276: Manifesting Your Dreams and the Mind, Body, and Spirit Connection

276: Manifesting Your Dreams and the Mind, Body, and Spirit Connection

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Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: [00:00:00] Before I became a coach, a consultant, an author, a speaker, I had dreams about this. I legit would have vivid dreams of me doing something like this for a living. I didn't have the language for it. I couldn't clearly articulate it as coaching, as speaking, but I would have dreams of me doing it. Being in front of big crowds.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I would have dreams of being in a space where I could guide others. I would have dreams of doing this for a living of, I actually did have dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, but I would hide these dreams from people. Because it seemed really big and really lofty and really silly, especially when everybody around me was telling me to pursue the tenure track and was also themselves pursuing the tenure [00:01:00] track.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And this is why I want to talk to you about today's episode about manifesting your dreams, about the power of the mind, the power of ancestor work, the power of listening to your intuition.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome to the top global ranked and award nominated grad school femtoring podcast. The place for first gen BIPOCs to listen in on conversations about grad school, and growth. In this podcast, you'll learn about all things higher education, personal development, and sustainable productivity. This is Dr.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Yvette Martinez Vu, and I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with tips and tricks and everything else you need to know to successfully navigate grad school. For over [00:02:00] 14 years, I've been empowering first gen students of color along their personal and professional journeys, and I'm really excited to support you too.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Yvette. Today, I am bringing you another solo episode.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's going to be a shorter episode because I am actually recording it last minute. I had plans to release an episode with guests, but , unfortunately, Something happened to one of the guests that made it so that they wanted me to push back the episode a couple of weeks. So I'm going to be releasing it later this year.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And so for today I thought I'd bring up something that has been coming up for me a lot, that I've been thinking about a lot, and that I thought, why not share this with my audience, which is thinking about the concept of [00:03:00] manifestation, of dreaming of visioning and how that can help you to really tap into what it is that you could even say you were destined to do that you were born to do.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So, , I mentioned that, yeah, when I was in grad school, I had these dreams and I was a little bit, Like I felt silly. I was ashamed of them, but at one point I remember, , I posted it on Facebook because I got that memory. , Facebook gives you these memories. I got this memory about me posting, like, wouldn't it be awesome if I had like an editing business or whatever.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: How would I say that if I had a business where I was supporting other first gen BIPOCs like me, and this was. It was nearly 10 years ago that I was saying this aloud. And if you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be doing what I'm doing now, I wouldn't believe you. [00:04:00] But something in me was telling me this in advance.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And I think that this was all part of my own, whether I knew it or not, my own manifestation work. So, I wanted to kind of introduce you to some concepts and some ideas. I'm not going to dive deep into them, but you can write them down, do your homework, learn more if you're interested. The first is I want to introduce you to this idea about the importance of the mind body spirit connection.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The mind and body and the spirit are all so interconnected. They impact and influence each other so much and I don't think that I honored this. I don't think that I realized this When I was a grad student, because I only focused on the mind, I was pursuing the life of the mind. So it was all about work, work, work, read, read, read, write, write, write.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That I didn't honor my physical needs. I didn't take care of my body. [00:05:00] I didn't let myself slow down. I didn't give myself rest when I needed it. And then on the spiritual side of things, I was that person that I didn't want to I have felt really resistant towards following any one particular religion. I was indoctrinated into the religion of Catholicism and, you know, I hesitate to say this out loud because I know that I have listeners that might be very religious.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And I'm trying to tread waters carefully because I want to honor and respect everybody in your belief systems. But just know for me when I was a teenager, I was rebellious and I resisted any forms of belief systems where it felt like Others were trying to force me to do what they wanted me to do especially any belief systems that felt to me very patriarchal.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I didn't want to follow [00:06:00] them. In fact, in my teenage years, I was like, I am not going to get married. I am not going to have kids. I am not going to follow any religions. I'm going to pursue a career and that's going to be my life. That was me as a teenager. But over time, I've realized that there's this side of me that is actually very deeply spiritual that I haven't tended to, that I haven't honored.