A Personal Note from Orion

Being a woman is a powerful blessing, but even to this day, it’s no easy feat.  We have to overcome so many of society’s expectations and restrictions, and strive to carve our own path in this world without caring how everyone else expects us to look or act.  We do have the power to overcome these external barriers, and really heal ourselves from the expectations of the world.  A powerful way to do this is through building a community of support and encouragement. 

This is exactly what Bri Seely and Thais Guimaraes have done through their Amplify Collective.  This duo of incredibly vibrant women are spearheading a sisterhood movement that is helping women live amplified lives. They certainly inspired me on everything from being comfortable in my own skin to accepting and loving myself in order to fully love others- their message is powerful! 

 

 

In this Episode

• [2:12] – Thaís tells us all about Bri Seeley.
• [3:01] – Bri describes Thaís Guimaraes.
• [4:22] – Bri and Thaís talk about the businesses the run together and independently. They share how working together rather than seeing each other as competition has helped their individual businesses.
• [6:35] – They describe The Amplify Collective.
• [7:58] – The role we as women should play in the business world, and in life.
• [9:51] – Thaís and Bri explain what it means to be a woman.
• [13:05] – Tapping into creativity.
• [14:44] – Bri and Thaís talk share details of their collaboration strategies.
• [19:12] – Bri talks about the crises of identity that she’s encountered and she explains how she was able to conquer these crises.
• [23:10] – Thaís talks “the dark stuff” and explains how it’s part of being a human.
• [29:52] – Shifting from being a victim to empowerment.
• [35:14] – Bri and Thaís talk about checking in with each other on their commitment their project.
• [39:30] – Thaís and Bri share details on what they individually do to help women step into the spotlight.
• [44:27] – The ladies discuss how they have built a community around themselves.
• [48:00] – The keys to their success.
• [50:07] – The ideal Sunday afternoon.
• [51:54] – The morning ritual.

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hi and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. I’m super excited about my guest today. They’re a couple of passionate, extremely smart, and amazing ladies. Bri Seely and Thais are two inspirational leaders dedicated to radically changing the way creative, ambitious women connect, engage, and inspire. They founded the Amplify Collective together, providing women a powerful space to be amplified so they can change the world. Hello, welcome.

‏‏Those women sound amazing.

‏‏I know. I think they are. I met you ladies about a couple of weeks ago and I heard you speak. I met you through Mela, she’s amazing. She was like, “You got to meet them. They’re incredible.” I met you and I was like wow, they were incredible.

‏‏I love Mela, she’s wonderful. She just came over this weekend and we had a bottle of champagne to celebrate my new apartment.

‏‏She’s awesome.

‏‏Congratulations on moving here. You came here from New York, no?

‏‏I just moved from Silver Lake downtown. I’ve been here for three years, just got a new place.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏My dream place.

‏‏Alright. Let’s start with you Bri, tell us a little bit about yourself and then Thais you can share a little bit about yourself.

‏‏I can share a little bit about Bri.

‏‏Why don’t you share a little bit about Bri?

‏‏Bri Seely is from the midwest, in the state that many people don’t know where it is. I don’t even know where the state is on the map but that’s also showing signs of my stupidity. Anyway, she has a strong desire to support women and leading inspirational lives. She comes from the fashion industry, she got her masters in Italy, she’s a fancy pants woman who had multiple identity crises and finally came upon her true realization of life which is she is meant to serve and inspire women to step into their most inspirational selves.

‏‏You did a great job.

‏‏Lovely. That’s great. Bri, who is Thais?

‏‏Thais is a woman that often is—

‏‏I’m glad I’m a woman.

‏‏Often does not recognize that her own power but true passion is to support women in stepping into their spotlight, stepping into their power, being seen in the world, being able to communicate their message, being able to exude their radiance and their passion out into every aspect of their life. She does it in a really great way. I’ve gotten to see her in her element teaching as she does, she’s a brilliant teacher. Just gotten the opportunity the watch and that’s really inspiring. Of course, we work together but we also support one another in our individual businesses and I’m really lucky to not only have her by my side as a co-founder but also as a friend and soul sister.

‏‏You guys are really like sisters.

‏‏We are.

‏‏Unfortunately. She eats my cheesecake.

‏‏I’m an only child so sharing cheesecakes is a big deal for me, I only do it with a select number of people. One of them is Bri.

‏‏I’m sugar free so no problem here.

‏‏So am I, but I still eat Thais’s cheesecake.

‏‏Amazing, amazing. What do you do personally and what do you do together?

‏‏Both of us, we have very similar businesses which is very interesting. When we decided to get into business together, we had all these people come at us and be like, “What are you doing? You’re literally getting in bed with your competitor. Are you bananas? Are you crazy? Why would you go into business with someone that runs the same business you run?” Thais and I have both had essentially coaching businesses. We have a few differentiating things, like we said I teach women a lot of creating their future stuff, a lot of mindset stuff around how to be inspirational in their lives. Thais deals a lot with healing past stuff so that you can step into your spotlight. Our businesses are nuance but from the outside we’re both coaches. I have a book, she wants to write a book. She teaches yoga, we have all these things but we don’t necessarily believe in that competition modality. We believe that by both of us being empowered together that we actually not only have created a really strong business together but each of our individual businesses are thriving infinitely more since we committed to being in partnership together.

