Ep 206 The P.E.R.L.O.V.E Forumula with guest Holly McNeill
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold goal crushers. I'm super excited about this episode. I feel like you're really going to enjoy the story of my guest. So let me introduce Holly at 34. She was a successful architect. Couldn't stop the perfect world she created from crashing down. And from this low point, she vowed to do better and spent the next 20 years making good on that vow across the country.
Sara Mayer: She explored spirituality, neuroscience, [00:01:00] psychology, and a deep dive into the Buddhist practices, her quest would evolve into the creation of the Pearl love formula, a transformational set of mindfulness. and meditation practices. She now imparts as a seasoned coach, teacher, and lecturer. Holly, welcome to the show.
Sara Mayer: I'm so excited to have you. Thank
Holly McNeill: you, Sara. I'm excited to be here. Every time I hear you, somebody read my bio, it just, I have to remind myself, Good job. I've come a long way baby from that low point. So thank you so much for having me today. Oh,
Sara Mayer: thanks for being on the show.
Sara Mayer: And there's so many lessons in, the life journeys that everybody goes through, but also when we hit those low
Holly McNeill: points. Yeah, unfortunately, it seems that we do have to, even in the world with climate change, whatever, it seems like we have to hit those low points before we want to make a change.
Holly McNeill: And I certainly did that. Like I said in my bio, [00:02:00] I had everything you're supposed to need to be happy. I was an associate principal at a large firm doing work in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and for Stanford. I had the perfect house, career, life, everything you could have wanted, but I was doing it for the wrong reasons.
Holly McNeill: I was doing it to appease my anxiety, to prove to myself that I was worthy and lovable things I learned as a child that I wasn't. And so at 34, all of that came, came crashing down. And I knew there had to be better. And that's the beautiful thing about why I made a vow to life, God, Buddha, the universe, anyone out there listening, help me and I'll change and give me a second chance.
Holly McNeill: And until I was given that second chance, and when you make a vow and when you make an intention, I had no idea, Sarah, how to get out of where I was, how stuck and isolated I was. But if you really, truly believe there has to be better, a way will show up. [00:03:00] And that's exactly what happened for me. And I'm so grateful to be here today.
Sara Mayer: I love that. So if you truly believe a way has to be better, there is a way will show up.
Holly McNeill: That's right. You don't have to know how to get to where you want to go. You just have to believe it. Your mind is that powerful. Believe there's a path and watch for it to show up. There was a quote by Rumi that's not exactly that, but pretty close.
Holly McNeill: It's very deep in, in philosophies and in, in cultural and religions and way back wisdom that, really, if you put your mind to it. You just need to be aware and available to to react, to respond to what shows up.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. It's really interesting. You bring this up because you seemingly had everything and you use the phrase that perfect life and everything that you should have wanted.
Sara Mayer: And society puts those pressures on us, even as young kids were asked, what do you [00:04:00] want to be when you grow up? Like they're five, they don't know what
Holly McNeill: that means. Exactly. Exactly. In fact, in my teachings, I hope someday to have a foundation or somehow to where we can teach kids early on, that they have the power to create their lives exactly how they want to be based on their thoughts, emotions, and feelings, not based on the conditioning that we get, because we get it so early.
Holly McNeill: And often our parents who love us have their own conditioning that they're also dealing with. And so you get these ideas about yourself that aren't true, but you But over time, because we repeat these ideas to ourselves, we believe them as true and take them on as our identity. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it starts with, I think it comes from a place of love, making sure that our kids are, able to do the things they want to do, but it does put that pressure on to get the house, to get married by a certain.
Sara Mayer: Age to have children to, have that [00:05:00] wedding, whatever it is. And then, sometimes we find ourselves in a life that we don't even like.
Holly McNeill: Yeah. Yeah. And I think this generation, the younger generation isn't feeling that pressure as much, but certainly I felt that I was good at what I did and I did it well and I was very successful, but it wasn't.
