Soul Pleasure - Interview with AlanCohen

Hello and welcome. I am Alexandra J. Johnson, and today we have a delightful guest, Alan Cohen. Alan has written 24 inspirational transformational books, and he's a speaker and a workshop leader, and he does retreats all around the world. And I personally love him. He is one of my great coaches, and I'm very honored to work with him. And I just think every time I talk to Alan, he is just infuses peace, love, and joy. I just have a conversation with Alan, and I'm like, life is good. So welcome, Alan.

Thank you. It is my honor to be with you as well, Alexandra.

Yeah. Thank you so much. So I'd love to. We're talking about pleasure today, among many other things, but I would love to just start off with, what is pleasure for you? Yeah. What is pleasure? How do you engage in pleasure? How do you invoke pleasure?

There are different levels of pleasure. There's sensory pleasure, and right now I'm looking out of my window, and I'm seeing the wind blowing the leaves and the flowers, and it's such a pleasure to see the beauty of nature. So that's one level. And there's another level of what I would call soul pleasure, where I enjoy watching my dogs eat, watching your sun eat. It's just something that's so rewarding about seeing something beautiful happening in the universe.

Yeah.

Pleasure. And each of us has our own idea of pleasure. And I think one of the purposes of our interview today is to inspire people to be willing to receive pleasure, because a lot of people are good at giving it, but not so good at letting it in. And that's one of the big topics that I work with people on in coaching quite a bit. Hmm.

I love that. So let's dive in. Receiving. What does it look like to receive? How do we receive more pleasure? I think that's a great question, a great inquiry.

Well, the first thing is to be honest about what makes you happy. And in my coaching, I tell people everything is either it or not. It either it brings you life or it numbs you or deadens you. And I remember once I had this bad breakup, and I was in grief and I had to go to the dentist, and I figured, well, that'll be an improvement. So I went to the dentist, and the hygienist is taking me through the hole. She says, how are you doing today? And out of my mouth came the word fine. And there was nothing fine at all about me that day. The boy said, that's a big frigging lie, buddy. Why do you lie? And I realized that I had been trained to be on automatic. And when somebody says, how are you doing? You say, fine. And then you move on to the next conversation. But in that moment, it was a lie. So I invite people to. At any given moment, if somebody says to you, would you like to go to Thai for dinner? Or Italian for dinner? If you would truly like to go to Thai, you say, so. You say, I prefer Thai. Now, it doesn't mean you always end up there, but at least you've expressed yourself. And if you're into Chinese medicine at all. All of life is about the movement of qi. Qi. It is the life force. So when you say, I like this and that feels good, and would you please massage me and would you please hold me and I'd like to make love with you, those are all movements of life force. And when your life force is moving, you're alive and you're lined up with the Tao, and there's no other place to be lined up with, really.

I love that and I love what you said. It's either it or not it. I think for so many of us, we question like, well, it feels like this is it, but should it be it? And then we start analyzing what is it and what is not it? So can you just talk a little bit about that of, like, how to really, is it just a feeling tone? How do we know when it's it?

Andrew, that's a really good question. It is not and are really simple. There's the Ten Commandments, but that's a bit much for most people. So I just have two, and one is, they're not even commandments, they're suggestions. And one is do what brings you life. In other words, when you go out with somebody, when you eat a certain meal, when you go to a certain class, when you walk away, do you feel energized and alive and empowered, and that was a good experience and I want to do this again, or do you feel dull and dead and numb and ripped off, which is a mod it. If you're really honest and everybody has the capacity to be honest, there's no person on earth who cannot tell the truth about this. We're all wired to tell the truth about this. If you're honest about what brings you life and what doesn't, you will have guidance, because life force is the best guidance I know. I've studied astrology and all kinds of psychology, but the only real spiritual system I know is go where life lives and avoid where life is not. If we practice that on A daily basis, life would be a lot easier.

Absolutely. So how does our mindset get in? Because I love this and all of your books, I feel like, are really about connecting to your heart, connecting to spirit, and getting your mind right, your mind connected to spirit. So how do we do this mentally really start to open up to life?

Well, you know, affirmations are good and prayer is good and meditation is good and anything that aligns your thoughts with peace or happiness is a good thought. There's right thinking and there's wrong thinking. It's pretty simple. Right thinking is when you're lined up with truth and spirit. Wrong thinking is when you're bucking against or denying or ignoring or plowing over spirit. And there's a scene in the movie For Love of the Game. Have you ever seen that?

Yes, I have.

It's a baseball movie with Kevin Costner and forget the female star, but he's a baseball pitcher and he injures his hand in a saw accident and he has to work very hard to restore the facility of his hand. And he has this trainer come to him and the trainer says, well, I don't know if you're going to get your hand back. And he gets really angry. He says, either you get your mind right or you get out of here. He's basically saying, I want to be around people who is supporting my intentions and my vision and well being. Don't come around and tell me what I can't do. Now that was an interpersonal situation. I'm really speaking more intra personally because we all have this little voice that says, you're not going to get well, you can't do that, you can't marry that person, you can't make that income, you can't have a baby. And you have to just tell the party, thank you for sharing, but I'm not going to sit down to tea with you. And then you reach for a thought that's aligned with your joy and all of a sudden you feel like, oh man, what was I thinking? Thought is a practice. Thoughts don't just happen. We cultivate them when we don't. So you have to cultivate thoughts that work.