‏‏We created our business together out of complete accident. I was hosting an event and I got sick and I asked Bri to come support me which she did incredibly. Since that day, we decided oh my gosh, this event was so good, we got to do it again. The next time we did it, we did it together. And then we did another one and another one and it’s just been such a whirlwind of excitement of having these women come together all over Los Angeles to support each other and to connect with each other in that networking methodology which we developed through hosting these events and seeing what worked and what feels really good for women. Now, we’ve hosted I think over 25 sold out events, the number just keeps increasing and we keep losing track of it. We’re just having so much fun creating the Amplify Collective and supporting women and living amplified lives.

‏‏Okay, there’s so many questions that I want to ask you but let’s start with what is…

‏‏We talk really fast too, sorry.

‏‏No, I love it. What is the Amplify Collective?

‏‏Like Thais said, it started off as a one off event, an event here and an event there. After about six months, we sat down and we’re like okay, are we doing this? Is this a thing? If it is, because our dinner parties were limited at that point to 14 women a month, is serving 14 women a month enough to us? Is that enough? Are we okay with that? Do we want more? We really sat down and decided that we wanted to create a different experience and a bigger impact for our community. What that looked like was developing a membership. Now, instead of hosting an event here or an event there, we have four events a month and our women get to really truly form these intensely connected, deep, meaningful, real relationships in their life and really have a community to fall back on.

‏‏In my world, by choice, I surround myself with women, there are four other women that are helpful. I go into women’s circles, I went into a whole journey of connecting into my feminine. My reality is that my girlfriends are supportive. I know it’s not the case mostly in the corporate life or for other people. What do you think about that?

‏‏Yeah. My background was not very women positive. I surrounded myself a lot with men because I liked the energies better and I didn’t like the energy of women, I didn’t like the cattiness, the bitchiness, the competitiveness, having to fight each other for men. I didn’t like the community of women that I thought were all women. As I grew older, I started to realize that that’s not all women, that’s just some women. I get to choose the type of women friendships that I want to have in my life. That’s when I started nurturing the women relationships that actually felt really good for me and that weren’t just obsessed with talking about shoes for ten hours, or boys, or whatever; they’re actually higher conscious women who want to talk about making an impact in the world. As I started to surround myself with those types of women, I started to find what it really means for me to be a woman and what it really means for me to be me. I believe that if we’re born in the body of  a woman and that feels like a good choice for us, I understand that some people want to change sexes and that’s okay, I’m talking about those of us who are born as women, we feel like we’re women. That means we have a responsibility of stepping into what it looks like to be a positive, impactful woman in the world. We all here have a purpose. If we are shedding out other women, competing with women, or believing that we’re judging them or believing that we’re better than them, we’re only doing that to ourselves. We’re only hurting ourselves. Other people are just a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. The more that we can heal and fall in love with who we are, the more we can accept people from all over the world and all over, all the beliefs and all the different backgrounds that they come from.

We have a responsibility of stepping into what it looks like to be a positive, impactful woman in the world. We all here have a purpose. Share on X

‏‏I totally agree with you. It comes down to self healing. When you love yourself, you can love everybody else whether it’s a man or a woman and you can love on a deeper level. What it is, what does being a woman mean for you, Thais?

‏‏It means just being authentically myself. It means expressing myself, it means letting go of the stories that I have to look a certain way, or because my boobs are this way I have to hide them in this way, or believing that I have to dress a certain way in order to get something, chuckle about. I’m here to show up as me in my authentic self and express my truth in the best way possible and do the very best that I can everyday. We’re all different, screw believing that we all have to have the same body type in order to be successful. Screw believing that we have to weigh a certain amount in order to be lovable. That stuff is just stopping us, it’s society. Stopping women from achieving what they can achieve. I don’t think society can handle the power of a woman on fire. We do all these things like keep ourselves trapped into dieting and obsessing about what we look like so that we don’t actually do the work necessary. For me, that’s what it looks like to be a woman. It means to be authentically myself. That looks different everyday. Sometimes, that’s more masculine than feminine. At the end of the day, it’s just about showing up and not believing the limiting beliefs that society has imposed on us women for so long.

‏‏Amen. What do you think, Bri?

‏‏For me, being a woman is really just allowing my intuition and my emotions to guide me. It means allowing myself to experience the full breadth and depth of all of my experience whether it’s excitement and joy, too deep sorrow and pain, or whatever that looks like, and just allowing myself the full experience of being a human and being in this body and loving myself fully. I love being a woman.

‏‏Me too.

‏‏Me too. For me, being a woman is hip circles.

‏‏I love it.

‏‏It’s sensuality and it’s creativity. Along with the masculine traits, it’s all about the dance between a masculine and the feminine. I was very masculine and then I was very feminine. I’m still in that process of learning the dance between the two but I’m so grateful that I have the tools to tap into both. I took pole dancing for a long time.

‏‏I want to do that so badly.

‏‏I’m going to take you.

‏‏Yay.

‏‏I do martial arts. I think for women, creativity is key. I went to brunch with my fiancé yesterday. We were at Creation in Venice, you know that place?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏The place mat is a mandala. They give you colors and you can color it. I got obsessed and I colored it and it looked beautiful. I think it’s awakened something, just coloring, and awakened my creativity. Then, I went and I cooked us dinner and I was so creative in the kitchen. I had to choose outfits and then all of a sudden I was super creative with the outfits where I had to look for outfits for travel. I think for us women, tapping into our creativity is huge. Bri, you’re a fashion designer. How do you awaken your own creativity?

