Mary Morrissey | Building the Life You’re Meant to Live

Notice that the part of us, the very power that's breathing us, you can't do that on your own. None of us created ourselves. We can't even make our heart beat one time under our own power. Life itself is animating this physical thing called our body. So there's a part of us that is. Whether you call it I'm a spiritual being having a human experience or however you define who you are, this is what the Transcendentalists were talking about. There's a part of us that is more than our current circumstances, situations and conditions and we can notice. So now we have a vision of life and it has money and it has different things to it that matter to us for the good we can do with it. That version of expanded life. Notice that there's a part of you that will be willing, and then there's a part of you that's arguing for why you can't.

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Mahl and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. And in each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you were always meant to be.

Let's get started.

What if transformation isn't just about thinking.

Differently, but feeling differently?

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What if the beliefs holding you back weren't even yours to Begin with. In today's episode, I'm joined by the remarkable Mary Morrissey, a true pioneer in the field of transformational thinking and personal development. Mary and I dive deep into the power of belief and how our stories about money, health, identity and success shape the very reality we live in. You'll hear powerful insights from Mary on rewiring limiting beliefs, including stories about money, failure and identity. We also explore the law of vibration, dream building, and how to expand your vision of what's truly possible right here, right now. If ready to shift from dreamer to builder and bring your highest vision to life, this is the conversation for you. Let's get started.

My name is Dr. Fleetmall, your co host for the session, and I'm really thrilled to be here today with none other than Mary Morrissey. Welcome, Mary.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

So you've been studying transformation for over 50 years and teaching for more than four decades, and I'm just curious as to what. How did you get so enamored of personal transformation? How did you find your way into this field?