And then what are some of the thoughts? The limiting beliefs? How do our limiting beliefs stop us? And like you were just saying the possibility to be willing to say, okay, this is possible. How do I move towards that? What stops us?

Well, at a young age, all of us hear programs from our parents and teachers and siblings that say you're stupid and you're ugly and you're never going to get married, and you're too fat and you're too dumb, you're too black, you're too white. And in the Hawaiian system, Hawaiian spiritual system, they say that when every child is born, it's like a bowl of light. Now you have an infant, a bowl of light. Let me add it. And then the wine system says that people start putting rocks in our bowl. And you say, well, you'll never do that, and black people can't make it. And on and on and on, and they judge you and resist you and compare you and compete you. And the wine system says that after a while, you get so many rocks in your bowl that there's just the tiniest little trickle of light coming out. Now, sadly, if you look on the city streets, in many cities, people are walking around with just the tiniest trickle of life force. And so the spiritual path is never about adding something to us or becoming something we're not. It's about letting go of those rocks, those beliefs that say you can't. And it's about lightening up and freeing yourself. It's about being what you already were before to stop. Somebody told you who you are.

Everyone listening. This is why Alan's so great. He's such an amazing storyteller. I love you. Just really bring it home with the story. So thank you. I love that we can all be like, oh, yeah, I have some rocks. I got some rocks in my bowl.

Well, you meaning to get your rocks off.

That'S awesome. Get your rocks off and have a joyful life. So, okay, speaking of joy, I love this, and you work with me a lot on this personally, just going for your joy. And I know a lot of people, that sounds great, but everybody has the stories or thoughts like, I can't go for my joy. I can't go for pleasure. I can't play because I don't have enough time, money, energy, whatever it is. And it seems like going for our joy is an indulgence or narcissistic. Can you speak on that a little bit?

Well, we could use some more indulgence because. How should I say it? We've indulged our dark side so much by criticizing and judging against ourselves that we need a really good balance at this point. I wrote a book once called Joy is My Compass, and it was actually not one of my best sellers. And after a while, it went out of print. I thought, oh, man, what a waste of time. I shouldn't have written that. There are other things I could have written. And then One night at a workshop, a woman raised her hand and said, I read your book. Joy is my compass. And I was in a corporate job, but what I really wanted to do was open up an AIDS hospice. I wanted to help young men who were dying of AIDS to die with dignity. And she said, I've done that and I've helped many, many, many people pass on with kindness where they were judged and hated by others. They, they were accepted well by me. And they said, this work has changed my life and I want to thank you for writing that book. I thought, well, you know, if nobody else ever read the book, it certainly would have been worth it to write it for that purpose. And this woman had to follow the theme of that book and tell the truth that she felt more passionate life force about doing the service work than staying in the corporate world. And what a blessing to the world because of what she did.

So just following that and you never know what's going to happen.

It's trusting Joy. It just sounds so very simple, doesn't it? But a lot of us were raised in religions that said if it's hard on the sacrifice, that's the one you're supposed to do. I've been experimenting. If it's easy and there's a flow and there's peace associated with, do that. And pretty much it works. I experiment with this a lot and it works.

And so what about the things that you don't really want to do? You have your creative joys or whatever it is that really lights you up. You feel like it's your life purpose. Then you have the mundane daily activities that maybe there's not as much joy. There can be gratitude, but how do we. Can we be joyful all the time experiencing those or what's your thoughts?

Joy is not situational, it's really attitudinal. And I tell people that there are two ways to change your experience. You can change your environment or you change your mind. And sometimes you can change your environment, but always you can change your mind. So I suggest to people, if there's something you have to do, and there's all things we have to, we all think we'd rather not do, but have to. So quit resisting. I mean, if you have to do it, you have to pay your taxes or see the doctor, have a discussion of your relationship, do it. But take the high road. Why not do it playfully and joyfully? See, the thing that wears us down is not stuff, it's attitude. When you're doing something and you're grinding against it while you're doing it, that that's what fatigues you. And so if you can either quit doing the activity or drop the resistance to it, it's as simple as that. And sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other. And if you can drop resistance, it becomes a play. People often ask me, well, I want to be an actress or a writer or a musician. I have to have a full time job. Great. So have the job and the service of being the musician. Think, well, I'm earning now so I can play my music at night or weekends. And one day I'm going to be a full time musician. So thank God for this waitressing job because I now reframe it, redefine it as in the service of my dream. Thank you God for the money I'm earning so one day I can earn more as a musician instead of in resistance to my dream.