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And it's only really been recently that I've tapped into it. And it's been incredibly powerful. And I just want to tell you that if you are that person that has struggled with religion, please know that there's this larger world of spirituality. that you can also tap into and the odds are are probably tied back to your ancestors whether you realize it or not.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So, um, there's that. I want, I wanted to mention the mind, the body, and the spiritual connection and how important it [00:07:00] is in helping you To do this work of like manifesting your future and of getting to a point where you feel like you're doing work that feels very aligned, that feels right for you, that feels purposeful, that feels like What your gut's been telling you to do all along.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So there is that. The other thing I wanted to mention, this is a kind of tied to the mind body connection, is that I started getting more into the world of like nervous system regulation, nervous system calming, however you want to call it. When Last year, I started to develop long haul symptoms. So I got COVID for the first time at the end of 2022, and then started to develop long haul symptoms, and then got an official diagnosis of dysautonomia.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Last year, in 2023, I was still in Portugal. It was a very, very scary time. And [00:08:00] during that time I was just trying to learn as much as I could just to do anything, treatments, medication, whatever you, to get back to being functional. It was really, really scary, and one of the things that I ran into is learning about brain retraining, learning about neuroplasticity, learning about nervous system regulation, that I realized that I have carried with me so much trauma that my nervous system was just always.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: wired up that I didn't give myself time to like rest and slow down and decompress and ground myself. And I noticed that the more I was doing the grounding exercises, the more I was slowing down, the more I was resting, the more I was tuning in to my body's needs and just listening to my body. It sounds silly, but listening.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: What [00:09:00] makes, what makes me feel good? What doesn't make me feel good? The better I started feeling. That doesn't mean that I am cured. That doesn't mean that I am no longer disabled. That doesn't mean that I no longer have chronic illnesses. Of course, I still have my symptoms. I still have my days, but I'm doing a lot, lot better.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And that is all thanks to in part this work of nervous system regulation and even the brain retraining of, Doing this work of trying to change my thoughts because your thoughts influence your feelings and vice versa. Your feelings influence your thoughts and both of them influence your behavior, which ultimately influences the outcomes that you reach and the life that you have.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So don't discount that. The fact that mindset work is something that can change your life. Spending time thinking about what are the thoughts that I keep having. [00:10:00] Yes, we all have negativity biases, so odds are there might be more negative thoughts you're having than positive thoughts. And acknowledging them, becoming more self aware, and then when you're having thoughts that are not really helpful to you, finding ways to reframe them.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Asking yourself, what evidence do I have to prove that this negative thought is truthful? What evidence do I have to prove the opposite, that it's not the truth? And a lot of times you can find evidence for the opposite. If I'm feeling bad about myself, if I'm feeling like, Oh my gosh, I am the worst coach or I'm the worst speaker, or I'm going to do a terrible job, or I'm going to, I don't know, like whatever the worst outcome that I can, I start to catastrophize.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Let me think about the worst outcome. And then I think about, okay, well, has this happened before? And if so, how long ago has this happened recently? What evidence do I have to [00:11:00] prove that I'm going to completely fail at this? Most of the time, I don't have evidence to back up or to support that thought. So keep that in mind that not only do you deserve to honor your body as much as you honor your mind, you also deserve to honor your spirit if that's something that feels like is pulling you the way that I felt it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I felt it and I kept denying it, kept denying it. And eventually it just got to a point where I was like, I can't deny this anymore. I'm just feeling it too much, too deeply. And I need to create a practice of spirituality of whether that's journaling or lighting a candle or prayer, or even slowing down and noticing the messages that my ancestors are leaving me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Because you can notice that if you open yourself up to it. [00:12:00] I know this episode is, is, you know, for some people it might sound more like a woo episode, but I don't think necessarily that everything has to be science backed. I really do think that there's so much data that we have inherently in our bodies and in our spirits that we can tap into, that it's just as powerful, just as knowledgeable.