Today's episode is going to go into something that's been really important for you as you have come into submission for yourself.
And really one of the things that has been the most, maybe the most uh impactful for you in being able to kind of start to own this for yourself.
And that has been slowing down your life.
Yes.
Um Slowing down your life is kind of a when we look back at it now, you know, five years into this dynamic together, you, you were far from a slow paced person before, right? And I think a lot of people identify with that.
We're not going to go deep into why you were that way before for today's sake.
But just for the sake of a place to start from you, you are a very hurried, busy minded, like take charge, get shit done, kind of woman responsible, very responsible.
Like yes, a doer is a great way to, great way to say it.
And that was kind of how you went through and lived pretty much every moment of your life.
You like you were the get shit done girl and in certain ways I had to be in my past part and parcel of being who you had to be in your life up until that point.
So if we flash back to there and flash forward all the way to now, I guess where I'd like to start before I kind of walk through what this has been is why is living a so a slow paced life important to you in order to be connected to your submission.
because it was the only way that I could um, decipher, decipher the noise of the ego of who I thought I was and who I truly am.
It's the only way I could.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just uncover who I was and get to know myself and find inner peace and why is inner peace important in dominance and submission in the way that we live it.
Well, I think it, um, I don't know exactly how I would equate it to that, but it is, um, it is important.
Um, but you kind of stumped me there, to be honest.
I don't, I don't know how to equate that.
It's, it's a felt, um, necessity.
I can't even articulate it.
What I've seen in you is that living a highly activated life where you're very busy where you have a lot of stuff to do and a lot of things to get done in a, to do list that fills up every moment of your day in your own head.
Mm.
You never have the time to actually figure out who am I? And what is it that I want and coming to a place of finding your own peace inside of yourself was like a starting point where you get to open the door and now look around and decide like what is it that I actually want out of life? Um Yes, but what I would, it's the inner knowing for me, that submission is for me like it's, it's the only way that I was actually able to uncover the depths of that again.
And I call the ego, the noise, it's and the noise of the world and the noise of everything else.
The distractions that when I look back like only perpetuated more of the disconnection from my inner peace and I want that I deserve that in the world and everybody does.
OK? But the way that um I can only speak from my experience, but I can also see this as a problem in the world.
If you will of just the amount of busyness, the go go go, the distractions.
I mean, having a device that connects you to so many different things in your hand all the time.
Like if you've only known that even if it's just your adult life, like if that's how you live, what I've recognized is um I, I don't know how something is impacting me until I'm willing to set it down.
And so when I was willing to slow the pace of my life down.
You were trying to, like, get me there for a very long time in our relationship, even predominance and submission.
Um, but I just wasn't ready for it and a little bit of the life circumstances didn't quite allow it in the same way.
Didn't make it easy, at least.
Right.
And so, but I had to be ready and I can't tell you what clicked the readiness.
Like it just, it just rose after there was a slowing down.
It just wasn't quite the way that you were probably wishing I would have done it.
But so let's go back a little bit for, for people, you know, if they've been listening to this podcast since we started, they heard the story about how we kind of got together and how this dominant submissive dynamic got started.
But before that, like we met when I hired you and you worked for me and we worked together for a year and a half before any spark started to fly between us.
And then like work happy hour.
I'll just kind of fast forward the story here.
Work happy hour.
Everything kind of changed in the, like the energy between the two of us.
All of a sudden we like we felt something just in one conversation and then like after that, it all kind of fired up pretty fast between us and went from 0 to 60 real quick.
And at the beginning there was all the passion, lots of intensity.
And then a couple of years later we get married and that, that kind of starts to fade and the, you know, the old patterns start to kick in with enough time and enough comfort.
And, you know, a couple of years into our marriage, I, you were still working for me and I tried to fire you.
Keyword is tried.
So I tried to fire Dawn because I told her like at this point, we were getting up before 5 a.
m.
to get to the gym by five.
So you could get back home to wake your kids up to get them ready to send them up to school, then get yourself ready, go to work, work all day, leave, work, pick your kids up, get them run around, do activities, fed dinner and then basically just run into a wall at the end of the day with no energy left.