Holly McNeill: It wasn't joyful for me, and so I made two intentions to the world in my early 40s, because about 10 years into my journey, I started seeing that I would have something to say. And I put two intentions in my early 40s. The first was to retire from architecture before I turned 50. And the second was to have the time and space to write about what I thought.
Holly McNeill: I knew back then. As intentions go, I retired three days before I turned 50. And in 2017, thank you, I sat down to write. But it wouldn't be until we were all sequestered in our homes during the COVID pandemic. That I had been writing, about my journey, and I had these [00:06:00] waking monologues, I called them, and I printed out a book proposal for a manuscript I've been working on for Hay House, and I looked over, and I could see it.
Holly McNeill: It was amazing, and there's been a few of these aha moments where the lights came on. It's like this veil was lifted, and I could see this and it's this path, this very securitous path that I had just been on for 20 years, but a very straightforward kind of dialect from that it's very doable and very applicable and there's some very simple truths in it from all those different modalities that I looked at that back up these practices and so I came up with the acronym, Her Love, Pledge, Evaluate, Recognize, which is the more cerebral part of the formula where we start to grow our awareness In our mind of the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that we've created our lives from and then locate open vest and expand the more spiritual part of the formula that where we open our hearts and expand beyond our condition limits.
Holly McNeill: Yeah, I've been [00:07:00] out there teaching those. I spoke at a mindfulness expo in Anaheim last month. I've been guesting on podcasts and yeah, it's been a joy, a long journey and it hasn't always been a joy. Let me tell you when you first. Go to make change you will reap, you'll meet with resistance because the mind, the subconscious.
Holly McNeill: So we have, each of us have like 6, 000 to 70, 000 thoughts a day. Most of those. I know. I know. When I tell people that it's yeah, we have those a day. Most of them are negative and our brain takes in 11 million bits of information every second. But our conscious mind can only process 40 or 50 of those bits, right?
Holly McNeill: So 95 percent of what we've been, what we've been, what we've been creating, the habits and patterns goes on below our level of awareness in our subconscious mind. And that subconscious mind is no questions asked, right? So if it's negative, if you have negative patterns that we're not even [00:08:00] aware of, we will take those on and it will protect those, right?
Holly McNeill: So when you try to go to change them. You'll meet with resistance. The mind protects its programming in a way, a survival mechanism. So I know I'm throwing a lot at you right now, but it's so interesting. Yeah. So it, the goal of per love is to start to become aware. Of those patterns, right?
Holly McNeill: Because we are, we not only are living from them and reinforcing them if we're unaware of them we take them on, we identify them with them. We identify as them as that anxiety, as that pain, as that person, that's not good enough. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: So go back through it. So the P stands
Holly McNeill: for. So you start with pledge, right?
Holly McNeill: You pledge to grow your awareness. It starts with one minute, six times a day, where you just take one minute, six times a day to stop, take a deep breath and watch what's going on in your mind. So often we [00:09:00] don't pay attention to what's going on in our mind. So what we're, we watch, we're not judging our thoughts.
Holly McNeill: We're not trying to push them away. We're just. Noticing. Okay. So people ask. Go ahead.
Sara Mayer: Okay. So pledge is about really taking in what's going on and then is it making a statement
Holly McNeill: or? So what you're doing in pledge is, so the subconscious mind is habit based and all those negative habits. So you are creating a habit by doing something over and over again, six times a day of watching your mind.
Holly McNeill: So that even though you do it once. One, one time, one minute, six times a day, eventually it becomes automatic, which is what a habit is. So you're creating, in pledge, you're creating the habit of watching your mind. That's simply all that pledge is. You need to have this habit and if you do something over and over and over again as we do without even knowing it with all our anxiety and thoughts of unworthiness then those things we start to become habit and [00:10:00] the neuroscience part of this is that, the more nerve cells that fire together wire together.
Holly McNeill: So if you start to do something often enough it starts to get, it gets actually like conchitra, set in your brain and it becomes a habit. So in Pledge, we are creating a habit of growing that awareness.
