#033: The Spiritual Side to Freelance Success — A Candid Talk with Pete Savage from ExpandYoursel...

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level.

And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Well, hello everyone and thank you so much for joining me for episode 33 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com Episode 33 I haven't been this excited about a podcast since I started the show earlier this year. And the reason I'm so excited is that I'm going to be addressing a topic today and actually in the next episode as well that I've held back on for a long time. And I've held back on it partly because I know that not everyone buys into this way of thinking and the ideas that I'm going to be sharing with you today and next week. And also partly because it's a bit challenging to talk about this concept in concrete terms. So here's the deal. Every month I get a couple of emails from subscribers who tell me something like, ed, dude, I have followed the formula to the T. I've done everything you suggested, I've worked super hard and I just can't seem to get this specific result. What am I doing wrong? And when they talk about the result that they can't seem to get, they're talking about, you know, finally landing their first client or landing higher paying clients or getting to the next level in their business, whatever it is. And I think we can all relate to this because we've all been there. We're all going after something big at some point in our life and many times, several times in our life. Better clients, a certain income level, more time off, reaching a certain level of physical fitness, whatever it is. We follow the plan, we follow the formula, the recipe, but we just can't seem to get the result we want. It becomes so elusive and so frustrating. So what's going on here? Well, I have some answers for you today. And to help me cover this topic in a more practical and detailed way, I've invited one of my best friends in the whole world, Pete Savage from expandyourself.com Pete has had a huge influence on my thinking about high performance in every area of business in life. He's a real student of this subject and someone who puts this stuff to practice every day and over the next couple of episodes, he's going to give you practical questions and insights that will help you see what's missing in these efforts and to help bring about the results that you really want. Now, listen, this material is not for everybody. I know that, and I accept that it requires an open mind and an open heart, and I really hope it inspires you and serves you in a big way. And listen, if this message is not right for you today, I hope you come back to it again in the future. Because sometimes these things are all about timing and about being in a place in your life where you're ready to receive new ideas and insights. So with that, let's get right to it. Enjoy. All right, so I am sitting here with my very good, close friend, fellow co author of the Wealthy Freelancer, and, gosh, the founder of a new blog called Expand Yourself the my close friend, Pete Savage. Pete, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks a lot, Ed. I'm really thrilled to be here talking to you and to your audience.

Yeah, you know, I am just as thrilled as you are, buddy. I was thinking about this this morning. I don't think I've been this excited about a podcast since I started this show in April. I really haven't.

I know. Well, we have fun when we get together, so we just, you know, it's going to be. It's going to be fun. We got to remember to get our work done, though. We got to get through this.

Yeah, we do. We do. This is a. You know, this is a fascinating topic, and it's also a very important topic, and it's something that I don't think a lot of podcasters and I think leaders in the freelance movement have the courage or the desire to put out there. And I've toyed with this idea for a long time, and I finally decided, you know, we really need to address this issue. And I know you and I had a conversation a while back about this, and you were all over it, so I'm just so happy that you took me up on it.

Yeah. Awesome. I can't wait to see where this call goes.

So just for everyone's benefit, let me just set the stage. And this is exactly how I explained it to Pete. I get calls. I get emails every year. I don't know how many. And, gosh. And I've asked myself the same question right when things aren't going the way that I want them. These calls, these emails say something to the effect of, Ed, I'm working hard. I'm following the plan. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, but I'm not getting the results or the breakthroughs that I expected. And, you know, you might. I might ask a couple of follow up questions. Okay, what's going on? Tell me more. And when I listen to the individual or when I read the response, it's very obvious that, yes, they, they're definitely working hard. I mean, they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And the real question is, why is that? You know, why? What's missing here? They just do they need to work even harder in. And it got me thinking, you know, I'm a cook and I can, I can follow a dish recipe exactly. And if I do that, I get the same results that the chef who came up with that dish got. So why is it not the same in business? Why can I not be guaranteed the same results that somebody else got if I follow a very specific plan step by step and if I work my butt off. And that thinking that I just described, that thought pattern led me to the conclusion that there is a spiritual side to this issue. And so that's why I wanted to bring Pete on board. Because Pete really is involved with this kind of thinking day in and day out. And he is. He's got some pretty amazing insights. And this is. Pete is someone I've turned to many, many times, and I've had very similar questions myself. So, Pete, I mean, first of all, are we on the same page here? Any kind of initial thoughts on that?