And I told you I need you more as a wife than I do as an employee.
And that was a hard decision for me to make because I couldn't afford to hire somebody else at that point to take your place.
And I was damn good at my job.
You were.
But I like, I recognized that you needed to slow down if there was going to be anything of you for me as a, as a husband and a wife, like for a relationship to have any energy because you were just running yourself to empty.
Yeah.
And I would remember, like, getting so tired in the evening and recognizing how not to the depths I could now.
But, like, I'm so tired, you want my attention? I'm trying to give it to you as my eyes are, like, falling closed.
And that didn't feel good for me either.
And you weren't getting anything from me outside of work.
So I tried to fire you and, uh, you kept coming to work anyway.
Well, I, I shortened my hours.
We'll put it that way.
But then eventually I did fire you.
Like you got out of there completely.
Couple months.
Yeah.
With my intent being that you were going to have some time in your life for you to slow down a little bit.
So there was something left of you for me and for us, which would have been time for myself for the first time in my life because I became a mom at 19 years old.
And instead what you did with that time was jam.
It full of a whole bunch of other things.
Oh, yeah, I kept the house clean.
The laundry was done.
There was cooking done.
So you just, you continued to burn yourself out just with different stuff.
So, and there were other things that we can kind of move forward through.
But yes, I was trying to slow you down for a long time, but you didn't have the capacity to let yourself slow down.
No.
So this was one of the things that I was determined to use this authority in our dominant submissive dynamic to find a way to enforce.
Like this was something that was really important to me and how I wanted to lead you was to essentially put some guard rails around you so that you would have something left to give me.
And that didn't go well at the beginning, but we took our time as we adjusted to this dynamic.
And then there was actually something that really started your ability to slow down, which was COVID.
Yeah, because I think I don't really, really remember timelines but was I already a personal trainer by the time we entered this dynamic? Yes.
Ok.
So that, yeah, so that was probably um 78 months after we started this dynamic after I was a personal trainer.
Alright.
Ok.
So COVID happened, gyms close and suddenly you've got lots of time on your hands.
One of the two kids has already moved out of the house.
Um So you suddenly had not much to do to fill your time.
Yeah.
And it was like life ended as a whole where we lived like we didn't, there was no going out to anywhere and no one needing as much of my attention.
I guess I did a little bit on the side.
But yeah, and even then you recognize like I have all this space now.
And you, I remember you coming to me and said, I need to use my mind like I need something.
Yeah, I specifically remember saying I need to use my mind because you like at that point, you still weren't comfortable with just being settled.
And so this is where the personal development journey started, that really started to move you forward into your own like self ownership.
So and I became hungry for it really fast.
So we started reading books, some together, some you would read on your own, listening to podcasts.
The first book that I gave you to read at that point was by the um now late Trevor Moad, it was called, it takes what it takes.
Yeah, neutral thinking.
Yeah.
So he was a sports performance coach who worked with professional athletes and his whole philosophy was you stay neutral in your thinking.
What I took from the book was and I understand this so much more now looking back, but it was, you know, as a quarterback, they have to be in the moment of what's going on.
They can't be thinking about the play that just happened or the one that's coming next.
So when you have that ball, you have to be in the moment of where it's going.
And yeah, I mean, simply put, be in the moment it didn't ring um to my depths when I first read that book, but it sure does.
Now, a couple of other concepts that came out of that book for, for you and really, for us together were, were the idea like it doesn't matter how far you need to go.
Like, it doesn't matter how far you are behind in the, in the game right now.
If you want to win the game, you, like you said, you have to show up in the moment, but also it's gonna take whatever it's gonna take to get there.
Like it's, you can't see it as too hard or super easy or anything else.
It's like what it's gonna take us to go out there and execute until we win moment by moment.
And so setting your sight on where you want to go, but then bringing yourself back into the present moments.
Another really interesting topic that came up from that book that's been really helpful to us is the idea that if you want to start going forward, the first thing you have to do is stop going backward, like you cannot go in drive when you are currently going in reverse.
