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Have you ever felt stuck on the hamster wheel of self-improvement? Endlessly fixing yourself, waiting to feel enough? What if the secret isn't in doing more work, but in savoring your life right now? You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the Relish Podcast. I am your host, Alysia Shake, and my mission here is simple. I want to help you relish your life. I want to help you deeply connect with gratitude and joy for
what's already right in front of you. And I want you to realize that you're actually already whole just as you are. Where do I even begin? Honestly, starting a podcast feels a little bit bizarre. I do feel some pressure here to set the tone, especially since I've decided to brand this under my own name, which was a huge and somewhat vulnerable step for me. More on that later. Um, but I've spent a lot of time asking, how do I express who I truly am in this very first episode or episodes? You know, what's essential to share? And then I remembered something kind of funny. I ran a YouTube channel called Mind Over Munch for a decade. Hello, Munchies. If you're listening, I love you. And my first video in, you know,
back in like 2013 was chai spiced peanut butter. It's still up. And the truth is, it is likely that I am the only person who remembers that. So today, I'm trying to release the pressure. If you're listening to this episode right now, this first episode, wow, I am especially grateful for you. I have no idea where this journey will take us, but I am really honored that you're choosing to spend this precious time with me. So, enough about me. Let's talk about you. Because who is this podcast really for? It's for you. If you are curious, growth oriented, if you're deeply interested in understanding yourself or others, I imagine you probably crave and appreciate meaningful relationships and purpose and a life
rooted in authenticity. You probably challenge norms. You probably value kindness and depth. And maybe like me, you have felt at times or often perhaps that you don't quite belong anywhere. Maybe you long to be seen. If that's you, you are exactly the kind of person I want to spend time with. You are a truth seeker and I want to see you. I already do see you. And if that resonates, I have a feeling this podcast will too. So go ahead and subscribe so that you can join me on this journey. Okay. So who am I? As I mentioned, I ran this YouTube channel. Uh it was focused on food and health and mindfulness. So I do have a content background. I'm also a
meditation teacher. I have a masters in mindfulness. I am a certified neuroscience brain health and sematic life coach. And I also facilitate in-person personal growth retreats, uh leadership seminars, and I speak. One of the nonprofits I work for is called the Hoffman Institute. I am a teacher at the Hoffman process, which is this um psychosspiritual transformational learning program that has deeply shaped me. And although I do want to acknowledge this podcast is not associated with Hoffman directly, you'll probably hear me talk about it sometimes. I also have a BFA in graphic design. I've done organizational DEI. I used to teach fitness and do personal training. Uh, I guess you could say I've
had a very non-traditional path to say the least. And that path is of course all relevant to my lens now. So I do need to share a little about the context of my experience because it is of course the lens informing this podcast. My whole life I have grappled with a painful sense of not belonging. As a mixed race white passing person, as a neurode divergent but neurotypical passing person, I have a complex relationship with identity to say the least. I've always felt uh kind of caught between worlds, never fully fitting in anywhere. And it created a uh profound sense of shame around my identity actually. And in my darker moments, I have often asked myself, am I even human? You know, why don't I ever
fit in? Now, this podcast isn't going to explicitly be about belonging or identity, but if you have ever felt, you know, similarly outcast or like a black sheep or like there's, you know, something wrong with you, I see you and you're welcome here. This pain of belonging for me really became a catalyst for my own personal growth, my spiritual development and for my philosophical explorations which you will definitely be hearing about on this podcast. We are going to dive into psychosspiritual insights. Don't worry, it won't be overly woo, okay? I'm also a neuroscience geek. I love evidence and grounding spirituality in science. the brand itself. So, choosing to use my name, Alysia Shake, as the brand was a huge leap. I knew that I
needed this project to be able to authentically evolve with me. When I started Mind Over Munch, I was, for one, I was so young. I didn't know how to show up fully as myself because I didn't really know myself. I was far more gripped by perfectionism than I am now, I'm happy to say. And I guess in some ways it served me. I mean, I got a million subscribers on YouTube doing it, but it didn't actually increase my self-worth. In some ways, it actually validated my shame. I didn't realize this then, but now I do because um I couldn't I didn't ever feel I could fully be me. So, with this project, I'm committed to messy humanness, you know, being I want to be myself openly. I want
to be here learning alongside you. I will definitely make mistakes. We'll navigate those together. And in this podcast, my intention is to forge a true relationship with you. So, thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me be me. And while I will share, of course, my thoughts on this podcast, a huge value of mine, um, coming, I think, with my mindfulness background is non-judgment. And so I want everyone who wants to be here to feel welcome here. That doesn't mean that this podcast is for everyone or that everyone's going to love it. You know, if you don't care about personal growth, then you probably won't care about this, which is fine. But for those of you who do, even if we
have different opinions or approaches, it's important to me that you feel welcome here. I love learning from people different than me, and I think it's actually really important for my own growth. I'm going to guess that if you're still here listening that you've been on a growth journey or you know some kind of healing path for some time now, you're probably not a total newbie. In the work that I do as a coach and facilitator, I often see truth seekers, okay, like ourselves falling into a trap of uh endlessly trying to fix themselves, feeling like a sense of I have to heal before I can really be authentic or feel like I'm enough. Have you noticed how exhausting it is? the
constant self-improvement. To me, it's felt like a hamster wheel at times. You know, how long have you been on this journey to better yourself? Months, years, and is there this voice inside that's saying, uh, you know, it'll be better once I get there or I'll be enough once I, you know, when I XYZ. I vividly remember walking into my therapist's office at 25 years old and asking, "Does anyone actually ever feel enough?" And I now see that this question um this yearning really is so deeply human. My favorite thing to talk about is what does it mean to be human? So get ready. Now, why is the podcast called Relish? Initially, it was supposed to be a kind of playful nod to mind over munch and my I'll call it
complex relationship with food and eating. Now, this podcast will not be about that, although maybe I will at some point touch about my relationship with food journey in the future if you want to hear about it. But the word relish has evolved for me. It isn't just about food. It's really about savoring life. To relish something means to fully savor it, to be present with it, uh, and to let that matter deeply. This is what I want the podcast to be about. Relishing being human, mindfulness, not just for, you know, finding relief of suffering, but for joy. So, here's a powerful shift I want you to consider.