‏‏It’s really different everyday. I do tap into it on the regular, it’s a big thing for me. I typically in the mornings will ask myself what do I need today? This weekend, I colored as well. I got this brilliant coloring book for my birthday, it’s a Star Wars coloring book. It’s all mandalas as well but it’s Star Wars themed. It’s like Yoda’s head a million times, it’s brilliant. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I did that this weekend but then I’m making a wedding dress for a friend so I spent hours yesterday hand sewing lace onto this dress. It’s really different for me everyday, social media is a great place for me to flex my creative muscle and share my voice and all these things. It ebbs and flows. I think that one of the things about being a woman is that we have the cyclical aspect to us. It doesn’t look the same everyday. Really honoring that and knowing what worked for me yesterday might not work for me tomorrow and that’s okay. For me, it’s continually asking that what do I need today question and then honoring whatever comes up, there is no right answer, there is no wrong answer. I just allow myself to say yes to whatever that answer is.

‏‏Right, beautiful. How do you ladies work together?

‏‏We don’t.

‏‏When you do?

‏‏We schedule. Every single Monday is our day together. We have a CEO meeting every single Monday where we sit down and get really clear on what is the priority this week, where does my attention need to be focused, where does your attention need to be focused, what are our goals for the week, and getting energies really aligned so that we’re making sure that we’re moving in the same direction. That’s really important for us because if you’re creating with another person and you’re creating in opposite directions, you’re not going to go anywhere. We have to just make sure because there’s two of us, we’re both very strong women, we both have very strong opinions, we both know very much what we want, to make sure that we’re moving in the same direction.

‏‏That’s the foundation, really, for the rest of the week which is so important for us to be in constant communication with each other. Whenever we experience any energy off between us, it impacts our business directly. We are constantly in communication about how we’re feeling, how we’re doing about any certain activity or any task that we have assigned for ourselves this week so that we are always on the same page. If Bri’s energy is off or if I said something that hurt her or vice versa and we don’t communicate that, it creates a gap in our relationship and in the flow of energy in our business. Because our business moves so fast, we don’t have time to sit here and be resentful for each other or be upset or whatever, we have shit to do. It’s imperative, the CEO meetings is the foundation, and it’s imperative that throughout the week that we are in constant communications, that we are in flow at all times.

‏‏When I hear you guys talk, one of you mentioned that when you arrive at a meeting, the first question you ask is is there anything that we need to clear.

‏‏Yeah, that’s really just to kind of set the stage so that there’s nothing residual hanging on before we create for the week. We just have to make sure that both of us are feeling really clear, really energized, really open, and focused on whatever is in front of us versus whatever is behind us. We don’t want to be looking backwards, we want to be looking forwards.

‏‏If there is something, let’s say I said that hurt Thais, it’s an opportunity for her to say this happened and I just want to talk about it. This is how it made me feel. Then, I get the chance to say I’m really sorry, that was not my intention. How do we move forward from here?

‏‏I would even say that clearing doesn’t even necessarily have to be in between our relationship, it’s also whatever is getting in the way from us being super present in our business. I had a really hard weekend or I had a big fight with my boyfriend or whatever, those are things that could get in the way between me staying fully focused on what needs to get done for the week. That’s something I clear. When we clear, we commit to letting that go. It’s not just a clearing like oh, I’m really pissed at him and spend an hour talking bad or whatever, it’s about this happened, I’m really holding it energetically within me. I’m committing right now that by expressing it to you I’m seeing it and I’m deciding that I’m letting that go so that I can be fully present to what’s coming up in the business.

‏‏It’s an opportunity too for us to support one another. If she did have a bad weekend or have a fight with her boyfriend or whatever, then I get to be there as a friend and a business partner for her to see her and allow her to let that go.

‏‏Exactly.

‏‏I started taking EMDR therapy, which is eye movement therapy to heal post traumatic stress and all traumas from the body, the emotional body. What it does is through eye movement it connects the right and the left brain. One thing that my therapist taught me, another tool, is to imagine a bottle. Before, if you have something that’s in the way before you go in a meeting, it can clear it. It’s not Thais or Bri, it’s somebody else. Before you have to do something important, you imagine a bottle and you compartmentalize and you put it into the bottle and then you just put a lid on it. That’s another technique. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to deal with it, it means that for now you’re not going to deal with it, it’s just another tool. What do you do to deal with different emotional states, with hitting rock bottom. Maybe you can share a little bit about some struggles that you had to overcome in order to become who you are today.

‏‏In my brilliant introduction, Thais mentioned a few crises of identity that I went through which is very accurate. Being a fashion designer, I decided to let that go about 18 months ago. That was a really hard thing for me because my ego was so entrenched and entwined and held on so hard to the fact that I was a fashion designer. This is what defined me. It was a really intense process for me letting that go and unraveling and dismantling everything that I have told myself about who I was in the world and what I had to offer and how I showed up and what I believed. It was really 30 years worth of stuff that I just had to sift through and decide, is this what I want in my life? Is this what I want to be in the world. If not, how do I recreate that for myself? Last year, 2015, the last nine months of the year was—I think I probably cried more in the last nine months of the year than I’ve done multiple other years.