The first thing you have to do is stop going backwards, stop hurting yourself before you start trying to help yourself, for example.
So lots of reading, lots of conversations, lots of podcasts you went through up until this point.
What would it feel like for you to have an extended stretch of time with no plans and nothing to do? Very uncomfortable? Why do you think that is.
Oh, like you're saying up until that point was it like that? Um, because I didn't know myself, I didn't love myself.
I didn't have a pattern in my life of stillness or of alone time outside of, I guess I did as a child a little bit.
I would play Barbies by myself and play dollies by myself.
Go for a bike ride.
But, um, you know, as I grew up and wounds got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Like, and let's be real that whole responsibility drive.
Like I don't, it perpetuated me to constantly be doing something.
Um, so it was either taking care of the kids or taking care of the home or working.
That's just what my life was.
That's all I knew.
So anything outside of that comfortable was gonna feel uncomfortable.
Well, you know, you and I were both raised around people who put work ethic above all else.
Yeah.
And, and honestly, I don't think that would have been like a stated value, but it was displayed.
And so what, what that did for you in this discomfort with not having anything to do is it gave you this belief that all time must be filled with something because there's something that should be done.
Like we can't waste time time.
Like there needs to be something accomplished with this and if you're not doing something, then you're not doing something that you're gonna have to do later.
So get on it.
Yeah.
And if there was anything to do, which there always was, I always just felt that in my system even trying to slow down with you.
It was like, I think if I remember right, you kind of had to take me out of the house to even like, have my attention 100%.
I'm sorry, I didn't know any better.
I like we would go, I would take you, like, even just we have a Jeep Wrangler and put the top down in the Jeep and go for drives with some music on just to get you out of the house.
Because if we were just gonna have a conversation together, if we tried to do it at home, you would be up and down and bouncing and, like, trying to talk to me while you did dishes or while you were scrapbooking or, you know, you were having to do something other than just be still dip and, you know, from my perspective, there's no way that I can lead you unless you are there ready to follow me.
And when you're always on the go, like, you never settle down enough to really hear me and let yourself go with me somewhere.
Yeah, it was the only computer program I knew.
So, you know, at this point at the beginning of when you kind of COVID kicked you into personal development, which was at the beginning, still another avoidance of having nothing to do.
Yeah, it's what it was born out of.
Absolutely.
But that's not a bad thing.
It turned out pretty good for you.
You slowly started to see more of yourself and be, be able to recognize more of your own, like the ways that you never really let yourself be who you are or even know who you are.
Right.
Do you remember any instances earlier on in this where you had like a, a sense of enjoying being with yourself? Um I did fall in love with going for a walk and listening to an audio book or a podcast and like having my thinking challenged my beliefs and my perspectives, having them challenged and being like, huh, how about that? And you were the best person to bring all of that to because you're highly intelligent, very emotionally aware and just understood me and we had been together long enough where you understood who I had been.
But you also saw underneath the layers of who I was showing up as.
And so like the wisdom, the truth that would come through you in all of the right ways, just slowly cracked the shell and the walls.
And the more I recognize that the belief systems I was holding didn't quite fit anymore.
Then I got really um excited to challenge more, more and more.
And I, I don't know, the more time I spent alone, the more time I started to actually enjoy it and what really stood out to me was that it felt like for once I actually didn't have to consider someone else constantly.
I didn't have to constantly consider.
Does one of my two girls need me in some way or did you need me in some way or did work need me in some way or did my mom or like whoever else a friend? Like I just got to just do what I wanted.
And I was like, wow, this feels incredible.
And I started, I did a lot of walking by myself and that's how I uncovered.
Wow, being out in nature is amazing.
And that the whole stillness thing started to just show itself to me in the calmness and relaxation that I could feel in my body.
So the example I was going to bring up was nature.
And this also kind of born out of COVID.
Lots of long walks you took alone and that we took together like we burned through some shoes during COVID.
We sure did.
We really went through some shoes in COVID.
We, we walked and walked and walked and walked a lot and we, um we lived by this beautiful trail that was paved.