I wasn't looking. A series of things occurred in my life and I'll tell you a little backstory on it. I grew up in Beaverton, Oregon and had a high school experience like most young girls dream about. I was class vice president and drill team and homecoming princess, leaving the junior play. And my high school boyfriend. We'd been dating four years, went off to college, came back on spring break. I get pregnant May 1st. I'm at the end of my junior year in high school. I tell my mom and dad I'm pregnant. My mother wept for me as if I had died. We had a very hasty 10 person wedding and a couple of weeks later I get a call from the principal of the high school to his office and are these rumors I'm hearing about you true? And I said, well, if the rumors are that I'm pregnant and married in that order, then yes, they're true. And then he just put his head in his hands and he goes, mary, you have great academics, you have terrific honors, but you will not be allowed to return for your senior year in high school because it would be totally inappropriate for a pregnant girl to get mixed in with the normal girls. But if you want a high school diploma, which I wanted because I had always dreamed of being a teacher and I didn't see this as a dead end, I saw it as a detour on my way to my own professional dream, so I wanted that high school diploma. He says, but if you want a high school diploma, there is a place for people like you. It was across the river in a part of Portland, Oregon. I hadn't been allowed to go drive after dark, where it's a normal high school during the day and then it becomes a high school in the evening for pregnant girls and delinquent boys. That next fall, I drove across. I'm now part of a group classified delinquents. And I remember walking in thinking, okay, this is my new student body. Now, most of us can remember where we were maybe at the beginning of a senior, or the equivalent of it, depending on what part of the world we're in. But this was my new student body. My son was born in December, and I graduated from Washington Evening High School in May. In July, I'm in an intensive care ward in a Portland hospital having been diagnosed with fatal kidney disease. So this is 1967. I've just turned 18. I have a little boy who's seven months old. And they're telling me that one kidney is totally destroyed with nephritis kidney disease. The other has 50% destruction. And at this point, without dialysis, without transplants, this is a death sentence. It's just a matter of how much time I'm going to have. So they tell me if we can get the blood toxin level in my body reduced enough to remove the right kidney, then maybe I'll have six months to live. I'm terrified. The God of my upbringing, Fleet was not a friendly place to go when you felt like you'd really screwed up. And clearly I had screwed up my best girlfriends from grade school, their mothers wouldn't let them see me anymore, as if I had something contagious. And so my structure of belie when we're talking about rewiring beliefs, My belief at that time was my version of a higher power was an angry, punishing version. So I must be punished for being a bad girl. I don't even deserve to live. This is the wiring that's going on in me. Finally, the night before the surgery was scheduled, a woman walked in my room, maybe 10 o' clock at night and identified herself as the visiting chaplain and wanted to know if I wanted somebody to pray with me. And I was terrified and scared and I said, okay. She pulled her chair next to my bed and she didn't do anything that looked or seemed like prayer out of any kind of training I've had. She just pulled her chair next to me and she said, would you be willing to tell me what's been going on in your life the last year or two. So I told her my story, at the end of which she looked at me compassionately and she says, mary, everything's created twice was like, what are you talking about? And she said, you actually know this. In fact, everybody knows this. Almost nobody knows the power of knowing this. She said, the bed you're laying on, the nightgown you're wearing, the sheet covering you, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, all of it had to be a thought before it could become a thing. Now that you're considering how everything is created twice, I want to share with you. I hear how much you love your little boy, but I can also hear how much you've been hating yourself. You feel like you shamed your school, you shamed your family, you shamed your friends. And that toxic thinking. If everything's created twice and a thought can help choose the color of the sheet you're laying on, could you imagine that there's a possibility that toxic thinking could have something to do with the toxicity that's rampaging your body and threatening your life. Now this is 1967. We don't have mind body clinics at Harvard Medical School and all around the country us today that we do. This was a different kind of thinking than anybody I knew. Thought that something I'm thinking could have something to do with my own well being. And then she said, so if you could live, what would you do with your life? And I said, I'd raise my little boy and I'd become a teacher. And she said, okay, so tomorrow they're gonna do a surgery. Right after the surgery, your mind will be dealing with some of the pain of the surgery. As that ebbs, your mind is going to want to go down the well worn paths of thinking that you've been doing. It's gonna wanna pick up that shame and think those thoughts again. So here's what I want you to do. After the surgery, notice any time a self loathing thought and I'm going to, we'll do a visualization. I had never even heard the word visualization at this point. And we're going to imagine sweeping up everything that's toxic in your body and just putting it in that one kidney when it gets released. And when it gets released, it's gone. She says you're not looking for the doctors to tell you that. You're looking a different place in your imagination. So let's imagine. And then when a thought of toxic shame rises up inside you just interrupt it and say no. That left with the kidney but it's not enough to let go of something, you have to replace it. So what I want you to do is say no, that left with the kidney. And then immediately imagine you've got a little boy's hand in yours and it's a warm hand. He's a five year old and you're walking up the steps to a school and he goes to kindergarten. And then fast forward and you're there. Oh, and you hear the sound of your shoes going down the hallway and turn the corner and there's your first classroom. Then fast forward and you're in a high school auditorium or a stadium and there's caps and gowns all down on the stage or floor. And you hear your son's name called and he's walking across the stage getting his diploma and you're cheering for him and all the moments of influence that you've been as part of his success and your teaching career is growing. And then fast forward and you're in the front row of a wedding and you're the mother of a groom and that groom is your son and he's marrying the love of his life and your teaching career is flourishing. And she said, just keep doing that. So I would, you know, looking back, Fleet, I would say I was an unconscious confident I must have done what she told me to do. But I wasn't thinking, if I do this, that might change the toxicology in my body and I could actually start to get well. But as I was doing that about two weeks after the surgery, the doctors told my family gathered at the end of the surgery that one kidney was destroyed, the other was all pockmarked and shriveled. They didn't even know if I was going to have six months. But after two weeks, instead of continuing my numbers to get worse, they were stabilized enough that they said, well, we don't know how much, how long this will last right now, but if you wanted to go home, be your little boy, I don't know if it'll be days or a week or a couple of weeks that you'd have at home before you have to come back. I went home in an ambulance. I was so weak I couldn't lift my head. And over time I had to go to the urologist three times a week just to check numbers. But my numbers not only stabilized, they just started to slightly improve and improve. And during that time I'm visualizing and making different connections really about I'm not so aware yet to even really hold state on being able to notice what I'm noticing, but over time. Six months later, I'm in a conference room at the hospital and the surgeon, the doctors and the specialists are all just shaking their heads saying, we have no science for what's happened with you. The surgeon said, I saw that one kidney, but right now it's functioning as a whole perfect kidney. So we don't know how long this will last or if it'll last. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I wasn't aware of what I was doing. It was just what I was doing. So I wasn't even curious. I got well, I was so happy to be well. I wasn't curious for about three years later when I'm deep in my undergraduate work. And a series of things occurred in October of 1971 that I don't need to tell the whole story about. But I realized, oh, this is what happened with me. This is transformation. And it didn't come from that. The ability to transform a situation wasn't predicated on the conditions being right, that there was another way to work with situations that seem limiting and difficult and, you know, forecasting even death. It actually allowed for more life, more capabilities than I believe we all have. So that was the beginning. And then I began to be like a thirsty sponge for everything I could find in the field. As you mentioned, I got my master's in psychology, looking at it from that lens. Religions. I went to a two year seminary, studied world religions, philosophies, and that's been my dedication is. And particularly I got very interested in what's known as the second revolution in the United States. The first being the revolution that untied our ties to Britain governing us. And the second was a revolution that occurred in the Northeast that became known as Transcendentalism, which is Emerson, Thoreau, that work of thinking beyond problems. And I've dedicated myself to the study of that and the service of that in helping people transform their lives and actually have a life that they love living while they're living it, because it's a very precious and short thing.

Wow. I imagine that you had an incredible origin story and I'm not surprised at all. And that is indeed incredible. And I'm sure has really fueled your passion for the possibilities of transformation and sharing those with so many. So that's just incredible. And that chaplain, what a gift. That chaplain showed up at that time in your life. Wow. Almost angelic. Almost an angelic kind of visitation there. Amazing. So you alluded to this already a little bit, but. So this summit's all about rewiring your beliefs. So what does that bring up for you in the context of manifesting the life we want, actualizing our dreams, dream building, what you call dream building. And today we're focused in particular on financial well being, financial freedom, even wealth, financial prosperity. And you know, so how all that might tie together our belief systems that we've inherited, you know, the conditioning we received from our family lineage, the culture versus what set of thoughts and beliefs might create a different reality for us to allow us to manifest our best possibilities.

