Creating Social Change With Maria Nemeth

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. And I am so blessed to be with you today as every day I got to wake up and I don't guarantee that that's, or there is no guarantee that that will happen every day. So it is truly cause for celebration. And I am in celebration mode right now. As I sit here, I get this be with all of you. I get to speak into this microphone. What's on my heart, and at this moment, what's on my heart is to be grateful and to remind myself just how important each and every day it is to be in gratitude and to start the day off that way. My grandmother would say it means I'm getting off on the right foot. So I feel lucky that we get to have this opportunity today to meet with somebody, to speak to someone. I get to interview her and have a conversation, really more than an interview anyway. But she is a remarkable woman, and I'm going to read a little bit about Maria Nemeth's bio and her background in just a second. But when I met her recently, as the first time I had met her, we'd met on Zoom and we was introduced through a mutual friend. I was just so impressed with her as a human being and invited her to be on the show so she could share some of her wisdom with all of you, the depth of her own Pivot journey. We're all on a journey of a kind, and oftentimes those pivots in the journey can be painful. Sometimes they can be joyous. I mean, they're a mixed bag of things. But all of it, every bit of it, is intended for our growth. Every part of it is required and therefore something that we can appreciate and be grateful for, especially if we're able to utilize it. And that's. That's really the key to me. And that's why we named this show the Conscious Pivot Podcast, because it's not just about the pivots in our lives, but the way that we use them on a conscious level to advance. It's an evolutionary process. None of it's random in my opinion anyway. And it's none of it's without its purpose. It may not be what we want in the moment. Change is something that sometimes we don't necessarily want to embrace, but yet all of it is profoundly important, not just to us individually, but to our to our world. So with that, I will share a few thoughts, read a few things about Maria's background, and then we're going to get right into it. Maria Nemeth helps purpose driven people everywhere see their greatness and bring it all to life. How beautiful. As founder and director of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, she has trained thousands of people worldwide in the nonprofit profit space and in government sectors as well. She's an expert in leadership excellence, personal and professional development, and financial empowerment. Her work has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey show, among others. She's a lifelong agent for social change. It's beautiful. Maria's contributed in the areas such as civil rights, racial justice, women's empowerment, health and human services, LGBTQ rights, and climate justice. Maria is also the author of two highly acclaimed books, the Energy of Money, available in four, five languages and it's follow up Mastering Life's Energies, both of which have given people everywhere a way to begin putting success principles into immediate practice in their lives. That's a wonderful, wonderful bio. It's a beautiful explanation of some of the work that you've been committed to for so many years, Maria. And just as the show is beginning, right before we hit the record button, you and I were chatting about the fact that bios don't tell the whole story. And it's kind of a funny thing on some level to listen to our own bios and realize that there's a lot that's missing from that. And so while we don't have to fill in all the gaps, I would love it if you would fill in a gap or two. First of all, welcome, welcome to the show. Thank you for being with us today.

I'm thrilled, I'm just thrilled to be here. I was thinking as you were saying that thank heaven some of the things are missing too, because some of the things we wouldn't want to show up on our bio gives us pause, makes us, you know, as you were saying earlier, the pivot points in our lives can be sometimes happy ones, sometimes difficult ones. And so as I said, I'm glad not all of it shows up on one's bio. Bottom line, I'm a clinical psychologist as well as a master certified coach and I have been in the human service field Supporting people as a psychologist and then as a coach and as a trainer for 50 years now. And it's really interesting, Adam, to. To wake up and think about all the time that we put into something. You know, it was just my birthday a few days ago. Thank you. And, of course, I like to joke with people that I was. I was a child prodigy when I started, but, you know, I was 24 then, and I'm 74 now, and so it's 50 years. And to tell you the truth, sometimes I love to throw my age around, because if I get a comment from somebody, how do you know these things, Maria? Or, you know, where do you get off telling us something or whatever like that? I can just say, well, honey, as some of my mentors used to say to me, honey, yes? How old are you? And, you know, I've been doing this since before you were born. And not always, but sometimes it stops the conversation or we can laugh about it and. Because that whole thing is just relative, isn't it? So, you know, I think that's probably enough to know about me for the moment in terms of my bio.

