Day 1: 5-day Money-Making Challenge

Hello, hello. This is Mary Schiller coming to you live right now from Paris, France. If you are joining me live, let me know by giving me a thumbs up or typing something into the chat so I can see that you're there. This is the Let's Make Money, Honey 5-Day Money Making Challenge. Oh, I see a thumbs up from somebody. Thank you. I'm glad you can hear me. You know, with technology, you can never be sure. So I always like to check in at the beginning and make sure that people can hear and see me okay. So if you are on here live, hey, great! Just give me a shout out by writing a comment and letting me know maybe where you are in the world, where you're joining from. If you watch the recording of the webinar that I posted in here, you'll know that I'm a bit of a tech geek in that I just love the fact that we can connect and communicate from all over the world so easily now. And I'm really, really grateful for technology that allows us to do that. Hi Brian! Hi Marie-Françoise! This is the live call, Marie-Françoise, so you're on. Hey Susanna, good to see you! So I want to say a big welcome and thank you for joining this money-making challenge. Hi, again, my name is Mary Schiller. I am an author and coach, and my most recent book, as you may have seen, is called Let's Make Money Honey. And since you are in this group and you joined by today, November 10th, when this is airing, you are entitled to the free audio version. So if you haven't gotten that yet, it may be because you're not on the email list. So be sure and join at the link that is in the group. Hey Debbie, how are you? Hey Lynn, good to see you. Hi Sarah. Hey Sab. Wow, everybody is here from all over the place. From Paris, right? Scotland. Where else? Sheffield. Let's see. Oh, Lynn's at the doctor's office. Okay. You can hang on as long as you can, Lynn. Colorado. So we've got people representing lots of different parts of the world. That's really exciting to see. To see. Really, really exciting for me. I wanted to host a daily Facebook Live in this group because I happen to really enjoy giving Facebook Live broadcast to people. I think it's a really fun way to engage in these groups. In the groups that I am in, I really enjoy being part of them. I hope that you like them too. I also like the fact that they are recorded automatically. If people can't be there at the same time as I am, they can watch the recording later, so I love that about Facebook Live. And I wanna let you know that they aren't just going to be me talking at you. I really want this to be an interactive situation, so I will definitely pause at certain times and ask you to respond to questions, and then we'll take it from there. Let's see, so let me start by saying that as I was, I realized that I probably should have used a different word other than challenge for this because the word challenge is kind of fraught with a lot of, I don't know, stuff around it. I don't have a good word. I've been speaking a lot of French lately and my English is sort of flying out the window. So bear with me. But you know, the word challenge sounds difficult. And it sounds like we're, you know, going uphill with something. I probably should have called it something like the 5-Day Money Making Game or the 5-Day Money Making Party or something like that. So if I do this again, I think I will give it a different name. So just know, you probably figured this out if you have been reading any of the emails I've been sending or engaging with any of the conversations in the group that my whole goal is really to help us to all lighten up in the area of money. Money is just one of those topics that seems to stir up a lot of big feelings in people. Can you relate? If you can, give me a thumbs up or type a note to me if that's true for you. And if you have seen me talk about this or read anything of mine, you'll know that money used to be a huge, huge stress point in my life. It was really kind of an all-consuming thought process that seemed to just take over most of my daily life. When I think back on that now, it's actually quite shocking to me. And when I realized it at the time, it was quite shocking because I didn't realize how much of my life was being spent listening to really wacky thinking about money. It's kind of nutty. So when I kind of woke up to that first, it was like, wow, why am I listening to all of this and is it actually helping me? And I realized pretty quickly that listening to all of that stressed out, worried thinking about money certainly was not really helpful to me in terms of actually making any money. So I pretty quickly concluded that I didn't need to listen to any of that. It could be there. And it could be saying whatever it was going to say, but I personally, you know, the real me didn't have to listen to it and act from that place of worry and stress. So that was probably my first big realization related to money. That was about 3 years ago, and that realization didn't have an immediate effect on my bank account, but it definitely had an immediate effect on my daily quality of life. I can say that for sure. That when I realized that those thoughts I was having related to money weren't telling me anything significant, that I could simply ignore them and kind of go about my business in life and do what I wanted to be doing, that really made a beautiful, positive impact on how I felt about life every day. And I really feel like that was a big catalyst for me to start making then some changes to the way I was living and what I was doing for a living and all kinds of things. So it's one reason why I love the topic of money because I feel like because it's so highly emotional and such a charged topic, it's easy for us to then notice when we start to experience it even a little bit differently, when we start to feel even slight shifts in this area, it can really make a big impact. I noticed that some of you posting in the group have already started to feel some shifts around money, which is really, really exciting to me. So thank you for sharing that, and thank you for sharing, you know, why you joined the challenge. So let me start this off then by laying out what the challenge is, and it's quite simple really. Since it's called a money-making challenge, the challenge does have to do with making money. But again, Again, I don't want this to be like this big heavy thing. It's more like a game. And to illustrate what this challenge is, I'm going to share a personal example of something that occurred a few months back, and I'll explain what happened, and then you can kind of see how this challenge is gonna play out, okay? And then I'll, I'll come back to the challenge itself. So I think it was in April, March or April. My husband and I had just moved here to Paris at the beginning of March, and we had a bill come due here. And actually, it was quite startling because I can't remember the last time I'd been served, process served, but we were process served here. And I thought it was kind of amusing in a way because the process server had a ton of papers. Process serving, I think, everybody in the building, basically. And the long and short of it is that they did some renovation work on the exterior of this building, and everybody had to contribute a certain portion to cover the cost, which is fair. But the only problem was they didn't give people enough notice before they started the work and before the amount was due. So I have a feeling that like most of the people in the building, that huge bill that we got a few