Day 246: Jennifer Kochevar
“… we’re all a really big stand for us bringing our greatest beings into the world, and that helps me explore my potential – the sharing and collaborating that we do in my community, in the community I live in. … but mostly it is being connected to my own life, my own work, my own truth.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jennifer, for agreeing to be part of this Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Jennifer Kochevar: I can. My name is Jennifer Kochevar, and I am with a company called Doorways of Discovery, and also the Global Sufficiency Network.
Toni: Thank you. It’s Doorways to Discovery, did you say?
Jennifer: Doorways of Discovery.
Toni: Of discovery … thank you for that. Jennifer, when you think of that word inspiration, who you think you inspire, and how does that happen?
Jennifer: Great question. Who I think I inspire. You know, I’m not exactly sure who all I inspire, actually. The way … I know that I do inspire people, and the way that that happens is by me being really connected to myself and to what’s true for me, what my truth is, what my passion is, what my vulnerabilities are, what emotional place I’m in, my struggles, my victories, all of those things that make me up that are the essence of me are what I find inspires people.
I know that there are people that I inspire that have said “Wow, you’re really inspiring me to make a change in my life.” Oftentimes friends, colleagues, family members … and I also believe that there are people that I’m inspiring that I don’t even know that I’m inspiring, because they’re the ones that are around the fringes, around the outside, or even close to me that don’t ever speak that they’re inspired by me, so I think it’s a combination of both those people that I know that actually verbalize, and people that I don’t know that I inspire that are all around …
Toni: I’m sorry, go ahead …
Jennifer: Go ahead.
Toni: How do people get in front of you? How do they know about you? What do you do, that even the people that you’re not in front of, that they are inspired by you? What happens?
Jennifer: What happens that I would know that they’re inspired?
Toni: What kind of work do you do, or how do people become aware of your presence that they may be inspired by you?
Jennifer: Well, there are a couple different reasons, a couple different ways. One, people know my presence because I’m a woman who’s 6’ 3”. I’m 6’ 3” tall, so people see me. People are naturally drawn by the eye to see me. And then the connection, my connection with my own body and my own “who I am in the world” is what happens. Then, the way people oftentimes get drawn in is when I start sharing my stories.
One of the things that I do with people is I have a colleague that she and I partner and do one-day equine retreats with people around the conversation of sufficiency, around looking at how is it that sufficiency – versus the conversation of scarcity and fear and not ever feeling like we’re enough – how does that drive the relationships that we have in the world with other people?
What happens in between you and the horse when you’re using that horse as a partner? What happens when we’re in the mindset or in the body of scarcity and fear to the relationship that we’re trying to create, and then when we shift from fear and not feeling enough to feeling enough and feeling connected to nature and feeling connected to our rhythm and being in flow. How does the dynamic of the partnership to life – the horse being the metaphor for life – how does that shift, and what becomes possible when we shift?
When I start talking to people about the equine workshops and what shows up at the equine workshops, and my own experience working with horses and how my experience changed my whole relationship to my kids and how I parent in one one-hour event, one-hour experience with the horses, people are drawn in. Like people that aren’t even a part of the conversation get drawn into the conversation and they start asking questions, and they start feeling … they can see themselves inside of the story that I’m telling about it, and that’s what inspires them, because they can feel it’s possible for themselves inside that.
Toni: That’s a great lead-in to the second question of the Project, which is how do you think that that work allows people to explore their own potential?
Jennifer: Well, it is about exploring their own potential, so the work … when people get … what I see is when people get to be … when they get to see themselves inside somebody else’s story, like when I talk about what’s possible in my life and my pains and my vulnerabilities, and then I talk to them about the shift that I made into what is possible — and where I went from there and the new observations that I get to make or that I’ve seen other people make — people can identify with that in that we’re all one.
I mean, inside the collective that we’re all one being on this earth, that people start identifying and seeing themselves in that and seeing the mirror, and then they feel what’s possible. They translate that into their life, and they start seeing what’s possible for them in their life.
Toni: Can you give an example of what that experience was like for you so that we can understand how people shift from hearing that?
Jennifer: An example that happened to me personally?
Toni: When you spoke about that some of what you do is tell people about your experience and the shift that you went through that changed the way you parent, and just in one hour … if you can give an example of what happened, what was it that happened that then that story allows other people to go “Wow, I’d like to experience the same thing.” What was that example?