Very cool attitude. And I love that you can either change your environment or change your mind. That we always have the opportunity to make that shift. And if we can't change it in our daily life right now, then we can make that mental shift. And as you were just talking about that too, patience. Being willing to have the patience to do what we need to do in greater service to our visions. Right?

Yeah. You're asking the wrong guy about patience. I'm pretty impatient. I'm practicing. I once actually walked in front of a line at an airport and then my partner said, did you see that line? I said, no, I didn't even notice it. I couldn't see it. But what I'm learning about patience, Alexander, is this because you have to sit in line, you have to stand in line at a bank or wait in traffic. I mean, we all get stuck here and there once in a while. Is that if you're tuned in, there's always something cool happening in the moment even before you're waiting for the thing to happen happens. So there's somebody cool you can talk to in the line at the bank, or you can put the radio on or put a headset on or do something cool while you're sitting in traffic or the here and now is always hot. If you're tuned in, there's nothing you're waiting for that's going to be better than what's here now. It's easy for me to say this, I'm not lying, but I get to practice when I do.

That's great. It's such a great reminder too, like turning into something cool. And that's a Great thing for pleasure, too. A lot of us have this idea of it's some big extravagant thing. That's what pleasure is. And like you said in the moment, you can just tune into pleasure. You can tune into something cool right now.

Well, creating pleasure. Did I ever tell you about the guy at the Chicago airport? The tollbooth guy?

I don't think so.

So once I was in the car waiting to go through tollbooth to get out of the Chicago airport. And it was a cold, dark winter night and there was a long line and I thought, oh, dad. And finally we got to the tollbooth and there was a handsome Italian man there with white hair. Beautiful man. And as he handed us our change, he sang us two verses from La Traviata and women swooned and we all clapped and then off we went. And I realized that my teacher used to say, take what you got and make what you want. And what he did was he took one of the most boring jobs in the world. Toll collector. And here he was in the night in Chicago when it's cold smelling exhaust fumes. And he turned his little toll booth into an opera hall. How cool is that? He was not willing to let that toll booth define him. He defined it for what he wanted it to be. And he blessed a lot of people. Everybody who came through his line had a lot more fun than if they went through somebody else's line.

Yeah, totally. Just bringing that joy and that love and that enthusiasm. I mean, you can't. It would be challenging to go through that toll booth and not feel better.

Yeah, you have to work hard to not do it. People did, but we didn't.

Yeah. So, I mean, I love this. And I know everybody listening to him is like, yeah, I can totally create play and pleasure and this enthusiasm and creativity in my life. But then I just feel like for so many of us, we just don't.

Yeah, it's habit. It's fear. What if I look weird? What if I step out of line? There's a new movie out called 42. It's the Jackie Robinson Story. Have you seen it?

No, but we're planning on it. Everybody keeps telling me to watch it.

It's a great biography on Jackie Robinson. And that guy had a lot of resistance. Again, he was the first black player in the major leagues and. And he was scorned and abused and he had to just hold his head high and he had to hold his space independent of the space that others were holding around him. And he ended up changing the world. He changed the baseball world and he changed society. Now, that wasn't much fun, but actually playing, he was voted rookie of the year and he had all kinds. And when he finally retired, his number, 4:42 is the only number that was retired by every team in the major leagues forever.

Wow. Goosebumps.

That was how much he was ultimately loved and respected and honored because he came to play ball. He didn't come to fight with people about his race, he came to play ball and he ultimately triumphed.

Wow. Yeah, totally. Goosebumps. That's so inspiring. Wow. Very cool. And you know, a lot of these interviews that I'm doing too, and I wouldn't have necessarily thought this would come up as much, but it does come up. And a lot of them is the courage it takes to actually go for your joy, to actually create the life that you want and to have pleasure in your life.

Well, let's take three well known names, Steven Jobs and Bill Gates and Michael Dill. Three people who changed society through computers and programming and none of them finished college. Steven Jobs quit college to do calligraphy. Imagine his mother saying, stephen, college, get a degree, get a good job, make some money, make something yourself. But he had to have the guts to, to do what he had to do. And now the world is a better place for it. Not all of us are going to become a Steven Jobs, but we're going to have our sphere of influence that touches people, that we touch. And even if you never touch anybody else, if you live a joyful life, you're making a contribution to the universe. Your energy is uplifting the planet.

That's so great. I love what you talked about too. The fear, like that fear stops us and just really is like we don't trust ourselves or we don't trust ourselves as much as we could, you know? And can you just talk about that trusting yourself? Because I know that's a big in all of your books. Every time I read it, I'm like, yes. I just feel like that's a common theme and thread throughout a lot of your work.