In this area from the study and the work that I've done with Transcendentalism, we're going to transform something. It means to go beyond the current form of existence, whether it's health, relationships, money, whatever it is. So what they were discovering was that we have a, what's called, they called a common hour thinking that is massively agreed upon as a construct for how reality works. That's in our human community, which is conditions have power versus the power that's in every one of us to think beyond conditions, circumstances, situations. So when Thoreau does this experiment with life, two years, two months and two days and goes and lives, he wasn't a hermit, he was a surveyor with his brother. But he wanted to get close to life. And he wrote, I went to the woods to discover what life had to really teach me and not discover when I died that I hadn't even really lived. And in his writings about the experiment with life, he writes, I was hardly at the lake seven days when I discovered I was taking the same well worn path. I had carved a path to the lake to take my bath in the morning, and I was continuing to take the same path. And I thought, if I have dedicated my whole life to discovering the impulse of life in the moment I'm living, and yet I'm following the same path every day. How often must I, unbeknownst to me, be traveling the same well worn thought paths that I'd been thinking before. So in terms of rewiring our beliefs, we have to become aware of a limiting belief. We have to notice that, gosh, every time I think about how my mother beat me or how my dad did this, I keep carrying a story about me that I'm continuing to live into as if it has power. It is a fact that that happened. But how much that fact has power in the life we're living now is a belief. So there's really nothing that cannot be transformed once we get to the core understanding that most people, in terms of common error, thinking are trained, and I had decades of training in it too, that if I want to do something, I have to have the right conditions. I have to know where the money's coming from. I have to put conditions, circumstances in place. Then I can do the thing I want to do versus deciding for the thing I want to do, having a very clear picture of it, the vibration of it, and then begin to live today doing the thing I can do with what I have and start to notice, and we see this in physics, that the more something is focused on, the more mass it gathers and situations start to. And things appear that we say came out of the blue. You know, it's a good thing to ask ourselves now and then, where is the blue? The blue is right here. We are in, you know, unending, immense possibilities. So when the woman said to me, could you believe there's a possibility you could get healed from this? And I said, well, they say I can't. She says, think about it. We're dealing with infinite possibilities. There's gotta be one where you get. Well, let's think from that one. And so as we begin to understand how to apply both the art and the science to transformation, the art is in the vision. You have to have a crystal clear vision of what it is you want so much that you can imagine yourself being in it, holding the little boy's hand, being at the graduation, the wedding. And so you're actually, there's a part of you that's resonating with it even when nothing in the circumstantial world yet reflects it. And that's how all things in the circumstantial world are. They come from the same thing. Our thoughts generate feelings. That feeling is a vibration. That feeling dictates the actions we will or will not take. And then the results are in harmony with all of those wavelengths. Same thing with your television. You turn on a television, if you have cable, I mean, you might have streaming. I mean, unending thousands of choices, but it's the one you're tuned to that's going to show up as the pictures on your screen. And if you don't like what's on the screen, you can change what you're tuned to. Hence, rewiring our beliefs will transform anything you want to transform because you're changing the frequency. And what we're seeing on the screen is a reflection of the frequency we're tuned to.

It's a great metaphor. In the prison work that we do, we have a meditation that's called change the channel. So it's basically like, you know, you have the power to begin to make that shift for yourself. So you mentioned limiting beliefs. It's important to first become aware of the limiting beliefs we may have. So in your work in terms of building wealth or financial well being or financial security or even financial freedom, and that can be a ratio between, you know, how we perceive our needs and then, you know, the revenue we generate. So I'm not trying to peg that might be anywhere for anyone what that sense of financial well being and security or even financial freedom is. But in terms of that part of our lives, the money part of our lives, what have you found to be some of the more common living beliefs, limiting core beliefs that really hold people back or keep them stuck at a certain level of or lack of prosperity?

Money doesn't grow on trees. I got to work harder, longer to be more successful. I'm not good with money, you know, common kind of beliefs that we generate. My amazing major shift in my relationship to money occurred in 1975. I was attending seminary. There was a conference happening in. My seminary was in Phoenix, Arizona, where I was studying world religions in Los Angeles. There was going to be a big conference and a man that I had listened to in those days, I think we had cassette tapes then I would listen to him. And he filled Lincoln hall once a week for lectures in mind science, you know, how you think. And there was something about him. I just thought, this guy knows things that I'm studying. But he knows it. And I wanted to go hear him along with other speakers. So I made my way to la. His conference or his speech was going to be off campus because there 3,000 people wanted to come. I got there early, I'm still a thousand persons back. I got my notebook. He comes on stage, he's like, big shock of white hair and beautiful in those days. Double breasted suit, black shiny shoes. And he's probably 80. He walks across the stage and he just looks at the audience for a while and says nothing. And you start to feel this uncomfortable shift. And then he reaches in his wallet, opens up his wallet and he pulls out money like this. And he holds it up and he just shows, not saying a word. He just shows us all the money. And he goes, this is money. I love money. I just love money. And when he kissed the money, I felt critical of him. I felt distastefulness about him. And I thought, this guy's not even spiritual. And then he put the money back in his wallet and he said, so now I'm going to Ask you a question. I don't want you to raise your hand, but I want to ask you a question. When I just did what I did, you had some thoughts about that. So if you felt critical or you wanted to rebuke me, or maybe you even had the thought, he's not spiritual. And I felt like he had just crawled in me and heard all the things I was thinking. And he says, I want to ask you a question. Instead of doing what I just did. If I had walked out, instead of doing that with the money, if I had walked out with a little boy, let's say he's three or four years old, and I pick up that little boy and I hold him and show you him the way I showed you the money. And then I bring him close and I say, this is my grandson. I love my grandson. I'll bet every bit of the dollars I have in my wallet that you would not have been disdainful of me, you wouldn't have been rejecting of me, you wouldn't have been critical of me, and you certainly wouldn't have thought that I wasn't spiritual. Why? Because you've been trained that it's okay to love a grandchild, but it's not okay to love the source of your freedom. Money is simply a symbol for your freedom to give what you really want to give, bring what you really have to this world. Let's go to your core beliefs about is it okay to have money? Because if you have a rejection that nice people don't have money, or those who are rich are selfish, or those are actually repellers of opportunities and situations that can help become the avenues and challenge of your own wealth.