Sara Mayer: Wow. And that's probably so powerful in itself, even without the rest of the process.
Holly McNeill: Yeah, just knowing that the subconscious mind is it's not going to ask if patterns are bad or good It's just going to go for it, right?
Holly McNeill: And if you created a bunch of things like mine was anxiety guilt Unworthiness, you're going to be living your life through that lens. Yeah. And so in growing that awareness, and you can then go into e evaluate and start to look at what these patterns are.
Sara Mayer: Okay. So first it's really about becoming aware on a more regular basis throughout your day and then evaluating.
Sara Mayer: Now what would that look [00:11:00] like? How would somebody go about evaluating?
Holly McNeill: So that is E is the most difficult part of the formula. In some ways, you know intellectually what some of your patterns might be. And so while P is one and done, you create the habit and you're good to go.
Holly McNeill: In E, you go back to it in layers. There's a poem by Robert Bly called The Long Black Bag We Dragged Behind Us. It says, as you get older and people don't like things about you, you're trying to please your parents, you take these parts of you that you think are unacceptable and you stuff them in this bag.
Holly McNeill: And depending on what happens, most of us don't get through the first 30 years of our lives without some kind of trauma or tragedy. Some of that stuff can be deepest in the bag. So I tell people in E Evaluate to start with the easy stuff. You might be a procrastinator or what we're doing in Evaluate is looking for targets.
Holly McNeill: Targets for change and you can start with some easy stuff and then come back for the harder stuff later. So I know for example [00:12:00] anxiety, always a big one of mine. It's easy to start with or like I said, procrastination. Yeah. And this is the time where if you're journaling, you know, and also when you're watching your mind, what are those thoughts?
Holly McNeill: You start to write down and evaluate what are those thoughts that keep coming up? And sometimes we know them intellectually, but we don't say, Wow, I keep telling myself this. So journaling, talking to a friend or a therapist, but in evaluating, to start with, you just need to pick one or two because I'm sure I had plenty of things in my black bag to do it.
Holly McNeill: Yeah.
Sara Mayer: I really do that analogy because it. Puts it in perspective of, how it all got there and why we may be stuck in our life. Because we have this anchor we're dragging around with probably an anchor in the bag.
Holly McNeill: Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yes, absolutely. It can get long and heavy and it can wear you down and you don't even know it's there.
Holly McNeill: You don't want to look at it. You don't want to show others,[00:13:00] I tell people to go into the bag with kindness and compassion. But also with honesty, and as best you can without judgment is often low down in the bag. We're often judging ourselves very harshly. Yeah. So as much as you can go into this process, this whole process with kindness and compassion because we weren't taught.
Holly McNeill: As children, the workings of the mind and how we are much more than our, what I call our TEF, our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. We get so enmeshed in them. We don't realize that we are so much more than that to go into this process with kindness and compassion. And it's going to help open that up a little bit for you.
Holly McNeill: And again, if you have this intention to change and to find that peace and happiness. You'll find a path if whether it's per love or some other path will show up for you. Yeah,
Sara Mayer: and so then what's
Holly McNeill: R? R is then recognize these patterns as they come up in your daily life. Yeah, we created our habit for change.
Holly McNeill: We've [00:14:00] identified a few targets. We created our habit of watching the mind. We have identified a few targets for change and in R we recognize them as they come up in our daily life. There's a moment when it first arises that you want to catch it before it drags you down like being in the jaws of a mad dog and throws you this way or that or takes you deep down the rabbit hole of despair, which happens very quickly, right?
Holly McNeill: You want to catch it and recognize it for what it is, for a thought that's probably not true, right? That you created, right? And once you recognize it, you can, you expect it, you welcome it, but you don't. Engage in it. Now this is I tell people this usually doesn't work at first because we're so enmeshed in it.
