#75 Conscious Communication: Speaking with Love, Listening with Presence

This is an episode about conscious communication - and how easily it slips away in everyday life.

Kelly’s husband has just taken early retirement and for the first time they’re together full time in Ibiza. Sounds dreamy, right? And it is - but it’s also brought new challenges in how they speak, listen, and respond to each other.

In this heartfelt episode, Kelly shares what she’s learning about communication from both a practical and energetic perspective - from the Throat Chakra and Non Violent Communication, to the 5:1 relationship ratio, Bach Flower Remedies, journaling, and the Violet Flame.

It’s an honest exploration of patterns, triggers, and the journey to speak with more love, compassion, and awareness.

If you long for more peace, harmony, and kindness - at home and in the world - it all begins with how we use our voices.

Follow on Instagram: @kellyprojectme
Facebook: facebook.com/myprojectme
Join the newsletter for 17 Books to Light Your Path and Kelly's soul-ful love notes: kellypietrangeli.com
Join Soul Explorers: kellypietrangeli.com/soulexplorers

Email: hello@myprojectme.com

Thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing the Project Me Podcast!

Read the Transcript for this Episode below:

 Episode 75 of the Project Me Podcast.

Hi, I'm Kelly Pie, and this podcast is designed to be an entertaining, inspirational, personal growth journey. Each episode goes in a mostly chronological order as a piece together. The books, modalities, people, and experiences that have fallen onto my life path exactly when I needed them. And how often I resisted the very things I needed the most or didn't see the gifts contained in the challenges until later.

By sharing my stories, I hope to inspire you to reflect on your life path. What are the seeming coincidences that have led you to where you are today? What are the hidden gifts within your challenges and what magic is out there waiting for you as you let go of resistance and follow your own breadcrumb trail?

At the end of each short episode, there's an opportunity for you to breathe and reflect on how my story relates to your own life. You can find more inspiration on my website, kelly pie.com. Hello. I hope you're doing really well. I recently received an email from Cindy, one of my newsletter subscribers.

She said, your last podcast on Apple is dated like August 28th. Is that the latest? And I thought, surely not. Let me check. And oh my goodness, she was right. I realized my entire September and October passed by it in a rather wonderful haze of friends and family here visiting. And it's been the start of a whole new chapter from a husband and I.

He's been negotiating for early retirement for so long, and he's finally been released from his 33 year corporate career, no longer commuting between Madrid and iha. So as of October 1st, we are now full-time together on the beautiful Spanish island of Iha, our true, happy place. Back in episode 27, I shared the story of us becoming empty nesters and manifesting our dream home mini Iha in 2020.

It's taken just a few more years for us both to be here together full time. And while he's received such lovely words of congratulations on his early retirement, from everyone we know, I've been struck by how many have also made comments to the tune of uh oh. Now you're gonna be at home. Driving Kelly nuts.

Ha ha ha. And several of my friends have also wondered how I feel about Luca retiring and being at home all the time. They know I thrive on alone time and I'm still working. So they've been curious about how we plan to navigate that. It ended up making the very start of his retirement month a bit weird with him feeling like he was potentially getting in my way and me denying it, but at the same time feeling like, yes, it is a whole new dynamic to adjust to.

During our entire nearly 30, 30 years together, yeah, 30 years. He's left for work so early that I'm not even out of bed yet, and he'd be back in the evening, just in time for dinner at around seven or 8:00 PM So yes, I was very used to having the whole place to myself the entire day and spending quality time together in the evenings and at weekends.

Well. Since his retirement, my morning meditations have now often been interrupted. He's just kinda opening the door and coming in, and I do feel a bit weird about using my Ian singing bowl or singing or chanting or dancing. I get up to all kinds of weird things when I'm on my own and then. There's the whole lunch thing.