‏‏I’m the one that has to experience it.

‏‏And then I call Thais. But no, I really allowed myself to experience the emotions and I know that this is something that Thais teaches as well. I didn’t bottle anything up. If I was somewhere and something was coming up for me and I was getting emotional, I handled it in the moment. I cried in public so many times last year, I had days where I would just lay in bed and cry all day long. I went to Seattle for two weeks at the end of last year and just let myself hurt and let myself be in pain and experience whatever it was that was coming up for me. That’s really how I got through it. There is no bypass, there is no oh well if I don’t look at it, it’s not there. It’s still there even if you put a tarp over it, it’s still there.

‏‏It will show up around the corner somewhere.

‏‏Yeah. For me, it was just going through it. There was no other way to do it, I had to just put on thigh high boots and mucked through the shit and just get through it all to the other side.

‏‏I love it, thigh high boots.

‏‏I was thinking more less sexy thigh high boots and more on the farm growing up in Minnesota thigh high boots.

‏‏That’s the image that came to my mind, especially because you’re a fashion designer.

‏‏Not always so glamorous.

‏‏I bet. None of us. I keep hearing it from many healers and coaches and speakers where you got to do the shadow work and you got to deal with it. I spent some time in India, at one of the universities. What a monk said was, “Let the tiger devour you when the emotion comes. When you run away from it, the tiger will keep chasing you.” You keep feeling that struggle but you have to let the tiger devour you, be it, feel it, immerse in it and only then will you be able to really let go and release it. It sounds like you did deep healing work with yourself, congratulations.

‏‏Thanks. It was an intense year but I could also say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. It’s not getting to the level of success that I’m looking to get to. I’m very well aware that it’s going to take some getting dirty. You don’t just get to be in the super shiny powers at the end without getting a little dirty. As long as it’s not real dirt, then totally okay.

‏‏That’s what people usually see, they see the end product, they don’t feel the struggles, they don’t see the long nights, they don’t see the inner conflict, the tears, the anger, the rage, and everything that goes behind that success, that desire, the shiny success. What about you Thais, what did you have to deal with?

‏‏What didn’t I have to deal with?

‏‏What didn’t you?

‏‏I’ve been obsessed with shadow work since I was 18 years old. I had a dark knight of the soul where I did not know what else to do, I was in so much pain and suffering. I was so tired of hating myself and being in this body jail and hating myself while simultaneously not even being able to deal with that hate because I was obsessed with food and obsessed with eating and obsessed with shoving food in my mouth to numb myself out. On that [00:25:17], I had to really look at myself and I prayed for the first time. That’s when I started down the path of yoga, buddhism, and healing myself. I’ve been obsessed with shadow work ever since because like we mentioned, I see women in the spiritual community spiritual bypass every single day. It’s a lot easier to want to yoga yourself into a new mood or to meditate and tap your way into a new a-huh moment than to actually deal with sitting with your shit. We are obsessed, we were obsessed with the highs, we were obsessed with getting these divine downloads, being creative, and being in the flow without being willing to simultaneously acknowledge and look at the fact that the dark stuff is part of you too and there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing to fear. It is all okay, it’s all just part of being human. I see so many people try to bypass it because it’s uncomfortable, and I totally get that. I just did that the other day. It is a part of all of us to want to deny the dark and obsess over the light. In order for us to step into wholeness, we have to find healing from the dark. I’ve been an entrepreneur now for four years but fully on my own for a year, I quit my job last June to go into business full time. It’s been one of the most challenging experiences because I think entrepreneurship is the most challenging spiritual journey we can take on, it challenges our faith, it challenges our capacity to manifest what we want, it challenges who we are. People are going to push us, they’re going to say no to us, they’re going to deny us, they’re going to want a refund, they’re going to want all these things because that’s part of being in business. If you’re not fully solidified in your emotions and in your wholeness, then it’s very easy to get pulled in the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship. That’s where I was for a very long time. Every no that I got was heartbreaking, I would have a whole thing around my no. I would define it as who I am and I would just go into this whole drama about it. You just keep going and you just pick yourself up. My thing really, I know it’s Bri’s thing too, we don’t have a plan B. In fact, often times when you have a plan B, you’re not going to succeed in your plan A because it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. This is it for me.

Oftentimes, when you have a plan B, you’re not going to succeed in your plan A because it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Share on X

‏‏I love that.

‏‏I have nothing else. I’m doing my purpose, I’m doing what I was born to do. If I don’t make this work, I have no one to blame but myself. If I don’t make this work, I literally have nowhere else to go. I have to make this work. By putting that all on me was a little stressful, it was a little overwhelming. Bri did the same thing to herself. I know because I see it in her too. We just put it all on the line and we really commit to doing the inner work necessary so that we can show up in a big way. This is it. This is really it.

