Episode 0: A Drop in Time

Show Notes

Welcome to the calm, confident and deliriously happy podcast.

I’m your host, Mandy Barbee (Lanier as of June 6 2020), and I want to start with a story, about the best part of all of us.  

There was this time at the gulf.  

I honestly couldnt tell you my exact age – but I know I was younger than I felt.  

It was the end of a long, hot sandy day on Florida’s western coast.  

I was toasted by the sun, and playing in the ocean with my sisters.  

The sun was starting to get really low in the sky, like it was cracking the afternoon open.

Suddenly, just like a switch flipped, we felt a powerful current pulling us sideways and out.  

There was a jetty to our left in the water, if you’re looking toward shore, and it was covered with broken oyster shells – the kind whose edges are sharp as razors. 

Parents called from the shore, everyone hurried out of the water.  

It was hard to get into shore, steps heavy pulling against the backwash.  

We were experiencing a riptide, just as tide was changing from high to low.  

Once safe on the sand we were mostly laughing and out of breath.  My family was all accounted for, and it felt like a collective sigh, both from the exertion of running up the beach, and with the ending of the day. 

Only then did I notice that a little child was out in the waves. 

Everyone else was leaving the ocean, and the waves were just coming faster and faster and crashing against that oyster-shell covered jetty and the beach, as the current pulled the 4 year old out. 

I ran through the white surf where the waves were pounding the shore.  

There were voices behind me, but all I could hear were ocean sounds.  Everything else was drowned out.  

And all the sun’s rays were being fractured into pieces by salt water spray.  

The experience was totally immersive. 

I moved in a straight line to the girl.  It felt like only me and this tiny stranger existed. 

Just as I reached her and took her in my arms, keeping her little body in front of my thighs while my legs churned below the water to keep our heads above whitecaps, the last big wave reached us, and almost as if I had queued it, against all odds, it just scooped us up, and lifted us smoothly up and over the jetty, washing us onto the other side.  

Immediately the intensity eased; the water on this side was tame, like a kitten.  

I brought us to shore and her family met us with grateful thanks and a couple tears.  

This memory is so vivid to me.  Countless times I’ve searched for the part of this moment where I was nervous, or stressed out, I just can’t find it.  I was okay.

As I grabbed a towel and checked myself out in the setting sun, we found a very clean, thin line of watery blood that was trailing down the outside of my tan thigh.  

A slice so deep and perfect that I couldn’t even feel it yet.  We would figure that out later.  

For now it was time to pack up the car, and head home for the night.  It had been a great day. 

What a memory.

There are a few reasons I’ve led with this story.  

And we’ll get there, but I want to go deep on one of them right now with you.  

Fact is, if ever I’ve told this story, people always ask:  “Mandy, what did you think when you saw the little girl in the water?!”

I ask myself the same question.  And always get the same answer:  I didn’t think.  I was compelled.  I just went.

Then I asked myself for many many many weeks:  “What is the meaning of this?”

Most times, we hear something like that, we stop at:  “That’s brave.”  

When seen through a lens of “me taking action despite anticipation of disaster or ruin”, people generally applaud.  They call it brave.  

But that is not brave, and this is not that.

I knew she needed someone, and that’s who I was:  the person that was needed.  

I never made the calculation.  And that’s why I can honestly say it wasn’t brave.  

I was 12 or so.  I didn’t set up an equation, do I do it or don’t do it, how likely to succeed?  Or weigh the outcomes.

Because of this, I never experienced the fear at all - 

Something else was more important.  

Fear didn’t register.  Losing didn’t exist.  I knew I could do it - because IT was reduced to being the one to act.  To lend my energy.

I trusted me, and I trusted beyond me, come what may.

It was a perfect moment.  I was fear’s master.  

Have you ever had an experience like that?

Let’s take a moment to breathe together.  Have you had a deep breath today?  

I want to ask you again:  have you ever had an experience like that?  

I know that you have.  What comes to mind?  I really truly want to know, and through this podcast, I will provide a way for me to hear the answer.

Part of the story is:  I have a relationship with that wave.  

Maybe you saw it sooner than I did, because it wasn’t until hours before actually completing the sketch of this episode that I realized that without that wave, I was dead.  For all of my life I’ve seen that wave as part of the danger - as the reason the danger - the source of the danger!  

But in reality, without that wave, we could have been scuffing against those rocks and shells in our bathing suits and bare feet, unable to fight the strong pull of all that water slowly toward the jetty.  

The wave carried us over.  And at the precise moment and way we needed it.  

Journeyers, this is one of the last times I remembered trusting myself to be someone who is agenda free - until recently.  It’s the reason that all of the fuss over me after bringing the little girl into the shore made me uncomfortable that night.

Only now in hindsight can I appreciate a huge reason I love this little drop in time is because I didn’t relate to the calling like a martyr.  But with free giving.  There’s a way of doing good with a feeling of “oh darn, I guess this falls to me.”  When we do that way, we lose even when no harm befalls us!  Even when we succeed we lose!

I’m speaking to the part of us that knows that to be true.  

I still have a thick scar, three inches long all these years later, where the heavy tissue of my thigh hung open that day. That scar is nothing compared to damage incurred how many other countless times in my life that I risked more for lesser reasons.  

Times when I had more assurance and skill in completing the task, but felt paralyzed in fear facing trivial failures.

The security I felt in the gulf that day in the face of real danger, makes a sharp contrast with other times in my life which were also disconnected, but in a different, disempowered and useless way: 

Adult experiences of chronic anxiety, depression, and self perceived worth that was lower than low.

Like heavy volumes of water leave a shore when high tide makes a shift toward low, my mind pours over the questions:  

How many years did I manage that pain instead of prioritize it?  

How much more scar tissue did I develop through my comfort with pain over time than I did on the beach that day.  

I’ll share this part of my story with you in the next episode, but can you relate?  

Are you curious what this has to do with the overall direction of the show?  

Why I named the podcast in the first place?  

We have time to get there together, and I am more interested in what the title conveys to you, and how it makes you feel.

My name is Mandy, and I’m an expert in human consciousness.  

With certification in clinical hypnotherapy, among other things, I trained with and by MD’s to help people heal trauma, transcend struggle, and alchemize pain into strength through the use of imagery, embodiment, and emotional processing techniques.  

I facilitate conversations for others that allow them to resolve the real reason for their anxious or down feelings using their inherent capacity for imagery.  This is the definition of root cause resolution.

Calm, Confident and Deliriously Happy is experiential.  It’s about exploring the landscape of the biggest and most painful problems we experience together, and revealing the essential nature of what’s really going on so that you can choose differently and feel differently, for good.

As your host, my goal is to facilitate our forward movement, and ascension process in consciousness, so that all of us can experience our intrinsic calm, confident and happy selves.

There is no missing piece to click into place:  an entirely different perspective is required.  

And that’s exactly what we’re going to gain on this journey together.