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: if not more than what we can learn in any educational or higher ed setting. So I just want to remind you that because I think that a lot of times, again, we're told to follow certain pathways, certain tracks, certain pipelines. And for some of us it works and for others, It doesn't. And why doesn't it work?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Because we have not been taught or we have not been given permission to tune in to these other areas [00:13:00] of ourselves, to tune in to the other gifts and talents that you have, to tune in to what your body is and mind and spirit is telling you that is right for you. I knew before I even could articulate it that I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship and lo and behold, it's in my lineage.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: My mom is a business owner. My mom has a botanica. My mom is an energy worker. She might not call herself that, but like she helps people for a living. So it's not a surprise that of course I too love to help people for a living. I too have a business and I tried to resist it. I never wanted to be in business.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I wanted a stable paycheck. But then eventually I started to honor those signs that I was getting and it's landed me here. It's landed me in a much better place than I was before. So for you, think about that. Think about [00:14:00] what are the things that Make you, you, what are the things that are tied back to your ancestry?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: What are the messages that your body is telling you? What are the messages that your spirit is telling you? What dreams are you having? Listen to those dreams because the more You vividly notice those dreams. The more you start to visualize it and the more you can envision it and visualize it, that visioning itself is so powerful because that's the start of you starting to embody that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And it can be that much more powerful to start to embody the thing that you want to pursue before you're even there. You know, just like a lot of people say, what's, , I'm trying to think about the phrase or the saying.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I can't remember it, but it just, it reminds me of how , you have to embody, you have to [00:15:00] visualize and embody something before you do it. So some of the world's greatest athletes are trained to visualize , what it feels like to win. They're trained to develop habits that are gonna help them to win.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So same thing with you is like you can. Start to visualize your future, no matter how lofty it is. You're training your mind to get there. And then you can start to set up little habits, even if it's the tiniest of habits. Maybe your dream is, I want to become a best selling creative non fiction author.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's your dream. I want to be a best selling creative non fiction author. So that's the vision. You can just picture yourself at an awards ceremony. And then that habit that you develop is, I'm just going to do my morning pages. Even if it's terrible, just every morning going to honor myself by giving myself some time to do my morning pages.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And lo [00:16:00] and behold, you do your morning pages, you do your manifestation work. You keep reminding yourself, like, this is what you want. This is what you want. This is what you're pursuing. And little by little, you're going to notice yourself taking action towards getting there. And before you know it, It's going to be one year, two years, five years, 10 years later, and you're going to see yourself there and think, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's how it happens. , this is why it's important. This is why so many people, even though it sounds silly, so many people talk about manifestation work. So many people talk about thought work. So many people talk about mindset work. So many people talk about, Ancestor work. So many people talk about spirituality.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's all interconnected. It's all about tapping into the fullness that is you. all the facets of you and using that knowledge, using that data, internal data from your body, mind, spirit, external [00:17:00] data, from the stuff that you're learning in your surroundings to eventually curate this life that is the right life for you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That couldn't be the life for anybody else, but only for you. Okay, that's all I wanted to say for today's episode. I hope that you found some of this helpful, inspiring, something that you want to look into further. And as always, I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll talk to you all next time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Thanks so much for joining me in the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. If you like what you heard, here are four ways you can support the show. The first is to make sure you're subscribed and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you email me a screenshot, I'll send you a surprise freebie. The second way is to get your copy of my free Grad School Femtoring Resource Kit.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: which includes essential information to prepare for and navigate grad school. You [00:18:00] can access it at the link in today's show notes. The third way to support my show is to follow me on social media. You can find me on Instagram with the handle at grad school, femtoring and on LinkedIn by searching my name.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The last way to show your love is to order a copy of is grad school for me. My graduate school admissions book for first gen BIPOCs. Thanks again for listening and until next time.

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