It was an old railroad track.
And so there were trees on both sides.
Like you can't even walk the whole trail like that, that system was just awesome to live by.
So you started to notice and this is something I remember how much more calm you felt in nature because you would never spent that much time out in parks and trails and in the woods.
No, my nature growing up was taking my bike down the gravel road or going on a tractor to the back 40.
That was my nature.
So you like, you get to experience something that I've experienced since I was like a small child, which is, I spent a lot of time in the woods, like out in, like out in the middle of nowhere alone or with friends.
And you get to experience for the first time how peaceful and calming it is to be out where you don't hear cars and see other people and you just hear birds and wind through the trees.
Yeah.
And I would have to say it's, it was being out in nature was probably some of the greatest whispers I heard from intuition and learning about myself.
And the more of that you felt, the more of it you started to want and need and crave.
Yeah.
And it, it became something that I couldn't um ignore anymore.
And like, I feel like just being outside in general is amazing, but like away from traffic and busyness and the chaos and noise, like I didn't know what I was missing.
I didn't know what my body was craving it just Yeah, it's amazing.
So over time, like the personal training job went away.
Never really came back after COVID just briefly Yeah, then I quit and then life just continued to give us opportunities for you to relax more six and to do less.
And for the first time you did, you stopped filling all of that time with stuff.
And that's where the slower pace of life really started to impact and bring a new kind of connection into this dominant submissive dynamic because like I said before, you were in no place to really even understand what it, what following me would be when your head was full of stuff.
Yeah, because I didn't know who I was.
And so if I didn't know myself and I, I didn't feel connected to myself, I actually couldn't follow you with a self.
I couldn't.
And also I think one of the other things, this is a little bit of a side note but not really when you slow down your own mental like spinning started to, to come down along with the slower pace of life, you just had less stuff coming in.
You were also able to connect to maybe ways that I have been showing up for you that you couldn't even see before, which I think helped lend to some of your ability to start letting go of control.
Yeah.
And there was a time and a place for a lot of that inputting information, there was because I needed to challenge a lot of things.
But then I also came to a point where my intuition was like enough, enough inputting into the head to, to seek to understand how to be in your body.
You just need to be in your body.
And so I slowly pulled back and it was like it, it became a screaming at me like done.
And I would say doing that has created even more inner stillness, inner peace and inner alignment.
It's the only way that I've been truly unable to or truly able to uncover the depths of who Dawn is not.
Who has done in comparison to X or who's Dawn in relation to who her parents think she is or anything of that, all the identities that you created essentially out of what you, what others expected of you rather than who you actually are, right? And now like when I say like inputting things too, like there's times where more often than not.
Um So here's one great example, driving in my car, I used to always have to have the music on and it was like you got in radio was on all the time.
I got to a point on this journey where it was like, huh quiet, this is amazing.
And now I even will do my workouts without music sometimes because I'm in tune with like even taking in noise through my ears.
Like the more and more it, I'm in tune with what my body actually needs in the moment down to that.
So what is slowness to you now in, in today's Don plus amazing.
Like I, I look back at how I was showing up in life and I'm like, how, how did I do that? Like I cry, I tear up because I'm like, I, I know II I was the person who did whatever I had to do.
Like I, I showed up, I gave my all even when, even to my own detriment, time and time and over and over and over again because of like, you know, in relation to my kids, it was because I loved them, you know, like they deserved my best.
Even though gosh, that's a whole another story of recognizing how it was my best at the time, right? And like even in personal training, I gave of myself more than I needed to.
And so now it's crucial to my well being and you set up our lives in a way that completely allows it.
You're so in tune with like where I'm at in my cycle and how that need for stillness changes and um ability to be out and be social, how that changes and yeah, and, and because I have experienced permission from you to be that and actually show up and live that way and experiencing myself thrive more and more in that way, like the amount of acceptance that you mirrored to me has only deepened the acceptance I could give myself which again, it then fuels more of the real me to come to the surface and to be witnessed and experienced.
And it sounds maybe so silly to somebody who like lives a busy life and maybe you feel like you thrive in that, but I didn't know what I didn't know.