Yeah, definitely. I think I can certainly understand why you're getting that question, because it's questions that I've asked myself is that what am I doing that's not working? I'm doing all the right things. And, you know, things just don't seem to be falling into place. And I think it's really good and important that, you know, you came right out and said, you know, people run into this frustration when they're not getting these results in business, you know, their own, whether it's a freelance business or small business, because there's this traditionally been this big gap, this divide between. Well, you can't. You can't be a spiritual person and have an awesome business. You know, those two things just kind of don't go together. And, you know, it's been my experience that they absolutely do. And the more they kind of weave together, in my experience, the more things tend to go your way. And, you know, the results kind of in my own life speak for themselves. So if someone's kind of in that in that zone. I think this is kind of a cool. It's going to be a different conversation for. For many people, perhaps, but I think it's a cool, cool one to have especially available in this. In this podcast form that you're doing, because you're really, you know, putting it out there now.

Absolutely. And I understand. And as I mentioned in the introduction, I know this is not going to resonate with everyone. This is very different from the podcast that I typically do, but it's too important to ignore, and I have to put this message out there. I think you and I need to be very upfront about what we believe. And I know that the people who will get this, whether they get it now or they come back to it at another point in their lives when they're ready for this message, I know that it will make a difference. So that is our objective here today, is for those who are willing to open their minds and maybe try something different. We really believe that this is going to make an impact and have an impact. So where do we start? Pete, I know you have a kind of a good way to kind of introduce this topic.

Yeah, I think, you know, for getting into a topic like this, of course, I don't know each listener's perspective on this topic, so I think it's a good idea to look at this with, like an analogy or a model. And I like to look at it as sort of a ladder. So we're approaching this conversation and there's a ladder ahead of us, and there's four rungs on this ladder, and you can sort of self identify which rung you're kind of on. And this conversation is going to be what I'll call a fourth rung conversation. So I think we should start there and talk about the four rungs, and then, you know, each listener can see if they want to kind of hang out on the fourth rung for the rest of this call. And, you know, if not, that's cool, too. If this isn't your cup of tea, like you just said, Ed, that's totally cool. But this will kind of help you peg where you are in your approach to this sort of stuff. So let's take a look at rung one. And you're on rung one of the ladder. If you would agree that there's a universal intelligence of some kind, so there's something out there, something that's greater than us, some kind of intelligence or spirit. And, you know, like, let's say 50 years ago, most people, at least in Western culture would have called this God. And many people still do. But over the last several decades, you know, for a lot of people, God is too concrete a term or too visual a term, and maybe it conjures up, you know, an icon of, like, the white man and the white beard type of image of God. So some people might choose spirit, source, source energy, the field, the infinite field, whatever the word, I don't think matters too much. It's. It's just this acknowledgement that there is a greater intelligence out there. So I think it's pretty easy to know if you're on the first rung or not, because probably safe to say that everyone listening to the call has contemplated this at some point in their lives and formed a position on it. So really, that's rung one, and you're on that rung or you're not. And as we progress through these. By the way, this is just an analogy. I'm not saying rung 2 or rung 3 or rung 4 is better than any of the lower rungs. This is just to help you peg where you are so you can decide if this conversation's something you want to partake in. So let's go to rung two. If you're on rung two, you'd be of the opinion that we're connected to this intelligence in some way. So really, what would be the point of this intelligence if we weren't connected to it somehow? And common words used to express what we're talking about on Rong 2 would be to say that we have a soul or we're spiritual beings. And I would say that this is a truth or a universal truth. If it's not 100% universal, then it's certainly an extremely commonly held belief that we have a soul or that we're spiritual beings. And if you were on rung one, I'm willing to bet that you're also now on rung two. It's not quite a big leap to get from rung one to rung two. I think that there's probably not a lot of people who would be on rung one and stop there, because effectively, what. What they would say is that, well, absolutely, there's a God or a spiritual intelligence, and we're totally disconnected from it. And so, you know, I'm sure some people believe that. That's why I'm saying there's two separate rungs. But for most people, I think the progression from rung one to rung two is an easy one. They're kind of coupled together.

And Pete, let me just interject here real quick just to be clear. This is. None of this, I think, really conflicts with a religion, for instance. I mean, I think these are tenets of most religions in the world anyway. So I don't think a lot of this discussion, and some of it might clash, but I don't think a lot of this discussion is really about, well, either have to accept this or you have to accept that they're mutually exclusive.