I'm used to working straight through lunch. When I'm in a creative flow with my work or if I'm not having a focused work day, I kind of glide in and outta the house as I feel now. I don't always know whether he's making me lunch or whether we're both just kind of making what we want, and when he has cooked me a nice lunch, I'm super grateful, but I need to get back to work and not spend ages eating and then cleaning up a messy kitchen.

Then there's the whole feeling that it doesn't really get my working day, that I have client soul plan sessions some days, and I can't just take the day off because it's great weather. Or when his mother came for a week, I couldn't join them every day for outings. And throughout this first month of being together full time, I started to notice some really poor habits around how we're communicating with each other.

They were there before, but obviously only on weekends or evenings. We've always kind of bickered and we've been a little too involved in each other's businesses, but now. I am hyper aware of how often I use my tone. I don't know, I sound a bit harsher than I intend, or I criticize, or I question how he's done something.

And now that we're in the same space all of the time, there are naturally more opportunities for frustration, irritation, defensive reactions, and yes, vice versa. I'm hyper aware of him doing all this too. Listen, we're both kind loving people. We both love each other to absolute bits, and we speak so nicely to everyone else.

I feel like I'm my highest self with everyone else but him not good. So this month in True Project Me style, I'm experimenting. This is a work in progress, but I'm happy to share with you what my plan of action is and what's working so far and what's not. It can be no coincidence that in my Soul Explorers membership, we have reached the throat chakra in my Rainbow Journey program.

And so I have chosen conscious communication as our theme for this month, and I had a two week head start on the theme because I wanted to have the throat chakra module, including the workbook already by the first of the month for everyone. The throat chakra is all about expressing truth. Integrity and finding your authentic voice.

This is the energy center that invites you to speak up, to honor what you truly think and feel, and to express yourself with honesty and heart. When your words align with your inner truth, your communication becomes clear, compassionate, and powerful. You begin to live with integrity, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and trusting that your authentic voice is more than enough.

As you master this, you feel a deeper sense of freedom and self-trust. You no longer hide your light or silence your truth. You become a clear channel for authentic expression, allowing your words and energy to uplift both yourself and others. So the very active devising and recording this throat chakra module and filling in my own workbook pages and taking the quiz to see if my throat chakra is underactive, overactive, or balanced, and curating the very best throat chakra, meditations, all of this, whoa.

I've really gotten deep into my why for why all of this matters, and here it is. I know that every word we speak carries a vibrational frequency that creates ripples, that that shape the energy around us. When our voice flows from the heart, we become transmitters of harmony. And when we use our voices for criticism, complaining, judgment, we send those waves out into the field.

Vibrations that not only affect others, but echo back into our own energy fields. Every word we speak shapes the reality we experience. I know deep in my heart that this is truth, so that I use my journal. I started going deeper. I explored how communication is equally about listening, deep presence, respect for others' perspectives, and then whoa, my much grander why emerged.

If I wanna see more peace in the world and oh, how much I do for leaders and politicians to drop their egos and to speak with truth and integrity, and an understanding of others' perspectives and needs for families and neighbors, to communicate with compassion and kindness, and for all of us to listen deeply and respond with respect, it all starts with me.

I need to master myself and my own communication in my own home first, how can I even begin to expect world leaders to be able to do it with each other if I can't even do it with someone I love deeply, who I care about so much, and so I have my bigger why. I do want more peace and unity in the world, and so I will do my part in my most important relationship.

And so now I will share with you what's been unfolding since I got behind my Bigger Why, and I set this really heartfelt intention. I sent out my first of the month newsletter to my Soul Explorers to share the conscious communication theme and to announce our zoom circle gathering later this month to go deeper together on this.

And that same day, my husband and I attended a five hour day retreat hosted by my friend and Kundalini teacher Nicole Shein, along with Neil Christie, both who are coming to London with me at the end of January for my day retreat there. I'm gonna share details about that at the end of this episode. This day, retreat I beha was really not my husband's normal scene and I'd normally have gone alone, but he agreed to come with me.