I grew up with a lot of those beliefs. My parents, it was a family business and they did well, but it was middle class, but they had a lot of beliefs. Like it was super rich people. They're selfish, or they're probably corrupt, or the whole big corporate world is all, you know, you know, salty. They're small business people and you know, they came out of the Depression era, so they had that survival based thinking. And is it true that. I mean, this might not be true in all cases, but it's common. I think that whatever the financial mindset our parents have, and even often the income levels they have, it's kind of hard for us to go beyond that unless we really do change our beliefs in some way.

Yeah. And one of those beliefs is the fear of outshining parents. If I earn more money than my dad ever did or my family's ever had. Maybe they won't like me. So if your core value is relationships, then those two things might, unless you become aware of them and transform. It's okay for me to have money to help my family. It's okay for me to be a place where my grandchildren get to go to college, because I'm able to support a portion of that or all of that. So making it okay to, you know, we're dealing no matter what. You call it energy, call it life, call it spirit, it's unlimited abundance right here. And we are all one thought away from either becoming more constricted or becoming more abundant. The thought itself dictates whether we're going to be open to more good or condensed by the circumstances. So my definition of this, Thoreau, when he wrote I borrowed his term common hour thinking he wrote in his essay in the conclusion, I've discovered this one thing from my experiment, I've discovered this, at least from my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of their dream, your dream is a certain amount of money that's in your accounts, in your assets, and what you're doing with it. Wanting money is not enough. Money is a tool. So it's what you would do with the tool that has way more energy in it. So if one advances confidently in the direction of their dream, dreams, endeavoring to live the life they've imagined, when not then, now. So I'm laying in a hospital bed, or I'm laying in bed at home and I'm imagining I'm doing what I can with what I have. Imagining walking my little boy to school, high school graduation, wedding. And that's unbeknownst to me, changing the vibration, the toxology, immunity, all of that in my own body. So if one does that, he says, so remember, you can't get to a dream you haven't dreamed up. So wanting to have a little more money at the end of the month is not a big enough dream. It's what you're doing with it. Remember she said to me, what would you do with your life? She didn't say, would you like to get well? She said, what would you do with health? So that I'm visualizing myself, yes, being healthy, but I'm doing things with that health. So it's the same thing with money. You don't want just money, you want what you're doing with money. So you want to be sure you're having that version or vision of yourself being that and doing that. He says you'll pass an invisible boundary once you get past common hour thinking, you open yourself up to. I mean, there's infinite possibilities and it's the possibility you agree with most that will become much more of your reality. So if you believe I'm not good with money, you get to not be good with money. It isn't as you begin to change that and say, I can get good with money, you know, I can allow more money in my life because I really care about this cause or this. It's okay to want to have a home that is your welcoming place to your family or friends or. And you want a bigger house. And if you have a part of you that thinks, well, that's just selfish. That's common our thinking. It's not the truth, it's just a belief and it will continue to constrict you. So one of the key things, and all the people I train, the number one tool is to notice what you're noticing. You can't change something you're not even noticing. And if you're having recurring thoughts, you know, I had recurring thoughts. You must be a really bad girl. I mean, look at you, you're like a delinquent now. I mean I was just, I had a string of this going on in me in those days. So what? You can't change something you're not aware of. So to be able to notice your own trains of thought. And if you're on a train of thought that is constrictive and beating you down is never going to take you to a good destination. So we get in front of that and begin to change even one or two of those core thoughts. So common our thinking, the definition of that is looking to circumstances, situations and conditions for permission to be and do and have and live the way you would love to. Brave thinking is the courage to think and live from a vision, regardless of circumstances, situations and conditions, which simply means holding the vision. What can I do with what I have to move me in the direction even one baby step today? What can I do today that would move me in the direction of my vision or my dream wealth, whatever the dream is. And as you know that you're dealing with the infinite, an idea will come if you're thinking thoughts. How do I get to the end of the month and pay my bills? Oh my gosh, how am I going to get money like if I move this one and I'm going to pay less on that one and I'm going to continue to create results where I'm having to try to get to the end of the month and pay my bills. But it takes no more energy to ask a different question, like what could I do to generate an extra thousand, 10,000, 100,000, depending on how you relate and what's going on in your life this month? Why can't you do that? Your first thought is, well, I'm not going to be able to do that, but what if I could? And that's the core of what happened in Concord, Massachusetts, with Emerson and Thoreau.