Yeah. Well, physical age is one thing, and mental age is another thing. Emotional. Emotional age is yet another thing. And maybe there's even something like spiritual age.

Spiritual age. I was just thinking that.

Yep. So we are. You know, our physical age is not always the indicator of how mature we are, how much wisdom we've gained, what value we have to share. So I think it goes both ways. I think people that are younger sometimes aren't taken as seriously as they ought to be. I think millennials are getting a bit of a bad rap these days. I don't know exactly why that is, frankly. I have two daughters. We have four kids, but two of them, two of our oldest children, are not children. They're young, beautiful young women, and they're millennials, and they're impeccable. Like, they're incredible. And I, of course, I'm incredibly biased because I'm their daddy, but I also see how they are showing up in the world and what people say to us about the work they're doing and who they are as people, and they're incredible. And I just dare say that some of the things that are said about millennials, you know, whatever those things are, I won't even repeat them, I think are broad generalization and highly inaccurate in ways. And then there's the way that seniors or people that are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, have been treated forever. I mean, seniors have been marginalized in so many ways in our society for so long anyhow. And that is, it's not even a matter of right or wrong. It's just, it's wasteful. And I can't personally can't stand waste. Part of the pivot, the whole thing that we talk about with pivot is that nothing goes to waste. That's what's beautiful about our pivots in life.

Exactly.

They're so useful. So in any event, thanks for sharing.

More and it's so wonderful to hear how proud you are of your, of your daughters too. That's really important for them to know that their parent is proud of them. And you know, in my work and in our courses at the academy, we have a wide range of ages of people who come for initial training and lots of millennials and then lots of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s. And when they come together in a room for four days, after a while we see that there are virtually no differences. We're all here, we're all living, we all have our goals and dreams, desire to make a difference. And so the question only becomes, how is it that I'm going to make my contribution? So, you know, once again, good to hear how much you appreciate your kids.

Thank you, Maria. Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. I've done as part of my own last 10 years of work is a lot of, it's been inside hotel rooms, in hotel space, with seminars and trainings, or anywhere, sort of on the, on the three day side to the five or seven day side. And I couldn't agree with you more that in those training environments, people come in sort of in their own space, their headspace. We create heart space and there's a context. And within hours there's almost no difference between exactly their, their ages. We've got kids in there, we've had teenagers and millennials and people in there, you know, well into their 90s as well at times. And yeah, there's, it's, it's such a community where those, the differences that you see more out in the world don't exist necessarily in that space. So it is a special environment, very special. And Yogananda said long ago, that environment is stronger than will. So creating an environment and what an environment creates is so important. Would you agree?

Oh, I think it's absolutely true. And, and at the same time, you know, I love quotes like, for example, from George Bernard Shaw who said, you know, there are many people who wait for the right circumstance before they take action. He said the people who are successful if they don't find the circumstance, they just go out and create it. So while environment is a big factor, sometimes it's just stepping out and seeing that you can create your own environment. And that, I think, has been one of the single most empowering aspects of work that's been done over the past 10, 15 years. Seeing that we do have the ability to choose how we're going to live our lives. And the question becomes knowing that, how do we gain some tools to be able to make it happen so that we're just not frustrated all the time, but we see it, we see where we want to go, and we actually have tools to take us there. And so a lot has been done over the past few years in empowerment and building in a neurophysiological base, for example, that shows that we can actually change how our brain works.