Holly McNeill: So there's this what I call an indirect way to recognize. And that is 10 and that is this, and this is something that with practice you'll see can really be helpful, but acting in ways [00:15:00] contrary to your patterns, aids in helping you create space between you and your thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
Holly McNeill: Because if you think about it, your neuro net is wired together with all this anxiety and pain and depression, but nerve cells that no longer fire together, no longer wired together. So if you're actually practicing self compassion or kindness or forgiveness, you're creating new pathways, such as you are with with pledging to watch your mind.
Holly McNeill: And so you're starting to, so those other nerve cells start to break up. And from that distance, you can see them, you can start to catch them and it, like anything, it takes practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. So it's pledge, evaluate and recognize. And I think that's probably really eye opening, right? It's a, it's something that you're doing on a regular basis now.
Sara Mayer: It's not something that you only do once a year, like new year's coming around time to evaluate my life. That's [00:16:00] right. That's right. It's more a daily
Holly McNeill: practice. Yeah, I tell, and that's perfect, Sarah. I tell people if there's only one thing you take away from this talk or anything about per love, is that if you want to make a change in your life, you must do it over and over and over and over again.
Holly McNeill: You must listen to this episode three times. You might listen to it once. And you go, yeah, that was really interesting, but three times, even remember it eight times for it to sink in and 21 days to make something a habit, because we're doing that automatically, right? With our negative stuff every day.
Holly McNeill: So we have to start to counteract that. So it doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take consistency and attention for sure.
Sara Mayer: And it's a, it brings it to the forefront every day so that every day that bag that you have, you're going into, maybe not on a huge deep level for a couple hours every day, but you're going into it and you're really breaking that stuff up.
Sara Mayer: And I imagine that then becomes [00:17:00] more manageable and more, as you said, automatic, it becomes a habit.
Holly McNeill: Exactly. And so when you do break this stuff up, there's these, it creates this space for these aha moments, these moments of peace to come through and you're absolutely right.
Holly McNeill: It becomes something that that you understand as thoughts, emotions and feelings rather than something you're enmeshed in. And this understanding is so contrary to the way that we were raised that again, it's something that you really need to practice. And tend to understand, but you have the power to change these patterns.
Holly McNeill: And again, the subconscious mind will not ask any questions. So if you put in a new pattern of self compassion or self love, it's going to start to bring that back up to you. Yeah. So yeah, it makes it, I found, and then you're right on, you're right on there that Of all the practices in per love, PER seems to be the missing link.
Holly McNeill: Between [00:18:00] stuck and isolated to the door of self exploration. Yeah. We're so entwined in all this teff that we don't know that there's so much more for us to explore in our own kind of self, in our own true nature.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. And what's really interesting, everybody, as you mentioned, has a bag.
Sara Mayer: I'll use an example. When I was in an art class in probably middle school, I wanted to do this pottery thing of a horse. I was into horses. Mine did not look like a horse at all. Somebody in the class, a kid, but I don't know, they're like 11, they're probably Picasso or whoever they said you're just not very creative.
Sara Mayer: And so that is something I shoved in my bag and I never took another art class again. And that stuck with me. And then one year I do a theme every year and it was about tapping into my creativity. [00:19:00] And so I did all these things that I was like I'm not going to be good at it cause I'm not very creative.
Sara Mayer: And here I am like in my. 30. I think I was in my thirties at that point. And I took a pottery class. I took a painting class and I found out that I actually was very creative.
Holly McNeill: That's an excellent example, right? Because it doesn't take much to, to shove that part of you in a bag. Like you said, that one guy's comment and you shoved your whole creativity.
Holly McNeill: In your back for how many years it doesn't a little 11 year olds, right? Exactly. And we're so there are formative years, and so it doesn't take much, but we, then, like you said, you believe that I am not creative. Yeah. And that becomes, like you said, a pattern until you pull it back out.
Holly McNeill: Look at it. Wait a minute. This was just some kid. What did he know? Yeah. And look at what, what I've done. And we, and of course people call those limiting beliefs,
Sara Mayer: right. Yeah. Yeah. And so now the
Holly McNeill: love part. So [00:20:00] love is the more spiritual part. And so it was a purr takes you to the door of self exploration and as you, like I said, as you start to create space between yourself and your thoughts, emotions, and feelings, you start to find this kind of this authentic silence and it's what meditation is all about.