What if the Transcendentalists have been a huge impact on my life? So I'm glad you keep referencing back to them. And I've always loved reference Thoreau's expression a lot that the great. I can't remember the expression. Something massive, tremendous before general neutral language or something. But the great mass of humanity living lives of quiet desperation. And that's when we have not embraced the power of belief. We've not embraced the power of our own mind. We're living according to circumstances. And of course, we're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, because our whole sense of wellbeing is focused on circumstances. So I want to talk in a moment.

I want to ask you about.

I know you've worked a lot with something called the law of vibration. I want to ask you about that moment just to make a fine point of this so our audience realizes how important it is to get in touch with the associations we have around money. And there's so many negative culture. I mean, there's a lot of celebrity and things, but there's also a lot of negativity associated around money and money's dirty and all these kind of things. And my understanding is, you know, based on our upbringing, our conditioning, our family, all those influences, we have kind of a framework of beliefs about wealth and money. And until we do something about changing that, even if we're motivated, I want to make more money, I want to develop wealth, we'll keep hitting a barrier of our beliefs. And it's like if we start doing too well, it's like the air conditioner will kick in and cool us off. If we don't do well enough, the heat comes on. No, you got to get busy. But we're almost programmed to stay within this particular band. Some call it a blueprint. And so the most effective thing, rather than struggling with the blueprint, is change the blueprint, change the beliefs. But I think, first of all, as you're saying, we have to become aware of what is our money set of beliefs, our blueprint, whatever it is that we're dealing with right now, I 100% agree with you.

That's exactly noticing what you're noticing. And so you can notice those little wiry thoughts that, oh, this is too good to last. Well, wait a minute. Where did that. Who says? Might have been what I believe, but I don't have to believe that now there can be sustained expansive growth. I mean, because I just thought it up. If you think something while it hasn't yet become physical in your life. But that's how everything physical in our life does happen. It starts with a thought, and then that thought is focused on, and then it begins to build mass. Meaning you put time to it, you put energy to it, you gather materials to it, and pretty soon you've got a whole new wardrobe of your life that is much more congruent with a life you love.

Absolutely. You know, I think I've been aware of the book Think and Grow Rich probably since I was in my youth. And I just never read. I wrote it off for all the negative associations I had about money or the negative associations I had with that kind of thing. I finally read it earlier this year and I was blown away. I mean, the psych, the psychology, the psychological insight and the psychology in that book is absolutely phenomenal. It was also based on his research at the time. So let's talk about the law of vibration. Once we. We get clear that we've got some beliefs that probably are not working for us or limiting us, and we're open to creating a new vision for ourselves. What's the role of the law of vibration?

Well, when we think about it, there are, you know, the law of electricity, the law of magnetism. These, we respect these laws. They are fundamental. Even though you can't put your fingers or hands or five senses to them, they exist. And we are in a field of life in which it's helpful to understand that. It's also helpful to understand that while we often now in personal development, speak of the law of Attraction, the law of attraction is a secondary law. The primary law is the law of vibration. I can't be thinking this thought. It has a vibration to it and expect this result. We are not going to work our way into abundance from thinking negative, limiting thoughts. Those two things are on a different frequency. So the goal then is to move to being the person who's living the life you're imagining. When Thoreau says, if one advances confidently, well, most people think that means I have to be confident in me. That's misplaced confidence. We know that we're on and off and that sometimes we're more consistent than others. But you can count on gravity every day. You and I do not get up in the morning and wonder if our feet are gonna stick to the floor. And we are confident in invisible laws, including, you can be confident in the invisible law of vibration. If one advances confidently in the direction of their dream, endeavoring to live the life they're imagining. Meaning, you can't get to your dream any more than I can get to discovery. If I'm tuned to cnn, I have to come from that frequency. So I have to be the person having that life, even though nothing in the material world yet has shifted. But because I'm on that frequency, different ideas come to me. The ideas I'm having about my life, who I can be and what I can have are consistent with the major dominant thought patterns I'm operating on. Those are not. Even though you may have had a result in your life for 30 years, it's only there 30 years because I've been on the same frequency for 30 years. It can change almost in a nanosecond when we get enough of us on another frequency. So noticing the thoughts you're thinking, are they expansive? Your first creation? If you're thinking a thought that's more expansive, you're going to feel it. Or if you're thinking, oh, my gosh, how am I going to get to the end of the month and pay my bills? And I worry about this and worry and you're going to feel constrictive. So watch for expansion or constriction in your own energy. And the more we lean into expansion, the more we're gonna see expansion, the things that matter to us in life.

Well, it's so incredibly helpful the way you're. What you're teaching us. Because sometimes, you know, the law of attraction, manifestation, the book, the secret, the film, they get a little bit of a bad rap. And some of that work that's put out in the world is a little simplistic. But here you're really talking about the actual science. On the one hand, the psychology, very clear psychology involved, but also the physics, the. We could talk about neurobiological terms, but this. The way that whatever energy is vibrating at different periodicity, different wavelengths, and so certainly does influence other ways. And we know in the science of entrainment and science of resonance, the science of coherence, all this is real science. And what you're describing here of how that works, and it makes complete sense. You have a program called your Dream Builder program, and I use that expression, I wonder if you could make a distinction perhaps between being a dreamer as opposed being a dream builder.