Well, the German philosopher Goethe said, when you finally trust yourself, you will know how to live. You finally trust yourself, you will know how to live. And pretty much every day, each of us has a hundred opportunities to practice selling out or moving with where love would take us, where joy would take us. I remember when I wrote my first book, the Dragon Doesn't Live Here Anymore. No one wanted to publish it and so I decided to publish it myself. And I borrowed $5,000 from my mother, which was her life savings in 1981. And I made a deal with a publisher to publish it. And as I was walking out of his office, he said, you know, they say you don't make any money until your third book. I want to be here. My mother's life savings in one book. I turned to him and out of my mouth came these words. They were not rehearsed. And they said, I know that's what they may say, but what they may not know is my agent is God. And I wasn't trying to be flipped, but I had so much of an emotional and spiritual investment in that project that I could not not let him distract me from it. But oh, my God, what if I didn't do the formula? And the book went on to become a bestseller, and it sold 200,000, 300,000 copies, and so much more money than $5,000 ever came back. And I remember taking my mother to the safe deposit box, showing her that I put back the $5,000. She says, really? She said, I'll keep it, I don't need it. But it's that kind of self belief that makes you stand out from the masses and make a unique contribution to the planet.

Definitely. And one of the things that I'm working with you on is being unapologetic. So for all of us to be unapologetic in who we are, what we want, want, where we're headed, I can.

Talk to you about that Because I live a lot of my life being apologetic. I remember I'd go stay over someone's house and I'd wake up in the morning and come out to the living room and think, well, I'm bothering these people for being here. It's just like a thing. Like, do you have a right to live and breathe and be. And over the years, I've worked on that. And you know, great people don't live apologetically. They live courageously and confidently. And probably the more you apologize, the less you're going to accomplish because you don't owe the universe anything. You have a right to be here.

Yeah. And so just being comfortable in your own skin and comfortable with who you are. And that's so great.

Yeah. It's really simple, isn't it? But it takes practice, doesn't it?

Yeah. This is one of the reasons that I think I've said this a few times. I love Alan because he's so simple. You just break it down and make it very simple. And we're like, oh, that makes sense. It doesn't need to be Complicated.

It's realness. That's the key. When you live authentically, you accomplish things that other people don't. I remember after I gave a speech one night, a guy came up to me and he said, you know, I took a public speaking course and he said, I was studying you as you spoke and you violated 8 of the 10 rules of public speaking. He said, but I didn't ask him what they were. I don't want to learn them. If you watch all my career with training, however, you're my favorite speaker because the most real speaker I've heard, and I took it as a compliment. I think we may not all be technically perfect, but I think when you're spiritually sincere, you're spiritually perfect. And that's all spirit can ever ask of anybody.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. It's such a great reminder for all of us to just be who we are. Not that training is bad, but you know, there's moments where you just. That's not necessary. And it actually inhibits who we are. Right.

Well, it's actually the combination of training and spontaneity. What was that girl's name who won the ice skating award about 8 or 10 years ago? A 16 year old girl from Long Island. I forget her name. Sarah. Sarah, I think. Anyway, she was in the Olympic figure skating competition and she was third in the competition and she had one more skate to do and they were hoping at best maybe she could win a silver. And she went out and she did this unbelievable routine where she did like three triple flim floms and on and on. And I don't know what she did, but they were. And everyone was just standing there with her jaw dropped and she got 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. And actually won the gold medal on that performance. And they interviewed her when that happened afterwards and she said, you know, at that point I was just going out to have fun. She said, I wasn't trying real hard. She said, I just figured I'd give it my best shot. What the hell? And she gave it her best shot. And so, I mean, she obviously had years of training. We're not denying that. But then there was that moment where she just let her spirit run her. She just. But the whole thing was totally spirit guided and she totally kicked butt. So that lovely combination of doing your homework and letting spirit move through you, which we're all capable of.

Goosebumps. Again, that spontaneity. So do you have recommendations of how we can go about that in our daily life? How do we actually Relax life, let go and just let spirit flow through us so that we had that spontaneity.

Think less and be more and also move with a little urges and inclinations and inklings and intuitions. You just never know how and when spirit's going to use you. Once I was giving a lecture to a very large group and I was telling this story, but I wanted to say 711 and got potato chips. And I felt kind of embarrassed because most of the people there ate healthy. And I felt like I'm supposed to be a good model, but I figured, what the heck, I said it. So I said it. And afterwards this guy came up to me and he was a well known spiritual teacher in the area and he shook my hand vigorously, said, I just want to thank you for talking about potato chips. He said, I'm a health food addict and every now and I binge at them, I feel really guilty. He says. But when Alan Cohen admitted he ate potato soup, he said, I am healed. I just had a laugh because it was just something that came into my mind to say and I went with it. I like to believe on some level that spirit was guiding me to say that. At least for him, somebody else maybe, at least for me, maybe I just needed to relax about not being a perfect. You know, life is not built usually on these big, aha, Moses coming down from the mountains, throwing ten commandments to you. It's built on little inklings during the day. Let me call this person, let me try this project. Let me, you know, and you know, Brian, have a ton of projects and I would imagine that the ones that you're most excited about are the ones that are spirit guided, would you say?

Absolutely. And I think they're spirit guided. And then there's. We go on all, not all, but a lot of our intuition and our inklings and we just create and see what happens. And there's a lot of projects that just don't. They don't work or we just forget about them.

