Expanded Love: The New Paradigm of Dating, Relationships & Life!

Kate Harlow: 00:00:00

So if you're loving and living and dating and relating from your saboteur, your views are not expanded. They're limited. They're small. So zoom out. You know, even if you can go for a hike up a mountain or go catch a gondola or go like, go to places where you can zoom, like, physically zoom out and get a feel for what needs to change in your life, because you are meant to expand, and your heart is so big, and when you live from the frequency of the heart, you need to have the biggest spaces to be in, because your heart is so big and it needs to be able to expand. So that is the new paradigm of dating and relationships and life is actually remembering who we are and living from the expanded nature of our beings, which means as always taking radical responsibility for your choices in your life and choosing to notice what does expand you and what contracts You. Hello, beautiful. Welcome to the new truth, season three, episode one with your one and only. Kate Harlow, I want to start off by saying that I miss Catherine today, and I'm sure there'll be many days when I miss her, but and you do too, but we're gonna get through because change is inevitable, and Change is the only way that we grow, really, that we catapult into the next level of ourselves, and also that we learn to dance with life, right? Life has so much to offer us, and if we don't get redirected and things don't change, new life can't be born, right? Like a forest fire rips through a forest, and then all the new seeds get planted, all the new trees grow, and there's rebirth. So that's the gift of change, and I'm certainly experiencing it so much in my life right now. I imagine you are too. In astrology, we're going through some really big changes. The Age of Aquarian, we have shifted into I'm not an astrologer, but I've heard a lot about it, and we've been in the Capricorn energy for 20 years. I think it's Pluto and Capricorn, and we've just switched to aquarium and what I know about that is the Aquarian Age is all about big ideas, big dreaming, creativity, expression, no longer living a life that's a lie. No more bullshit. Aquarian Age is all about the truth of who we are and our fullest expression, which feels so aligned with the new truth podcast, especially season three and where we're headed, as I had shared last week in the what's coming in Season Season Three, my intention, the energy behind season three is that it's all about expanding everything, expanding your life, expanding your creativity, expanding your expression, expanding your love, expanding your ability to receive love, expanding your bank account, expanding whatever you want to be, expanded, but about learning how to be so ruthlessly who we are, so that we can expand in every way. And this week's episode, I want to start the season off because, of course, the new truth started with love, and we're still going to be talking a lot about love. I have so many amazing guests coming up, intimacy experts and sacred sexuality experts, and lots of really amazing, amazing guests coming up in the next couple of months, and we'll continue to only get more and more amazing as we go. You know, because the new truth started with love, I thought I would start Season Three with an episode all around love, and my coaching method that I developed almost nine years ago is called the expanded love method, and it's really about learning how to expand into every corner of who we really are, as opposed to living these limited versions of ourselves and these limited lives and this, this, these lives of suffering and pain and chasing something to feel good, but never really getting to fully experience it. So I wanted to talk about expanded love and the new paradigm of dating and relationships, and I've been feeling this so much lately. So I am recording season three. Oh my gosh. I almost said season one, season three, episode one, in Kenya, my favorite place. My home, away from home. It kind of feels more like my home these days. I am sitting in this beautiful villa. It's called Villa gorilla. This is actually the villa I stayed in when I did my last retreat here in November, I'm back here, and I am here for two months. I'm here the first time I came to Kenya was last February. I was here for two weeks, and then I came for five weeks in November and December. And now I'm here for two months. I'm working on my book, which is lots of inspiration coming through that's coming along. It's really fun, and there's no place I'd rather be. There's just something about Kenya that has expanded me. So coming back to this word, expand beyond where I was before. And one of my favorite parts about it is that Kenya and Africa were really on my radar. Yeah, like, obviously I had, I had the, oh, I'll go on a safari in Africa one day when I'm like, 70, you know, an old, rich person or something like that. Like, it was a, it was more of a pipe dream, one day, one day, one day. But as most of you know who've been following me and my work for a long time, it's all about, you know, being unscripted and following those divine moments where life leads us somewhere unexpected, and where our heart gives us a signal that there's a desire there. And my practice, over and over and over again in my life, has been to follow that. And you know, I think about the Catherine leaving