(upbeat music)
- I'm in San Francisco.
I almost couldn't check in to my hotel room
because they said that they accidentally
booked my room to somebody else,
and it's pretty late,
it's about to be midnight.
I gotta wake up at like 7:30.
I'm very excited.
I feel like now that I'm here,
I can finally wind down.
I'm sorry,
but I can't even look at that art
without feeling unsettled.
I actually used to be very,
very afraid when I was younger.
Everything would really freak me out.
I would get in my head.
This is the reason why I don't watch scary movies
unless they're really, really good.
My brother is really trying to make me watch "Hereditary."
He said it was the scariest film he's ever seen,
but it's also one of the best films he's ever seen,
and I really like the director.
But any who, what I'm trying to say,
is it's very, very hard for me to watch anything scary,
and this painting over here
is kinda giving me the heebie-jeebies.
If you're ever traveling alone
and you are kind of like a scaredy cat like me,
a little tip I like to do is just turn on the TV,
and I make sure that it's at a TV
station that won't have any scary commercials
'cause I know January is the time
where scary movies start coming out
and I hate when a scary trailer comes on.
It's actually rude.
I'll put on Nickelodeon
or the Disney Channel
or even HGTV.
There's no scary commercials on that channel.
Now, it is 12:16.
I wanna be up by 7:30,
so it'll give me enough time to get breakfast,
get ready,
and I guess start the workshop.
I don't know what it's gonna be like,
but it is very exciting.
And I also think I get very giddy
when I come to San Francisco
because I just have so many memories here.
On the ride to the hotel,
I started getting really emotional.
Granted, I was listening to sentimental music,
which I feel like a lot
of my youth was spent in San Francisco.
I feel like I built a lot of character here.
It's nice to be able to come here when I'm older
and be able to kind of zoom back
into who I was when I was like in my early 20s.
I'm gonna try and go to sleep,
and I'm gonna try and not fucking look at that.
Oh, god!
I almost wanna just unhinge the painting
and then put it somewhere else,
but what if there's something behind it.
I need to get out of my head.
Okay, everything's fine,
I'm in San Francisco,
it is beautiful,
I'm in my room.
Everything is going to be fine.
(upbeat music)
It's like a big shower.
It can fit like five people in here.
Ugh, I hate it.
I have truly managed to do everything.
I even washed my hair and I curled it
and it's 8:35.
I'm supposed to be at the lobby at 8:30,
so I think this is good.
Sometimes I don't need to be
so freaking punctual all the time.
So I think 8:35 is good.
All right, wish me luck.
I'm on my lunch break,
and my first impressions of this workshop
is that it's like a new experience,
but it feels very familiar.
Pretty much,
I feel like I'm at school,
but this time we're all like sitting
on the ground in a cushion
and everyone's just a lot older.
I feel completely out of my element,
but it's good.
I brought my tangerine to eat inside my room
because everyone's eating lunch outside on the tables,
but I came a little bit too late
and there's no place for me to sit,
and I don't wanna be like,
hi, can I eat lunch with you guys?
You can see a really great view
of everybody from my hotel room though.
I'll show you guys.
Oh, that is so creepy.
That's everybody.
I am going to make it a mission
to just strike up a conversation with somebody
because maybe I don't look the most approachable perhaps.
I don't know,
I think I'm just in my fucking head.
I'm just really in my head.
I'm in my Saturday night's best
and I'm gonna go out to dinner by myself.
I'm gonna go to True Laurel.
Good morning.
Yesterday was a whirlwind.
I felt so many emotions.
When I first got in,
I was obviously a little anxious
because I didn't know what to expect,
I didn't know anybody.
I think it started to change
when we started to interact with each other.
We're doing a lot more activities where we pair off.
Everyone that I've interacted
with has been so open and friendly
and it's just really great to get everyone's
different perspective about life.
I'm definitely one of the youngest people here,
and it's just been great to hear everyone's stories,
and everyone has so much life experience,
and it's so refreshing and enlightening to hear.
I met this lovely woman named Cathy,
and yesterday at the wine and cheese hour,
we had just a really nice chat.
I felt like I was at school again.
Everyone was sitting in the little table,
and I was like,
you know what, Jenn,
just put yourself out there.
So I introduced myself
and I asked if I can sit on the seat,
and they were super welcoming.
During the wine and cheese hour,
I had a glass of wine.
I feel like normally for wine and cheese hour,
I'll have like,
especially if it's free,
I'll have like two or three glasses of wine
'cause I've got to admit.
But yesterday,
I only had a glass of white wine,
and I was like,
I was very proud of myself.
Then I went to True Laurel
which is this restaurant bar that Stephanie recommended,
and so I went there
and I had a lovely dinner to myself.
It was actually really interesting to go.
Oh, no!
It was actually another really cool experience to eat alone
because when I went to the restaurant,
it was literally packed.