‏‏One of those moments for me was when I was 22. I sold cars which was really out of character for me, I didn’t even have a license. I sold cars and I was successful in it. I didn’t save much but the work was killing me, it was killing me to do it. I found this guide book about Japan and I read it. I was sold, I was like this is beautiful, I want to go there. I gave a two week notice, I only had $700 in my pocket and I went to Japan. It was my first ever flying outside of the country, I’m originally from Israel. I’ve never been outside of the country, never been to an airport before. It was crazy. I remember landing in Narita and it was just a sea of Asians that were a little shorter than me and they all looked alike because I was so jet lagged. It went for three and a half weeks, I ended up staying for three and a half years. It ended up being one of the most important, powerful experiences in my life that I’m so, so grateful for. What you were talking about, Thais, is so true. Sometimes we just have to jump and a net will appear. Honestly, I think that you are heading in the right direction finally.

‏‏I have to say though when I first jumped and I was doing it, I was somehow making some money but nothing big was coming in. I kept getting all these no’s and I did not have the income necessary to support myself. I got very angry at God and I was like, “The net is supposed to fucking appear, where is the fucking net? I don’t see no net. Nothing is touching me, I’m free falling, I’m literally dying here, God, where is the fucking net?” That’s when I realized, this is something that Bri and I talk about all the time that what I was really doing was I was waiting for the net to appear and I wasn’t saving myself. I was waiting for God to save me because I was unwilling to save myself. Women do it a lot, it’s called a tiara syndrome where we hope that just by working hard we’re going to get what we want. It’s a corporate world where women who just keep their heads down and do the work, their boss is going to see how well they’re doing and they’re going to promote them, they’re given a tiara. We have this, this feeling we’re going to be saved. Someone is going to save us. Sometimes, it still happens. I just want someone to be an angel investor and give me $100,000. I have to really sit with that, this desire that we all have to be saved and the shift in my business happened when I stopped waiting for the net to appear and I just created my own net. It’s just a shift in perspective because creating our own net, that is God because God is working through us, the universe, whatever you want to say. It’s all one, it’s all the same. It was stop waiting for something to save me and just believe that I can create it for myself is when I gave the universe permission to start supporting me. It was a few days later that Bri and I created that first event together.

‏‏Wow. Bri, what is it for you, how do you perceive shifting from being a victim to empowerment?

‏‏For me, it’s all about taking responsibility. Everything that happens in my life, if it looks like it’s completely out of my control, if it’s positive, if it’s negative, if it’s anything, I immediately go to what was my role in this, how did I create this, what do I need to learn from it? That is how I stay out of playing the victim. I’ve had clients not pay me and instead of saying screw them, they’re terrible people, I say how did I have a hand in this? How did I feed into them defaulting on their payment, how did I not support them enough to feel like they could come to me or whatever? It’s all about taking responsibility. That is..

‏‏What I will add that Bri does and something that I want to make sure everyone listening knows is that self responsibility and playing victim are two different things. You can take self responsibility to the point of murders and the point of shame and a part of why, I’m so bad, how did I let this happen? That’s not taking self responsibility. The way I know that Bri does, I’m speaking for you Bri, I hope that’s okay. The way that I see her do it and the way that she teaches me to do it and the way that I do it is you want to be asking yourself these questions, you want to be taking action from those questions, but you also don’t want to be going into the whole spiral of I must not be good enough. It’s not like why did this happen to me as if it’s bad, it’s like why did this happen, what can I learn from it, and what can I do from it. Versus I’m such a bad person, wow, look at this happening to me. I must be awful, I must not be good enough, etc.

‏‏I think the big thing for me is I take responsibility for it and I see what I could’ve done differently but I don’t judge myself for it, I don’t label myself as being good or bad because of the situation. It just happened. What can I learn from it? How can I take responsibility for it? And what will I do differently next time? That’s absolutely what I stay out of playing the victim. I see a lot of women play victim all the time and they always ask me, “My circumstances, what do I do about my circumstances and blah blah.” Stop trying to create your future from your present. If you currently don’t like your circumstances, why would you make decisions from them? I loved your story about buying a ticket to Japan. You had every reason to not do that, every single reason, and instead of focusing on why you couldn’t, you did it anyways. I feel like that’s so foreign to how we’re taught to make decisions. There’s a way to make impulsive decisions without being irrational. I feel like that story was amazing, that was the perfect example of allowing that divinity to guide you and take an impulsive decision without it being irrational. Doumo Arigatou Gozaimashita.

‏‏I lived in Japan for two years when I was two years old. Japanese was my first language. I don’t remember any of it.

‏‏I think you understood what she said because you laughed, I had no idea what she said.

‏‏I didn’t understand.

‏‏I said thank you very much. It was a Japanese version for thank you, thank you very much.

‏‏Thank you so much, I really appreciate the acknowledgement. What’s really interesting is that when you take those steps, the universe tests you. I remember the night before I went shopping for something and this lady heard that I’m flying to Japan. She started telling me horror stories about those ladies that went to Japan by themselves and they lost all their money, nobody opened their doors for them, it was winter and snowing, it terrified the hell out of me the night before I went but I went anyway. We will get all those little tests on the way. Like you said Thais, you fall and you fall and you fall and the universe still tests you before the net appears because you have to show up.