Yeah, you know, you throw it against the wall, see if it sticks. And Linus Pauling, who won two Nobel Prizes in two different domains, said the best way to have a great ideas, to have lots of ideas, so you just put them all out there. That which is right will reveal itself. I found that again and again. If it's spirit guided, it will show you.

Yep, that's great. Spirit guided. It will show you. And one of the things that you say that I always remember is that I might be paraphrasing it, but whatever will get Done, spirit will help you get done whatever needs to get done. So we get so wound up in getting all these things done and we need to do this before we die or whatever it is. And just trusting that whatever gets done, spirit will help us.

It's an affirmation I teach as part of my time course. I have a course called the time of your life. The affirmation is spirit, how does it go? Let me remember it. I always do. In the perfect timing, what spirit would have me do? The idea being that if it's not spirit guided, you're going to waste your time trying to get it done. So if it's right, spirit will give you time. I always have the time to do things that spirit would have me do. If you're rushing and forcing and yucking. One of my friends was late to a therapy appointment and she was on a one lane road and one lane sided and there was a slowpoke in front of her and she kept honking and flashing. She couldn't pass for a long time. Finally she passed the person and she looked over and it was her therapist. So you know, she was actually in her right time. It was the ego and the rushing and the fear said, let me get there, let me get there. You know, things always somehow there's the right timing for everything. It's just the way things work out.

Yeah, that's why I love talking to you, because there is that and I know a lot of people listening will just have that. There's that feeling of ah, spaciousness, like I don't need to rush, like everything is unfolding perfectly. I know every time I talk to you that's what I get. Like, oh, life is good, it's all good, it's all happening. No need to worry or stress.

They just built a new sleep street restaurant near my house and they took the longest time to make it. I mean we go to a restaurant near them, must have been like a year. I mean they gutted another building and they refurbished it. I thought, man, are these guys ever going to make any money on this? Is it ever going to open? And then finally it opened and they're packed every night. There's people, there's lines standing at the door. And I thought, well, they did everything right. They took their time, they did it properly. And now people are banging the door to get in. So I'm really a big fan of doing it well rather than rushing.

And then also what you talk about too is enjoying the whole process and that's part the of, of pleasure. Too right. Like enjoying. Like, why do we need to rush our creative goals or our dreams? Like, does it make it any better if it happens next month or next year?

It's a perfect point. Thank you. If you're not enjoying the creative process, you miss the whole point of it. I mean, what's the use of cranking something out if you were absent in the interim? And people will feel the love and the passion and the intent that you put in your writing or your music or your seminar or your dance. It's like when something is done with love and care, it radiates, it vibrates, it emanates. And people are drawn to it on some level. They sense the psychic intention in that object and it becomes extremely valuable for that reason.

That's great. So to have that intention when we're doing anything that. It's the intention of love and joy.

Yeah, Just imbuing it with love. They sold Judy Garland's ruby slippers for 15 million. That sounds ridiculous. Price.

Oh my gosh.

At an auction. I forget the exact. But it's not. And I thought, you know, there was so much good energy in that movie and it was such a great parable that people focalize on symbols and objects of things that contain life force and they become valuable for that reason.

That is great.

So.

Desiring things. I'd love to talk about desire. Like, what is desire? How does that. Or how does that help us enjoy and have more pleasure into our life and. Yeah, just speak on desire.

Well, it's a good question. I've been actually thinking more, deeper levels about this more lately. Desire is a form of passion. Very often my definition of passion is the universe's way of getting you to be in the right place at the right time with the right people for the right purpose. Passion moves the universe. Nothing happens without passion. Life is dead without passion. And no good things come without passion. I mean, babies come from passion and movies come from passion and books and buildings come from passion. So I like to believe that when I feel passionate about something, it is God or the universe working through me to make something good happen for me and the universe. And that's my primary definition of passion. Now, there's another form of desire. It could be neurotic desire where you're nervous or you're afraid or you're trying to fill in space, or it's a habit or an addiction. And in those cases you have to sort out, is this a joy based desire or is this a fear based desire? And it takes honesty, doesn't it?

Yes, totally.

And for most of us, at least, people who consider themselves on a spiritual path, often it's a joy based desire. So suggest in general to go with it. But it's good to check yourself out and ask yourself, am I just grabbing for an extra hunk of ice cream because I'm nervous or would it really be fun to have it?

Yeah. Then having that, like you were saying, being really honest with, with ourselves, like not making excuses and justifying, that's like a fine line.

Yeah. It's a rare person who's really authentic and I've been working on it for many years and sometimes I feel like I'm just starting to get there. But consider the alternative.

Yeah.

You just kind of live a hollow life and, you know, look back in your life and say, where was I and who was I and what was I doing here? And what does Wayne die say? Don't die with your music still inside you. We all have a song to play.

Yeah. And you know, just on that, like, I just feel this is one of the reasons that I'm doing this is because I just feel like there is a like for me, I don't want to miss out on life. Like, I fully want to enjoy it and I want to be engaged and enjoying it and have the pleasure and fully appreciate my son and my husband and my life, you know, and it's just like it feels like life goes by pretty fast and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. And I love one of your books that I love is How Good Can It Get? Which is like, just perfectly sums it up. Like, how good can it Get? Can you tell us a little bit about that book and How Good Can It Get?

