Feminine Soul Efficiency: Feng Shui, Productivity & Living Fully Alive with Jessie Sobool

Feminine Soul Efficiency: Feng Shui, Productivity & Living Fully Alive

I remember I’d never been asked before this, and I’ve been saying to people in my circle, “This is genius.” Like, you have to ask your closest people and you have to ask strangers this question because it changes things. There’s like, there’s totally sparkles in it.
And that question was, “What’s your magic?” And I was like, “I’ve never been asked that before, but it’s true. I totally have magic.”
And so this started a whole, like seeing myself from another perspective.
Imagine if you were like seven years old and it’s like, “Oh, this is what you do with life, and that’s it.” Yes. And then done. Yeah. Like, oof, no thanks. I don’t think any of us signed up for that. We all signed up for the beautiful journey and the twists and turns and the climbing.
As you said the other day, there’s many ways up the mountain, and I feel like just exploring those trails is such a juicy, juicy way to engage with life.
Eudaimonia is a permission slip in my mind. Just be who you want to be and pursue the things that truly light you up, not for some goal in the future or some specific outcome, but because it builds character and it helps to round us out and investigate life and all of the interesting sparks that life has to offer us.

Who is Jessie Sobool and what is soul efficiency?

Welcome to the Peri Moon Podcast. My name is Nelle Tamar-Manuel, and today I am joined by my divine, beautiful friend from far away, Jessie Sobool.
Jessie is a feng shui consultant, but she works more in the digital realms, and I feel it’s the nexus of feng shui and productivity, or soul efficiency. We’ll talk more about that later.
Jessie is also a writer, and her email our email threads are such a delight to be in, and I eat them up regularly.
Uh, thank you for joining us today, Jessie.
I’m totally honored to be here, Nelle. It is such an honor to share your space and to be invited in, so thank you.
Aw, bless you.
We were just chatting about soul efficiency and the synergy of working with another woman who, you know, I think what I appreciate about you is the way you receive my gifts, and how I can then become more of myself.
And I feel somewhat like this is a mutual adoration that we have of each other. Like, I feel like I become more of me from receiving your work and then from showing you I’ve become more, then you become more, and it is a synergy as you just said off-camera, and I’m so grateful for that.
Me too. You bring out of me things I didn’t know that I had. I consider you an accomplished writer and for anybody that’s listening, if you’re not on Nelle’s email list, make that a priority.
I regularly get healing and epiphanies from being on your email list, so that’s a must-do. But it really truly evokes thoughts and considerations from me that don’t arrive on their own in my world.
They come through you and they ask me to consider topics and perspectives that I haven’t before. And so I so appreciate all of your peering in crevices and pulling on threads that interest you, and listening so deeply.
I think we all benefit from that. And so, yeah, I know that I have grown as a better writer and as a friend because of our synergy.
Absolutely. Yeah. I love that.
But I think you’re so clear. Our email threads are so cherished to me. Even just you saying, “This word landed in this way,” shows me so much about who you are and where I can touch as a writer.
It’s almost like you let me explore more of the peripherals so then I become safer there, and I’m more able to…
Like, you cradle me. You cradle me so well in my writing, and it’s so beautiful. And then for you to receive that and share back to me what you’ve felt, gosh, it’s just such a beautiful insight into who you are as a person.
The words you use to describe things are so exquisite. I’ve considered myself very lucky that we have found each other in such an amazing community that we’re already a part of.
So I am so grateful for your invitation.

What is eudaimonia and how can it transform your life?