You know what? I want to. I want to come back to the neurophysiological conversation in just a second, Maria, but you inspired me to pick up a book that's sitting on my desk, and typically it's upstairs because I refer to it, confer with it each night before I go to sleep. And it's this old book. It was written in maybe 71 or 72. I have to check it out. But Ogmund Dino's the Greatest Salesman in the World. Another great book of. He's written so many, had written so many, like the Greatest Miracle in the World. But in any event, what I love in one particular section is this quote where he says weak. And I'll change the pronouns just a little bit here, but weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions. Strong is she who forces her actions to create control her thoughts. And I think that's the point that you were making there, or at least in part, is that it's. It is really important that we allow that we have a. That we empower ourselves to take action. And, you know, people have heard this many times. So action in spite of fear and all that kind of stuff. So I won't repeat what has been said so much and is fairly obvious at this point, but the idea that cultivating good thoughts is crucial, to be the guardian at the gate of your mind is everything. And I learned so much from Emmet Fox's work and spend so much time in that process of cultivating better thoughts. And yet it's actions that actually create thoughts often. So when we want to break free of something that's a pattern, interrupt a pattern or habitual way of seeing the world, whether it's to see it with, with eyes that, you know, complain, or with eyes that are looking, looking at what's missing, or eyes that, that are seeing the world through a lens of regret or fear about the future. Any of those things. Often it's, we want to get. Be able to think, to think more in a more empowered way, to think more rightly, righteously right thinking. And yet action can be a catalyst for new thoughts, for better thoughts, for thoughts that are outside of the box. That's the old adage, or at least it's become an old adage, that people want to think outside the box in business. And yet it's not necessarily about thinking outside the box at all. It's acting outside of the box which then creates new thinking that didn't exist before. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, it does make sense. One of the people I have been studying quite at length is Wallace Wattles, who wrote the book the Science of Getting Rich. And in chapter 11 of the signs of Getting Rich, and if you're interested, I'll tell people about my Wallace Wattles challenge that I suggest people go through. But in the Signs of getting rich, chapter 11, he says, by thought your vision brought toward you, but by action you receive it. And he said, there's so many great metaphysical teachers whose, you know, their, their dreams land on a shipwreck in life because they are waiting to take action, whereas thought and action are both together. They have to be together. And we see this in the teachings of other people because, for example, Mother Teresa, one of her chief mottos was love in action. So it's always in visionary or metaphysical reality we have a thought, but it has to be married with action in physical reality. And in that bridge between metaphysical and physical reality. In that bridge is what we would call the meaningful life. Living life in accordance with what's important to you, what you love, rather than waiting for what you love to show up, and then you'll live into it. So I think what you're saying is absolutely, absolutely right.

Love in action. It's so funny. That's a definition for us of service that we shared before. Such a beautiful thing that it came from Mother Teresa. I didn't know that. So thank you. Let's turn back just a couple of minutes ago where you were talking about the way the brain is wired. And I'd love to have you share some of those thoughts. And then we're going to dig into a pivot story of yours in just a few moments too.

Yeah, the favorite thing I talk About, Adam, in that regard. You know, when I was getting my PhD at UCLA in psychology, one of my subspecialties was neurophysiology. And so I became interested in how the brain works many, many years ago. But the latest research is so interesting, Adam. We've discovered that our brains, your brain, my brain hasn't changed much in over 100,000 years. That the only way the brain actually changed between seven and 9,000 years ago is that we started having blue eyes. But other than that, our brain is essentially the same brain that's been around for a hundred thousand years. So to look at it from that vantage point gives us a certain way of looking at how we react in life. For example, let's pretend that you and I were living in a cave 100,000 years ago and we're buddies. We decide that we're going to go out and get some breakfast. So when we leave the cave together to go outside for some breakfast, it's a hundred thousand years ago, we leave and we're standing into the opening of the cave. What's the first thing our brain is going to start looking for?

Probably something growing on the ground or on a bush.