And now this, this truly feels like it helped bring forth the real me and slowness and stillness.
So I wanted to take a minute to talk to the men who might be listening to this because a lot of a lot of guys that I experience and this partially was me, but not all like I didn't have the same experience here.
But a lot of guys that want dominant, submissive dynamics in their relationship really miss out on the importance of this, how, how valuable it is for you to slow your submissive life down.
And instead, and usually because this is coming from a place where a man is trying to get into dominance because he's trying to get something out of a woman.
He's trying to get her to surrender to him.
So he can tell her what to do to get his own like short term desires met from her.
And this is the old analogy of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Yeah, because if you see her submission as something like if I say your submission is something that you do like to be submissive.
You do all of the things I tell you to do.
Therefore, you are submissive, you can only be a robot to, to some extent and we don't even have time to get into all the ways that that is bound to bring up and create resentment and to leave you burned out and all sorts of other things that I couldn't want if what I really wanted was for you to follow me.
So guys who are leading submissive women in these sorts of dominant, submissive dynamics.
If you try to go too fast to obedience from her, you're going to hit a brick wall at a certain point.
Instead if you can be a little bit patient, like we've talked about before.
If you can be a little bit or a lot patient, let's be real.
You've had a lot of patients, I've needed all that I could muster and just in fairness, you've needed a lot with me as well.
But if you can be patient and help to create a life for her where she can, where it can become natural for her to follow rather than forced, then you have a your whole lifetime ahead of you to have all kinds of fun together with this with these dynamics.
So slowing down a little bit in your own approach of dominance to try to create a life and a connection that creates space for her to grow is really, really important because it makes all of the kind of stuff that we're talking about here possible because really what what we are together and the, the depth and the, the intensity of this love that we share would not be possible if you were not able to slow down.
No, not at all.
You could not have grown in yourself to a point where you could own what submission means in the way that you do or have been able to feel safe enough to let go of control without being able to have the time and the space to work through that.
Right? And if we as the dominant are the ones leading these relationships again, short term thinking or immediate gratification is gonna be like she's wearing a collar now.
So I get to tell her what to do.
Now, I can have anything I want.
Hm.
Maybe.
But at what cost, you know, we said already like crave and need this time like just downtime the slower pace of life in general.
What are some of the ways that you do that, that you take that or that I create the space for you? How do you actually live a slow paced life? What do you do or not do? Um, well, one thing that also has been um really helpful for me is letting my body sleep and getting the, the sleep that my body wants and not setting an alarm clock to just get up.
And I know not everybody lives their life in a way that makes that possible.
But I will say that sleep is an important aspect for me to feel my best all the time, people roll their eyes sometimes when we talk about things like sleep and nutrition and hydration when it comes to dominance and submission.
But really, like, you've got to take care of the basics of who you are and in order to be able to show up in your life.
Yeah.
And so one other side note that I'll go down here is something else that the slowing down, the stillness has um helped me realize is how I fluctuate over the course of a month as a woman and how my energy levels are impacted.
Whereas, you know, if I'm constantly in the getting shit done, I was, it was really, really easy for me to overlook the fact that I was tired and what my body was trying to get me to do was to rest.
But the gym workout was more important and I felt like hell doing it because I wasn't listening to my body speaking to me, but I still got it done.
And so now what that need is changes over the course of the month.
Um you know, like during ovulation, like after the follicular or in the follicular phase after the period time, like my energy just starts to come out and it's like, oh yes, I have way more energy for a workout.
I have way more energy to be around people.
I have way more energy to be out and about to like do all these things and then the deeper into the luteal phase that I get, um there's no like ignoring the lower energy and I have given myself like permission to slow down, which feels really good.
And so like the last few days deep in my lal phase, um it is beautiful here right now.
And so it, it's been sunny and so it's literally sitting outside in a lawn chair, absorbing the sunshine and most of the time maybe reading if I feel like I can even input that information.
Um Just fun, sexy romance.
Um But a lot of times just laying with my eyes closed and feeling completely at peace and content forever for however long.