I remember I’d never been asked before this, and I’ve been saying to people in my circle, I’m like, “This is genius.” Like, you have to ask your closest people and you have to ask strangers this question because it changes things. There’s like, there’s totally sparkles in it.
And that question was, you just messaged me on Messenger and said, “What’s your magic?” And I was like, “I’ve never been asked that before, but it’s true. I totally have magic.”
And so this started a whole, like seeing myself from another perspective and how I could offer that to a… You were a stranger at the time.
But yeah, I just started asking all the people around me that, and I think it’s probably one of the smartest things you can do to ignite the most interesting conversations and bring people’s guard down and start talking about the meaningful things.
And honestly now, it’s eudaimonia all over, right? That gets straight to the marrow of eudaimonia, doesn’t it?
I feel like there’s something about the word magic that is so playful, and it does, as you were saying, let people’s guards down.
Like, if I said to you, “What’s your purpose?” or “What’s your five-year plan?” There are so many ways I could have said it. But for me it’s like, where do you play, and where does that really shine for you?
That’s where I want to work with people. I don’t want to work with people who are just painting by numbers or working through something just because it’s a paycheck at the end.
I want to work with people that are truly lit up, because that’s where I’ve landed in my business, and I want to surround myself by other women doing the same thing.
You just mentioned eudaimonia, which I really… This is you. This is all you. Would you be able to explain eudaimonia to our beautiful listeners?
Thank you. I know I just threw that out there.
But I knew we were gonna get to it eventually, and like I say, I really think that asking somebody that and exploring that just goes right to the heart of it.
Eudaimonia is a permission slip in my mind. Just be who you want to be and pursue the things that truly light you up, not for some goal in the future or some specific outcome, but because it builds character and it helps to round us out and investigate life and all of the interesting sparks that life has to offer us.
And I need to say real quick, I am not the origin of this idea. It’s an ancient Greek philosophy term, eudaimonia. And I read it about eight years ago in an article in 2018, and the light went on.
I had always maybe criticized myself for being unfocused or not being able to follow through on things, just these vague criticisms that float around in your mind.
But after I learned about this, I was like, “No, I am investigating things. I am rounding out my life. I am living a fulfilling life by tugging on all these threads and these things that interest me.”
So yeah, it was the permission slip I needed, and I’ve just been going with that ever since. I live by it.
And I really love to see it manifest in others. That’s something that really interests me. It’s one of the things I love about social media or YouTube or our communities: to be a detective about when people are pursuing their own personal eudaimonia.
Yeah. I love that.
From when we first met, I was looking for some help with the UX in my app at the time, and it was an experiment. The sheer amount of hours and energy it took was enormous.
Being able to pivot and move back to a place where it’s not about money, money’s great, it puts a roof over my head and food in my baby’s bellies, but it’s not about money.
There’s a richness, and I think that can be thoroughly tethered to eudaimonia, is that richness you experience when you’re living from a place of curiosity and exploration and impermanence as well.
Not holding yourself to societal expectations or your own expectations from twenty years ago. There’s a true exploration and curiosity and presence that I love about this whole concept.
It’s so beautiful.
I love that juxtaposition between richness and expectation that you just set out. I think that’s one of the things I want to say about it: it’s very simple to me because it is a feeling.
You can feel when you’re rich, when you’re experiencing richness, fullness, spark, magic. You can feel when you’re in expectation, and that can really impact creative work.
Our life is a creative work.

How do words become a lived practice?

I want to make note that you and I have opposite astrological placements. You’re a sun in Virgo with a Scorpio moon, and I’m Scorpio sun with a Virgo moon.
Our way of experiencing words in our bodies is so similar. I feel like it’s such a kinesthetic experience for you as well, so I love that you just drew a parallel to words and how they land in your body.
It’s so beautiful.
Yeah. I’m still learning about it. What’s in it, and what it sparks in you and in others. I’m really interested to hear interpretations of it and what it lights up for people.
Like I say, I’m still discovering and learning about it eight years later. I’m so glad I have it as a tool in my toolbox.
It reminds me, Danielle LaPorte used to have core desired feelings. Every year you’d pick your word of the year, and for different parts of your life you’d have this overarching word that you really anchor into.
That practice actually made me a better writer. Being able to hold a word and embody it, and sit with a word for a big chunk of time, and have it contextually relevant in different parts of your life.
So eudaimonia, I just feel like it’s such a meaty one. It’s a really big one. It’s very dense while also being light, which makes no sense at all, but it’s anchoring and has levity. It’s so beautiful.
Do you mind me asking what word you’re playing with right now?
Actually I have. At the start of the year, I was chatting with my beautiful branding designer, Nikki, and I said, “I think wonderstruck is my word.”
And it’s happening. Yeah, it is absolutely ablaze in my world.
Wow.
Mastery was another one, which takes a bit more. But I love being in service to mastery. I think it’s a beautiful thing to submit to.
I think between those two words there’s a service and a receptivity. There’s the receptivity of being able to experience wonderstruck and be open to that, and then there’s the service of mastery where it’s like, “Okay, this is where I move forward. This is my focus. That’s my North Star.”

What is soul efficiency and how does the Euda by Jess productivity system work?