Nicole's garden was so lush and green. It was like the Garden of Eden. And at sunset, while we were all taking turns dancing with a broomstick, you had to be there. It was so fun. I looked out and the sky was stripes of bright orange. We drank cacao. Our hearts were so open, and we were asked to write down something that we wanted to bring in and on the reverse, something we wanted to release.

And I found myself writing about my deep desire for conscious communication to say all things with love, compassion, thoughtfulness, and understanding, and to respond rather than react, to listen deeply. On the reverse side of the paper, I wrote that I wanna let go of egoic reactions and defensiveness, and then we entered the tent.

Neil guided us all to lie down. We were given blankets and eye mask, and he began beating his shamanic drum, taking us on a guided breath work journey. I've done guided breath work with Neil Christie before, so I knew just how much potential there was for me to unearth what might be hindering my loving communication or what could help me to rise higher.

Everyone there was on their own journey with their breath work. I saw my ancestors surrounding me and my grandfather appeared. My dear beloved Grandpa Alphons. Normally I connect with my two grandmas, so it was so emotional to see his loving smile again. I began weeping with joy and love to be in his presence again.

I felt him holding me as a baby and then holding my hand as a child. We were so incredibly close, and I felt that immense closeness again. And then I saw him and my grandma Betty together, flashes of them raising their big family in the harsh winters of Minnesota in the 1940s and fifties. They were a team.

I saw such tenderness between them, light, gentle teasing, playfulness and flirting. Things that like I never really remember seeing in my own childhood, but right there in this like breathwork session, I could just see it all. It was them in the farmhouse. Um, you know, I remember, I do remember my grandma telling me that my grandpa never once raised his voice.

I can't imagine that tiny farmhouse filled with five boys and one girl and no video games or internet and. Never raising your voice with that many kids in the house and this small house. I'm imagining the winter times when you're all kind of stuck in doors together with, without all the stuff that we've got now.

You know, and all at once, I felt this immense support from my intention. I wish shown that I have so much abundance and luxury and space. I really do have it all, and there is just no reason for bickering or arguing. I was crying my eyes out at this point. I had the pure perspective of higher consciousness, and it seemed inconceivable to me that would ever use my voice for anything but love So much happened in that one hour journey, but when I came back down to Earth, I felt so immensely happy and peaceful.

We went outside and ate Nicole's lovely curry by the campfire, and then we burned our papers in the fire. Luca shared with me on the way home that he had also put communication on his paper. We were officially on the same page. Now, I'd love to be able to tell you about how the next few days since that experience, we only used our voice to express our love and deep appreciation with each other.

But guess what? We are humans and we humans are hardwired to revert to into our usual patterns and habits. What I will say now is we are becoming very aware of it. It's like we are realizing when we're doing it and we're just bringing a new stages of awareness to it. And this made me remember a blog post that I wrote for Project Me about 10 years ago.

I'm gonna open up the tab here. Uh, here we go. It's called The Four Stages of Competence When Learning something New. And I'd written, do you ever get that three steps forward and two steps back, feeling that you're not getting somewhere as quickly as you'd like? Maybe you're learning something new or you've set yourself a goal or intention only to find that you're not making much progress.

Please don't throw in the towel. There are four stages of competence and understanding which stage you're at will keep you going when you're feeling inept. Knowing these four stages of competence has moved me forward. At times, I've felt incredibly frustrated that I'm not making enough progress. It's helped me to see that progress comes from feeling incompetent, and oh my goodness, it's been so good reading this again, like reading my own advice to myself 10 years later.

So I wrote the four Stages of Competence, stage one, unconsciously Incompetent. This is the stage where you don't know what you don't know. You're just behaving the way you do without really thinking about it. Stage two, consciously incompetent. In this stage, you know what you don't know. You're hyper aware of your incompetence and you feel like you're doing things wrong a lot of the time.