the podcast, it's been a similar thing. You know, life leads us to this new place, and my mind wants to kick and scream and say, No, this can't be happening. You have to stay. We have to do this forever. You know, five years is a really long time to commit to something, and how much both of our lives have changed since we started. And there was that small, younger part of me that wanted to hold on and just keep going forever. But the reality is, Catherine needed to redirect herself for the new place she's going to inside of herself as a mother, as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as a human, as a soul, right? She had to follow that pulse, follow that Call of her heart, and go that way, even though it seemed scary, even though it felt like she was giving something major up, even though part of her was kicking and screaming, she had to follow that, because that's what we teach. And what did that do for me? Ruptured something in me, but also is allowing me to experience new levels of myself and new new levels of what's available for me in my life, in my work. So there is the greatest gift when we can follow those places of expansion and live from live a life that is expanded. So circling back to dating and relationships, you've heard this a million times on the new truth podcast, but circling back to dating and relationships, most humans, most humans, are choosing their partners, are dating and connecting and meeting people and getting into relationships and getting married and having kids and doing the, you know, the the whole nine yards of the scripted path of what we've been taught to be. And I don't say that from judgment, like there's something wrong with the path itself. But the problem is not the path itself. The problem is what part of us is choosing what part of us is entering into a relationship. So when we talk about expanded love, the difference between regular relationships, you know, I would say like, oh, gee, love. Like, what our perception of love is, is our perception of love is this thing that we extract from other people and we get something, because we don't feel like we have it on our own, right? So that little part of us, it doesn't feel lovable or worthy or good enough, unless we have a boyfriend, unless we're engaged, unless we're getting married, unless we have kids, unless, unless, and less. And then we wake up one day, you know, crying in the closet. I've heard the story many times closets. Women love to cry in the closets. Walk in closet, I imagine. But you wake up one day crying in your closet and like so disconnected from everything. Why? Because a part of you that felt a lack internally, that felt disconnected from the source of who you are, chose that relationship, even if it's the right relationship for you, when your pattern is choosing the relationship like you're choosing the relationship from sacrifice, from fantasy, projecting into the future, from trying to control how fast the relationship goes, from isolation, shape shifting, all the different patterns that we talk about on all of our episodes. If you are choosing the relationship and getting into the relationship and dancing in that relationship with your partner from the Wounded Little girl who's trying to feel good enough, who's trying to feel lovable, who's trying to feel worthy and trying to fit in and trying to belong and trying to be like everyone else. If that part of you is choosing, you know it's sneaky too. You might not even know if it is. I have an expanded love masterclass coming up in April, so I'll tell you all about that soon, so you can get registered and understand your saboteur more intimately, because that's so important. But if that part of you is choosing your relationship, that is where you're entering the relationship from, and therefore you're going to be a perfect match to your partner's patterns as well, right? So now you have two wounded kids and a saboteur, right? And these patterns who are the perfect match, and that's going to cause a relationship of highs and lows. And, you know, trying to get something, trying to feel worthy, trying to feel like they love you, or you're beautiful or and you're trying to get something from them to feel good enough, and it's a bottomless pit. Have you ever noticed that it's a bottomless pit, right in relationship, when we're like, you know that feeling? Apparently, there's a funny meme going around. It's like, when you're dating and the guy doesn't text you, and you're in agony, and you're like. Suffering. You're like, fuck him, and you want to block him, and you're mad, and you're go through all the layers, and you feel worthless, and you are questioning things, and this is all your saboteur and little you. And then the moment he texts, all of a sudden, you feel happy again, you feel relieved, you feel calm, you feel excited, you feel you know, whatever, that's exactly what I'm talking about, right? It's this unsustainable, exhausting, roller coaster ride where you're sourcing that's actually what is happening in the old paradigm of love. We are sourcing

Kate Harlow: 00:10:34

