What happens when we swap our desperate (conditioned) grasping for certainty for a curious(ly awkward) embrace of confusion?

This episode invites you into a radical reframing of confusion—not as weakness or failure, but as an appropriate, even necessary response to our rapidly changing world. Cultural messaging tells us confusion should be avoided, fixed, overcome. That if we’re confused, somehow we’re failing life! Abso-f$%king-lutely not.

Through personal stories, practical guidance, poetry, and more, let's illuminate how confusion can lead us to clarity, self-trust, and connection when approached more consciously. You'll learn to differentiate between conscious confusion and unconscious rumination, with tools to lovingly disrupt those unconscious loops. Releasing certainty and embracing conscious confusion is a practice to disorient us from the systems designed to keep us good consumers and bad rebels.

• Learn more about Dana & Leah’s Fall Equinox retreat in Joshua Tree! (https://bit.ly/leah-dana-retreat)
• Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
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• Love this Being Well episode on rumination!
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😭 Sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock 🤖 theme song ~ Kat Ottosen 🪱 cover art ~ Natalee Miller ♨️

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@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

Death anxiety lurks beneath virtually everything we do. Our capitalistic drive for endless growth, our political polarization, even our addictions to consumption – all stem from our desperate attempts to buffer ourselves against the terror of our finite existence! Dr. Sheldon Solomon, pioneering psychologist behind Terror Management Theory, explains how when death is on our minds (ie, during pandemics, live-streamed g3n0c1de, climate collapse, wars, etc), humans cling more fervently to cultural worldviews and become susceptible to authoritarian leaders promising security.

Death denialism explains so much about why/how fascism rises predictably alongside economic inequality and mortality salience. Yet facing our mortality offers profound liberation!

In this episode, which is part 2 of Season 2’s “Death Boop with a Side of Death Cult,” I finally interview Sheldon Solomon. Honestly, we have a great time together discussing death, aliveness, fascism, and the true delight in becoming radically inconsequential.

This practical invitation to turn toward our deepest fears, to embrace both personal transformation and systemic change, to confront the paradox of finding joy amid global upheaval, is perhaps to realize that our shared mortality offers the very foundation for building something more beautiful together.

~ RESOURCES ~

• Sheldon Solomon has no internet presence — AKA RADICAL INSIGNIFICANCE — and is a professor at Skidmore College, a co-author of In the Wake of 9/ 11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.
• Free guided grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• All Roads Studio
• How Your Story Sets You Free, with the Million Person Project
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller //

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

What if breaking the rules isn't just about random acts of rebellion, but a sacred, messy practice essential for personal and collective liberation? Let’s explore the nuances of disobedience, how it (and obedience) lives in our bodies, and plunge into why we must regularly practice breaking smaller rules to prepare ourselves for breaking bigger rules when it truly matters–AKA right friggin’ now!

From dealing with homophobic lighting™, to reclaiming our attention by fondling plants as our to-do lists (and our collective productivity-shame) try to kill us, small rebellions build our "rule-breaking muscles." As the systems around us create increasingly narrow parameters for living, we must resist being groomed into compliance and reconnect with our deepest inner knowing.

This episode is a love note to all the small and spontaneous rebellions...we also throw open the doors to the Church of Plantfondling, a sacred space of disobedient prayer, cultivating more-than-human relationships, dancing with the layers of reality and our aliveness, and calling in divine guidance along the way. Let’s get in some good trouble together, crybabies!

Subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review. Join Dana every Friday at 10 am PT on IG @danablix for a live guided grounding meditation (and #plantfondling).

~ RESOURCES ~

• Cy blocking the NG convoy on its way to LA!
• New report on undocumented immigrants paying higher tax rate than billionaires and corps (by Americans for Tax Fairness)
• Know Your Rights (re ICE) from National Lawyers Guild LA
• Follow the Global March to Gaza
• Free guided grounding meditation—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• Beautiful Trouble — your troublemaker toolbox for effervescent rebellion!
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller //

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