It's a parable about a young man who is hurting financially and emotionally, and he meets a mentor who changes his life. It's a fiction, but there's a lot of great spiritual truth waved in between the story. But the title is telling because a lot of us spend a lot of time assessing on how bad can it get. And very often when I'm coaching somebody and they have a decision to make and they're worried about this and that, I'll say, well, tell me how bad it can get. And they've had this catastrophic fantasy. Well, this can happen. This can happen. This guy can die and I can get divorced, there's no end to it. They say, well, tell me how good can it get? And they sit there like, I don't know, I never thought about that. How could this possibly work out in your Favor. And if you could carve out the scenario how this could work out in the best possible way, how would it look? And when I get up thinking that direction, light bulbs start to go, well, this could happen, this could happen. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a gift. And all of a sudden they're excited about this. That seems to be a dilemma. Now becomes an opportunity because you're thinking in possibility consciousness instead of fear consciousness.

That's so awesome.

Fall in a mud puddle, check your pockets for fish.

Yeah, and it's so true because we do. We all have that. Our brains are wired right. We've evolved to look for what's wrong. So, so we're like professional wrong. Something's wrong seekers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's the worst case scenario? Well, sometimes you have to consider, but you know, the mind is very powerful and we tend to create in the direction that we think. And so when you look at possibilities, they reveal. You see everything is frequency. Fears are fear. And love the frequency. And when you're in fear, it's like you're putting on dark glasses and all you have access to is what the world of fear shows you. And it's scary. When you're in love consciousness or well, being consciousness or joy consciousness, you have access to everything that love would show you. And we've all had moments when you were bummed out or worried about something and somebody gave you a hug or I love you or you're wonderful, you're beautiful, you can't. And something shifted and all of a sudden we felt great because we changed the lens. So the whole game is about doing whatever it takes to stay in the love frequency. Whatever it takes to stay in that frequency is worth doing.

Yes. And I love that visual too, that literally we can have fear feel lenses on, fear goggles or love goggles. And literally it changes what we actually see, right? I mean we miss so much when we're in the fear based thinking the.

World and universe is available to us. I'll tell you a really cute story. Once I was waiting on a plane to go from Maui to California and they announced that the plane would be delayed by two plus hours. And I had put in for first class upgrade. And so I went to the desk to see if maybe I could get my upgrade. And the long line had formed in front of me because people changed their travel plans. I thought, well, I'll just stand here for a while and get in a person's face. I was taught in New Jersey that the way to get what you wanted to get in people's face. I thought, well, I'll do that. And then I looked at this line. I realized I'm going to be standing in this line for an hour. And this voice said, okay, on you, teach trust. If you were trusting now, what would you do? Well, that's an interesting question. I thought, well, I had a pass to the lounge, special lounge. So I said, I go to the lounge and have some orange juice and put my feet up and take a nap and come back in two hours. So I stepped out of line and I did that. When I came back just before boarding, the announcement came when, Mr. Cohen, please come to the desk. So I came up and she said, well, your first class upgrade came through. Then she said, it's amazing. She said, that seat was not there a minute ago. And she gave me the ticket. I realized I didn't give her the coupon. You're supposed to pay for the coupon. So I said, do you want the coupon? She said, no. She said, computer here says that the sea seat is paid for and that's good enough for me. I said, well, it's good enough for me too. I went on a flight and I really enjoyed it. And the whole point of the story is that when you step into that well being consciousness of trust, the universe literally, literally, literally materially rearranges things. So stuff shows up that wouldn't have shown up if you were in a fear of defensive mentality. It's called a miracle. There's a shift in perception that creates a shift in results and it's available to all of us all the time.

That is fantastic. I love that. Tell me the question that got you along that process or started you.

If you trusted, if you were willing to trust at this point, if you practice trust at this moment, what would you be doing differently?

And I love that because it's such a demonstration. You just saying that is literally like trusting and then engaging in pleasure. You're going to go have some juice and just relax. So can you talk about relaxation? I know you talk about that. You have like relax into wealth. You have a lot of, you know, a lot of your books, you talk about relaxation and the importance of it. Can you talk about that?

Well, ease is a much more powerful tool to get what you want than struggle. And I know this really runs counter to what you and I have been taught for years, since birth. No pain, no gain, work ethic, bust your butt, you get what you want. And I watch successful people and I see that they work and they do their part. But when they're motivated by joy and having fun with what they're doing, they're so much more creative and so, so much more successful than when they're just trying to squeeze an income out of the universe. And I notice personally, when I'm relaxed, I get really fabulous ideas. And I get some of my best ideas. I get just when I'm in the shower or on the toilet or walking in the park or having a meal, just, okay, here I am relaxing. All of a sudden, these ideas come into my world. And it's because the pipeline is like, if you're uptight, you're constricting the pipe through which good ideas flow to you. When you relax, they come. It's pretty simple, actually. There was a tai chi master I saw him in. Not Tai chi, Taekwondo and qigong, Qi kung. This guy, he was teaching qi gong in the park in China, and he had these six guys come up to him and try to push him over, and he just went like this and knocked each guy over because he was in such a flow of equilibrium that he had power that they didn't have. So our real power is in ease, not strain.