our self worth from how the other person shows up or doesn't show up, how they give you love, or doesn't give you love, how they meet you or don't meet you, right? That we're trying to get something from them. Why? Because most women, and hopefully, if you've listened to the new truth podcast for a long time, this is not you. Hopefully you've you've got on board with everything we stand for. But most women have no connection to their own souls. They're so busy chasing everything from out there to feel good, you know, trying to get the next job, the next raise, the next corner office, the next guy, the next house, the next, you know, Botox injection, the next 10 pounds lost, trying to get these things to be validated and approved of by the world around them, right? Most women are operating from that place. So of course, when they're dating and in relationships, that's going to be the part leading. It's pretty rare unless you've been doing a lot of inner work, inner practices, getting to know your own soul, you know, listening to the new truth, working with Catherine and I are all the other amazing teachers and guides out there to help you get to know and get to fall in love with your beingness, with your own soul. Because here's the thing about expanded love, when you know yourself, when you have created a life that supports you flourishing, right? Imagine you're treating yourself like you are the greatest gift in the world, and taking care of yourself and tending to that those gifts, and practicing your gifts, and expressing your gifts and the gifts of who you are, and loving and honoring yourself and learning how to speak lovingly towards yourself, as opposed to abusive, right, like when you start to build a relationship. And this is the heroine within which we talked about in one of the episodes recently. But when you really start to live from that sovereign heroin woman who has everything already, right, she's just lives a life that's about following her yeses and deeply listening to the voice of the heart. Because when we say yes to our heart frequency. And I know Marianna and I talked a lot about this on the Valentine's Day episode as well, if you want to go back and listen to that, but when you're living from the frequency of your heart, it no longer becomes a question as to who I who am I? What like? What value do I bring? I hear women share this all the time, they start to dial back over functioning and taking care of everybody else, and then they start to question their value, right? Because we've been taught our value is based on what we do for other people, or what kind of work we do in the world, or, you know, what we're accomplishing, or what we look like, or what our relationship status is, right? All of these external things that are performative, that's what we've been taught. Our value is rooted in but let me tell you something else, sister, your value is in you, fully being who you are. And right now, in this moment, if you haven't gone on a deep journey, if you haven't come to the immersion. If you haven't, you know gone on a deep journey of getting to know your own soul. You don't know what that is. You can't feel it. I had a friend, a friend of mine in Kenya. I'm at Ola pangi farm again. I had the owner of Elizabeth from olapangi farm. I had a friend reflect my greatest gift. And I felt, I said to him, this is a friend that I go for walks with in the morning here. And I said, Wow, I feel like I feel so seen by you. And the statement was this, you are here to love the world, Kate, that is your greatest gift. And he was just reflecting the impact he's seen of me loving and connecting with every single person that works at olapangi, and every person I've met on this journey, and every guest that comes to the farm, and Elizabeth and her partner, Kieran, the owners of the farm, there is because that's my gift. That's not necessarily your gift, that's my gift, right? But I had to spend many, many, many years peeling back the layers of who I'm not and untethering from all the lies I was believing about myself, like I'm worthless, like I have nothing to offer, like I'm stupid, I'm not good enough. I everyone hates me if I'm not, like perfectly. Performing as the best friend in the world. You know, I was a massive self sacrificer, and really I hated myself internally. So to get that reflection, he he said that yesterday on our walk, and I almost cried. I mean, did cry a little bit, but I just felt like that is a reflection, like this person is seeing me now, because I am that gift, and in every facet of my life is in devotion to exactly that me, loving the world right in every way, me, every woman I work with, I see her soul. The moment you're on zoom with me. You'll show me your patterns, and I'll see your soul. I'll see I'll see right through all your patterns. I'll see right through all the protection, and I see people's souls, and I love them back to their wholeness. I love them back to their worthiness. I love them back to remembering who they are. And every single one of us has a gift like that, like that. It's like a superpower, and if you are not aware of it, if you are not living in deep reverence and devotion to being in relationship with your most important beloved of your life, which is you. You might not know that gift, and probably chances are the gift is so my old mentor used to say, it's like your superpower, but also your kryptonite, right? So if you're if your saboteur has a hold of the gift, which mine did. It was my kryptonite, that love ended up being like self loathing meanwhile, like sacrificing people pleasing over functioning, putting everyone else first, always ignoring my own body, always ignoring