Yeah, that's a. That's a great point. And. And so if you're. If you're looking at these as rungs, the next one. I mean, already most people. I better on at least rung two. Well, rung three, if you step up to rung three, that would mean that you would agree that the. With the idea that this intelligence that we're connected to is benevolent in nature and it's benevolent towards us in a sense that we can benefit from it. We can receive on some level, some good from it. So the idea here on rung three is that at least we're at least passive benefactors of, you know, call it God's grace or providence or the divine or this infinite intelligence that it can flow into your life. And, you know, whether you might perceive that as answers to prayers or, you know, God smiling down at you or looking out for you or, you know, dare I say those loaded words, the Law of Attraction, or whatever name we might assign to it, it's basically that this benevolent spirit touches our lives and comes from somewhere beyond our senses, beyond our physical world. So where are we? So, rung one, rung one, there's a universal intelligence of some kind. Rung two, you would say that, yeah, we're connected to it. Rung three is that. Yeah, it's. It's here for our benefit, and it can flow into our lives. Rung four. Now, this is the fourth rung of the Ladder. It's the final rung in our analogy. See if you can step on to rung4 if you're listening, because rung4 is for you. If you believe that you can actually initiate communication directly with this spirit or source energy. But not only that, but you can actually direct it and tap into it in a very deliberate and intentional and participatory way. So rang for is not the belief that it's a random phenomena, that we might get the odd touch of grace in our life somehow, and it comes and goes and we have no control over it. Rung four is that we can actually tap into or influence how this unseen power flows to us. And this is the idea of you can create your own reality. This is really the fourth rung. And this is really the approach that I take to not only business, but to life. And this is kind of where the tone of this call is going to kind of oscillate around. So.

Yeah.

Do you have anything to add to that?

No. Makes sense. And now that you list all four of them, I kind of interrupted you after run two, but I'm taking notes here. And I don't think any of this is really. This is definitely a progression. I see this. But again, I'm looking at many religious beliefs, and a lot of them really point to these things anyway. And there's an evolution to kind of believing and fully understanding this. But this really resonates. I. Yeah, and you're right. I think rung number four is where we're going to keep this conversation.

Yeah. And the call here, you know, the call here is about changing your approach to affect a new outcome in your life. And if your approach up until now hasn't worked, then a logical move would be to change your approach to try something new. The thing is, changing your approach usually means you need to change not only your physical actions, but more importantly, how you look at things, how you approach things, or how you view the world. So even if you're kind of thinking it's rung four thing, I don't really know. You kind of lost me after rung three. It might be worth your while to just listen anyway, because some of the things that get mentioned here that Ed and I bat around, that might be just enough to trigger something in you, and it might give you the perspective you need to just sort of say, oh, I never thought of it that way. And it might be enough to just get you inspired to change. To change what you're doing. And the thing about that is to change things, you know, we automatically think that we need to do things in order to bring things about. Anything you physically do, like sending an email or making a phone call or writing a webpage, or maybe you're following someone's coaching program or marketing program. A lot of that is that's the outer doing. But this call is about starting with not the outer things you can do. It's not about changing those outer things by focusing on those outer things. It's about looking within and making inner changes. And the best quote. I just watched this movie again for the second time a few nights ago. It's a Martin Scorsese movie about George Harrison. It's called Living in the Material World. And an audio clip of George Harrison jumped out at me and he said, you know, somehow, you know, you have to look within yourself, otherwise you'd go crackers. And for me, and that was just like, it resonated. Because if you think about that, if you're not getting the results that you want in certain areas of your life, especially your business, it can drive you bananas. You can feel frustrated and upset about it. And, you know, you could feel like you're running this loop without getting the answers you need.

Which again, points to what I mentioned earlier. It's like, dude, I've tried everything. I'm exhausted. I'm at my wit's end. Please, you know, what am I doing wrong? And that's the point you have to reach for many people, right, in order to say, okay, I've done everything I can on the, in the outer right with the things that I'm doing. What am I not focusing on?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and really, you know, some of the things I want to talk about on the call today that I think, you know, I hope, help people come from the perspective of an entrepreneur trying to affect change and going through this on their own. That's definitely been my experience over the past 10 plus years of being an entrepreneur. And I know, you know, your audience is the same kind of makeup. And so I want to present these ideas, some of the things that might be going on inside you that might be causing things not to work out for you. And I like to present these in the form of a question that you can ask yourself. Because if we just say, hey, it might be this and it might be that, it's easy to just dismiss things that you hear. But when you throw a question at yourself, you know, if you're ignoring the answer to that question, it's harder to shrink back and say, I'm not going to answer that. You know, if you need to address something, when a question, when you're asking yourself a question, if you're being honest. So these are just. These are all a bunch of questions that point at the same thing. They're all a bunch of different ways of coming at the same thing. And that point is that, you know, the reason for that is if we come at this from enough different angles, odds are good that at least one of these questions that I'd like you to ask yourself will resonate with you. And some of these questions lend themselves really well to an example. Some are just useful to spend a minute or two talking about, and some segue Nicely into a technique that you might try. So, you know, it's a mixed bag here and you know, I'd love to just launch into these Ed, unless you have something you want to have before we do that.

Let's do it. I love that approach. It's kind of a diagnostic, self diagnostic approach.