Wow, that's so amazing. Geez, I can't imagine I don't currently have that amount of power of power or I haven't practiced that amount of power yet.

Well, it's the opposite of trying. It's allowing is the opposite of no try. Only do.

Yep, there is no try. The allowing. Yeah. We talk about this in our calls, too. Allowing. And I love that, too, that you're saying the opening. I love the vision of just opening up. If we're stressed and we're tight, we're really constricting the flow. And if we're open and receptive, divine rushes in.

This is a river that's moving. You're moving with it. You're moving against it. And the river is a good river. It's moving on up. It's called the dao. It's called the Force. When they said Star wars made the fort, well, that was not quite accurate. It's may you be with the Force because the Force is always moving. The question is, are you aligned with what wants to happen? You could tell whether you're not with the Force by how much pain and struggle there is in your life. The more you're painting and struggling, the more you're swimming upstream, the more you're just letting life live through you while the results are obvious.

Right. So if anybody listening to this, they're like, what is this pleasure talk? I'm not experiencing pleasure at all. There's. When we're not experiencing that, we're not allowing the river to flow through us. Right? We're just resisting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I suggest people to lean into pleasure. I don't think you have to go off and have plates Twister with 100 naked people in Mozilla oil and stuff like that. You don't have to dive into that immediately, but you can do little things that let you feel good. You can take a nap during the day. You can lay out in the sunshine. You can call a friend. You can sign up for a massage. You can sign up for a retreat. I mean, just do little things that nurture yourself. And then the more you do the little things, you kind of build a pathway. You open up that pipeline so that the bigger pleasures can come, and then pleasure can be more of a habit. And once again, we're not just talking about sensory pleasure. We're talking about soul pleasure. About being with people you love, about taking work you love, about doing things for your body that help it heal. All those things.

I love that. Soul pleasure. That's like a great title for a book. Soul pleasure. I like that. Soul pleasure. So, okay, as we're going about in our soul pleasure and engaging in pleasure, what are your thoughts on? Because I think like you said earlier, there's fear. So whatever our pleasures are and the things that we want to experiment with and go try, what do we do if we have fear or maybe somebody declines our request or we're rejected, or somebody makes fun of us or something like that? How do we navigate that traffic?

Well, you have to get a bigger picture because if somebody declines your request, they're obviously not the person to fulfill it. My friend Bashar says, if at first you don't succeed, then redefine success. We had a lady calling to my radio show. I have a radio show every Thursday on Hay House Radio. And she was a young woman and. And she wanted this guy to be her friend. And I guess she was bugging him. And he said, please don't call me or text me. And I said, well, why would you want to be with somebody who told you that? I said, can you imagine that there are other people out there who would love for you to call them and text them, and why not get with your just right tribe? Why would you want to be with somebody who doesn't want you? That makes no sense. Sense whatsoever. And unfortunately, a lot of people keep beating their heads against the wall to try to get with somebody who doesn't want them. It's not a dead end. It's a right turn. In other words, it means you're being redirected. Man's rejection is God's protection. So if that job isn't it, well, that job didn't take you. Obviously there's a better job for you. So why not just take it as a sign tool, look elsewhere and don't take it personally. I mean, there's a right place in the universe for everybody. We're all just seeking our own.

That's so great. Totally redefines the no rejection. And it's not rejection.

Rejection. Man's rejection is God's protection.

That's so great. God's protection. I was just going to say so on that. Then what do we do around or. You know, because I think there's a lot of. We all have people pleasing and different things, people asking different things for us. And when we really get aligned with our soul pleasure, I find that I have to start saying no to certain things so that I can truly open up and have space for things that I love. So can you talk about navigating that part of the journey?

That's a big piece for a lot of us, isn't it? Because we're taught to feel now to some to feel guilty if we say no. We use a metaphor in our training that goes, there is no private good. No private good. Which means that if something is truly good for me on a soul level, then it's going to serve everybody that it's not selfish to move to fulfill your soul. Because that has to be be part of a bigger plan that will ennoble everyone's soul. And, you know, you just got to practice and trust. Once Dee and I went to a restaurant in Seattle and we were seated under an air conditioner and Dee got cold and we wanted to move, but we don't even serve their appetizers. And we felt a little guilty about asking to move at that point, but we did. And then after we moved, an elderly couple came in and they were seated at the table we had vacated. And the moment that man sat down, he said, ah, just when they needed air conditioning. And so our good was intrinsically connected to theirs. But we could not see the result of that until we had the confidence to act on what would work for us. And the other key to that is that every no to one thing is a yes to another. So if you have trouble saying no, remember what that no is. Making space for in terms of yes. So saying no to your boss to work overtime means you're going to say yes to your family. To be home wise, Saying no to dates or sex with people you don't like means that you're now going to have space on your disc, if you will, to find somebody who you really match. So there's always a bigger yes behind the little no. And if you remember what the bigger yes is, you're empowered to say the no with love and grace because you're not hurting anybody. You're helping everybody.