Jennifer: Yes; so what the example was, was we were doing exercise. My colleague and I were doing exercise. We were practicing something that we were going to do in one of our workshops, and so I was the person that was going to do the exercise. And what the exercise was, of experience was, to think about something that I was really struggling with, and instantly I thought of parenting. I have a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old boy, and I get frustrated with parenting and start getting down on myself about “I’m not a good parent” and “I’m doing this and I’m doing that” and so on … it can be a very heavy thing for me, the responsibility and role of parent.
So being connected to that, I took the horse … it was a leading exercise, so I took a lead line on the horse and led the horse around in a circle. And while I was leading him, he was about three steps back, two steps back from me and I was in front, and he had his head down and he didn’t want to connect with me. And when we got around the corner, there were other horses in another field, and my horse that I was supposed to be leading and connecting wanted to go over and play with the other horses. He did not want to be with me.
I got to see inside of that how when I’m in that mindset, like the person that I’m with doesn’t even want to be with me. He wants to go over and play with the other horses. He wants to go have fun. That’s a heavy, heavy thing to do. And then when I came around and ended, another horse came and stood in between me and my horse, like to protect my horse. And when I let the lead line go, the horse ran away off into a corner of the field.
So I really got to see how I isolate, where I’m in the mindset of “I’m not a good enough parent” and “I’m doing all these things wrong,” that I actually isolate myself from who I’m with. Then we did some talking, my colleague and I, and I really shifted to see how strong I am as a parent by some things that I’m doing that are influencing my child or both my children.
I had some repair work to do with the horse, so I went over slowly to my horse and had to rebuild trust with him, so it was a slow process, and we moved back into the position to walk around. And with me actually connecting with him and connecting with my love for him and my joy, he stayed very connected.
We were together. We walked together instead of me being in front and being the one in control. We talked together. When we went around the corner of the other horses, he had no interest in going over there. His head was higher. He had less tension in his body. And when we were done, he stayed with me and he nuzzled with me, and the other horse didn’t come over at all like to get in between. The other two horses in the area came over, but they more wanted to be around the energy instead of doing these moves.
Toni: Thank you for that great example. I can see where that would be a wonderful story for someone to hear and go “Wow, you know … that is fascinating work.” Actually it really is fascinating work, so thank you for sharing that as an example as well. What inspires you, Jennifer?
Jennifer: Oh, what inspires me … I’m sitting here actually in my car looking out my window, and I have this huge woods with a marshy area and the trees are blowing in the wind and there’s cottonwood blowing, and so the first thing that naturally shows up for me is nature inspires me. There are people in my life that inspire me, that call me forth to want to be my greatest person in the world.
Nature does that for sure, and my kids, how they really inspire me. They inspire me to really look inside of myself and see what’s cooking for me, and to play. They push my edges. That kind of stuff inspires me; pushing the edges and really looking at what needs to be looked at or wants to be looked at for my own transformation.
The possibility … another thing that inspires me is the possibilities of this world – and this is going a little wild, but this world can shift. I see the possibility. I see all these people out in the world, doing their work, doing the work of taking care of Mother Earth, and about shifting. And this fact that there is a whole community of people around the world all over the place doing all of this amazing work towards higher consciousness is really inspiring to me; like I want some of that. I want to be a part of that.
Toni: It’s interesting, Jennifer, because the last couple of days of the interviews that I have done for the Get Inspired! Project, the word that is running as a theme is “shift” and that’s really interesting as you bring it up again today. That’s just so cool. What do you do to explore your own potential?
Jennifer: I live my life. I’m laughing, but where it starts is me being alive and aware and awake of what’s happening for me in my own life. And other ways that I explore my potential, I take classes, I’m in a community of people that … we’re all a really big stand for us bringing our greatest beings into the world, and that helps me explore my potential – the sharing and collaborating that we do in my community, in the community I live in. I think that’s all, I think that’s … but mostly it is being connected to my own life, my own work, my own truth.
Toni: That is an amazing piece to leave the interview with, and very powerful – to be connected to your own life. That is probably one of the first times it’s been positioned that way as an answer to this question. It is said many times, but I think it is incredibly powerful the way that it’s been stated by you, which is to explore your own potential you must be connected to your own life, and that’s awesome.
We thank you very, very much, Jennifer, for being part of the Get Inspired! Project, and we will showcase how people can get a hold of you and learn about the work that you do at the end of this interview, so thank you very much for being here.
Jennifer: Great. Thank you.
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For more information about Jennifer Kochevar: www.doorwaysofdiscovery.com, www.globalsufficiency.org
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