143: Welcome Back to New View Advice!

This transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello, beautiful souls.

Welcome to New View Advice. My name is Amanda Durocher, and I should be saying welcome back to New View Advice because I haven't recorded an episode in over a year, and the last time I was here in your feed, I said it was my final episode, and clearly that wasn't true.

And I swear I really did think it was the end of New View Advice.

I really did try to let go of this podcast, and I really did think that was the end, but life is funny like that. And clearly, since I'm back here, it is not quite the end of New View Advice.

So hello to everyone. Hello to long-term listeners. Hello to people who discovered the podcast in the year I wasn't recording, and hello to anybody new. If this is your first episode, hello, I'm Amanda. I'm grateful to everyone who sent me emails, everybody who sent me messages about New View Advice and how it's impacted them, and to all my pen [00:01:00] pals, thank you.

You have kept me sane in a way that I struggle to articulate. So thank you so much to everybody for your support, and for being here with me along this journey, that I really did think I closed the door to this.

I honestly worried I wasn't allowed to come back to the podcast for a while. I don't know if anybody's ever felt like this before, but I was like, "I can't go back. I closed the door. I said I wasn't gonna do that."

And There are a few people in my life who have listened to me talk about the possibility of coming back to New View Advice for months now, and each of them has been like, "Amanda, it is your podcast, you can do whatever you want, and if you can't stop thinking about it, maybe you still have something to say." And it's true. It was hard for me to admit that to myself, though. I felt like because I closed the door, I really thought it was over. I grieved the end of New View Advice for months and who I was without it, and I had to sort of begin navigating the world in a different way and then it's been about [00:02:00] The last six months, maybe a little longer, that New View Advice has just been in the back of my head, and I just have not been able to let it go. And to be honest, I finally felt like I got the confidence to come back to the podcast actually recently when I was watching the World Series, and there was a story told about, uh, one of the players on the Tampa Bay Rays.

His name's Cam Booser, and it was a story... I'm sorry if I butcher this story, but basically He used to play baseball and he got injured when he was younger, and he began struggling with alcohol, and then he no longer played baseball anymore. So he ended up moving home to Seattle and working in carpentry back home. And he got sober, and he thought his career in baseball was over, but he would go to bed at night and he would just continue to think about baseball.

And One thing led to another and he reached out to somebody, I think, who ended up being, like, a trainer or coach and helping him to practice pitching. And when he went back, he was, like, really good at it. [00:03:00] And I think they ended up putting videos on social media, and he got drafted into the major leagues.

Maybe he did minor leagues first, but he ended up getting back into baseball is the whole point. And this story really resonated with me because it was like he couldn't stop thinking about it. He gave it up, and he couldn't stop thinking about it, and he would go to bed at night and think about it, and that has been me and New View Advice.

And so that really resonated with me and is one of the reasons that I felt the confidence to come back because I was sort of judging myself for, again, not knowing if I should or shouldn't do this. I've talked about a lot throughout episodes, but

It's where so often people come to New View Advice is should I or should I not do something? And it's so often when we're in that place where we're not sure, we just have to take an action, and that action will give us information of what we actually need to do. Because so often, if we're just in our head, we just remain stuck. So that was me and New View Advice. So if anybody else besides me needs the reminder, you're allowed to change your mind. [00:04:00] And the truth is, I'm really glad that I took the year off, because I feel entirely different about New View Advice than I did a year ago.

I honestly had to process the feeling of feeling like a failure a l- year ago. , I don't feel like New View Advice is a failure at all, but a year ago I did. And I had all these different reasons for that. I'm not gonna go into them today. Maybe they'll come up in future episodes.

But I really had to be with the feeling of failure in the last year and all the different ways I felt like I had failed throughout my life. And it's so funny to look back on, because now I don't feel like a failure. I'm actually really, really proud of myself. I know that sounds cheesy. I feel like it's cheesy when we talk about being proud of ourselves and each other sometimes, but I am.

I'm really proud of myself and who I am and all the things I've done in my life. It's not traditional. I'm so far from traditional, I'll say that. But I'm just really proud of myself for the courage I've had throughout my life, because many of the things I've done I have been terrified to [00:05:00] do. Even coming back to this podcast, I was in a place of fear.

Like, I was afraid to come back. I was afraid what people s- would say. I was afraid of reopening the door. I was afraid, would people still listen? You know, there was a lot of fear coming up. And eventually I always say to myself, "I gotta get over myself," and that's how it feels when I would just get in my head.

I gotta get over myself and try it again. So here we are. I'm excited to be back. I don't know exactly what this is gonna look like. I'm gonna be honest with you and upfront. I invite you to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, because I'm not committing to a day of the week or a frequency right now.

I'm either gonna fall into a flow with it and it'll be weekly, biweekly, monthly, I'm not sure, or it's gonna be a bit sporadic. I tried to figure that out ahead of time, but it was, like, another way I was kind of avoiding just recording an episode. So right now we're gonna see what happens, and I will keep you updated on what that looks like.

And so I did just wanna record today's episode to be an intro [00:06:00] back to the podcast, and then starting next week, we're gonna be going back to talking about different topics and answering questions.

I have some things I wanna talk about, some things that came up over the last year that I'm excited to talk about, and I know I need to kinda get off my chest. I also have already received some questions from some people that I email with, and also I have updated the New View Advice website.

I think it's so much better, so much easier to use. I love it, and I have an Ask a Question form on there at newviewadvice.com/question, so feel free to ask a question, but I've already received some questions through that, which has been cool to see that. I updated the website less than a month ago, and I already received some questions.

So we'll be back to that format next week. I just wanted to do this kinda intro episode to just all be on the same page. Before I wrap up this episode, the last thing I want to mention is when I ended New View Advice, I was like, I have a new project I'm so excited about.