Most personal growth focuses 80% of the energy on fixing what's wrong, the negative. And maybe 20% is spent celebrating what's right. And you know, to be in my integrity, I'll clarify that I made that number up. That is not data, but that is my experience. What if we flipped that number? I mean, imagine 80% of your energy going toward joy and meaning and what lights you up and then you've still got 20% for the healing. You're still, you know, doing the work, but from a place of love rather than lack. So, this podcast is here to support exactly that shift. It's not about um endlessly chasing self-improvement. It's about cultivating wholeness, presence, aliveness.
So, I will be sharing a mix of episode styles. I want to give you a heads up. Entre. So, entree episodes, these are going to be full episodes to nourish you. See what I did there? Um, yeah, there's going to be puns here. So, in entre, we will talk deeply about what it means to be human, mindfulness, joy, belonging, healing. Uh, and I promise my evidence-based insights, my inner neuroscience nerd will definitely be making appearances. Then we've got quickbite episodes. These are shorter episodes, maybe, you know, 5 to 15 minutes. We'll see. Um, and these are intended to offer reframes, perspective shifts, practical tools that you can
implement right away. And then we've got dessert episodes. So these will be meditations, visualizations, practices that you can use to uh take home with you. Now you don't need to consume all of it. You know, just taste what nourishes you. Although I have kind of set it up so that the content builds on itself. What's really important is that joy matters. Joy is central here. I heard a quote once, I don't know who said it, but I love it. It's we teach what we need to learn. Part of why I am calling this podcast Relish is it's actually a reminder to myself to focus on joy and uh get off my own hamster wheel. Honestly, I'll be sharing my ongoing journey with you. I'm here alongside you doing my own work and I
really just want to ripple out some goodness. You know, even a little bit I believe matters. And I also want to validate the work that you're doing and more importantly who you are right now. As you are, you are already enough. Even if you never changed another thing with all, you know, your bad negative patterns and conditioning, all that, you're already enough. So, have you been stuck on your own hamster wheel of growth? I would be honored if you would share your experiences with me. You can comment here, find me on all the socials, Alyssiah Shake, uh, DM me. We'll put everything in the show notes.
I want to get to know you. And in the next episode, which is technically, I guess, kind of our first real episode if you don't count this one, we're going to talk about joy and what it is and how important it is. And it's actually already live. So, yes, there is another episode live right now. So, as a heads up, to celebrate the beginning of this new project this week, I wanted to go big. We are launching Relish with four episodes this week. Okay? So, they've got this one, this intro one. You can go listen to episode two right now. Episode three will be out on Wednesday. And on Friday, episode 4 will be out. Now, after this special launch week, we'll drop new episodes every Wednesday
regularly, sometimes twice a week with a bonus on either Monday or Friday. My hope is that this first month, we can really give you two per week most weeks. But uh in service of letting me be a messy human who might it up and you know just hold me accountable to Wednesdays for now and look at anything else as a bonus. Okay. So thank you for your kind attention. I would so appreciate it if you would ripple this goodness out and share the podcast on socials or hey maybe text it to someone you admire for you know the work that they've done on themselves. You're here because you're hungry for meaning and joy. And my hope is that uh you can feel like this community sees you and that
you can reconnect to your beautifully human wholeness. So, let's connect. Let's get in dialogue. Come comment. Come say hi on Instagram, Tik Tok, all the things linked in the show notes. Wherever you like to connect. I appreciate you being here so much and I will see you uh literally in 1 second when the next episode auto plays. Okay, bye.