It’s, you didn’t choose anything light there. Those are both universes in themselves.
I want to talk about your beautiful system, Euda by Jess, which was such a huge breakthrough for me.
And whoever this phrase belongs to, soul efficiency, it is absolutely yours. I don’t care that it came from me. It is what the experience of doing your program gifted me.
There’s something so freeing from what I did with your beautiful little program. It is little. I think it took me an hour total, and life changed.
Thank you.
I think the beauty of it is being able to sit with what moves the dial in my entire life and being able just to put a few things on the stove. Only a few things on the stove at once rather than trying to manage a whole pantry of ideas and ingredients.
Through doing that it really gave me a potency and a focus.
I think you should probably speak about what your program is.
I’m so humbled by your words. It is so meaningful to me to know that it has had this impact for you.
It’s like growing its own legs right now. I had the dream to put it together, and I knew the purpose and why, but this feedback is like, whoa. It’s not in my house anymore. It’s out in the world growing legs and doing its own thing.
What it is, is a course on productivity that I built because I had to.
I’ve been doing this for ten years. I love productivity, and I’ve tried lots of different things because that’s who I am. Every time I am in a project or I’m overwhelmed I just come back to this framework.
What does it take to set up? Fifteen seconds and you’re there. It’s like cooking.
Every time I need it, it’s there for me.
I kept hearing people say things like, “I can’t seem to get things completed.” And I realized I had been taking for granted that I have the solution for this.
So I put it together.
I wanted people to get it completed, get cooking, and just have it. The design was that I wanted to get these tools over to people so they can be doing the meaningful things they want to do.
I’ve used it for self-care, running the household, running a business, running all my creative pursuits. It’s also been stress-tested against some of the biggest and most demanding projects I’ve ever been a part of. I’m really excited now about hearing how other people are experiencing it.
Yeah. Bless you. Being open to receiving people’s experiences of your magic is such a big part of growth as an entrepreneur. I have nightmares still regularly about losing my timetable in high school. Scheduling and calendars and time in general have been the bane of my existence for most of my life.
I’ve spent twenty years trying to work that out. I’ve probably bought fifty different planners thinking, “This year this will be it.” Nothing ever did. I came somewhat to accept that maybe I’m just meant to work on vibes alone.
But I have such respect for you, and I know that you get me deeply as a human. So when I sat down with the course this year, I think because it was so instantly implementable, within half an hour I was like, “What? This is all of the things that are important to me, and they have somewhere.”
There’s no ticking clock. There’s no shame if I don’t get it done. There’s no turning back a page because I missed a day. It is so… You get to it when you get to it. That clears so much shame and judgment of myself. My creative energy comes in waves, so to be able to come back at any time and have things that really matter to me be in my face is so perfect.
It’s also freed me up to discern what’s for me and what’s for other people. Where can I get help? Now I have a beautiful assistant as well, Hayley. We’ve both worked with Hayley. She is a gem.
I’m just blown away.
What I hope is that because it is so flexible and adaptable, it’ll solve for people what they needed. I also feel a strong obligation to say I didn’t create this out of my own brain. It’s derived from Agile Project Management Frameworks, which I have a certificate in through Atlassian. The bones are so strong. The course is about how I’ve interpreted that as a solopreneur, and how I’ve used it for my own personal life while also keeping all my notes while I was working corporately. It’s about using Agile as a team of one.
Hearing that, the way you deliver it is not corporate. It is so tender and intentional and thoughtful and compassionate. There’s an art to the way you present things. Your lived experience and your wisdom flood through. Everything you do, your emails, every touchpoint, is so tender and beautiful.

What happens when you leave corporate for creative work?

I want to talk about your experience in corporate and walking away because most of my clients are in or in transition from moving from corporate into semi-retirement or passion projects and side hustles. I’d love to hear your experience.
Walking away from corporate was huge for me because I really believed in that company and what we were doing. They gave me a bunch of green lights to do really interesting projects internally, and I was totally bought in. Every day I was asking, “How can I make a difference?”
Walking away opened up a ton of room in my life to hear myself and my priorities and my needs. Every way that I had been interpreting my job and bringing value and being useful, now I had to apply to myself. It was wonderful, but I was definitely tired because I hadn’t had a lunch break in like five years.
I needed to eat. I needed to breathe. I needed to pull back and get some perspective that I had lost. I think it’s just a natural phase that women in midlife reach. We get to that stage where you’ve given your life to this patriarchal model of work.
You get to a place where it’s like, “Well, what’s for me? Where is there space for me?” Being able to let go of that attachment to job as being where you are of worth and where you are of value, and find, “What is my magic for me?” I think it’s such a beautiful exploration.
I think what I’ve witnessed from you is you really cultivating a sense of magic within yourself.
Yeah. I think to put it in a nutshell, all of these skills and abilities and magic depend on your environment. That’s why I’m so passionate about feng shui. You can take that passion and focus and desire to serve, and if your environment is corporate then applying that there can really exist. But what me and my friends are finding as we’re maturing is that purpose exists outside. It doesn’t need to be realized through a relationship or a career. That’s just part of who we are.
We pull back and realize that’s part of us. So that purpose can be fulfilled in all of those things. I don’t need to force it anymore. It’s one of the benefits of the fatigue of aging. I don’t need to force it to happen this way anymore. It just is. It’s a gift. It’s a wonder. I can have it here with our emails, with gardening, cooking. That purpose can be present.