I was, like, really on cloud nine about [00:07:00] this idea I had, and the idea was a video game And I don't know if there's any other creatives out there, but the video game did not come to be the way I thought. It was such a freaking rollercoaster, like the idea I had. I tried to create, I couldn't create it. I tried to learn a bunch of new skills.

Then I discovered vibe coding through artificial intelligence, which led to another project I do have, which is called Hum & Play. And Hum & Play is a website with games and activities

the website's really meant to inspire curiosity, but it's meant to help people on the healing journey, people healing from trauma, but also working on their mental health and their emotional wellbeing. So it's a work in progress, but you can check that out at humnplay.com. I'm probably gonna talk about it a lot throughout these episodes because I created Hum & Play after doing New View Advice because in the springtime, after my video game idea didn't quite come to [00:08:00] be, the idea that came up for me was to create a science museum for the inner world.

So I believe the science museum is a place that you go as a child to explore what the physical world is, right? To learn about how the world works. I remember going to the science museum and learning about lightning and learning about dinosaurs and learning about, music and frequencies and things like that.

Like, it had so much stuff to learn about. And so this idea I had was to create a science museum for the inner world. And what's funny is nobody knows what that means. Nobody needs to know what that means. But it's just another part of the creative process where that's what Hum & Play is inspired by for me, is how can I help people be just as curious about themselves and their inner world as we can be about the outer world?

Because I think that the inner world is so juicy, and recently I like to say that I think everybody's inner world is like a new frontier, and you get to be the lead explorer. It is your world, your own [00:09:00] personal world to explore. And as you likely know if you're a New View Advice fan, oftentimes the inner world is really scary.

It's filled with negative self-talk. It's filled with trauma. It's filled with hard memories. It's filled with things we've repressed. It's filled with darkness. But Oftentimes we need to go through the dark to then bring in more light. And there's nothing actually wrong with the darkness either. That's where the self-compassion piece we talk a lot about here comes in, is like if we're kind to that, those things that we've labeled as dark, if we're kind to those parts of ourselves, because those parts of ourselves have experienced things that were hard and take time to unpack.

And I share all that because Hum & Play was inspired by this idea that I think one thing people really struggle with is going into their inner world because it feels scary or because they have difficult emotions they don't know how to deal with. So on Hum & Play [00:10:00] you'll find breathing exercises, which are great for like anxiety.

There's also just games that are meant to kinda get you out of your head and back into the present moment. Then there's build-your-own stories, which help you go deeper, but I'm always adding new games. Like this week I built a tapping game where it just shows you how to do butterfly tapping and how to tap your chest.

It's a tool I use all the time recently 'cause I went through a medical trauma in August, which I'll talk about in a future episode, but I've been experiencing a lot of anxiety and even panic attacks since then. So a lot of the games were inspired from my own journey with anxiety and panic attacks because it wasn't something I had dealt with in a very long time, and I was looking for everyday tools to sorta help me to move through that really difficult time.

And I'm still moving through the trauma piece, but I'm luckily not struggling with the panic attacks right now. I hope those don't come back. Those are so hard. For anybody who deals with panic attacks, I am so sorry. Oh my God. So scary. Again, we're gonna [00:11:00] talk about it in a future episode. I wanna keep this episode short.

So anyways, when I created Hum & Play, I thought, "This is it. I'm no longer gonna do New View Advice.

I'll just have Hum & Play." And then I've sort of realized they kind of, in my head, go hand-in-hand. Not everybody who listens to New View Advice will like Hum & Play, and not everybody who uses Hum & Play will like New View Advice. Anyway I wanted to share a bit about Hum & Play here if you're interested, if that sounds like something you're interested in.

It's really games and activities to help with wellness and healing. But really, it's inspired by the idea of connecting back with ourselves, and it's often easier when we add lightness, when we add play, and we add fun.

'Cause I find on my own healing journey is that to go deeper, I usually have to add fun. I have to add lightness. I have to come back to the present. So I'm sure I'll talk more about Hum & Play throughout these episodes.

But if you wanna check that out, it's humnplay.com, H-U-M-N-P-L-A-Y.com. You can check out Hum & Play, and it's free to use. I haven't [00:12:00] mentioned that. It's free to use. All the games are free. If you're interested in signing up, you can save where you are, you can track some streaks.

And if you want a game or an activity or you have an idea, send it my way. You can email me anytime at [email protected], any suggestions and feedback is always welcome.

I think that this episode is longer than I even expected it to be, so I am going to wrap it up here. But once again, thank you so much for being on this journey with me.

Thank you so much for your continued support of me and my work.

And I'm just really, really grateful for all of you. I'm really grateful for you listening here today. It's an honor. It really is. I know I say that a lot, but it's really an honor to be a part of your journey and to be a part of your day. We are all so freaking busy all the time, so the fact that people take time out of their day to listen to this podcast means so much to me, and I haven't forgotten that over the last year.

It's something I really continue to value. So thank you so much, and thank you to everyone who reached out over the last year. It meant so much to me to hear from people. People [00:13:00] send me emails at just the right time. I'm such a slow responder, so I do apologize to anybody.

I'm not great with email, never have been. At this point, I'm accepting never will be. But I'm just really grateful to this community and to everybody here, and thank you again. So once again, I wanna mention that if you have a question you'd like to hear answered on the podcast,

You can visit my website at newviewadvice.com/question, or you can email it to me at [email protected]. And thank you so much. I am so looking forward to this new chapter of New View Advice, this new journey that we will all be on together, and to continue to heal and grow together.

I am sending you so much love, and I look forward to offering you a new view on whatever you may be going through. All my love. See you next time. [00:14:00]