my needs. So that gift became my kryptonite. So when we are living in harmony and relationship to ourselves and our gifts and all of who we are, and we're stopped, like we're no longer participating in this ridiculous story that like, once I get that thing, then I'm going to feel good. Once I get that job, once I get that guy, once I get that ring, once I get that wedding, once I get that house, once I have kids, once, once, once, once, once, when we stop subscribing to that right? That's the script. It doesn't mean you're not going to have items on the script, but when you're choosing those items, and you're trying to feel good By sourcing from those items, it is a self fulfilling prophecy, and you won't know the real root of who you are. But when you start to live into your gifts, you start to devote your life to getting to know your soul. And how do you do that? Like dabble, follow what you're excited about. Someone invites you, let's say to a dance class or to a singing thing, or you you end up, you know, being drawn to going to a new country, or whatever that may be. When you follow, it's like the the clues of your heart. Every time you say yes to those little clues of your heart, and you follow them, and you start to get to know your own soul. You don't need validation anymore. You stop looking outside of yourself to be approved of, because you just feel good, right? It's like shifting gears into devoting your life to being absolutely 100% about you feeling good. I spent three hours this morning hanging out in this epic, epic swing chair that hangs from this giant fig tree, and I wrote, I'm right. I'm working on the book, but I was just writing it, writing down ideas in my journal, and I sang and I sang and I wrote and I sang and I meditated, and I just like was in bliss. That's my life. Like my whole life is designed to feel good, is designed to take care of myself, so that I am in alignment, right? And when you're in alignment, this is expanded love. When you are in alignment with all of who you are, you attract other people who are too and then you start to experience love beyond what you could ever have fathomed before, because it's not conditional love. It's not like extractive love, where you're waiting for them to give you something so you feel better, or you're mad all the time because you're not getting your needs met. You're not getting something from them. Like think about feel that energy, feel the frequency of like love trying to get something from someone, or feeling like you constantly have to give like from a sense of depletion, getting and giving versus love, that is like this overflowing fountain of who you are. That's who you are. By nature. You are Love and you're living from that place, then you become a magnet to other people who are living from that place and to people who are reflecting exactly where you're at within yourself. So it's like changing the radio station. If your radio station is currently set to saboteur archetypes, right? You're playing out the self sacrifice. You're a fantasy addict, you're isolating, you're not sharing your feelings, you're not being vulnerable, you're controlling. You're trying to control your future. You're trying to like you're perfectionist, you're shape shifting, you're pretending to be something you're not. All of these patterns. If you are on that radio station, if you're on that channel, you're going to attract everyone who's on that channel, friends, colleagues, bosses, um. Uh, romantic partners, dates, right? And that. And then you're, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You keep chasing the thing and you never get to eat it,

Kate Harlow: 00:20:09

versus changing the channel to the to the heart frequency, which is the Valentine's episode. The whole thing was about that. But this is expanded love, like expanding the love in your life by being the love, by treating yourself with love, by surrounding yourself with love. When you're on that channel, the people you attract and how deeply you will feel seen and understood and met by the people in your life is unfathomable from the other channel, right? If you've only known the channel of saboteur patterns of like friendships based on gossip and and triangling and complaining and victim mentality, if that's the only channel you know, you don't even know how it feels to experience a reciprocal relationship with with women or with men, where you feel met, where you feel heard and understood, where you feel deeply supported and valued and celebrated for your gifts and your uniqueness and not threatened and not competitive, right? There's, there's a totally different frequency that you can live your life by. And my intention for you is that this whole season, season three, that this inspires you to expand every facet of your life, to expand how you're showing up in your purpose, how you're showing up, where you're living, what you're saying yes to what you're saying no to how you're expanding into growing and working with mentors and teachers and learning how to access new parts of yourself and relating and building relationships from a different place. It's up to you. The only person who can shift how you're doing your relationships is you. So expanded love is about attracting people who match your energy. So if you keep telling the same story over and over again, like I, keep attracting unavailable men, how