And so other ways that looks is like, you know, you help me with all the workouts now, but like there's way more slowness in the pace of the workout.
There's like dropping the weights in the workout at certain parts of my cycle versus others.
There's times when it's like, oh wow.
Like I feel like I can lift a little bit more today.
And so I do.
And so one of the greatest feelings for me is like everybody has heard my addiction to the fitness thing is the ability to accept where I'm at.
Like for real, not just like trying to, but to actually be like, that's all I have today and I gave my best and not hating myself for not living up to a standard that I had set.
Um So some of the other things I do on, like when I want the stillness is Yin yoga or when I need the stillness.
Um But yeah, sometimes it's stillness of the body and sometimes it's stillness of the mind of like really just shutting it off completely and gosh, I have to tell you that the more I can live in that, um, the more bliss I feel just being, I like that word has been around for a long time and it was like, I remember like, how do I do that? I know you're going to laugh at me for using the word do, but I don't know how else to ask the question.
Well, there's that kind of cheeky statement.
We're meant to be human beings, not human doings.
And how would you define the difference? What does it mean to be a human being, being in touch with your moment to moment experience of life? And that requires all of us to heal from our wounds and traumas of our upbringing? Because we all have them, we all have them um, to really uncover the depths of who you are and not the ways that you're showing up as the boy you had to be for your father or the girl, you had to be for your mother or father, whoever it is.
And I think about the amount of people in the world who are very career driven and who give a lot of their time away to these businesses, these corporate entities.
And my heart just kind of hurts because I'm not saying you don't love your job.
But is that the life experience that you actually want to be having? Like, I can't speak for anyone else.
That's not what I'm here to do.
But I guess it's just a encouragement to ask the self reflection questions of like, what, what parts of my life is actually helping me be content and happy and alive.
And like, all I'm speaking to is what has helped me feel like myself, which has helped me feel like I'm alive for the first time in my life.
Our habits are how we perpetuate and continue the life that we are living currently.
Right? And so when I think about the human doing, this is a person who wakes up in the morning, does the same set of things gets up, has the coffee has breakfast or maybe not get stressed, goes to work, maybe goes to the gym comes home, does their evening routine, goes to bed and maybe has some dreams that their life would be different than this.
But their, their day to day, moment to moment experience is just perpetuating more of the same.
And, you know, I think this is probably a great place to end is that I don't really think that the, the definition of insanity is actually not doing the same thing and getting different results or expecting different results.
You know, that, that's not actually the definition of insanity, but you, nothing will change if you keep doing everything the same.
Right.
And if you want your life to be different, if you want your relationship to be different, if you want your own experience of what it means to be yourself, to be different than what it is.
You've got to start by changing the patterns that you're in and the habits that you're in.
And if back to something we said about um Trevor Mola's book, if you want to go forward first, stop going backward.
If you want to go forward into some, into a better experience of life first, like shift the car out of reverse and put it into park and just stop for a second, slow down your pace because then you'll have some space with which to start moving forward in a direction that you wanna go building some new habits, some new ways of showing up.
Yeah.
And one thing that I just want to add here is like if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, how do I even do that? How do I create space? Like take a look at what your life looks like? What are you willing to sacrifice? Is it scrolling on your device? Is it watching Netflix? Whatever? Like try to carve out 5, 10 minutes to just be with yourself and you will be presented with some beautiful opportunities of self reflection column.
Like you'll be able to witness yourself in a whole new way.
That wasn't possible before when we're constantly living from the mind and doing all the time.
One of the things I ask people when I'm coaching, like doing one on one coaching work is could you sit alone with yourself in a quiet, silent, dark empty room if there's a pitch black room with absolutely no noise.
Can you walk in there, sit down in a chair by yourself.
How long can you last? How much do you enjoy your own company and just being alone with yourself and creating the ability for yourself to do that is where freedom comes from.
So, thank you for this conversation.
I think this one will be very helpful to a lot of people who find themselves stuck in old patterns and wanting to be experiencing something different.
Thank you for showing me this and setting me free