‏‏Yeah. I drove across the country to move to LA. I kept getting tested again and again and again. I had this whole conversation with my boyfriend and I was like making a big decision is not a one time decision, it’s a constant commitment because things happen. You got to decide if it’s going to be a sign or not. That’s why I’m very weary of people being like it’s a sign, that’s a sign. You could’ve easily said that woman sharing her horror stories is a sign for why you shouldn’t go. It’s a sign if you want it to be a sign, it’s a sign if you decide that it’s a sign. Because of our cognitive biases, because of the psychology of our mind, we’re simply just not clear enough on a consistent basis to be able to read. The universe is always communicating with us but the problem is if we don’t have a meditative practice, if we’re not grounded in who we are in connection to spirit, then our cognitive biases is going to interpret these signs determinant on whether or not we want it or don’t want it. If we are in fear, then we’re going to be reflecting that on the outside and you get to choose if that’s the sign that you want to listen to or not. Part of the up leveling journey is to consistently commit to showing up, to saying yes again and again and again.

‏‏Kind of what we do with Amplify as well. Thais and I are always checking in with one another. Are we committed to continuing to be in business? Are we committed to continuing to do four events a month? Are we committed to continuing our podcast? We’re always checking in with one another to make sure. When you’re doing something big, it’s not a one and done thing like Thais said. We’re always continually checking in with one another. Are we still good? Are we still moving in the same direction? Are we still committed? All that stuff.

‏‏Intuition can be very tricky. The female brain is very good with tuning into intuitions and success and all that but sometimes we get caught up between intuition and childhood programming or patterns from our life. You’re totally right, one of you mentioned that it’s about the state that you’re in and it’s also about if you go deeper and really ask, the voice of the intuition is always the strongest. You have to learn how to figure out if this is an outside voice or an inner voice. The inner voice is the intuition and that’s the right voice. A lot of time, it’s voices of our parents or reflections of past experiences.

‏‏Have you seen Inside Out?

‏‏No.

‏‏Oh, it’s so good.

‏‏Oh, Inside Out the cartoon?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Oh yeah, yeah.

‏‏The Pixar movie.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Ever since seeing that, I can almost tell the difference. We all have multiple voices and multiple tapes and multiples stories that run in our heads all the time. Ever since seeing that movie, I can almost now tell the difference between which of my aspects of myself it is that’s talking. I can almost see them as the different little colored beings with the little personalities, it’s so funny. We were all taught that multiple personalities when we’re growing up, blah blah blah, all these things, different voices in your head or whatever. It’s so true that we have all these different aspects of ourself. Like you said, some of them aren’t even ours. I was raised by a single mom, I still carry a lot of her stories. Periodically, I’ll stop and be like oh my god, that’s not mine, that’s so fascinating but I’ve started seeing them as these little multicolored beings that are inside of me just like Inside Out.

‏‏The point is we all have the ability to connect to our intuition. We all have intuition, it’s not like some people have it more than others. We all have it in equal amount. The point is though if you’re constantly listening to other people, if you have a TV on all the time, if you’re always checking what other people are doing on Facebook, if you’re always connected, if there’s all these voices and chatter happening all around you, if you’re always listening to the radio when you’re in the car, if you never have time to silence the outside, how can you silence the inside and vice versa? Connecting with your intuition is amazing but that’s not always a capacity of people because we’re so inundated with voices and messages on the outside. What’s important is we want to start connecting with our intuition is first to clear the clutter, clear all the stuff that is keeping you from spending quality time by yourselves in mediation, silence alone, with yourself, with your thoughts, get used to the noises in your head, get used to the different voices, get used to that stuff first before you start to notice and pay attention to what it looks like to be connected to your intuition.

‏‏It’s practice, just the way listening to your body is a practice. When you eat something and it makes you feel good or bad, that’s a practice. Listening to emotions and sensation in the body is a practice. Listening to your intuition is a mindfulness practice. If you really want to get good at it, you’re not going to just be good at it if you, like Thais said, watching TV all day and never take a moment to calm down and go in. It’s all practice. We all have the potential to grow our intuition and to connect to our bodies and connect to the universe on a different level.

‏‏I love it.

‏‏Yeah. I wanted to ask you. Bri’s teaching how to be inspirational and Thais is teaching how to heal past stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that?

‏‏Yeah. A lot of the work that I do is supporting women to step into leadership and to step into the spotlight. I don’t believe that you can be a leader if you’re staying hidden or if you’re not being seen. You have to be seen as a leader, you have to be an authentic voice in the world in order to create a movement. I believe every woman is a leader, every woman, everything she says and does is teaching the world what she believes. She’s influencing people whether she knows it or not. It’s important that she starts to acknowledge consciously the things that she’s doing and saying and being so she can create the impact consciously that she wants to make. It’s kind of like when women go from unawakened to being awakened and they go through that transition of realizing that they’ve made their whole lives be about them, me, me, me. They start to awaken and start to become conscious to being able to create their own lives and then they see the shift that is happening within them and they’re learning so much. Now, they want to be a teacher, they want to speak that onto the world but they are not really taught the tools to do that. That’s where I come in. I look at all the old patterning, the childhood stuff, the beliefs, the stories that have been keeping them stuck in the same pattern. As much as we want to believe that we’re autonomous in our lives, most of us are stuck in these really legit patterns. For me, it was binge eating or binge spending. That was two patterns that ran very rancid in my life. When we start to break the patterns, we start to create autonomy, we start to create authenticity, we start to create our lives. What I love about what Bri and I do is that I first go in and I really look at the old patterning. I break the patterns, I create space for them. Bri comes in with her brilliance and she’s like awesome, so now you’re here, you’re at this place, you’re totally open, you’re totally clear, let’s create the future that you want. She can speak a little bit about what she does but it’s just really cool how we support each other in that capacity. We didn’t even do it intentionally. It was just how we came together. For me, it’s all about spotlight and standing in your spotlight and being seen as the authentic woman, expressing your truth, expressing your worth, feeling worthy and not feeling like you’re so not enough all the time.