Yeah. Okay. So the first question you might ask yourself is, ask yourself, when I look at this situation in my business, have I been primarily problem focused or solution focused? And if you're honest with yourself, most people will find that, you know, by and large we've been problem focused. We're brought up to focus on fixing problems rather than inviting in solutions. And you might be thinking, well, what's the difference? There's a big difference because problem and a solution are two totally different things. And Einstein said something to the effect of no problem can be solved from the same level of thinking created it. So how do you change that? How do you go from viewing something in your life as a problem to changing it and viewing it taking a more solution oriented approach? There's a really quick and easy mind hack for this. I'll call it. And if you've heard of the Silva method, that's like a hugely popular meditation based self improvement program which began I think in the 60s. This technique comes from that. It's really easy, it's really simple, is to, when you think about some situation that you would label a problem in your business, stop calling it a problem, call it a project. And just by changing the label you give to something, you can totally change your perspective on it.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, call it a project. And suddenly like we all know how to handle projects. You got a project, you say, okay, well how do I want this to unfold? Where do I need to go with this? What are some like milestones you can. And along the way, when you're involved in a project, you know that things pop into your life that help you move that project along that you sometimes, you know, couldn't have predicted. So it's a different way of looking at it. But to sort of elaborate on that with like a real tangible analogy, you know, we actually do this all the time. And here's what I mean by that. So let's say you have something in your life that's, that's niggly. Let's take it away from business for a second. But let's say you've got in your home, let's say you've got a bathroom that's got green paint on the walls and it's been in there since the day you moved in. And you've never really liked your bathroom. And maybe it's your main bathroom. And for you, this is a problem. And you might say, well, come on, it's just paint on the wall. It's no big deal. But we know we do this. We let these little things that are in our life, you know, bug us. So for you, the green paint in the bathroom is a problem. And one day you wake up and say, you know what? That's enough. We're painting the bathroom. So, you know, you and your spouse get together or your partner, you say, okay, we're changing this. It's not going to be green anymore. We're going to make a beautiful, lovely, rich brown wall color. So you decide, okay? And off you go. And let's say you go to Home Depot, you're gonna go look for paint, and you're out there and you're looking for paint. You find the paint you like, and while you're there, you notice they've got tile, really nice tile, expensive tile. And they've got like six packs of a certain kind of tile on sale, and it's 70% off. You say, hey, do you like this tile? Look at this tile. Wouldn't this be great? There's six packs here. I know we could do. We could do our bathroom for five packs. We could get these. And suddenly you and your spouse are sort of. You're planning this project. You're envisioning the new bathroom. So it's gone from changing the paint to, we should tile the bathroom. And we've all been in this situation before. You know, you're standing there at Home Depot, you're looking at the tile, and in your mind you're thinking, you know, I can get this this week, tonight, this week, I'm going to rip the. I'm going to rip the old stick tile down. I'm going to take that off. I'm going to get my brother Frank to come over on the weekend. We can tile this bathroom in a day, and, jeez, I can grout it the next day. Painting is going to be no problem. Suddenly you're thinking to yourself, we can get this done by Christmas, no problem. And within like five to 10 seconds, mentally, you're thinking of your new bathroom. It's Christmas time. Your friends are over, they're all admiring it. They're asking you if you did it. And you're saying, yeah, I did this. You know, Frank, my brother, helped me, and Frank's there. You can hear his voice saying, help you. I did all the work. Like, you're totally building this picture in a matter of seconds of this finished, beautiful project. And so you get the tile and the paint, you go home, you go into the bathroom, you walk in there, you don't even see that green paint anymore. It's as good as gone. Because in your mind, you've got a clear vision of the solution, and you're working on a project. And if you've heard of mindvalley, the founder of mindvalley.com, he uses this technique. He says, the single change that I make in changing a problem to a project has impacted me greatly. I no longer have problems. I have projects that I work on.

I love that I love. You know, and it's when I. When I think about as you're. As I'm listening to you. And I love that. That home improvement example, because there's something else to that. Pete, we don't. We don't really get, like, emotionally stressed out over. I know you mentioned. Yeah, it's annoying and it bothers you, but it's not the kind of thing where you're agonizing over, where you're, you know, you're. You're talking to your neighbors. Oh, how's it going, Ed? Oh, my gosh. Let me just tell you. My bathroom, you know. Right.

We don't.

We don't, like, elevate it to this, like, status of. This is consuming every minute of our day. We just. It's more like we tone down the emotion and we. It's. By treating it as a project. It's more like kind of matter of fact. Right. Okay, this is a problem. What's the solution? Which. Let's. Let's go ahead and paint it. Let's do it.

Yeah.

