to bring peace to the Middle East. The reasoning for the choice of their names was that every time they called their turtles lovingly by their names, they not only sent their turtles love but they held loving kindness for the Middle East at the same time. Words have power. Fawn and Matt begin relating words, numbers, zeros, ones and computer coding. Matt corrects Fawn and says as a programmer, he thinks “all things are code, code is not necessarily math. It’s Boolean logic and saying it’s a bunch of zeros and ones fails to convey the true majesty that is.” This week’s topic is about the first time you felt the power of friendship and what it did for you and your life. The alliance that we talk about this week is all about the sense that together, you’re able to do ANYTHING. You can overcome racial injus…

Our nugget  AKA pearls of wisdom for this episode involves Dr. Bradley Nelson, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Gregg Braden, the Heart Math Institute, Electromagnetic field, Heart math, heart brain, heart wall, intellectual humility, social intelligence, IQ, emotional intelligence, shared reality, Magneto cardiogram and it measures the magnetic field of the heart. These machines record this field to be about 12 feet in diameter, but they're all saying that the machines are actually limited. That in fact they believe the, the field to be infinite, which makes sense. How do we “Agree to Disagree”, especially now with so much charged emotion within our divided nation in the United States? How can we maneuver the misconstrued tones, the arguments that grow, the unexpressed resentments, the unheard voices, the differences of psyche, culture, sex, race, social/economic, generational points of view, the mess under the rug? How should we step away when both sides are deeply emotional? Can we find a shared …

This week’s nugget is a 16th century Norwegian term, meaning to comfort or to console -  related to the English word “hug”. You need HYGGE in your life, especially these days, guys, this is how we can feel better! Here are some words words associated with HYGGE – comfort, cozy, relaxation, indulgence, and gratitude. This is about taking pleasure in the presence of a gentle thing, soothing things like a freshly brewed cup of coffee, cozy socks, food, drink, pastries, whatever your favorite things are, you partake in them and have them all around you. There’s even a HYGGE manifesto containing 10 things that will get you to a HYGGE state! We share them with you! There's a book that's called the book of” HYGGE  -  the Danish art of contentment, comfort and connection”. There's a quote from it:  “a practical way of creating sanctuary in the middle of a very real life and a cure for S a D” a cure for sad, which stands for seasonal affective disorder. In this episode, we learn about the unfo…