Well, even before that, believe it or not, our brain will start looking for danger, a predator. Because, you know, we didn't have fangs, we didn't have fur, and we weren't very robust as animals. But we did have a brain that could look for danger and plan for danger. So many neurophysiologists now are beginning to see that our brain is wired for danger, wired immediately to look at what is wrong with the situation where there's a predator, where I'm going to get hurt. And when we see that, the great thing about that is that we see that our doubts and worries are absolutely normal, meaning most of us have them, and natural, meaning we don't have to be trained in order to have these doubts and worries. So we can relax that if you and I have a doubt or a worry or we're scared, it means essentially that we have a well functioning brain. There was a woman many years ago, they wrote about her who was born without an amygdala. The amygdala is that part of the brain that's always looking for. You know, it's always concerned with fight, flight or freeze. And she really was never afraid. She didn't have fear. And people had to look out for her because she'd walk into situations without checking things out and she could get herself into a lot of trouble. So, number one, our fear is normal. And natural number two, we have the ability to shape our brain. We have the ability to decommission those aspects of our brain that no longer interest us and literally build new synaptic pathways for things that do interest us. And so the question becomes, how are we going to then learn to create these new synaptic pathways? I think that's what a lot of your work is up to. I know that's a lot of what I've been working on for the past long period of time. But anyway, so when people hear this about themselves in the brain, they actually relax because they see there's nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, if you had a brain that was not wired for danger, you might get in trouble. You know, you might not react to a situation in which you needed to plan for danger.

Fear has its place, and a very important place. The question is, where's the appropriate place for fear for each of us? And so sometimes I'll describe it as we're driving in the car, and the question is, if fear is in the car with us, which it is, it's with us all the time. Is that fear driving the car? Is it in the front seat holding the map back in the day when there was a map? Is it programming the gps? Where is it in the car? And to me, asking that question is both an acknowledgement of the fact that fear belongs there. It's healthy for us to look twice before we step out into the street and to oncoming traffic, et cetera. And at the same time, for me, and this is, as you say, we both have, have. Our good chunk of our work is in this area of how it is that we are able to see. See fear in a way that empowers us to not be stopped by it when we don't want to be stopped by it.

Yes.

And that's both the conscious response to it, a more conscious response to it, as well as recognizing there's unconscious programming and wiring. Those neural pathways have been set long ago, as you say. That goes back to sort of the reptilian brain and the way it's wired to keep us safe. So what do you do about it? Well, for me, it's not driving the car. I don't want fear to be behind the wheel. I don't want fear to be even programming the destination for me in my life. And yet I know it's got to be in there. So it's maybe sitting in the backseat. It chirps up here and there. It does a little backseat driving from time to Time and. And that helps. So in any event, I would love Maria, for any thoughts that you want to share with our listeners and our viewers, people watching on YouTube, other folks listening wherever they are, potentially now walking outside or on a treadmill, or maybe they're at the office, etcetera, Maybe driving a car right now, in fact. So keep your eyes open, everybody, and just know you're safe and sound and the fears are normal. That's the first thing I think we've. We've heard from you, Maria, that that's helpful, that we know that just because you have fear thoughts doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or the way your brain is wired, but that you can decommission certain parts of your brain. Share a little bit about that. I think that would be important for people to know what that's about.

Well, I'll tell you, decommissioning is so simple, Adam. Let me set the context. You've probably seen the movie A Brilliant Mind, and in that movie, it's about a man who was brilliant and paranoid schizophrenic, and so he had hallucinations. Part of the movie had to do with how he could control his reaction to the hallucinations. And it's important because the hallucinations didn't necessarily go away. It was how interested he became in them, actually decommissioning his interest. So at the end of the movie, someone is talking with him about does he hallucinate still? And he looks in a corner of this hall where he's giving this speech, and he sees the hallucinations, the man and little girl, and he simply turns away from them and begins to take his wife out to dinner. And it's the turning away from. It's the refocus of your attention. So what we might look at is what is more interesting to me. What is it, for example, that I want to be known for? To talk about a vulnerable time in life. I remember when I was 60 and having my birthday cappuccino with myself, and I was thinking about all my issues, and all of a sudden I got this notion, Adam, what do I want to be known for? Do I want on my tombstone, Do I want it to write, here lies Maria. She had issues. Is that what really I wanted? People? And it wasn't true. Here lies Maria. She loved us, we loved her. And life was just a little better place because she was in it. And that's what I wanted. And I've come to see over the years, that's what virtually all of us want. We want to know that we've made a difference and that life was just a little bit better because we were there. So the question becomes, what do you then focus on? Well, one thing you can focus on if you're willing to shift the focus of your attention, which doesn't change anything. You see, anytime you try to change how you think, how you think becomes more embedded because you're focusing on it. So when you shift the focus of your attention, how do I want to be known? For example, life's intentions. I have something called a life's intentions inventory, and at the end, I can let you know how to get in touch with it if the listeners want. But a life's intention is something that I want to contribute, like to be a contributor to my community, to be a loving family member, to be physically fit and healthy, to be spiritually developing. There are so many of these life's intentions, and if I were to simply focus on one or two of them, how might someone who is willing to be a loving family member act right here and right now? You see, I'm shifting. I'm not listening to my doubts and fears. They just are less interesting to me because you and I ultimately will be known for that upon which we focused our attention. If I focus my attention on my issues, my dilemmas, my problems, my fears, that's literally what's going to be on my tombstone. Or figuratively. But if I'm willing to make a contribution, to do something with my life, then, you see, then the real journey begins, like it did with Buckminster Fuller when he was almost about to commit suicide because he was so depressed with how his life turned out. He was about to drown himself. And at that moment, he said, you know what? My life is already a throwaway life, so I'm not going to even focus on my life. I'm, quote, dead to me. So given all that, what am I willing to focus upon? And out of that came some of his most brilliant inventions and ways of making a difference for others because he wasn't paying attention to himself. Does this make. Does this make sense, what I'm saying?