This stage can feel really uncomfortable and frustrating. You have to pass through this stage to get to stage three, so stay determined and keep going. Simply recognize your stage two moments and be extra kind to yourself. At least now you're aware of what you could be doing better. Stage three.

Consciously competent at this stage, you're getting it right a lot more often because you're concentrating. You're doing things like creating step-by-step action plans, being resourceful, finding solutions for your challenges, and you're feeling pretty good when you make mistakes. You learn from them. You apply what you learn to make things better.

You find yourself moving a lot between stages two and three, but the most important way to move forward is to stay positive and not get down on yourself when you don't get it right. See Slipups as growth opportunities and celebrate all small steps in the right direction. Stage four, unconsciously competent.

Now you're getting it right so often that it becomes second nature, the Holy Grail enlightenment. So applying my own advice to this deep new intention of ours, of conscious communication. We are very much in stage two, consciously incompetent. At least now we're seeing where we're getting it wrong. It sucks, but awareness is the key to change.

We're simply in some poor habits, that's all. So I have broken out one of the tools that I created many years ago for getting into good habits, the Project Me Habit Tracker action sheet. Those of you who've been through my goal setting course nine or 10 years ago, or have been in my project we membership, you might remember this one.

I have identified a few habits or rituals that I feel will support me while I'm working towards this change, and I've written them into the sections, so every day I will. One reaffirm my intentions and affirmations around loving communication at home each and every morning. I must start each day with a clear remembering of my why, so I'm connected to it.

Number two, journaling or morning pages or evening reflections, some kind of writing. This is already shining a light on times when I slip up and why. What are my triggers? Where could I have chosen better? I'm noticing my stories and I'm using my journal to rewrite them. Number three, meditation. I'm doing a heart or a throat chakra meditation daily to use my voice to communicate from my heart.

Number four, BCH flower remedies. I've chosen the a few BCH flower remedies that are gonna really help. I've chosen Impassions to be less irritable or frustrated to be patient and more relaxed about the whole thing. And also beach, which promotes tolerance, open-mindedness, and empathy. It helps with appreciating other points of view and being more encouraging of others' ideas.

Don't you wish we could slip this into the water of our world leaders? I am putting both of this in. I put this in both of our water bottles every morning. I just did a workshop on botch flower remedies for my soul explorers, so it really helped to bring all of this back to the forefront for me, how these remedies really, really work.

They're natural. You just put them in your water. I'm putting them into both of our waters every day, and I, at the moment, I'm just doing those two impassions and beach, but I've also got as a backup vine if needed. Vine helps to be less argumentative, more willing to listen, and more understanding. Again, can we please get this into the, the, the people in power?

Can you imagine if we could get like government leaders to use bch flower remedies? Oh my gosh. That's another dream of mine. Um, another thing I've got here in the habit tracker sheet, um, this is less of a tick the box. So the other ones are like, tick the box. Every day I've done those things. I tick, I just tick the little box, but I also give myself scores like little marks that of 10 for how I did on these two things.

One is ego awareness and responding with love. And the other is the five one rule, the magic ratio of communication. If you don't know about this one, psychologist Dr. John Gottman found that in thriving relationships, there is a ratio of five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. That doesn't mean you can never express frustration, disappointment, or do constructive criticism.

It simply means that kindness. Appreciation and empathy should far outweigh complaint or correction. When you're intentional about offering more words of affirmation, gratitude, encouragement, the energy of your communication shifts. You build trust, you soft intention, and you open channels of understanding.

All are key qualities of conscious communication, and I have to say that I don't actually count the number of times I compliment or appreciate Luca every day, but. I now notice what comes outta my mouth, and at the end of the day, I just give myself marks at a 10. Was I more in the kind of critical, you know, mode or was I complimenting or appreciating more?