Holly McNeill: This space where your aha moments, your peace will come through. You can feel it. There's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a vast realm of intelligence, according to Eckhart Tolle, beyond thought. So love is to locate a little bit of that space, right? And at first you can just you just might locate a bit of it and you use it as an object of meditation.
Holly McNeill: And when you locate it and you might, and you meditate on it, you might notice that it's expandable. It's maybe a little bit beyond this body and mind, but then once you locate it you drop from your head to your heart. Your head to your heart. This is the true nature of your mind. Your true nature is in your heart.
Holly McNeill: And then you open your heart. You actually practice opening your heart. And people [00:21:00] say that It's said that we highly underuse our power of imagination, but what we think becomes real. So if you actually imagine opening your heart, you will feel this flow, right? You'll feel this natural flow. It comes through your heart.
Holly McNeill: And then in then v is to best invest in what flows through there. There's unconditional love, universal compassion, and infinite wisdom. And finally, then and you vest in there. You spend as much time as you can in that flow of an open heart, but also you vest in the obstacles that come up in your life because while your small, isolated self is using all your thoughts, emotions, and feelings to keep you fearful.
Holly McNeill: Your omnipresent, omni universal self is showing you in every person, place and thing, everything that's going on in your life, what you need to set yourself for.
Sara Mayer: Wow. And that's very powerful.
Holly McNeill: Yeah. Yeah. And finally, then we eex expand beyond our conditioned limits. Once you understand that [00:22:00] the mind is conditioned, it's a tool that's conditioned, it's a bio computer computers are based off of the mind, that, we can start to create that space, understand what these conditions are, we can expand beyond our conditioned limits, and I say in the end, finding true happiness might be a little more subtle than people expect, when we realize That you and the world around you are one in the same.
Holly McNeill: They say that it's hard to really understand what it means to become awakened and fully enlightened. But I tell people when you stop seeking, you have arrived.
Sara Mayer: Say that again.
Holly McNeill: When it's hard to it said that true enlightenment or understanding what awakening fully means is beyond words.
Holly McNeill: But when you stop seeking, you have arrived.
Sara Mayer: Wow. That's really powerful.
Holly McNeill: Yeah. And it's, but even if you're not that, and I try to keep religion out of it because there's a lot of people, the spiritual part is there for you if you want, but the [00:23:00] cerebral part is really the three simple practices to transformation, so however far you want to take it, the formula is meant to go back and forth as many times as you want or need to, and take it as far as you'd like to go.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. So you, this was 34, you were at your low point, you discovered a whole different world, a whole different you probably, and now you're doing this, you're helping others. How did that evolve from your own transformation into helping others?
Holly McNeill: It wasn't easy. So again, you're going to, when I first decided to make this bow, I, it catapulted me out of a mutually manipulative and controlling marriage and into an eight year battle for my children.
Holly McNeill: It would take, and at the same time, while working single mom, working full time it would take everything I had at the time, which wasn't much to prevent my permanent alienation. From [00:24:00] them. I was alienated from them for a while, but been making this vow and keeping it. Like I said, things started showing up a book after book.
Holly McNeill: And if I had a question, the next thing I read was the answer. I was so open. To finding that truth. So for the first, I don't know, 10 years, I was just surviving, just and so and then there came a moment, like I said, when I realized it was in 2009. It's wow, I really have something. I'm learning something here.
Holly McNeill: And what I loved about it so much, Sarah, is that all the different modalities that I learned from all pointed back to those few simple truths. Which is that we're not our thoughts, emotions, and feelings, that we're so much more than that. The thoughts alone are powerless. If we don't engage with them they, they simply like a wave in the ocean.