And since it was only me,
I was able to squeeze myself in the bar seats
and I was good.
I ordered the fried mushrooms
and a patty melt,
and I just read my book.
I would much rather be reading
than just scrolling endlessly on social media.
Today is the last day of the workshop,
and then I am heading back to LA.
I wish I had one more day here.
- [Instructor] Close your eyes,
and if there's tension in your face,
begin to soften it.
- So I'm currently editing this vlog,
and I realized there was a reflection
part of the video that was missing,
so I just wanted to give you
guys some of my thoughts about my solo trip
and about this Rising Strong workshop.
I feel like I did go through all the emotions possible.
There was fear,
there was joy,
there was uncertainty.
I just felt very vulnerable on this trip
because there was a lot of emotional exposure
by opening up myself to a bunch of strangers,
and there was risk because I was traveling alone
and uncertainty because I just didn't know what to expect.
I really enjoyed being outside my comfort zone.
I didn't like it when I was uncomfortable at the moment,
but it's one of those things where you're like,
you can look back
and reflect being,
like I'm glad that I did that.
I am really happy that invested
in this because this experience was not cheap,
but I consider education something
that I will always invest in,
and I mean yeah,
education's freaking expensive.
It's like hella inflated,
but I have been out of school for nearly 10 years,
and I just refuse to not learn.
I will always have this thirst
to understand why things are the way they are
or why people are the way they are
or why I'm wired the way I am.
It's just a lot of curiosity,
and I feel like it's something
that is a huge part of my soul.
One of the activities that we did on this workshop
was to really hone in on what our values are
because I feel like that question,
oh, what are your values?
Values are important to me.
That question is thrown out a lot,
but no one really specifies what their actual values are.
So during this activity,
they had this huge glossary
and word bank of all these values.
And at first I was like,
I like all of them,
but the instructors told you to pick three,
maximum five,
but they said three was the best because
that way you can actually focus on these values.
Your values can't be everything.
So my values are connection,
curiosity and excellence.
There's no bigger joy in life
than feeling connected to something, to someone.
I really enjoy knowing
that I'm just a little cog in a bigger picture.
I like feeling connected.
Curiosity is a big pillar for me.
As I said before,
I just love learning, I love growing,
I love connecting the dots.
I find that really thrilling for me.
And excellence because I just appreciate
when things go above and beyond.
I feel like I seek excellence in a lot of my experiences,
and when I do have the joy to see excellence,
I am literally so appreciate from excellent food
to excellent film, excellent shows,
excellent people,
and I think it's because I love when people
and systems are at the best that they can be.
On this trip, we also had this activity
where we really defined the whole scope of emotions
because I feel like with negative emotions,
we don't really dig in on why we feel that way.
I know it's really common to say,
ugh, I'm feeling sad,
but sad is just the umbrella term.
Are you feeling ashamed,
are you feeling, are you feeling disappointed.
I think it's important to really define
those words so that way you can figure out
and pinpoint how exactly you're feeling,
and once you have targeted that,
you can do things to make yourself feel better.
I just feel like I went through a vulnerability train
from being with a new group of people,
traveling alone,
introducing myself to just strangers,
and then eating alone.
Even sharing this experience with you
feels very vulnerable because I know
that there's probably a handful of you
guys who are judging me being like,
wow, Jenn, can you be more self indulgent
by going on a trip to explore more of yourself?
But I think discovering more of yourself
is not self indulgent at all.
I think it's a part of the reason why you're here.
I also think I need to learn more about myself
so I can treat people even better
and be more empathetic
and to be a better friend,
a better wife, a better daughter,
a better everything.
I feel like the people that are the most hostile
are the ones that can't stand to be in their company,
and so they need to lash out on other people
to bring them down to their level.
I would love to hear your guys'
values in the comments down below.
I will leave a list of all of them,
so if you guys can pick three
and why they are your three,
I would truly love to read about them,
and I will be picking one entry in the comments down below
and I will be giving away
a annual subscription,
or I guess a year's subscription to masterclass.com.
It's essentially a website where you
just learn a bunch of new things by celebrities,
so like Natalie Portman has an acting class,
Stephen Curry has a basketball class,
there's like a wine sommelier class.
I just finished taking Sarah Blakely's
self-made entrepreneur class,
which was incredible.
This is not sponsored by any means.
I personally paid for the Masterclass annual fee,
but when I bought it,
it also came with a free one that I can give to a friend,
and so I thought that I would give it to you guys.
So yeah, write your values in the comments down below.
There will be more directions in the description box,
so please open that,
but yeah, I wanna thank you
so much for sticking around this long
and for watching this,
and I hope that this inspires you
to just get to know yourself a little bit better.
It's uncomfortable,
but you'll feel so much better for it.
All right, so I'll see you guys in the next one.
Bye!