Episode 33 - Stillness, Power, and the Art of Transformation with Marcia Martin

Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders to help support you on your journey to super connecting to the life of your dreams. Hello friends, and welcome back for episode 33 of the Super Connections Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Cahill, and it is my pleasure to introduce and connect you to world thought leaders, techniques, and tools to super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Today we have a dear new friend of mine, Marcia Martin, who is a bestselling author of Sex, Power, and Transformation. She dives into the untold story behind EST and how she was one of the women and the main woman who really made it all happen. In today's episode, we're going to deep dive into how do we transform ourselves personally, lessons she learned that she shares in the book, and how despite many ups and downs throughout her years in the personal development movement working alongside the greats like Jack Canfield and Tony Robbins and of course, Werner Erhard. How do you stay connected to yourself and how did you live this legacy that has impacted millions of people around the world? So, Marsha, so great to have you here with us.

Jennifer, it's such a pleasure to be here. I'm so honored. I just love you and your work, and it's great to be here interviewed by you for sure.

Oh, thank you, my friend. Well, my God, your book is riveting from page one. We're hanging on every thread as The young woman, naive and just full of hopes and dreams, goes to San Francisco and becomes enthralled by the man who later becomes her mentor. And I'll let you tell the rest of it, but tell us, how did you stay grounded and become the powerhouse bestselling author that you are that's impacted millions of people? What is your secret? How do you super connect? And take us a bit through your journey on that.

Well, I've had an interesting journey and kind of a unique story because even before I met Werner Erhard, who, as you said, was the founder of EST, Erhard Seminars Training, which later became Landmark and has currently 3.5 million graduates and is the largest personal development company in the world. And I was there at the very beginning when we had our first seminar. Oh, this is my cat. Loves to do her ears. Oh, perfect. Riley. I was there in the first seminar where we had 31 people. And by the time I left almost 10 years later, there were over 500,000 people that were graduates. And I was the vice president and the head of the communication registration division. And my story is very— it's unique and yet it's universal because it's the story really of a young girl who comes into womanhood. In a Man's World. And it's the story of a powerful woman, and I've always had power, and we can get into that in a minute, dealing with men with power. Some of them were powerful men, and some of them were just men that had power and used it and abused it. So early on in my life, I was trained by my aunt who was a clairvoyant healer and an esoteric astrologist before I even met Werner. Wow. And I learned to heal myself and others. I learned about the chakras. I learned about metaphysics. I learned about energy. I learned how to get in touch with the part of myself, the higher self, where personal power lives, and to be able to access my internal wisdom that really is available to all of us when we're connected to that universal source. And so I was kind of Did life, um, I know that's one of his whiskers, her whiskers.

I know, I was like,

huh? I did life backwards. I learned how to be, um, grounded and how to heal and how to be kind of centered before I even had any obstacles really thrown at me. So I always knew that what life was giving me was a gift. No matter if it was hard, no matter if it was troublesome, no matter if it was scary. And so I really faced my fears and my obstacles and my challenges from a different perspective in terms of, this is a gift and I'm meant to learn something here. Now, that didn't mean that it didn't hurt. Mm-hmm. I went through a lot of things like people do. I was divorced and I lost a stepson to suicide and I've lost money. And on the other side of it, I've had all the other things. I've had fame and wealth and amazing power with people. But it was that kind of grounding to know that things were a gift to me and I needed to look at them. And so I just kind of did life backwards. Instead of getting the obstacles first and then having a breakthrough and going on a spiritual quest, I went on a spiritual quest before I really knew there were any obstacles.

Beautiful. It's the Story of the Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's book, which is one of my favorites, is like kind of We all make our own obstacles one way or another. I mean, that's the beauty of life is that there's always opportunities or obstacles depending on how you look at them. Just this morning, my sister had sent me a beautiful interview on Instagram. I don't follow celebrities. It was some famous talk show guy that I'm sure you would know his name with like gray hair, and he was interviewing this guy, and he was something Cooper, Anderson Cooper maybe, something like that. And he was interviewing this Celebrity, and he was talking about our greatest gift is the obstacles, is the pain. Because imagine if we lived in a world that was just endless bliss and joy; we would have no contrast, and we wouldn't have the ability to grow. Which is why we as humans go through soul school or this experience of being a human and going through divorce, going through loss, going through suffering. So that way we have this beautiful juxtaposition. That allows the love to be so much more sweet because we've experienced the depths of despair, right?