And I remember this. This is another analogy when we had our first. We had. He had a lot of stomach problems, and we were getting zero sleep. My wife was. We were both just at her wit's end, and my wife was very stressed out. A friend called her, and my wife just poured out to her, and she started crying and everything. And she said, I don't even have time to clean the house. And I remember her friend told her, why don't you just hire a house cleaner and mint Let that simple question again, kind of turning it into a project changed everything. Because, you know, what it boil down to is that was the one thing that was really stressing her out, that our house wasn't clean.

Yeah. And just jamming up everything else. Right. Like, can't get to the other things because it's bugging it so much.

Yeah, yeah. But suddenly, once you take care of that problem by treating it as a project, it's no longer emotionally consuming and draining.

That's great. And it's great that you pointed that out, because I think that will help listeners understand or, you know, not kind of go with the notion to just dismiss it. I'm just, what is that really doing? That's not doing anything. Changing it from a problem to a project, I want to tell you, that's doing everything that's changing the way you view it so that you can get on a different mental track and get to the solution. That's a great example, Ed.

Yes.

So I told you I'm going to come at this same idea from a bunch of different angles. So here's the next question to ask yourself. Ask yourself, have I spent a lot of time visualizing the outcome that I want? And I mean a committed, daily practice of visualizing it. Now, the thing is, most people, when they hear visualization, they might think, well, I've tried that. I'm not good at it, or I can never seem to get a hold of a vision in my head. I just gave you a perfect example of how we do this all the time with the bathroom remodeling analogy. Visualization is daydreaming. That's all it is. We've all gotten carried away in a daydream in the past, and we've been totally lost in the vision of what's playing out in our mind. But the problem is we tend to think that that's silly or childish or a waste of time. And the best way I like to speak to that point is to say it's different when we're talking about sports. You know, we all, I mean, if you're a sports fan, isn't it funny how people generally seem to love stories about sports figures and visualization? Like, who doesn't love listening to a Michael Jordan or Tiger woods giving interview and talking about, you know, I visualize myself making the game winning shot. And so in sports, visualization has been a technique that's been employed for decades and been kind of looked upon as. As like, awesome and cool by most people.

For decades, it's accepted. No one questions it.

Exactly. But you take it outside of sports and you talk about applying visualization to your business goals, and suddenly it's like spooky or New Age or nonsense, you know? And so I'm saying, you know, how can the same technique in one application Be totally revered but totally dismissed and feared in another.

That's a good point. I have no idea why, but it does have that connotation, doesn't it?

It does, yeah. So back to the question is, have I spent a lot of time visualizing the outcome? Just have I daydreamed and got a clear picture of what it's going to feel like? It's hugely important. Is hugely important. And I think if you've had a problem struggling with visualization or accepting it or thinking it's hokey or something, think about it from the sports analogy. It's widely accepted there apply to other areas of your life. Don't be afraid to do that. Another question to ask is, do I have a clear feeling of what it will feel like to have this situation accomplished in my life? And really it's important with each of these questions to honestly ask yourself. So this question is about can I right now, in a heartbeat, just turn on, just access a feeling of what it's going to feel like when I achieve this, yes or no. And you know, you might say, well of course I don't have a clear feeling of it. How could I feel something before it happens? And you know, you certainly can feel. So, you know, the reason you want something is because it's going to feel great when you get there. You, you know, if there's a goal that you're shooting for with your business, whether it's landing certain type of client or reaching a certain level of income or revenue, you know it's going to feel great. So you have to train yourself into that feeling so that your actions and your thoughts reflect that feeling. And if you don't have a clear practice feeling that you can really embody you in that successful situation, that means that, you know, you're more likely to feel more regularly neutral or even negative about.

Seems like it's easier to feel to bring the negative emotions out than it is the positive, isn't it? For a lot of people?

Yeah, it is. I mean for me as well, I think for so many people. Because you know, when you, when you're feeling negative about something, you know, if you're thinking something, you're feeling something, then naturally your actions begin to line up with that. So if you're doing something half heartedly or begrudgingly, it's because you're kind of in a negative space about it in your mind to begin with. The odds are all those things are going to line up and kind of feed off each other. And then when a certain thing doesn't work out, you can say, well, see, I was right. You know, I knew it wouldn't work out. And in a strange way, that actually feels good to our bodies. Like, if we live in a world where we think that there's things that are beyond our control, like maybe the economy or the market for our services, then it feels good to be right about something, to be right about predicting an outcome, even if the outcome is something that isn't good for us. Does that. Is that making sense?

Yes, it is. It is.