‏‏For me, what I do is help women get really clear about that future path. What do you want for yourself? What do you want to create for yourself? What kind of woman do you want to be in the world? Then, it’s really developing that habits to become that woman. I didn’t just wake up with my dream apartment and my dream car…

‏‏And my dream business partner.

‏‏My dream business partner and my dream office. I didn’t just wake up one day with these things, I work every single day to align myself with the kind of woman I want to be in the world. People outside might not see it because it mostly is inner work but in order to be the kind of person you want to be in the world, you have to do certain things. You have to have a relationship with yourself, you have to get really clear on what you want and then how to align yourself with that so that it becomes your reality. I teach a lot of habits. I do a lot of manifestation. If you’re here now and you want this in the future, I love to build backwards. If you know that that’s your end point, how do we build backwards so that you can just be that woman now? I do a lot of manifestation, a lot of habit building, a lot of belief shifting. If you’re believing something about your current situation and it’s not in line, if you cannot hold onto that belief and create what you want for your future, then how do we let go of that belief and what belief do you need to put in its place in order to align yourself with that future vision?

‏‏What’s so great about it is that I’m the one who goes in and I’m like first you have a belief, where did that belief come from? Let’s look at what happened when you were three years old that incurred that belief in the first place, let’s fill it with acceptance and self love. And then Bri comes in and she’s like, “Let’s change all that up and let’s create a new belief.” It’s just so cool how we work so brilliantly together and that’s why we’re really, really excited to be launching a mastermind next year for our Amplify Women where they’re going to get a taste of the cool dynamic of our coaching style.

‏‏Amazing, I’m sure it’s going to be extraordinary, I’m sure of it. I’m excited about that, way to go.

‏‏Thanks.

‏‏Awesomeness. Let’s talk about community because we kind of decided to talk about community and then we went into this beautiful, deep conversation about whatever we talked about. I do want to touch a little bit about community, what are the keys to build a community that is responsive, that is heartfelt, what are the leadership tools that you ladies are using?

‏‏So much of it is just authenticity. If you ask most of the women that are in the couturier, a lot of them have joined because of us, because of who Thais and I are in the world and because of what we’re creating in the world. So much of the foundational aspect of building this community has been us, it’s been us not just showing up authentically but us showing up consistently and really, truly reminding our community members that we’re here for them no matter what. We put ourselves on the line to make sure that they’re succeeding in the world, we make sure that they have all the tools they need to feel like they’re living their best lives, to feel like they have resources within the city, to feel like they have people to fall back on. Really building a community, it starts with us. How we’re showing up, who we’re being in the world, and then inviting women in that are aligned with that energy.

‏‏Leaders go first. We are always practicing that by going first, by showing what’s possible and holding them to those standards so that they have the capacity and the strength to show up in their way, however that looks like for them.

‏‏What are the tools that you’re using to connect with your community?

‏‏Our favorite way and so much of what Amplify is built on is in person stuff. We love social media as a tool, we love social media or text messaging or whatever to plan stuff. Our idea of community is taking whatever that is, those online connections, offline as quickly as possible. We want to be in person with our women, we want to give them hugs, we want to know how they’re feeling, we want to feel their energy, we want to clink champagne glasses with them. That’s what we thrive off of. Our community is built on in person interactions. It’s built on having that really touchable factor with each and everyone of our members. We know their names, even though we don’t talk about what we do, we know what they do, we know their businesses, we know their spouses, we know their pets. It’s really important for us to be engaged with our women.

‏‏What Bri said, what has allowed Amplify to be as successful as it’s been is we don’t show up with what we do, we show up as who we are. We inspire our women to not talk about what they do in the context of our mixers. Not to say that if the subject comes up that they’re not allowed to talk about it, but when you start the conversation with what you do and you don’t really set a foundation to actually care what that person does, what we often get is this huge, long sales pitch or MO or this bio that women know from the back of their hands. It doesn’t feel authentic, it doesn’t feel like you’re talking to someone, it feels like you’re talking to their sales robot. That’s not what we want, that’s why we call it an un-networking methodology because we un-network by not using what we do as the platform for our connection. Instead, we inspire our women to ask questions like what are you passionate about, what is a win that you experienced this week, what are you excited about doing this week? That starts the conversation going in the path that feels more authentic and it allows them to actually leave the mixer, leave the gathering feeling like they actually know people and that they created real friendships and not just a bunch of business cards that they just throw away at the end of the day.

‏‏That sounds to me like you’re really working on holding space and truly caring in a genuine way.

‏‏Totally.

‏‏Wonderful. What do you think are the keys to your success beyond that?

‏‏For me personally, I think that it’s my…

‏‏It’s Thais.

‏‏Well, that too.

‏‏I’m having so much fun giving Bri a hard time today.