Holly McNeill: They'll come up and they'll dissipate. It's when we grab onto them that we struggle. And that the subconscious mind is it's pliable and it's changeable and it's a tool [00:25:00] for you. So it was a long process and obviously I'm hoping that people don't need 20 years to get here to where I was, but back 20 years ago, there wasn't as much right as of these podcasts and this stuff, but there's a lot now there's a lot there's a lot of ways back to these truths.
Holly McNeill: I love that all of the things I learned pointed back to these same truths. And what you find when you go down this path and you train your mind, it's all about mind training, is that you find this freedom and power to create your life however you'd like to do it. And this is how I'd like to create my life.
Holly McNeill: And so here I
Sara Mayer: am, right? Wow. That's so powerful. And the fact that you were able to go through all of that to truly design what you want your life to be is just incredible.
Holly McNeill: Bye. Bye. Bye. Yeah, I have no regrets. It was tough. I do regret, what my Children went through. But I knew [00:26:00] every time I was faced with something I had to, I'd find my strength and I would maybe turn around, shut the door and crumble.
Holly McNeill: But every time I had, I, in, in, in fighting for my kids, I had to realize there was somebody other than my self absorbed, unhappy, anxiety filled self. I had to care for others. I was alienated from my father as a child, so I knew the repercussions of it, which is what kept me in it. So everything is a line to show you what you need to set yourself free.
Holly McNeill: So I don't lament any of it. And I'm happy to be here and I get I wish I was 20 years younger, of course, but I'm so grateful to be here and understand how we're all connected and we all can, help each other to find this type of freedom and creativity. Wow.
Sara Mayer: I love your story. It's so powerful.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for sharing and being open and honest on this episode and then sharing the per love formula. I think [00:27:00] that is something that many people can truly benefit from. And if somebody is listening to this show and they're like, okay, I need to connect with Holly. How could they connect with you and what might
Holly McNeill: they expect?
Holly McNeill: Okay, so I have, if you go to perlo formula.com, P-E-R-L-O-V-E formula.com, and you sign up for our newsletter I send out a monthly newsletter with insights on the practices. I, I'll take a particular practice and highlight it for the month, and also I'll list podcasts like this one on there, but also you'll get a link to a class called the Loss Formula to Happiness.
Holly McNeill: A free link that takes you through the formula right from P to E and I suggest that if you're interested you take that and you listen to it not just once but over and over. It's free. You can download it. Just sign up for our newsletter, which helps grow the practices if you sign up for our newsletter.
Holly McNeill: And if you're interested in more, we have a perfect practice forum. [00:28:00] It's twice a month. It's 25 to join and we get to we meet the first and last Tuesday of the month online to go through each practice. We have different modalities. It's first starts with the basics. Then from the outside in simple and obvious in the middle way and in January, you can join any time.
Holly McNeill: But in January, we're starting over from the beginning. So a great time to start if you want to check it out. You can email me at holly at per love formula. com with any questions. And yeah, I love it. I'd love to have you join the forum, but at a minimum, listen to the class. And if it speaks to you, just really, if anything speaks to you personally, Listen to it over and over.
Sara Mayer: Great. And I'll go ahead and drop that link for the newsletter. So you can sign up and get that class as well for free in the show notes. So if you're listening, go ahead and head on over to the show notes to grab that. Thank you so much for doing this episode. I [00:29:00] truly learned a lot and I appreciate your story and your
Holly McNeill: journey.
Holly McNeill: Excellent. I'm glad. And it's wonderful. And like I said, For love is just one path. But as an architect, I guess my gift is clarity, trying to, tell people that I am working on getting mindfulness meditation training certificate doing coming through the back way. But anyone can do this right.
Holly McNeill: Anyone who sets their mind to training their mind and creating the life they want can do it. So thank you so much, Sarah for this opportunity. I appreciate you and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Oh,
Sara Mayer: thank you so much. All right, everyone. You can crush your goals and everything that gets in the way.
Sara Mayer: So let's get to it.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community.
Sara Mayer: I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.[00:30:00]