I think so. And I think even in addition to that, it gives you the understanding that how really powerful and amazing the human spirit is, that you can accomplish anything, that you can, um, overcome anything, that you can get through anything, that really you're stronger than you ever thought. And how would you know that? If you didn't have challenges. So I think it's really a gift for sure, all of our adventures in life.

Well, after having come from being one of the co-creators of this personal development movement, what is your advice if somebody is in the depths of despair? I was on a call earlier today and somebody said Elon Musk just posted that all jobs are going to be outsourced. And some people might be exploding head emojis. Some people might be angry emoji, you know. People are going through this myriad of emotions. What is your advice, having come from 40-plus years in personal development, to help us all with whatever our personal struggles are that we're facing right now?

Well, I think I have 2 messages. One is all the answers are within. The wisdom really is within. I kind of look at it as a metaphor of how life is that, you know, when you look at the great vast body of water that is the ocean, And how huge it is, but it comes up to the sand and the rocks and on the shore, crashes against those rocks, and then there's a spray that comes up of individual droplets of that water. And they're individual expressions, those droplets of water, of the bigger ocean. Wow. They still are connected, they're still part of it, they're still the same thing, but they've now taken on their individual expression. And that's how I see each of us and the animals and the rivers. We're all individual expressions of the greater whole of whatever the divine is. And if we can understand that I'm an individual expression called Marcia with my little personality and my quirks and my challenges, and you're your own individual expression of a greater thing that we're all connected to. And the way that we find that connection and get in touch with it is to go within. But you have to be still to go within. And you have to, to get to that place, you have to be willing to go through your fears. I consider that human beings are really 3 faces. There's first who you pretend you are, the face of pretense. You know, we all have that. I'm okay, and I'm doing great, and I know what I'm doing. When we're really a second face, the person that we're afraid that we are. We're afraid we don't know what we're doing. And we're afraid that we're not okay, and we're afraid that we don't understand. And underneath that, if you can drop the pretense, you'll get in touch with the fears. If you can confront the fears, you'll be able to dissipate them and break through them. And then you get in touch with the third face, which is who you really are. And that wisdom is there for you, for your life. Now, that's one part of it, that you go within and find your own wisdom. Here's the other caveat. I've noticed that especially in transformation and self-help programs, that there's such great wisdom out there. There's many wonderful programs. There's amazing wisdom that's come down, knowledge over thousands of years from the great masters that tells us the journey of how to be an effective human being and how to find ourselves and how to contribute and how to make this a better world. And there are great people, leaders, that find this wisdom and then share it with others. And what I find is there's a little bit of a danger when the charismatic leader or the charismatic guru that has kind of aggregated the wisdom and is duplicating it and showing others, there's a danger that the others think that that person has the answer for them.

Mm-hmm.

rather than has an answer that they can continue to look at or consider to see if it works. And when you give up your voice, and when you give up your own wisdom to somebody else and you just say, okay, they know what's best. And I think that's where the fear comes. Your friend is looking outside at the Elon Musks or the different adventures that are happening or the circumstances, and it's not there that you find the answer. Right. That's where you find the fear. You have to go within, and you have to be strong enough to listen to your own answer and then be able to live by that rather than get carried away from maybe everybody's popular or somebody else is in agreement or there's a lot of people that think differently than you, and so you think you have to agree with them. It's a dangerous road, the road to enlightenment and a spiritual quest. So I think that those 2 things, look within first and be willing to have the courage to stay in touch with your own wisdom. Don't give your voice or your answer away to someone else. Take their answer and have it be something that you consider if it works for you, but don't take it blindly.

Yeah, it was interesting in our tribe that you and I are both a part of, there was, uh, there's a 17-day challenge that we're all doing, right?

Yes.

And one of the people in the challenge, I don't know if you saw Katya's video, and I love what she said. She said, one of my mentors said, Everything that you do, question it 3 times. Why? Then why? And then why? And I know I tend to default where I'm just like, I feel it, it feels right, so I'm just gonna do that. And that's where I've got myself in trouble, like writing a $11,000 check when I was 26 years old to a real investment. I knew nothing about— drunk at a Christmas party, right?