Oh, makes perfect sense to me. I wish we could ask everybody who's listening right now, does it make sense? But the way you can indicate whether, whether that's the case, of course, is to. You're not up and down with whatever you're up to. And then. And then the opportunity to comment on the podcast and on the blog that the podcast will. Will. That the blog will flow out of the podcast is a great way to let Maria and myself know if this did land for you. I think what you're saying is profound in its simplicity, in so many ways, in that where we put our focus is everything. It's. I don't know that there's anything. It could be the first and the last chapter of every book on achievement or success or how to parent, how to live, really, because it's where our energy ends up going, where our focus goes. It carries our energy there as well.

Absolutely.

I can't help but produce some result, some consequence. So, yes, it's fundamental and yet it is profound at the same time. Worth. Worth. I don't think we can stress it enough, but I loved how you drew in the example of Bucky Fuller as well, and how it is that when he did feel as though his life had run upon the rocks and was for all intents and purposes over, so to speak, or dead, that his focusing, changing the focus for himself, where he was looking, looking outside of himself, gave him a new life, gave him a new future. I mean, he became a futurist. The geodesic dome, you know, the thing, that Epcot center, that you may not know who created that, but that's Bucky Fuller's work. And so much work beyond that, that wouldn't have, wouldn't have existed clearly, if he had taken his life. But, but even if he hadn't taken his life, but he hadn't changed his focus where he was looking, he was just looking inward again, what's wrong with me? And do I change in me and all that kind of inward, inward focus? He might not have changed the world the way he did. So. What a brilliant example of that.

Thank you.

And these are for the, you know, because it's, it's part of our body of work. I'll call it pivots. That's a, that's a pivot. A change in direction of our, of our, of where we're looking. Our focus is a pivot. And part of what I believe is the foundation of our work, or I know this to be the case, is that it doesn't have to be a very sweeping, large change in the focus or doing 180 degree change in what we're looking at to create some significant movement. Often it's just a tiny change. It could be a 1 degree change or a 2 degree change in where we're looking or in our focus in the moment that over time I use the example of a straight line. If we take a straight line and Then on the end of any of one of the ends of that line, we simply change the direction by a degree, even one degree. It doesn't look like much at the time. It's not much at the time. But then you, over time, see that those two lines diverge, and they continue to diverge. They never come. I mean, there's no straight lines in the universe anyway. We know. So there'll be other things happening, but those lines diverge and. And they move further and further apart until six months later, or two years later or 20 years later, you could hardly know that they were ever started in the same place. And that's the essence of the pivot is this idea that we. The changes is profound and that when we want to change something or we are thrust into change, there's a great creative opportunity. And again, that's a change of how you see what you see. Are you curious about it, for example, or is it something, you know that you give a different label or that you're in fear of that creative opportunity that presents itself when we're thrust into change, or there's an opportunity for us to be more deliberate and design focused when we're wanting to change certain things. That's a great area of curiosity for me and for our community. So I would love it if you would lead us through one of the changes in your life, a pivot point or story, and we'd love to get a sense of what you gained from that process. It may have been tough.