So a dreamer dreams of things out there that, oh, wouldn't that be wonderful? And you can feel uplifted or even inspired a bit in the vision of something possible, but there's no grounding of that. In order for physicality to arrange itself around, you know, molecular happenings, no dream comes true unless you have the dream and then build the dream. So I have, wanting to simplify all this, the first phase of dream building is the vision. And that has to be a crystal clear vision, as if it's happening now so you could step inside of it. You were mentioning discovering science, getting, er, think and grow rich. When Cullen Hill interviewed Carnegie, which he didn't know, Carnegie had a vision for what he wanted from Hill. Hill just wanted to get an interview so he could sell a document. He told him so once he agreed to attend a 20 year experiment for which he would be not paid a dollar. With Carnegie, richest man in the world at the time, his promise, if you just do what I'm telling you, you will become. And you do this, you study the science of success, because there is a science to it. I know. I want every common person to be able to have access to it. You will become more successful than in your wildest dreams right now. So he agreed. Step one, he's told Napoleon Hill, now, when you go home today, I want you to go to the mirror and I want you to look yourself in the eye at three times a day. I want you to say to yourself, as if you're talking to me, Andrew Carnegie, not only shall I match your achievements in life, but I shall meet you at the post and pass you at the grandstands, which is a horse racing metaphor. The post is where the final stretch happens. The grandstands is where the race is won. He's imagining looking at Andrew and Napoleon Hill says, I felt like a fraud if I'm saying this one thing, but all my current results are this. I mean, I'm struggling. They're living in a one room, he and his young wife, they're living in this one room, barely able to pay rent each month. And he's imagining looking at the richest man in the world in his eyes and saying, I'm not only going to become as successful as you, I'm going to become by the end of my lifetime more successful. And he just feels like a fraud. And this isn't. But here what's happening, he's starting to Rewire a belief that he's stuck in limitation and things he's going to have to struggle. He's got an inner belief about stuck with money struggle in life paradigm. And he just starts doing this anyway because his mentor told him to do it. The mentor said, I'll check in on you and when I think you're ready, we'll have another meeting. So Napoleon Hill said it was probably three weeks of doing this and just doing it because he was told to do it. Like the woman who came to my bed. And he said he was walking down the street and this thought crossed his mind, well, it could happen. And it was like somebody else's thought had got into him. There's some belief that his ours to change right now, no matter how successful we are. That as fleet you clearly spoke, you know, the upper limit is always held by certain beliefs. So if we want to break through in any area, it starts with really noticing what we're noticing and the thought that's behind and driving that. So of course Andrew Carnegie had all this physical wealth. Napoleon Hill then writes his book, 20 years later publishes it. Carnegie made about a thousand billionaires. You can't even begin to count the number of millionaires that came out of the science of success that Napoleon Hill codified.

Wonderful. And you know, just for our audience, clearly everything that you're so wonderfully teaching us applies to every aspect of our health, our relations. We're focused today on wealth and financial freedom and so forth. But these principles apply to every area of our life.

When we're noticing what we're noticing, notice that the part of us, the very power that's breathing us, you can't do that on your own. None of us created ourselves. We can't even make our heart beat one time under our own power. Life itself is animating this physical thing called our body. So there's a part of us that is. Whether you call it I'm a spiritual being having a human experience, or however you define who you are, there's a part of us that this is what the Transcendentalists were talking about. There's a part of us that is more than our current circumstances, situations and conditions. And we can notice. So now we have a vision of a life and it has money and it has different things to it that matter to us for the good we can do with it. That version of expanded life. Notice that there's a part of you that will be willing and yes. And then there's a part of you that's arguing for why you can't. Why? Now is not a good time. Well, it might work for other people, but it's not gonna work for you. So we have two sides to our human nature. One is the spiritual side that's always for more expansion. The other part is way more girded in the human nature, which is, well, how are you gonna do that? Where's the money gonna come from? And it's all conditional based thinking. So to become aware when you notice the part of you that's trying to talk you out of having what it is that you would really love, because it's just patterned thinking. It was given to us, we were raised with it. Money doesn't grow on trees, all of the limiting beliefs. So you can't change something till you notice it. So if you notice the part of you that wants to go forward, and the part of you that's arguing for why you can't, you can override that part by installing new thinking that turn into new beliefs.

Beautiful. So I wanted to ask you. I think one of the things that's a real obstacle to change in every area of our life is our self image and identity, which is really a collection of beliefs. And so often I've heard people say, I'm sure you have. Well, that's just the way I am. I mean, that's not going to change, I've always been that way. Right. Or that's just the way life is. But principally that's the way I am. And we have a very strong, almost a desperate need to hang on to identities because we start off as little tykes and we have to develop some kind of self structure. And we develop it out of whatever environment we're in. But to navigate the world, right, because we can't handle the groundlessness of just consciousness or you know, letting you know, transcending self structures and all that at that point. So we develop a self structure and we're pretty desperately hanging onto that. So in a sense, when we're looking at change and transformation, we have to be willing to start to loosen our grip on one identity and consider the possibility of a new identity emerging. And that can be a little frightening, like who would I be? Or I've always been this way, so who would I be? So I wonder if you could talk about the power of self image and identity and how we can shift that in terms of this area of our life, in terms of financial well being and financial freedom and so forth.