That's great. I love that yes because I love that there's always a yes with the no. Like, what is the bigger yes to look for that and hold that space. A lot of times we just, we don't want to make people feel bad or we do things and we're not holding onto that yes. And then our little yeses and our joy just gets diminished. And before you know it, we're just, we feel deflated.

You can say it diplomatically. Like a lot of people come to Maui and they want to have lunch with me or whatever. And I just, I'm sure I would enjoy it. Thank you. But this is my family time and I travel a great deal and I see a lot of people. So when I'm home, I'm just quiet. I don't do a lot of going out. So thank you very much. But this is my renewal time. And if somebody doesn't understand that, well, it's too bad because it's just the truth. You just have to respect that. So if you're confident and you know, or confident in the yes, but highly enough, there's always a way to say it lovingly and diplomatically so somebody don't get hurt.

Yes. And I love you. I think in one of our calls too, I'm just referencing my calls because I learned so much from Alan that you know right away. Usually we know if it's a yes or no and then we might say yes and then we have to back out. Like, it's much easier to. Once you're clear that it's a no, if it's an it or not it, than to say it than Wait, right.

It starts, you know, when you finally trust yourself, you will know how to live and trust that there's a system that's empowering you and supporting you. That's bigger than a little ego that thinks it has to decide. I mean, the universe is really conspiring on your behalf for well being.

I love it. So I have one more Question. And I think it's a great reminder for us. And I love. Do I have it? I don't even have it here, the book. Good enough, right?

Enough already.

Enough. Oh my God. Good enough. That's what I got out of it. I'm good enough. Enough already. So can you talk about that? Because, you know, there's the balance of going for our desires and our dreams and then there's also enough already. Like, can you just talk about what that means and how we can have enough already?

A while back, I decided to meditate on enoughness. And it came after a conversation with Wayne Dyer. We were having dinner and he said, I have enough money, I don't need any more. I thought, yeah, you make a lot of money, you can save that. And then I realized that he had enough money because he decided that what he had was enough. So I thought, well, let me meditate on what if my house was already enough? And what if my body was already enough? And what if my relationship was already enough? What if my bank account was already enough? And it just this ease came over me, like, what have I been missing? Like there's beauty and there's love and well being and so many places. And I've been missing it because I've been defining what I have is not enough when it quite is. And it led me to this really beautiful space of ah, I'm just blessed and showered with good wherever I turn. So that whole book came out of it. And then the other piece is that to want more is okay too. Because the process of wanting and striving for more, if it's fun, is also a form of enoughness. The universe is always seeking to expand and prove on itself. So if it's fun to you to ask for more, to create more, please do it, but do it from a space of fun, enjoy and overflowing celebration instead of I'm empty and I'm broken until I get this thing. That's where you hurt yourself. Like you define this. I'm bad, I'm not this bad now and it will be good when I get enough. Well, it can be enough now and be even more than enough later. Tony Robbins calls it happy and hungry. Happy what you have, but then you're joyfully hungry to see if you can stretch and create more, right?

And then like you keep saying too trusting yourself that we all have different happy and hungries, right? That there's a different level of what's enough for you and to not compare and just too tune into what feels right for You.

Exactly. Someone said that comparison is the death of joy.

Wow. Totally.

It's like when you get into she's prettier, she's younger, she's thinner, he's smarter, he has more money, more successful. That's when you start shrinking energetically. Now you can use other people as role models and inspiration. Cool. I like to be successful like him. But when you make yourself less than because somebody is more than, you've missed the whole point. So by using them more than to inspire you to inculcate the same more than within you, simultaneously celebrating what already is is enough.

Amen.

It's like a zen game. But let's play with more than enough. It's not even roaring. It's both and.

Yeah, yeah. And then just the experimentation, like being willing to experiment. Like, okay, I'm going to go for it. It's a little too much pull back or just it's kind of a dance. Right?

It's a balancing act. You know, life is never static. And you tried it, it didn't work. You tried. It worked. You tried it. You fine tune it, you tried it again. We're all in flux.

Yep.

Yep.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much. Can you share where people can learn more about you and buy your books and your retreats and your workshops and all that stuff?

Sure. My website is alancohen.com, a l a n c o h e n dot com. All of my books are there. I'm doing life coach trainings these days. I send out a daily inspirational message every day of the year for free if people want to sign up. So come on my site, Alancon.com, we'd love to connect with you.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Ellen. As you know, and I've said it numerous times, I love you and I appreciate your wisdom and you following your joy because it inspires so many of us.

It's always a delight to connect with you and Brian. You're role models for me. You're both alive and smart and creative and have a beautiful family and so it's pleasure to co create.

Yes, yes, yes. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much.

Aloha.

Aloha.