Well, it was very tough. And it happened about 40 years ago. I loaned someone $35,000 on an unsecured promissory note. Now, for listeners who may not know what an unsecured promissory note is, it's. It's not worth anything because it's something that says, you're giving me this money, and if I don't pay it back, there's no recourse. So I loaned this person $35,000 on an unsecured promissory note, someone who I'd only known for about three months. And I borrowed the 35,000 from a family member at 10.5% interest, because the man to whom I gave this money said that I would earn 35%, 32% on my investment. He was going to invest the money for me. And, of course, it was a Ponzi scheme. It's one of those schemes where, like Bernie Madoff, where obviously you're investing, but you lose all the money. And I actually did lose all the money. And I remember that as I was signing that check over to this man, 35,000 and over 100, because I didn't want him to cash it for more. This little voice of wisdom inside of me was saying, maria, this is too good to be true. But I didn't listen because I was just, my God, this is a way to make money. And it was just. I was so excited. You know, it's that bling factor. Bright, shiny object. And even my family member. My family members and my colleagues said, don't do this, because I talked to them about it. So I did it, and I lost the money. And instead of facing it, I ran psychologically into my office and began seeing more clients and families and groups because I wanted to make this money up as quickly as possible, and I just wanted to be done with it, not even looking at, what is the lesson for me, you know? And about three months into this, and I wasn't speaking to my family members or my friends at all or even if they asked me what had happened, I changed the subject really quickly. And so it was clear that I wasn't learning anything from this. And one thing that happens when you don't learn from your lessons, of course, is they come after you. And they come after you. Yes. And that's what happened. Three months later, I get a call from the Sacramento Bee, and there's this woman saying, you know, Dr. Nemeth, we've been given your name from UC Davis because at the time I was an associate clinical professor in psychiatry. She said, you're well known in the community. We need to ask a question that's been bothering us in our community. And, of course, I remember getting all, you know, filled with my professional self. And, you know, yes, I'd be very happy to talk with you. And, you know, it's amazing when you don't see your lessons that are about to hit you. She said, Dr. Nemeth, a lot of the people in Sacramento, where I live, have been taken by this Ponzi scheme. And we need to know from someone of your stature, what kind of a person gets taken by those schemes? You know, what's wrong with them? Do they have unresolved issues? And of course, she was talking about me because I had been taken by that same scheme. And in that moment, Adam, is when I shifted the focus of my attention, because I remember thinking to myself, I may as well just tell the truth. Let her know, because, you know, if someone else can avoid doing what I did, it'll be, you know, I will have made a difference. And so I told her the truth. I said I was one of the people who was taken by that Ponzi scheme. And I started telling her about how I lost $35,000. And I was ashamed and embarrassed. And to her credit, she did try to shut me up. She said, Dr. Nemeth, you know, I'm writing an article about this. And I remember telling her, you might as well just say all this, because I just. If it can be of a contribution to someone else. So she did, you know, and it was in the paper, the Sacramento bee, you know, Dr. Maria Nemeth lost $35,000 to this Ponzi scheme. And my friends and colleagues and relatives called me, and they didn't ask me why I had done it. What happened was they started talking with me about their own relationship with money. And, Adam, I discovered that no matter how much or how little money people had, the story was always the same, that they were disempowered. You know, there's one woman who was a multimillionaire, and she said, maria, every time one of my daughters calls me, I don't think it's because she loves me. I think it's because she just wants more money. And then there was one real estate mogul in Sacramento who said to me, anonymously, I don't want people to know how little money I have because I, you know, spend it as quickly as I make it. And so I decided to start a seminar called you'd and Money for me to heal my own relationship with money. And you know that old saying, if you want to learn something, teach it. And so that was, boy, a good 39 years ago. And that's how the journey began. Doing the you and Money course and then the Energy of Money course. And I wrote that book. And then Mastering Life's Energies. And then I wrote that book, and then people coming to me saying, maria, you've been coaching people. This is even before coaching was popular, back about 30 years ago. You know, if you thought of a coach, it was like a singing coach or a sports coach. But I'd been teaching people coaching that I had begun to pick up along the way, studying with people that I considered to be masters. And so we opened the Academy for Coaching Excellence. Because bottom line is, I see as a psychologist, Adam, that coaching is as important and powerful as psychotherapy. And coaches still, I'm going to tell you, still, do not get enough training to work with their clients. In order for me to get my PhD to practice therapy, I had to put in 3,000 hours. I decided that I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and give coaches as rigorous a training as possible so that they would learn where to coach and where to refer. And interestingly enough, over the years, the coaches from our academy who have been rigorously trained, these are the coaches who are earning the most money because they know that as a coach, they really have a fiduciary obligation with their client to at first do no harm and second of all, provide a space for the client to see their goals and dreams in life.