are you unavailable? How are you shut down from your vulnerability? How are you not being honest? How are you not showing up fully? What are you hiding? Look in the mirror. That's one of my favorite practices. Is mirror work, where you just as soon as you have a judgment about someone else, go look in the mirror. Because there's something in your frequency that is the perfect match for that dynamic. Maybe it's anxious attachment style, so you attract avoidant people. If you're anxious and you're constantly waiting for the text and waiting by the phone and waiting for the approval, right? That means a little girl is in charge. So with the expanded love method, that's a sovereign woman is dating, right? Sovereign woman doesn't need validation. A sovereign woman isn't waiting by the phone for the next text. A sovereign woman's life is already full. So when she attracts love, even if it's the most exquisite, extraordinary, beautiful love, which it will be right when you're coming from that place, she doesn't need it. So she's not attached. She can she can receive it. She can be with it. She can feel it. She can appreciate it, but she's not attached to it. She's not she's not co dependent, not needing it to feel good, right? That's the expanded love versus the saboteur love, which is the little girl trying to perform, trying to get chosen, trying to be, you know, like everyone else, trying to fit in, trying to belong by having what everyone else has, as opposed to coming from that rooted, anchored place within yourself. So things to watch out for when you're dating and in relationships when you're in that old paradigm is having expectations and constantly being disappointed. Right? If you have all these stories and all these expectations, that is a huge indicator that you're in control or energy, that you're trying to control this other person and where it's going, rather than being in fascination, curiosity, being present with what is being present with yourself and your own feelings, taking responsibility for them, right? Are you showing up on dates? I mean, Catherine, and I've said this a million times, are you showing on dates depleted, or are you showing up on dates already satiated and full, and if you're if you're feeling like you're constantly depleted, well maybe it's time to look at the bigger picture. Where is your Where are you out of alignment in your life? Because so many of us just live a big lie and we push it to the future. One day I'll leave my job. One day, one day I'll do the thing that feels good, one day, one day, one day, one day, I'll leave this relationship that's so out of alignment, right? We put it off in the hopes that one day we'll solve it our future self one day will, will, will know how to deal with that, versus me actually facing it right now. So this is everything to be able to sit with. What's my truth right now, if you haven't listened to Catherine my final episode, endings in I think it was called letting go endings and beginnings. We did that third week of February, and it's a really powerful episode, talking about how important it is, like I like I started with at the beginning of this episode, in order for us to really become. The woman we're becoming, we have to be willing to let go of what what's no longer aligned, and that's going to be scary to part of you, right? Part of you wants everything to stay the same. Part of you thinks it's safer in just doing what you've always done and and yet, there's that saying, If I always do what I've always done, I'll always get what I've always got, right? The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. If you are not making new choices in your life that are bold and scary, they're going to be scary. If you are not making new choices in your life, you are living from your patterns. You're living from your limitation, and therefore not living the fullness and the most expansive life that you could live. Life Life has so much to offer you. This I went camping just last week. It was the most extraordinary experience, and I was totally afraid, as I was afraid of staying in the tent, doing the writer program, artist in residence program here at Ola pangi farm,

Kate Harlow: 00:26:01

I was terrified. We were going to a national reserve called Samburu National Reserve, and we were going camping amongst the lions and the leopards and the elephants and the giraffes and the rhinos and the hippos. And like wild camping, this is not a camp site. We went camping with the owner of olapenki. They have all the all the setup, all the stuff, and and went and just pitched our tents on this river where elephants were crossing. It was so extraordinary, but my mind was so afraid. I was so afraid to walk through that threshold. I thought I wouldn't be able to handle it. I had all of these stories, but I'm at this point, I no longer subscribe to following Regina, my saboteurs newsletters. I don't listen to her. I don't read her newsletters anymore. I acknowledge her, but then I come back to my center, my sovereignty, and make the choice that feels most aligned to my heart. And it was aligned for me to go and I'm so grateful I did, because that was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had. It was so profound. We were laying in bed at the tent at night, heard so many hyenas, heard so many lions, heard so many like all sorts of creatures you can only imagine. And you