You know, and there's scientific research to back this up. If you look at the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, and he's just one author, but plenty of others, you'll find that it's essential for humans to get feedback from our world that jives with our view of the world. It helps us to feel stable in our environment, and we need that coherence in that feedback. And here's why it's important, is that when something happens that doesn't jive with your perception of the world and your place in the world or where you think your comfort zone is, something happens, it feels wrong, it throws you off, and you'll subconsciously try to get back to that comfortable place. You see where I'm going with that?

Yes.

And a great example that I think in my life I can use to articulate that. About 10 years ago, I used to golf with a golf pro. I'm by no means a golf pro or an awesome golfer, but I was lucky enough to play a few rounds with a golf pro, and he used to teach at the Royal Woodbine Golf Academy in Toronto, and that's one of the top golf schools in Canada. And he said, you know, it's a funny thing with golfers. You'll go out and shoot 18 holes. And let's say you usually shoot 79 or 80 for 18 holes of golf. And then one day you'll go out and you'll play the front nine, and you just have a killer game and you're hitting pars and birdies and you're just rocking it. And let's say you shoot a 32, and after nine holes, you think, God, I usually shoot a 40 on the front nine. I just shot a 32. That's almost like a stroke, a hole, and you go into the back nine, and this is happening, and you go the back nine and your game just falls apart, and you end up. You shoot on the back nine like, you know, a 47. And so for the day, you've kind of reached your homeostasis. And it's like, what happened after those. How did that happen? How did you just go from amazing to, like, in the tank on the same day? And this is very common, and golf is just one example, but this golf pro would tell me this is very, very common. He'd see this time and again. There's something inside us that needs our outer experience to jive with our inner thoughts and feelings of who we think we are. And if the outer circumstances are throwing us off, then it's going to cause us to act in ways that change things so that we can get back to that comfort zone, even if we're retreating from our best interests.

All right, so here's a question for you. Let's go back to that golf example, and let's say that after the first nine, the front nine, I shot a 32. Now, the way you stated the example was, oh, my gosh, I've never done this. Well, I usually do 40 or more. Shoot 40 or more. What if instead of that, you said, you know, the God is smiling down at me, or this is. This is my day. Look at me. I mean, or something along those lines. Right. So. So somehow you accept it and you just go with it and you. Is. Is that part of the solution?

Part of the solution, absolutely is just to consciously recognize what's going on and being open to something new happening. Absolutely. In fact, that's a. That's a breakthrough moment. That's. That's something that you should celebrate because what you're doing is you're observing your thoughts about what's happening. And, you know, that's. That's everything right there. When you can stop your thoughts and observe the thoughts you're having about something, then, you know, you're. You're tapping into, controlling and having influence over your own thoughts.

Well, in. And we see this in sports all the time. I don't even need. I mean, I could name dozens of examples where the team has. In the announcers will call momentum. Right? They have momentum.

Yeah.

And when they have that momentum, it's very, very difficult for things to turn. Start turning sour for that team. And I. The way it's always explained as well, they just, they're just on it. You know, they're playing well. It's like the left brain, right. They're playing strategically, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the other team had some injuries. We always think that it's that. But I agree with you 100%. The team believes in their heart and soul, every fiber of their Being that they're meant to win this game and that's what's causing it. And I've seen this in my own business as well. When in sales, my 12 years of corporate sales, when we had momentum, everyone believed that they could close all these huge opportunities, all this business. The moment things started turning south, like when the economy turned and so forth, everyone started believing that reality. And it was interesting. The whole team started going down and all it took for the, for the turnaround. And this again in sales and in my own freelance business is for someone in the team to suddenly land a couple of big deals and suddenly the whole sales team would go, oh my gosh, maybe there's. That wasn't a fluke. And then a second guy landed another big deal and now it starts becoming kind of accepted. And it's funny, like everyone just starts doing better. And there again the VP of sales would say, all things are turning around finally. And it's the economy. It had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it.

That's a great. And that what comes up in my mind for that is the classic example of the 4 minute mile. When Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile and this was like this human achievement that was deemed impossible. No man can run a four minute mile. Well, he did it. And then since then, all kinds of people have done it. Right. It just becomes normal.

Yes. So I guess it's what you're telling yourself and accepting at a cellular level. Not. Well, I'm supposed to affirm this and believe. But you don't really believe it. Right.