It's like a Hippocratic oath. It's like, exactly. Do no harm, first tenant.

Exactly. And so for me, it was really mortifying to go through losing that money. But if I hadn't lost it now, in retrospect, I might not even be here talking to you today.

Yes. One of those amazing opportunities that doesn't always come wrapped in a bow that says, I'm an amazing opportunity to be so vulnerable. Yeah. Shame. Oh, and I'm sure there was a grieving process for you for some length of time.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. You know, it's like, what did I learn? And that really gave impetus to develop this seminar. I told 22 of my friends, look, come with me in this seminar that I'm going to develop because I need it. And I promise you, we'll all have breakthroughs. And we did because we were willing, Adam, to ask ourselves difficult questions when it came to money, to unpack. Unpack everything that had us making the money decisions that we had made. And once you unpack them and look at them, you can say to yourself, have I had enough of doing it this way? Is there something else I'm more interested in focusing upon? And so I might say in talking with you, I'm realizing this right now. For the past 38 years, I've been teaching people to shift the focus of their attention. Just didn't call it that in those days. But nowadays we do call it that.

Indeed. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate, and I know folks are listening now, appreciating your vulnerability and honesty about it. Because when we lose money or we make poor decisions around money, there is a lot of shame. There's a lot of feeling of self loathing that comes up. Judgment, of course. Judgment of ourselves as well as judgment of maybe somebody that got involved in taking the money from us. But we were the willing participants.

Oh, yes.

Very rarely is it a gun to the head. I mean, we know what that's called. And so robbery is one thing, but poor investing, and investing in people that weren't trustworthy or violated our trust and things like that. You know, it's very, very much a personal, a personal thing. It is that we ourselves are responsible for.

It is, it is what I discovered, Adam, is that when that the reason I look with people at their relationship with money, although that's not everything that we study at the academy, that just 1, 1% of what we study. But if you have a shift of focus in your relationship with money, it will affect your whole life because money is just a form of energy. But how you relate to it, how you use it to either invest in goals and dreams or wasting it, you know, it talks to you about your life. And there are six forms of energy that we're here to use in life. There's money, there's the energy of time, the energy of physical vitality, the energy of creativity, the energy of enjoyment, and then the energy of relationship. And if we had a couple hours, you and I could have a conversation about this. But of all the energies, if you look at money first, that's where you're going to have a breakthrough that affects all the other energies.

Wonderful. Well, the Energy of Money was your first book. And how long has that book been out approximately?

It's been out since 1999.

Beautiful. Beautiful. And that's in five languages. And mastering Life's Energy was the follow.

Up that's been out for about eight years.

Uh huh. Awesome. So in the show notes folks, you'll be able to get information about Maria and where you can find out more about her academy of coaching excellence as well as the books that she's been mentioning. And there is something, I think you said earlier that some folks could. I don't know if it's an assessment of some kind.