Can purpose exist outside your career?

I think it’s a much more efficient way. There’s such a pristine connection to purpose and joy and magic when we remove all the barriers. Corporate can be a huge barrier environmentally. The fluorescent lights, the politics, the red tape. Even if you’re doing the most purpose-driven job, how much of your energy is directly translating to meaning?
Whereas we can expend that energy in a beautiful email thread and feel an immediate sense of connection and richness. Our intentions to the outcome can be such a great distance apart.
I hear you.
That wasn’t my particular experience. I was actually really strongly connected to a lot of different teams with a lot of different outcomes. As I was thinking about this interview, I realized that’s one of the things I miss: having a map and being able to really see where my cog fit into the bigger picture.
In corporate I knew exactly how what I was doing every day was impacting other people. As a solopreneur, sometimes that feels lost on me. Maybe that was unique to my position or the culture I was in. We had consciously decided to remove silos, so we were really working together. That’s one of the things I miss. Being on big teams was really fun and rewarding.
I can imagine that you would. You really had a high level of discernment when you took that role. Being aligned with their values was hugely important to you.
I’m interested though, with the cogs, do you feel like this lack of a cog as a solopreneur means you have more exploration to do?
Yeah. Impact just feels more random. You receive some feedback. You receive an email. People take the course and fire off in whatever direction. Someone has feng shui consulting and sends me photos of decisions they’ve made. It’s on a trajectory of its own now.
Whereas in corporate it felt like it was all cinched together. It’s a very different flavor of how I interface with outcomes.
I absolutely relate to that. I used to work in pharmacy as an integrative nutritionist. It was very cause and effect. You could predict outcomes. Leaving that has left a hole that I’ve been looking to fill. But there’s also an exhilaration that comes with the fervor through which feedback comes when you’re living in a more creative, feminine, flowy existence.
When I receive an email now, I can feel so exquisitely held. It’s a different way of being.

What is high context vs low context communication?

This really speaks to what you were sharing with me in an email the other day about high context and low context.
Oh, I love this.
Being able to sit with your creations existing outside of you and outside of your realm of predictability. I have no idea. I wrote a book, and it’s up to them what they make of it. I’d love for you to share what that means.
Fantastic.
This belongs to an author whose book I was telling you about, and I believe even she is citing somebody else’s work. She had lived part of her life in India and then moved to the United States. She was trying to understand what she was experiencing. India would be considered a high context society, and the United States a low context society.
In a high context culture, the speaker doesn’t necessarily need to explain themselves to the listener. In a low context culture, it is the onus of the speaker to make themselves understood. If you grow up in a high context society where everyone shares similar understandings and heritage, then myths and stories don’t need direct reference in order to contribute to conversation.
Whereas in the United States, where people come from many different backgrounds, the speaker has to do the heavy lifting. What Nelle and I have been talking about is publishing work in a low context society. Is the onus on the creator to belabor a point and make everything crystal clear, or can we hide some of our meaning and allow that to unfold for the listener? Am I capturing this correctly?
Oh, absolutely. When you mentioned this in reference to the way I wrote my book, it struck me. I knew the name, I knew the arc, I knew the intended outcome. It was intended to be nonfiction. But I couldn’t.
The more I got into it, the more I found imagination was such a critical ally in joy. My book is called The Joy Decision, and it’s about joy. I couldn’t sit back and say, “This is how you do joy.” I needed the reader to sit with concepts and stories and experiences so they could make sense of what joy means for them.
Because we’re all so different. Our society has become so driven by “This is how you do X, Y, Z.” For me, that feels like the antithesis of self-development and growth. I have struggled in the past few years. There are people with really excellent, meaningful content, and I think they’re being asked by publishers to deliver it as though it’s the penultimate solution.
I search out Audible books where the person is just enjoying sharing their learning instead of telling me how to experience it. For my nervous system, I can’t be told how to process it anymore.
I need to be offered something of value and trusted to process it in my own way. Rebellion.
Yes.
But there’s some super quality content. Maybe I can get better myself at teasing through what’s underneath. What’s the gem? What’s the treasure? The sub context. Yeah. I think there’s a subterranean thread that exists through anyone who’s really trying to help others.
Only we can burrow into that and find where we need to land. Sometimes ticking the boxes is a distraction to the actual work the writer is offering. Now, I’ve ruined perfectly good books by treating them that way. There was wisdom there to gather, and I was just checking off boxes and moving on to the next jewel.
I’m absolutely guilty of that.
It’s like self-development tourism. Going to the cold plunges, doing the meditation, having the matcha, taking the Instagram shot.
Yeah.
There’s something to be said for approaching that with play. Just tossing the ball around.
Let’s give it a try. Take a picture. Have fun with it. Not always asking, “Is this going to fix the thing?”