Yeah.

I could have asked a few more whys before making that investment, right? So how do we cultivate the why? How did you— I know it sounds like from a very early age your aunt was instrumental in helping you cultivate your own why, your own inner understanding. But for those of us who might be jump in before we, you know, look before you leap, you know, some of us will leap before we look. And how do we cultivate that curiosity and that sense of why for some people out there who might feel like it's overwhelming? That's why we almost want to outsource the why. Oh, can't I just leap? No, no. figure it out, or this spiritual tradition or this guru. Sometimes it feels like a burden to ask why.

Well, I think that you've hit on something really important because Deepak Chopra, I think it was, said, your mind is like the ocean, and sometimes the ocean can be really raging and torrential. And if you threw the Empire State Building into it, you wouldn't see the ripple that it made because the ocean was so full of noise and terrible storms. And that's like your mind. Your mind can be full of noise. And the ocean also has a time, I'm sure you've seen it, where it's very still, like glass in the moonlight. And if you threw a pea into that ocean, you see every ripple it makes. So when you hold a thought in your mind, which is the beginning of how you create a result or anything in reality, it has to take hold. And if what you're putting that thought into is a raging ocean of noise, It doesn't stand a chance to grow. You have to be able to be still. Now, here's the other part of that. Most people haven't been trained to be still. So we should call them human doings instead of human beings, because all they're doing is doing, doing, doing something instead of being still. And being still is the technique that a human being uses to reassociate with, to reconnect with the power or the source. And we're not used to being still, so we have to practice. And here's the thing about how you learn something. Your mind learns through understanding. Your body learns through practice. You have to embody something for your body to learn. And both your body and your mind must each learn, and they're separate entities that are connected. So how your body learns is by practice, except for nobody wants to be a beginner. And if you think about how you were when you first learned to ride a bicycle, or if you play the piano, the first time you ever played Chopsticks, you were miserable and stupid and clumsy and you did it all wrong. And a human being is thrown to wanting to be right, look good, and know the answer. So that's exactly the opposite of the skillset that you need to be a beginner. You need to be willing to be clumsy, look stupid, not know. And we're not really comfortable with that. So if you can get a person to be willing to be a beginner, then to begin to learn how to be still. And the first time when you're a beginner of learning how to be still, you probably won't be still. You'll be itching and you'll be sneezing and you'll be hungry and then you'll have to pee and then you'll be thinking of all sorts of things. And that's like getting on the bicycle the first time. You probably fell off. But if you keep doing it, say, if you say to yourself, I'm going to commit for 3 times a week for 3 minutes each time, and then up those statistics. So it's maybe then it's a half hour or it's 40 minutes once a week where you're just quiet. Close your eyes. Even you can focus on something, a rose, a body of water, an animal, and to train yourself how to be still. Then the next step is— To begin to question the inner silence to find your answers. So it's a process, but if you can do that, and I was trained to do that when I was very young, I didn't even understand that it was such a gift, but boy, I am grateful for my life for sure.

I really am still captivated by the metaphor that you used of the ocean and it roiling, whether it came from you or Deepak or wherever it came from. It's so captivating to see that visual in the mind's eye. We've all seen, you know, the ocean when it's roiling and it's here and there. And of course, you're— to your point, the— you won't see anything that gets dropped in there, a thought or otherwise. But to get to that point of stillness, and then that pebble or pea has that impact that ripples out. And if we think of how much is in our mind, can we just Except one of my favorite tools is the Sedona Method. I think I've referred people to it in earlier episodes. It's one of the simplest ones. Could you simply welcome that my mind is roiling right now? Could I allow that my mind is roiling? Could I release? Would I release? And sometimes almost getting yourself to nothing from there, because what you're really saying is the more still, the more quiet we get to, there's this space of nothing where from there we can begin to create something that has an impact. But normally we won't be able to create anything because there's so much noise. So I love that beautiful analogy you gave us.