Yes, please. If you go on to Ace coach training forward slash blueprint, you'll get something called your life's blueprint. And it's a way of not only seeing what's important to you, but having you discern various ways of bringing what's important to you into physical reality. And it's something that people love. It's easy, it's simple and Ace coach training.

Blueprint.

Blueprint. That'll get it for you.

Beautiful. Maria, last question for this particular conversation has to do with rituals, practices and things that help you to be. And I'll stick with the, with the example you've given which is to change your focus to shift what you're looking at in a moment where you're feeling disempowered. So do you have rituals for That I do.

I do. One is meditation. I follow Paramahansa Yogananda, so I study a hymn and meditate. I also read things that are very important. And this is the Wallace Wattles Challenge. I wanted to talk with people about.

About.

Wallace Wattles writes this book, 1910 the Science of Getting Rich, which really arguably is the book that has affected all the thinkers in the 20th century. Napoleon Hill. Oh, yeah, W. Clement Stone. I mean, I will stick by it because if you read his book, especially chapters 4, 7, 11 and 14, and they're short, the science of getting rich, chapters 4, 7, 11 and14, read them every day for 90 days. And if you miss a day, you start over. That's the challenge. And about three or four times a year, we launch from the Academy the official Wallace Wattles Challenge, in which I read parts of the. The book and it's for free. But right now, where you can get started is Signs of getting rich. Chapters 4, 7, 11, 14. Every day. 90 days.

90 days.

It will shift the focus of your attention, I promise you.

Maria, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being a guest on the show today. And I personally enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure you too, love your energy as well. We have. We're part of a group called tlc and there's a lady that's also a member there, Lynn Twist, who wrote the Soul of Money. And, oh, yes, there's just so much that we can do with that topic. Just magnificent. So I will end our. Our show. And it's not an ending, of course. It's always just continuing this opening. So a beginning. But we'll bookend our show by bringing to our attention again how important it is to be grateful. And I will wave my magic wand, which I love to be able to do. It's the privilege of having this microphone that I get to express outward into the world an intention and a wish, a hope, a prayer even, that we all wake up tomorrow. There's no guarantee of it. So it's a prayer. And I wish it for you, for every one of you that is listening now or watching even, that you wake up tomorrow. That I wake up and you wake up, Maria. That you wake up. And that is both the physical waking up as well as this metaphoric one, that we wake ourselves up a little more each day.

Beautiful. Beautiful, Adam. Thank you.

Just a little bit more. Because it's in that higher consciousness that we'll get to serve, find out more and be able to serve at a higher level. So three parts to our ritual for Waking tomorrow, first wake up. That's the vigi. All right. And in the moment that you realize, yes, yes, yes, I am actually waking up now, taking that first deep breath, recognize too, that there are people who will be taking their very last breath in that moment as well. And babies being born that are taking their first breath. So it's a sacred moment, special, no accident at all that you are getting that breath. And so the question is, what is your assignment? What's your assignment in that moment? Ask yourself. I sit in bed just for a few moments in the morning. I do this every day. I'm waking up, I realize how special that is. I'm grateful. So I cultivate that feeling, being grateful for the breath and for all it means, including the assignment that I have for the day. And maybe, if I'm lucky, days beyond today. And then I say something out loud, which I invite you to try. I've gotten to share this with a lot of people around the world. It's made a big difference for me and for a number of others as well. We understand. And that is that you declare out loud, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. I'll leave you with that. I wish you all a beautiful rest of your day, your evening, your morning, your afternoon, wherever you are in the moment, be in gratitude for that. It is a blessing to have you be part of our community. Of course, if you've not yet subscribed to the podcast, you can go to AdamMarkel.com and subscribe. Please leave a review. We love the feedback, love the reviews on itunes. Please do that as well. And our Facebook community is growing. We'd love to have you be part of it. It's magnificent. It's the start my Pivot community on Facebook and you can get there by going to pivotfb.com and again, we'll have show notes and things about Maria and her work as well. And Maria, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much again for being.

On the show and you are such a gift, Adam. Thank you. I'm very grateful that you asked me to be here with you today.

Thank you. Thank you again. Bye bye everybody. Ciao for now.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own Pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.