And I give myself a score for this. And I have to say that when I give myself a low score, it really means that the next day I up my game, I do better. So being more conscious of my incompetence leads to greater competence. You see how this works? So these are my daily tick the box habits, and I look at this habit tracker first thing in the morning and I tick the boxes as I go along.

And this is really helping. Now I have to tell you that there's a whole nother angle I'm approaching this with, and that is energetically. Everything is energy. So rather than approaching this solely from my head and trying hard to make these changes, I'm also calling it in. I have been working with the violet flame.

You're either nodding your head, knowing about the violet flame, and or you're going, huh? I was in the huh? Camp until recently. It all happened so quickly and in such a blur that I'm struggling now to piece it together. I put a timeline on it. I just searched my journal before I hit record on this, and I found that the first reference to the violet flame comes about four weeks ago.

I wrote my journal. The Violet flame clears karma without having to loop through it over and over and over again in order to get the lesson. Connect to the violet flame every day to transform and transmute. I wrote the violet is the color of the crown chakra, the seventh chakra, and prince is associated with this color, and one of my favorite print songs is called Seven.

Prince and I shared the same soul plan energies, including a dominant vibration of sevens. Could Prince as my spirit guide be a form of Saint Germaine, who is the saint of the violet flame? Did Prince know about the violet flame while he was alive? The violet flame I wrote, the violet flame has been gifted to us as a tool to clear energy and patterns.

Amethyst is associated with it. Amethyst is the crystal associated with the violet flame. And then, so I wrote that in my journal, and a week later, my dear friend Hillary from California came to a beat at a visit, and she gifted me with a beautiful chunk of polished amethyst in the shape of a flame. She had no idea.

She was in the crystal shop near San Francisco and that was the one that was calling to her to give to me. And to be honest, I didn't initially make the connection when she gave it to me. It was only after she left. I was on Pinterest. I was looking for a violet flame image to make as my phone lock screen.

I found one I loved. I've got it on my phone right now. Let me look at my phone. I have to unlock it to read this to you. It says, I call, I now call upon the violet flame to surround me, to cleanse my energy and elevate my vibration. Whoa. I put it onto my phone, and then I realized behind the words in this image, there is an amethyst.

It's polished and pointed like mine, like, can you believe it? I hadn't even made the connection until I saw it on my phone and I went, whoa, this is, this is what Hillary gifted me. So I've been working with this special new crystal and with this repeated mantra on my phone to assist me in raising my vibration and clearing and transmuting patterns that are no longer serving me, and I'm realizing something important.

In my past relationship with my abusive ex, I was shut down from my full expression. I was often walking on eggshells so as not to accidentally say something that might upset him. My throat chakra closed out of fear. I had to work really hard to regain my sovereignty and to know that I have a voice and it is safe to express.

You can listen to my episode called Finding My Voice. One of the podcast episodes here, I shared the whole amazing story of how I opened my throat chara again after that. Now I'm with a man who I am safe with. He would never lay a finger on me, and yet I am in a pattern of defensiveness. I'm seeing what triggers me the most, and it's around fairness.

When I feel something is not fair, I get upset. I wanna call it out. So this awareness has just come to the surface for healing. I'm going to heal the, it's not fair energy. You know, we have an invisible support team out there who are always guiding us, and when we set our intentions, people show up to help us.

Well, there was this Hillary. She came to be the conduit to deliver the violet flame amethyst to me. And then last week I shared my intention of conscious communication in my general newsletter and lovely subscriber, Kimberly saw it and shared an Instagram post with me. It said, in a nutshell, most people live their entire lives controlled by energetic patterns.

They can't see repeating the same conflicts. Attracting the same dynamics stuck in invisible loops. When you learn to work in the energetic realm, first you stop needing to have physical confrontations. What she sent me aligned with just what I'd started doing, working energetically on this transformation, Kimberly taking the time to share this with me, really helped me to stand behind my why for approaching this from the energetic realm too.