‏‏She’s not usually this bad. We had a glass of champagne for lunch, I think that was it. I think that was really it. For me, it’s really my consistency and my willingness to show up no matter what. Even on the days when I was in bed crying, I was still showing up for myself and showing up for my clients. It’s just that consistency for me of every single day I get up no matter what. I keep going. On the days that I’ve wanted to quit have always come my biggest openings or biggest expansions like right after that. Definitely, my consistency and willingness to keep getting up.

‏‏I love that. I agree.

‏‏I would say that my success strategy or what has allowed me to reach the level of success and continue to allow me to reach new levels of success is my fierceness at going within and looking at everything and not being afraid of looking at who I am, not being afraid of accepting who I am and practicing being authentic and being vulnerable with the world with who I am. At the end of the day, I can’t change who I am. I’ll listen to our podcast and be like wow, that’s really me. Sometimes I’m just really loud and I’m just really annoying, whatever. It’s like I learned to really love that, I’ve learned to really love just me and the way I am in the world. I can’t really change that. I love that I can embrace who I am because it means that I give other people permission to be who they are without them having to feel like they have to change for me or change for themselves. I’m my own best friend. The more that I can step into that, the more successful I’ll be because I’m always with me, I’m always stuck with me. I might as well be her best friend and support her through anything that happens in her life. Talking about myself in third person is very odd.

I’m my own best friend. The more that I can step into that, the more successful I’ll be because I’m always with me, I’m always stuck with me. Share on X

‏‏What’s your favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon?

‏‏Can I answer for you? Can we do that again?

‏‏I don’t know, depends on what your answer is.

‏‏Bri, her ideal Sunday afternoon would be having brunch with friends and having a glass of champagne followed by going home and spending time with her kitties followed by going on a date with her current love, her current partner, soul partner, prior to them moving in together, going on a beautiful date and having fun in a hot tub together. And then yeah…

‏‏And goal setting.

‏‏Oh yeah, and goal setting.

‏‏I top off every Sunday night with sitting down, I pre-schedule all my social media for the week ahead. I set my goals and intentions for the week. It’s a decompression with friends, with loved ones, with myself, with my kitties, and then really setting up my energy to be really powerful for the week ahead. For Thais, she loves to do yoga and take her puppy for a walk and sit on her couch and read a book and snuggle with her honey.

‏‏Watch a documentary on Netflix.

‏‏Watch a documentary on Netflix and not cook, most likely go out for dinner or order in.

‏‏Satisfactual. I do the same thing as Bri. I have to have my Sunday nights for me. I will not make plans for Sunday nights unless I have a Monday off or something. My Sunday nights, I have to look at my schedule. I transfer everything from my online scheduler to my planner so that everything is synced up, I set my goals for the week, I set what I have to do so that I can go to bed and wake up Monday morning really committed to the results I wanna create in my week.

‏‏Do you ladies have a morning ritual?

‏‏Yeah. Thais always rolls her eyes at this. I have an intense morning ritual.

‏‏Five hour regimen.

‏‏The first two to three hours a day, I usually spend in my space in the mornings with, again I ask that question, what do I need today. It can be a combination of a cup of tea, kitty cuddles, coloring in my swear word coloring book, doing yoga or taking a walk or running to the grocery store. Now that I live in downtown, I get to walk to Whole Foods. It’s a whole combination of a multitude of things just depending on where I’m at that day and what I need in the morning. It’s really important for me, the biggest thing is like I said, before aligning my energy. Making sure that I feel clear from the previous day and setting myself up to be my most powerful self throughout that day and create whatever it is that’s on the plate.

‏‏I usually do yoga, meditation, and chanting, and some journaling and gratitude practice. It looks different everyday as well. I don’t wake up with an alarm clock so whatever time I wake up is when I wake up. I go take Chewy, my dog, on a walk. I come home and then I do whatever I feel will feel really good for me. Usually, it includes meditation, yoga, I chant every morning the Hanuman Chalisa which is 140 verse poem in honor of Hanuman who is a Hindu deity that I’m very connected to and journal. I do the gratitude practice, I really really love my gratitude practice and that’s been the cornerstone of my presence in my life.

‏‏I love it. You ladies are awesome. Thank you.

‏‏Thanks for having us on.

‏‏Sorry we’re a little feisty today.

‏‏I enjoyed every minute. I’m sure our listeners did too. If they want to learn more about the Amplify Collective, about where to find you, how to follow you, how to come to your dinner parties, where do they go?

‏‏The best place is Twitter and Instagram, we are most active on those two platforms. We are @theamplifyco. You can also check out our website at theamplifycollective.com.

‏‏Alright, thank you so much.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏And thank you so much listeners, I’m sure you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Remember, be your own best friend and live a stellar life. I’ll catch up with you soon, bye!

Links and Resources:

About Bri Seeley & Thais Guimaraes

Bri Seeley is a born catalyst and natural truth-teller with a history in counseling, psychology and entrepreneurship. She was unknowingly taken down the path of healing and transforming lives through a series of “accidents,” “coincidences” and divine guidance.

 

Thais Guimaraes is a truthspeaker, healer, women’s leadership coach and feminist on a heart-led mission to support the seekers, the edge-dwellers, and the “why the heck do I feel so broken” of the world reclaim their sense of belonging by learning how to explore, trust and express themselves unapologetically. She also hosts a weekly podcast RECLAIM where she offers conversations on finding the intersection of feminism and spirituality.