That's a great distinction. So here's how it's worked at a cellular level. So to me, I interpret that as, can you feel it? Do I have a clear feeling of what it's going to be like? And this worked for me. This changed my business. Quick example here. I had a. It's not like a major example, but it is. The outcome was major, is I had a thing about my business and my clients and things like that. And I had this niggling credit card balance that I just, I couldn't seem to bring down, like to zero out. You know what it's like when you're an entrepreneur and you know, you're dipping into a line of credit and cash flow is important. And I had this credit card balance that I just couldn't zero out. And I began to, I was reading a lot about this stuff every day, every morning, every evening. And I decided to put it into practice and I just, I spent some Time, not a lot. I spent some time visualizing this, just this silly little credit card balance being down to zero and feeling. And I could actually, after doing this a few times, I could feel a smile on my face of being like, yes, I brought that down. Now at the time of doing this, I didn't have the thousands of dollars to just write the check to bring it down. I was visualizing this and what happened. Very shortly after that, I got a call from a client of mine and they said, pete, our monthly retainer. At the time, I had a fifteen hundred dollar monthly retainer with this one client. And he said, come on up for lunch, let's talk about, talk about your retainer. Went out for lunch. The company had got a bunch of money and moved my retainer up from $1,500 to $7,500.

Holy cow.

Per month. Then not long after that, they moved it up to 10,000 per month. And I still have that client with that retainer. And what's more, this client has referred me to another client which resulted in another $40,000 in business that same year when this happened. And I still have that client. And you know, you could say, well, was it the feeling of, you know, just the feeling that caused that? I don't know. I know there was a lot of other things I was doing. I was doing a great job servicing the client. I knew the company well, had a great relationship with them. But I think it's interesting that this happened right after I just said, you know what, I'm just going to stop focusing on getting new clients. I'm going to focus on what it feels like to not have any credit card balance.

You found something that struck a deep emotional chord in you, right? Because this is a very important point. A lot of people think, well, you visualize money. Well, money in and of itself has no emotional reaction in most people, most normal people, the dollar bills themselves or the number on account, a balance. But what like you just, it was something that was really nagging you, that credit card balance. And that was emotionally charged when you visualize yourself kind of clearing it.

Yeah. And I think the reason, because that is because it was bugging me so much that when I imagined the relief of it, it was this really visceral, awesome feeling. You know, if there was 20 bucks on that credit card balance and I visualized it being clear, who cares, right? It's not a big difference. But to actually put myself in a state of mind that this has been cleared to zero is like this major, major awesome feeling. That I began to resonate with, and then things happened. But the thing is, like, it's not just about lining up our own thoughts and feelings and actions. If you start to look at the work of the author that I've read a little bit about this about is Greg Braden. But there's a bunch of other authors about it, and he talks about the fact that it's our feelings that is actually the language of how we communicate with this infinite intelligence. So we talked about Rung four being about communicating with spirit and directing it. And this is kind of the how of doing that. It's not really through words or thoughts. And he gives a great example about this. He lives in New Mexico, and he's done a lot of research into the ancient civilizations of the world and tells a story about being in New Mexico in the 90s, doing a really heavy drought in that part of the country. And a Native American friend of his invited him to go with him and share in a prayer for rain. And he said, sure, yeah, so. So it was very ritualistic. He took him. They went on. They hiked through the desert. They went up to a mountain to this stone circle, and it was this ancient prayer site which had been preserved for generations. And he said, his friend took off his shoes, and he stepped into the circle, and he said just a couple words. He honored his ancestors. And he said. He honored the four directions. And he said, but that was just kind of the beginning of the ritual. He said that he. He then brought his hands together in prayer mode for just a few seconds. And, you know, Greg Braden is watching this. And he said. And then his friend, he turned around, and he said to Craig, he said, okay, I'm hungry. Let's go get a bite to eat. And he was like. He tells this story like he was shocked by this. He said, I thought we came here to pray. His friend said, you know, explain. Well, I just did pray. So he asked him, well, what did you do? Like, I heard you say a few words, and then you didn't do anything? He said, no, what I did was in that silence, I felt the feelings of rain, and I could smell the downpour of rain in the village and what it feels like to be outside and stand on the earth in the mud after so much rain. And by doing that, that's how I open up the possibility of rain to come into our world. And now he finishes the story by saying, later that afternoon, and the next day, the heavens just open with rain. And, you know, he says, I can't scientifically Prove that that prayer caused the rain. But that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is that whether you call it a prayer or intention or deliberate creation, it's not about saying the right words in the right order. What he learned that day was that his friend taught him that it's through feeling that you communicate with this greater world, this. This benevolent intelligence, and open up the possibility for what you want to have happen to happen.