And then I posted in my high vibe circle in the Insight Timer meditation app about the theme of conscious communication. And Catherine replied and said, I'm really enjoying some of Hans Van Veen courses here in the app. It's making me far more aware of how I'm speaking, especially in difficult situations.

And she linked to his three day course in insight timer. This particular three day course is called Nonviolent Communication Level one, and each day is Luke and I are listening to it together. I do have the very famous book, nonviolent Communication, A Language of Life by Marshall b Rosenberg, and I remember so many people recommending it and start, and I started to read it.

But I remember thinking at the time, why is it that in my marriage I'm the only one making efforts at better communication? What good is it if I read this book and I study all this and he doesn't? Hmm. Looking at it now, it's the, it's not fair story again. Well, this little course is already giving us some very good foundation.

The course teacher says that the term nonviolent communication does put a lot of people off. It definitely did me. He prefers compassionate communication. I like conscious communication. I see it as how my higher self communicates. I will be sharing my continued journey with all of this in my Soul Explorers community where we feel safe and seen and heard by other women who are all on our own personal and spiritual growth journeys.

If you feel called to be a part of this, maybe it is your spirit team nudging you to join us. Details of Soul Explorers around my website, kelly petley.com and I'll be sure to link to it in the show notes.

Dear listener, relax your forehead now. Take a long, slow, deep breath in and let it out with a sigh. Do you share my dream of seeing more peace in the world? For leaders and politicians to drop ego and speak with integrity for families and neighbors, to communicate with compassion and respect for all of us to listen deeply and respond with love, it starts with us.

Communication is not only about speaking, it's also about listening. Presence response. It's also about the way we talk to ourselves. I invite you to pay gentle attention to the words you choose, the energy behind them, your tone, how you respond when triggered, how you speak about others, how you speak to yourself.

Gently releasing old patterns, complaining, defending, convincing, gossiping, or staying silent outta fear. Awareness is the first step towards transformation. Now, if it feels good, imagine right now that you are surrounded by a beautiful, powerful violet flame.

And together we call in new ways, sharing from the heart, speaking honestly, but kindly pausing before responding, listening to understand expressing needs. Clearly imagine the violet flame moving to your throat. Right to your throat chakra, cleansing, clearing, balancing

conscious communication, deeper connection, more harmony in your home, in your community, in your workplace, your voice becoming a channel for higher frequency.

May we bring more peace, harmony, and compassion into the world? One conversation at a time, at home, at work, in the smallest moments of daily life, and repeat either out loud or to yourself. I speak with love.

I listen with presence. I create harmony through my words.

Thank you for listening to the Project Me Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, review and share it with others. You could even screenshot this episode and share it to your stories. Tag me, Kelly Project me. This week I'm sharing the throat chakra video from my Rainbow Journey program with all of my lovely subscribers for free.

Join my newsletter list on my website, kelly petran.com. If you're listening to this at some point in the future, email me and ask for my throat chakra video and I'll send it to you. Hello, at my project me.com. I really do believe that the more of us who are speaking with clear balanced expression, the better the world will be.

Get your throat chakra clear, connected to your heart. Join Soul Explorers to be a part of a really wonderful community. It's not too big. It's just right. Come and give it a try. No hard feelings. If it's not quite right for you, you won't know until you try. And if you can get yourself to London at the end of January, I'm excited to be hosting a full day retreat there on January 31st.

I will be coming over to the UK with Nicole from Elevated Beha, who's bringing her magical cacao and Kundalini to the day, and will be joined by Neil Christie, so you can experience his incredible shamanic breathwork journey for yourself. And of course, I'll be weaving my magic into the whole experience to create a day of high vibes and transformation to start your year in a higher frequency.

Nearly all places are already sold to my Soul Explorers members and to those who've done my high vibe Journey program, they all got the first notice. But email me hello@myprojectme.com to ask if any places are still left. It's gonna be an incredible day. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious.

We all need some space in our lives for the magical. An unknown.