And also remember the other part of it is if we go outside of ourself to find our answer. So there's not only your ability to learn how to go within, it's your knowledge that that's where the answer is instead of being so upset over the circumstances. But to go inside to be able to create the circumstances. I love the Sedona Method. Hale Dwoskin is one of my greatest colleagues and one of my students. And in the Guest Seminar Leaders Training, I trained so many of the early great teachers when we did S. So yeah, it's amazing, isn't

it? Who you might have actually worked with too. Do you know Alison Armstrong? Do you know her work?

Oh, very well. Allison is fantastic. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. She introduced me to the Sedona Method years ago. I was in a class and I reference her for my happy marriage all the time. So really, you are the source of my happy marriage, Marcia, because Allison then trained me.

Well, I didn't train Allison, but Allison and I became great friends and great colleagues. And she came into the Transformational Leadership Council, which I co-founded with Jack Canfield. And so a lot of the early students that I had, I brought into the TLC. And then Jack and I also expanded the TLC to include many, many great authors and, and thought leaders from around the globe. So yeah, all my colleagues love it. And now I'm with you and the tribe and I'm loving that. Yeah,

I know. It's, we have this thing called the Jen Hill Tribe. And so Marcia and about 300 other people are part of it. And I love that we all just to get to help fulfill my vision, which is connection and contribution. That's why I podcast. That's why I do all of this. But in those last few minutes that we have together, Marsha, I'd love to hear from you. What is the greatest lesson of your life, aside from the stillness and all the beautiful wisdom you've just imbued to us right now? If there was one thing that you would say was catalytic for your growth, your development, working with Jack, Tony, Werner, everybody you've worked with, what might that have been?

I'd have to do it in 2 things. First of all, that the foundation of all growth is awareness.

Hmm.

So when anybody asks me, how do I get rid of this? How do I do more of that? How do I stop this? No matter what the question is, the answer is always the same for me, which is be more aware. Not just aware of what's outside of you, but aware of what's inside of you. What triggers you? What actions do you take when you're triggered? What sets you off? What are your thoughts going on when your body feels a certain way? Because your body and your mind are connected. Just to be aware of all of it and to start noticing what does throw you off center. And then what do you do when you're thrown off center? If you can be aware of that, what'll happen is greater choices will unfold for you due to your awareness. And then I have a mantra. Center— well, I have 2 mantras. Center first, then act.

Mm-hmm.

So get present first instead of reacting, respond, but you can't respond unless you're present. And present is what centering is. When you're present, you're open and you're connected. You're here in your body now in this time of now. Then choose how you're gonna respond to the circumstance. And so I just say, center first, then act. And the other mantra I have is, welcome the experience. Your job is what? in the universe. The universe's job is how. So when you say what it ever is that you want or you want to create or you want to contribute, the universe is listening and the universe will throw at you all sorts of experiences that it determines you need to experience and go through in order to have the thing that you said you wanted. So usually what happens though, you get an experience. Well, you should know that's what needs to be experienced. Why? Because you're experiencing it. The universe isn't going to throw you something that you're not supposed to experience in order to have what you want. So just welcome it instead of resisting it. And then I wanted to show everybody my book, Sex, Power, and Transformation. And it really is a wonderful, riveting, like you said, amazing story, especially for women, I think, too, or for anyone that is going through questions, wanting to make a contribution, wanting to grow, wanting to be more powerful. It's my story. Wow. But I think it, it translates into so many situations.

I love it, Marcia. Well, where can people connect? Of course, they want to go pick up the book Sex, Power, and Transformation. If they want to stay in touch with you, where would they go to do so?

Oh, great. You can get the book on Amazon. It's a bestseller on Amazon, Sex, Power, and Transformation by Marcia Martin. And Marcia is M-A-R-C-I-A. And you can find me at marciamartin.com. You can find how I can coach you or how I can come in and work with your corporation. Or how to get the book or how to even come to my membership club. So I'm, I'm just grateful, Jennifer. Thank you so much. And I hope people do come to marshamartin.com.

Beautiful. Thank you, Marsha. Thank you for your wisdom, your perseverance, and showing us all how to bring awareness to owning our power with grace the way you have. So thank you for your time and wishing each of you the ability to harness your own power. And to do it with the stillness that Marcia so beautifully illustrated with us today. Thank you. Thank you.