I love that you're. It sounds to me, Pete, and tell me if you agree, like, so you have to find something or create or manufacture some sort of situation in your mind that gets you emotionally charged. For me. And I kind of take a slightly different approach to a lot of this. I like your credit card balance example. I've been doing little experiments recently, and a lot of it based on the book E Squared by Pam Grout, which is fascinating. So if you like what we've been talking about here, I recommend that book. And one of them was, you know, I'm just gonna play with this, and I'm gonna see if I can manifest an unexpected $1,000. It's not that I needed a thousand dollars. I just wanted to play with it now by itself, because I don't need a thousand dollars for anything in particular. It had no emotion to it. So what I did is I visualized myself buying the book for my dad and then calling him and telling him, you have to read this book. Let me tell you about one of the experiments that she suggested. I picked manifesting $1,000 and dad within 48 hours, which was the deadline. Let me tell you how I manifested that in my visualization. I didn't have specifically how it happened, but I remember feeling as if, oh, my gosh, this story is amazing. Right?

Yeah.

Well, sure enough. And this just happened this morning. I'm happy to report that within a day, I happened to call the phone company because we had an overdue bill because we just moved, and they didn't mail the bill to the right address. And in that conversation, the topic of our statement came up, and I asked, you know, is there any way we can combine all these bills to save a little bit of money? There's got to be a way. Turns out that, yes, we can combine them. And the savings. The annual savings would be $480. Okay, $40 a month.

Okay.

So right away I thought, wait a minute, this might be part of that, but it's not $1,000. Well, just today, I received a completely unexpected check. I still. I'm not sure what the check is for of $449.70. Now, I haven't done the math and I can't do that kind of math in my head, but that's pretty darn close to $1,000. The point is that I found instead of visualizing $1,000 in some material or like, okay, suddenly $1,000 on my desk. Nothing like that. I visualized something that got me excited, which would be calling my dad and saying, dad, check this out. This happened to me.

Yeah.

Which is kind of a backdoor approach to it.

Well, I think. But I think so. So a couple things. That's, that's awesome. A couple things, as you said, a check. And I still don't know what it's for, but. But it's not like it's not just some stranger sent you a check and whatever. Like that logically fits into your life somehow, right? That you would receive that check, but you weren't expecting that. You didn't have that on your. Okay, this month I'm getting this check and I know that for certain.

Right, Exactly. It was. It's not attached to a specific invoice. I think I know what it might be, but it's not something that I expected at all. It's not something I invoiced.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay, this is, this is good. And, and I think that. So you said something really important. You said you, you just visualized the. You got in touch with that scenario of, of it happening and how it would feel and what you would do. You'd talk to your dad and you didn't get into the how because if you had tried to get into the how and you know this the how, you would try to intellectually figure out how could this happen? How can I make this happen based on all the inputs I know about what's going on in my life right now.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I just kind of stayed open to the idea that, you know, it's. Yeah, I believe it's going to come from where. And here's why.

That's great. Do we have. I got a couple more examples for the next question. Do we have time to jump into that?

Let's do this, Pete, because I. This is fascinating. I want to cover all these diag self diagnostic questions that you have here, but I want to be respectful to. To everyone's time and keep the show under an hour. Why don't we do this. Can we continue the show next week and do kind of a part two with. With the rest of your questions?

Yeah, let's do it. We'll go through the rest of the questions, more examples, and then. Yeah, because there's stuff we can wrap up. We can wrap up with some cool stuff at the end too. Definitely.

Perfect. All right, cool. We'll hold here. And folks, if you're enjoying this, make sure enjoying it. Make sure to join us next week and we're going to continue this conversation. Thanks, Pete.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks, Ed.

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that discussion as much as I did. And again, we're going to continue that conversation next week, so make sure to come back for that. In the meantime, I wanted to remind you that Early Bird enrollment for my B2B launcher program ends this Friday, December 13th at 6:00pm Eastern Time. If you've been wanting to launch a profitable and successful B2B writing or B2B copywriting business and you can't seem to get traction, you're not sure where to start, how to fast track your success, or if you've tried launching your writing business and you haven't achieved the success you expected, this might be the program for you. This is an intensive 10 week training program where you work with me in a one on one mentoring capacity and with a group of ten ambitious and motivated B2B writers, and we work together to launch a very successful writing business in record time. I skip all the unnecessary steps and effort that you don't need and I walk you through a proven framework. It's designed to get you clients by the time the program is over or shortly thereafter. We've had some great successes coming out of this program this year and I'd love for you to be one of our great success stories in 2014. To learn more about this Early Bird discount, the special payment terms that I have lined up for Early Bird enrollees and other perks, visit b2b launcher.com earlybird altogether if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you shared it with friends and colleagues. And the easiest way to do that is to go to b2b launcher.comlove or to use any of the social media sharing buttons on the Show Notes page. And if you're getting good value from the show, why not give the show a quick star rating or sentence or two in iTunes? And the easiest way to do that is by going to b2b launcher.com iTunes ratings and reviews really help elevate the show in the rankings, which exposes it to people who need this material but are not aware that it exists. So that brings us to the end of the episode, I am you, your host, Ed Gandia. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day.

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