It was Maxwell Maltz who wrote in Psycho Cybernetics and then the magic power of self image psychology that you can never outperform your own self image. So what I'm looking at as my results is a reflection of my own self image. Who I think I can be, what I don't think I can be, how important other people's approval is to me versus really having what Thoreau would have called, you know, more self recognition. That it's what really matters to you is how you see you. So one of his tools that he used in self image transformation is to. He called it the theater of your mind. That in the theater of your mind there's a lot of different movies on the shelves that you can play and you can recurrently play the movies of you failing. Or you could recurringly show some movies of three times when you were successful from riding your bike for the first time or tying your shoes for the first time or even what he called micro successes. But you start the trans. The self image is not a static forever thing, unless you believe it is. That's the way I've always been. That's because that's what I tell myself. It doesn't have to always be that way. But maybe nobody ever introduced that I actually can change that. And the question is, do you even want to? Because maybe there's a, you know, a hidden benefit to continue to be holding onto that maybe I get attention. You want to know all of those things because as you know in your work fleet in psychology that there's many layers of why things continue to be that are not, not life giving. So the fundamental question is, do I want to have a more successful life? To me, would that include money? What about my relationships? What about great health along the way to be able to do and give the things that matter to me in vocation. You don't have to earn income in your vocation, but your vocation is what you do with your time and talent that is meaningful to you. And if it has the output called work that is meaningful and purposeful and you feel like you're contributing to something bigger than yourself, there's a certain kind of fulfillment that isn't found unless we put those structures in place. So in noticing who you've been telling yourself you are, those are more structured beliefs about what I can have and be and too. So when you realize you actually are far more than you've ever known and you contain far more than you've ever thought because you're connected to this infinite energy and call it what you will, is breathing you right now and it's sending Signals of more life in the human experience. We see that, we hear that. Just notice what you've been longing for and notice where the discontent is. Those are two signals from your soul that you are meant for more. Now you'll either shape that into a vision or you'll just continue to struggle with the circumstances. We've all been given free will in that. But to know that those conditions are not more powerful than the power breathing you. And there's a way to work with that in such a way that you unleash that power and authority to even bring simple but life lasting changes.

So as we consider possibly changing our belief structures around wealth and financial freedom and changing our identity, our self image around that believing in the possibility of something greater, wherever we are, they're believing in the possibility of something, you know, a significant shift that can bring up a lot of fear. What if I fail? Or if we have tendencies to be self critical and self shaming, we'd be fear, yeah, I'm going to fail and that'll be shaming. I'll experience all that shame or. And many of us also feel like we kind of need permission. We're waiting for somebody to give us permission to be this different person, right? Or you know, we have a lot of these, like I don't deserve that or how could I? But I wonder if you could talk about again noticing what you're noticing but how to work with that fear that comes up and, or how to work with the feeling of almost feelings of guilt or a lack of permission or something that come up even once you're really trying. Like I'm gonna take on this vision I'm hearing Mary, I'm willing to really do the work. And then I get in, I get really nervous, it gets scary.

So we wanna rewire in terms of rewiring, rewiring our belief about failure in this dimension of life. We learn equally from getting it right and not getting it right. It's just information. But we have, you know, as little kids we give ourselves full permission to experiment and try and fail and take the learning. Nobody just stood up and walked. You walk and fall down, you walk and fall down. And as little kids when we fall down a number of times learning to walk, we don't say well I guess I'm not going to be a walker. But fall down in love or fall down in money. And as adults we think we should always get it right. And the people fear that we don't get it right can feel so piercing when we don't understand this is simply learning that this gives us an opportunity for feedback. It's only failure when we decide it's failure. Up until then, it's just feedback. Okay, that didn't work. Well, let's find out what does and neutralize it. But that's not something that's in the culture of thinking about what looks like failure. Oh, my God, it's shameful. That was dominating in my early life. It was deadly, and I believe it's deadly, whether it's physically deadly or life in terms of constriction, that I'm going to live under the veil of I just don't want to fail versus I'm willing to have some things work and maybe some things not work while I'm learning and growing. Now you don't have to, you know, take your whole bank account and do something with it. You can give yourself permission to explore. You're starting a business, you're doing something, and you still can have your protections in place. But it's the psychological side of it to be willing to experiment and learn. When Thomas Edison, I mean, arguably the most prolific inventor ever to walk this planet, was asked, how did you deal with 10,000 failures on your way to finding the incandescent bulb? And he looked at them quizzically and he said, I never had a failure. It was all feedback. It's something we can adopt if we choose to.

