Ep. 1: From Shrinking to Shining. Moving From Separation to Wholeness Through Community

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Be More Connected. I'm your host Elyse Preston. This podcast is a place where we explore how to center meaningful connection as our most valuable resource in a changing and challenging world. Understanding that we are each uniquely powerful beings with a role to. And the collective shifts happening on the planet at this time.

And our ability to lead and thrive depends on how well we care for nourish and honor our innate value, wisdom, and beauty within ourselves, each other, the natural world and the divine. Thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to dive in with you.

Hello, my beautiful [00:01:00] friends. Welcome to episode one of Be More Connected. I am so excited that this episode has finally made it to your ears. This podcast has been many months in the making. Actually years in the making, if you account for the amount of time that I've been a serious podcast listener. Dreaming of one day launching my own show.

And so in this introductory episode, I have three main objectives to introduce myself. To introduce the vision for the podcast. And to get you excited about what's to come in this first season. All right, let's get into it.

Elyse Preston: Hey everyone. I am Elise Preston. I have a life alignment coach, soulful business mentor, and the host of the BMR connected podcast. I'm also a multiracial woman of color [00:02:00] living in Baltimore, Maryland.

And I love to say that I guide visionaries change-makers and entrepreneurs. To remember their soul mission and find the courage to pursue it. So they can increase their abundance and social impact. And for those of you like me, who love a quick cosmic profile, I'm a Scorpio, sun, Libra, moon, and Taurus rising.

I'm also a six to emotional projector in human design. And I consider myself to be a highly intuitive and highly sensitive being with a deep desire to reduce suffering and. Increase the capacity for connection and abundance and liberation on the planet. And I've always felt this mission. Pretty deep within me, like deep in my bones.

But it wasn't until I began exploring entrepreneurship about five years ago. That I felt as though I had found a meaningful way to actually contribute my [00:03:00] gifts. And I'm super, super grateful to say that I am so lit up by the work that I get to do now. Really guiding and mentoring some of the most inspiring heart-centered people to reconnect with their truth and built lives and businesses that both heal themselves and their communities. But it definitely was not always this way. I spent many years feeling frustrated and burnt out by the work that I was doing and the nonprofit sector. While also simultaneously feeling guilty and telling myself that I was super selfish and ungrateful for desiring more for myself and for my life.

And when I think back to that time now, It's really so fascinating. And it's, astounding how our minds have a way of keeping us bound up. In situations that our hearts and [00:04:00] our souls know are not right for us.

And this is definitely a topic that we will continue to unpack and explore. On this podcast

as I've deepened into my own healing journey. It's helped me to uncover so much of my wounding and programming that was largely unconscious and running on autopilot and the background of my life. And this journey of making the unconscious conscious. Is ongoing, right? It's it's never ending. And I feel that the.

Big shifts that we are experiencing collectively on the planet are also a result of this. The reason why things feel so tumultuous and so uncomfortable. Is because this is a time of unlearning and deconditioning. And releasing our attachment to certain oppressive systems and ways of being that have been in place for centuries. And we're getting more [00:05:00] clarity about.

How these systems have impacted us, our communities, our relationships with each other, our relationships with the natural world. And in this time, something that I've been really recognizing and, just having greater awareness around. Is that.

It's really an invitation for each of us to have greater humility and integrity, to be able to recognize how we've internalized these systems. And how we perpetuate them without meaning to, and being able to open to greater accountability and healing rather than just reverting to defensiveness and shame.

And. I'm continually finding new ways that I have internalized. Toxic programming. And have had some really profound opportunities to unwind [00:06:00] that conditioning and come into greater authenticity and deeper truth. And a recent example of how this showed up for me. Is when I tried to launch this podcast as a business strategy centered podcast earlier this year.

I was creating the show. From a place of what I thought other people were expecting me to produce and create. And I was placing all this pressure on myself to break things down and explain them perfectly in a way that would get my listeners the best results. And. As I was. In that experience, just researching and planning.

The first couple episodes of the podcast. I noticed I was exhausted before I'd even recorded anything. I was just simply not feeling inspired or motivated at all. [00:07:00] To continue with that project. And so I decided to scrap the first idea for the podcast and try again, because I still felt this desire to speak and express and share. And I've loved this medium of podcasting for so long and have been.