know, sleeping under and I wasn't under the stars, but under the stars, sleeping in nature so peaceful. We went on game drives every day, and Elizabeth, the owner, and I sat on the roof of the safari jeeps, holding on. And it was so beautiful. I was crying all day. We had this moment where we witnessed these mommy, Mom elephants take their babies across the river, and they were communicating with other elephants across the river to help get the babies across. And the babies were tiny, like maybe one month old, and I was bawling. It was so profound. I think that's why I love Africa so much. For those of you who don't know much about it or haven't been here, Africa, to me, is expansion, and really Kenya, the northern Kenya and Ethiopia are known to be the birthplaces of humanity. And when I'm here, I feel that in every cell of my being, and there's something that is so my nervous system feels so calm, and I feel so expanded. My vision grows, because everything is so open here, wide open spaces, so much nature, so much beauty. It's rugged, it's wild, and, you know, even the way people live so much more traditionally, still, tribally and community. And I'm here at Ola pangi, living in community, and, you know, working outside and spending my whole day outside, that is what life is about, right? So, like, it's kind of hard when you're living in the Western world and you're in a box. I don't say this with judgment. This is just it's, it is what it is. But you're in a box. Right your house is a box. You're probably on a box all day, on your phone, on zoom right in a box, on a box. And, you know, in these little nuclear families, where everyone's so isolated from each other, and everyone's like looking at looking at their neighbors next door, thinking they have it all, and they've got it all figured out, and they've got all the money and the happiness and the beauty and the whatever, looking around, comparing ourselves to everyone else. Meanwhile, people are so alone and lonely and depressed and anxious because they're so contracted, right? If you're living in your saboteur, you're contracted, because you're you will naturally have anxiety because you're going against your truth all the time. But I even think of the contracted nature of homes and apartments and how how small they like, dark and enclosed and square at OLAP pangi, um, everything's designed. It's it's a biophilic design award winning and biophilic means Biophilia is about building buildings that are in harmony to nature. So all of the buildings are curved, everything. The walls are rounded, so many windows, the ceilings are really high. There's thatched roofs. It's like everything is to mimic nature, so that even if you are inside, you still feel like you're with nature. So. Yeah, and it's not destructive to nature, and it's not destructive to the nature of of being a human being, right? Because we are nature, we are animals, and we need to have expanded views. So if you're loving and living and dating and relating from your saboteur, your views are not expanded. They're limited. They're small. So zoom out, you know, even if you can go for a hike up a mountain or go catch a gondola, or go, like, go to places where you can zoom, like, physically zoom out and get a feel for what needs to change in your life, because you are meant to expand, and your heart is so big, and when you live from the frequency of the heart, you need to have the biggest spaces to be in, because your heart is so big and it needs to be able to expand. So that is the new paradigm of dating and relationships. And life is actually remembering who we are and living from the expanded nature of our beings, which means as always taking radical responsibility for your choices in your life and choosing to notice what does expand you and what contracts you. And when you're contracted, are you contracted just because your body reacted? Are you contracted because of the story you're believing about the contraction? Right? So be really mindful. Get to know your saboteur and all her stories and protective mechanisms and ways that she shows up. The masterclass, expanded love masterclass, is going to be the week of April 7, so put it in your calendar. It's five days. Every single day. I teach a different saboteur archetype. If you've done it before, it always has more value to do it again and again. I'm going to talk way more about it closer to the date, but just planting the seed. Now, if you want to block off those dates, I always go live at eight o'clock Pacific every day for five days, and it's such a beautiful reminder of like, getting intimate with the saboteur. And so like, once you know your saboteur so intimately, she won't have so much power over you, and now you can date and have relationships from that expanded, sovereign, heartfelt place, as opposed to your patterns, choosing partners and then later feeling disappointed because you're they're not meeting your expectations or what you think they should. That's the old paradigm. That is the old paradigm. So excited for this season, I have an amazing guest coming on next week, and as always, spread the word to all your gal pals, all your sisters share the new truth podcast. We are going places, and I'm so excited. We'd love to hear from you. If you have any desired episodes, please send me a message. Love to hear from you and enjoy the episode and we'll see you next week.