Why do seasons of healing and growth matter?

I think that speaks to impermanence as well.
We all go through different seasons. For me, meditation was huge for such a long time, and now doing the dishwasher tends to be my meditation.
I feel like this podcast may end up being called Nelle and the Dishwasher because so much of my wisdom comes from being able to move through that awful experience.
We all go through seasons, and for one thing to be all healing at all times for all people, I don’t see that as realistic.
It’s just not accurate, is it?
No. It can’t be. And I love that.
Imagine if it was.
Imagine if you were seven years old and someone said, “This is what you do with life, and that’s it.” Oof. No thanks. We all signed up for the beautiful journey and the twists and turns and the climbing. As you said the other day, there’s many ways up the mountain. I feel like exploring those trails is such a juicy way to engage with life. Agreed.
That’s where the magic and the sparkle is.

Where can you find Jessie Sobool and Euda by Jess?

Jess, it has been so magical and sparkly sitting with you today. I do hope we get to do this a little more regularly. You’re one of my most favorite people, and our emails are amongst my keenest pleasures. It’s been such a joy having you on today. Thank you so much, Jessie, for joining us.
Thank you so, so much, Nelle. This has been such a riot, and I treasure your words.
For our listeners, where can they find you in the world?
Ooh, come see me. I’m at www.cozyjess.com, so that you don’t have to spell the actual name of my business. Which is Euda by Jessie. Euda being my interpretation of eudaimonia. Come join me on my email list because I have some things cooking, more courses that are oriented around my feng shui passion. I really needed to get that productivity course built. It was demanding to happen. I look forward to connecting there.
Bless you.
I think you needed to build it for me.
My dear friend Abby was on a couple of weeks ago. She continues to tell me, “I’ve got my Trello board, and I’ve got this and I’ve got that, and I’m using it all the time.” So your work really does have legs and legacy, and I’m so grateful to have you in my orb. Thank you so much, Jessie. That is amazing. I just wanted to say one last thing.
When you and I first met, you were near the end of putting together your app and all the workflows there. You asked me to do some user testing, and I did. I’ve done user testing professionally, and I love it. I was like, “There’s a team behind this.” We hadn’t even had a meeting. We’d just done Facebook Messenger back and forth. It surprises me so much to hear you say scheduling and planning is a challenge. I never would’ve guessed that.
When we first met, in my mind, you had created something big and engaging with so many doors to it. You were managing them all with such clear feminine energy. Up until recently, I didn’t realize you had done all of that without a team.
Thank you.
I am really blessed. I can get in creative slipstreams, and I don’t really have resistance with what comes through. I don’t know where it comes from, but my creative process has a purity to it that I never take for granted. I can sit around for a week thinking, “I need to write this page,” and then sit down and it’s written in an hour. I did have help. I had Nikki, my beautiful branding lady, and I had a web developer. But yeah, the rest of it was magic and me, I guess.
Amazing.
I’m so privileged to have witnessed that. You are so beautiful.
Thank you so much, Jessie. It’s been such a pleasure, and I really do hope we can speak again soon sometime.
I look forward to it. Thank you again, Nelle, so much. Thank you.
Thank you for sitting with us today. It has been an absolute joy. If you’d like to work with me or connect with any one of our beautiful guests, you can find everything at perimoon.com.au. And until next time, may you find yourself all the way alive.