Absolutely. It's a wonderful training. I led a lot, and it was introduced to me by someone else where we did this game called the maze game. And if you're trying to get through the maze with your team, and every time you step in the wrong square, you get beeped. And the teaching that came out at the end of it was realizing because you have emotional reactions to the beep, right? You get upset, and you get upset with yourself. You get upset with the person doing the beeping, the realization out of the end of it. It's just feedback. It's just feedback that helps you then find the right path. So I think that's a great insight for us to have about what's arising for us. So one of the belief structures I think, can really get in a way is people. And you referenced a speaker that you saw out there in Los Angeles and your thought that, well, he's not even spiritual. And then he said that you probably had that thought right. So people often think that money and spirituality are at opposite ends of the spectrum. They're on different poles. So I wonder if we could. You know, I know myself, I grew up with this kind of depression era fear and survival based stuff with my family. Then in the 60s I revolted and became a hippie in the countercultural movement. And then money in the corporate world was all bad. And then I became a Buddhist. And I misinterpreted those teachings to think it was purely that really hardcore anti materialism which is a misunderstanding of that tradition. But it really doesn't say anything about wealth one way or the other. It's more how you relate with how you use it and what you do with it. But so anyway, I had to work through all those different things about feeling like spirituality and money were at opposite ends of the spectrum. And it really wasn't until later in my life. I started through my work meeting some wealthy people who were quite spiritual and quite sane. And that really shifted my thinking. Now at the same time we know there's a lot of people who drive themselves to financial success and have a lot of financial success who are not happy. So I wonder if you could talk about that a bit about how we can build wealth in a way that is not out of alignment with our spiritual values and which will not put us in a place of more unhappiness but rather more abundance and ease in our life.

I think there's something called full spectrum wealth. Most people associate wealth in a very small corner of their lives. It's money, it's a physical asset, but that doesn't make you wealthy. Full spectrum wealth is that you're wealthy in your health. So many times people are so busy trying to earn income, gather wealth, they at the expense of their own health. So they can become bankrupt in health or bankrupt in relationships because they're too busy doing the thing that they think has this value. Meanwhile they're missing a whole, I mean depth of wealth that comes in really healthy, long lasting, beautiful relating expressions of life vocation. Something that isn't just about money, but it's something that you can love into existence because it has meaning and purpose involved in it. And then this thing called your freedom quadrant. So four quadrants, Health, relationships, vocation. And I know you do many of these summits that actually address specifically these areas. Fleet the fourth quadrant, in my understanding of full spectrum wealth is you want to be wealthy in time and money freedom. Not just money freedom, but the time to invest in things with your time that matter to you, take the trips that you, if you love, to travel to different places with family or friends, that you have this wonderful mix of health, relationships, vocation, time and money freedom. And to work with Our rewiring, our beliefs that you can actually have a full spectrum wealth result in your life that continues to expand and increase versus if I get this and I'm going to trade that which is just common. Our thinking is looking to things outside ourselves to try to rearrange so we can have the things that matter to us.

Well, that's an argument for our audience really making sure that you take advantage of all the days of this summit because it addresses all those areas of our life. And again, what you're teaching us, these basic principles apply to all these areas. We can apply them not only to financial prosperity, financial wealth, but to every aspect of our life. So we're coming near the end of our time here. And you know, you've spoken to this again and again, like developing it's kind of a mindfulness practice and awareness practice, but paying attention, like being attentive to the emotions that are arising, the thoughts that are arising, beginning to recognize some of these self limiting patterns that that's really the basis of the work. If there's a practice, it's learning by paying attention to our existing self limiting patterns. Right. And then that's the beginning of being able to change them. And you kind of mentioned this before, but I wonder if one kind of like really rubber meets the road. Part of that is as we become aware of the supplementing thoughts or patterns of any kind, there's going to be a feeling of constriction that will affect our energy, our breath. You know, it's that feeling of constriction. And it seems like if we relax into a more expansive view or trusting source, trusting consciousness, trusting that which animates us. As you've been referencing, there's more feeling of opening. And I'm wondering if you can talk about how that might be a guide to keep us on the path to move away from our constricted conditioning into a more expansive visioning for our lives.

So I'll give you three magic words that I use and train people in exactly what you just said. So you're noticing expansion, you're noticing contraction. One is life giving, one is life constricting, the thought that generate that feeling. So if you have a thought, you know, that's just the way I am, or money doesn't work for me, or you know, hear all this, you know, whatever. When you hear yourself thinking a limiting thought, that and how it is just who you are, you just say, up until now I've believed that, up until now I've operated as if that's true. But now, and the moment you say, up until now, it's as if the whole subconscious mind gets alert. Oh, Captain's turning the ship. Now, in the old days, it would take seven miles to turn an ocean liner. But the moment the captain gave the order, all hands under deck went to work on it. So by saying, up until now, so what's now? And then, that's where you lay down. A more expansive version like, but now I'm. And you're changing self image, you're changing the construct of who you are and how you can be and what you can have. And nothing in your material world has shifted yet, but it's already shifting by means of a new vibration moving into and through you by means of your agreement with it. But if I agree with limitation, what Henry Ford said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So let's get on the right side of you getting to actually experience who you came to be and what you came to bring and the life that really has your name on it.

Wow. So I hope our audience will write that down because that is golden. That's like the secret sauce there of how to create that shift. That's quite amazing. Well, Mary, thank you so much. Thank you so much for everything you shared with us today. It's been incredibly illuminating. Thank you so much for the work you bring into the world so bravely. And where can people learn more about you, your work, the Brave Thinking Institute, your Dream Builder programs?

You can go to bti.com or bravethinkinginstitute.com you'll find everything I'm doing. There's a lot of free things on YouTube and of course everything we're offering is on the website. But I also want to say thank you, Fleet, thank you for your work in the world. Thank you for the years of study and all that it took for you to be bringing all the wonderful things into our lives that you are bringing. It's been a privilege for me to be here.

Oh, thank you, Mary. It's certainly an honor and privilege for me. So thank you so much and please be well.

Thank you for joining me on the radical responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens. Happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you.

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