months earlier came as quite a shock and we weren't prepared to pay for it. So we had been paying a certain amount monthly. And I think all of a sudden, the management company just decided, okay, it's time to just clear this off the books. We want everyone to pay up right now. So, you know, being new to the country and getting served this document saying you owe X thousand euros basically right now was a little bit of a shock. And so I had one of those moments where I was like, oh my gosh, this is really not a good way to start our life here in France, now is it? And I looked at the amount due and it was a fairly sizable number. It was several thousand euros. And I had this thought of, you know, I really don't want to take this out of our savings. We needed to keep a certain amount of money in our savings in order to make the French government happy. And I just didn't want to take that from our savings. I was like, no, we just can't do that. We have to leave that money alone. But we didn't have enough at that time in our checking account to just write a check for it. So I looked at my husband and I said, you know what, we— this was, I think, on a Tuesday. I said, we are going to make this, I think it was 5,600 euros. So we are gonna make this 5,600 euros by the weekend. And on Monday, we're going to go to the management company and hand them a check for it. And he was like, we are? And I was like, yeah. And I said, I don't know how we're gonna do that, but we're gonna do it. And so I got really excited about this idea. Like, could I make, you know, 5 or 6,000 euros in just like 5 days. Could I do that? Could I make that money fast enough so that I could not only bring it in but then transfer it to the right account and write the check on Monday? And I was shocked to find out that we actually made it in less time and we made more than we intended. We ended up making probably another 30 to 40% over that by the weekend. So by the time Monday rolled around, I was able to make the transfer, and I think we actually went and delivered the check on Tuesday. And that was just such an incredible exercise because it was like, okay, here is a money goal that I have, and I could have gotten all, you know, crazy about it, and I did have some of that panic, as I mentioned, but underneath that, I was like, we can get creative. We can figure out how to do this. This is not that difficult. You know, we have the creative capacity to make a few thousand euros in a few days. I know we can. And between the two of us, we came up with an idea. We got people to sign up for this service, and we delivered the service, and then we delivered the money to the management company. So how does this relate to the challenge? Well, the challenge is a similar thing. You may have something that you would really like to pay for, buy, have the money for, and I would love this challenge over the next 5 to 6 days to give you the space to play and see what you could come up with in order to pay for that. And it doesn't matter to me if it's €5, $5, or €5,000 or €50,000. It doesn't matter to me. What matters most to me is that you experience this as something that is really fun and creative and more like a game, more like the what if I could, like what if I could, you know, make that €5,000 so that we could just run over there and hand them a check? And I have to say that felt really good to be able to do that because that had sort of been hanging in the background. It was one of those things that was just sort of hanging there and I was really happy to cross that off the list. And so ideally, ideally, you could make this money, whatever the amount is, doing something that you enjoy. And that was something that I was definite about, was like, I don't want to do something that I dislike. I want to help people in some way that is really going to benefit them and uses all my skills and talents and brings everything to bear on that and is fun. and I only want to work with people that are fun and that I want to work with. So that was a really big piece of it for me. So I had a lot of things that were part of that that I really wanted to make sure were included in the process, meaning I wanted to have a good time. I wanted to have fun during this what-if money challenge. So how does that sound to you? How does it sound to consider you know, that there's something that maybe you would like to have that requires a certain amount of money, you'd like to say, "What if I could make that money over the next 5 to 6 days doing something that I really enjoy and that is fun for me?" So what do you think? Thumbs up? Not sure? Let me know with the little emoticon things or please type into the comments. How does that sound to you? I see a thumbs up. That's good. A few more. Yay! Yay! Awesome. And here's the thing is that I think we have this idea that, you know, money is like this big scary monster. I love all the emoticons coming through. You know, this is— I'm speaking personally, you know, I really used to see money as this terrifying thing that I equated with my sense of security, with my sense of freedom to be myself, with my sense of well-being. I mean, even down to my actual survival, I equated money with actually being alive. And if you look at all of that, no wonder I was a freaked-out mess when it came to money, because I I was constantly listening to thinking like that. And honestly, the piece that shifted it, it was so simple, was just going, wow, I'm listening to a lot of thinking about money. Do I have to do that? Do I have to pay attention to that? Or is there something else that I can listen to? Is there something that's beyond those thoughts that I can look to? And that's what we're talking about in this challenge. Is what else there is for us to listen to. One of the major points that I make in the new book, and if you've listened to the audio, I'm sure you've heard this part, is that we don't have to be in any specific state of mind in order to change our finances. You know, if I had waited until I was completely calm after I got served that notice that that bill was due, I would probably have waited a really long time because while I was coming up with ideas of things we could do to make that money fast, I was still feeling stressed thinking at that time. It wasn't like all of that just vanished and I was suddenly like, yeah, we're gonna go, we're gonna go. No, it was more like, yeah, I'm feeling pretty nervous about this, but I know that there is creativity available to me just because I'm human, and I'm gonna decide to look there instead of giving so much weight to all of this worried, scared thinking. And I really understand too how hard it can be to sort of turn your inner gaze away from that sort of worried, stressed-out thinking, whether it relates to money or anything. It almost seems magnetic at times, doesn't it? Anybody feel that? Like sometimes you have these scary thoughts and feelings and they just seem so compelling to you. It feels like you have to follow them wherever they are leading. So if you can relate to that, you know, give me a high sign because I certainly can. What I have seen though is that even though they can be really compelling, and kind of magnetic and wanting us to follow them. We have the option to not do that. We have the option to just let them do what they're going to do and let whatever feelings come that they, you know, that they bring with them. But we are allowed to go someplace else. We are allowed to go towards the things that we really want to be doing with our life and go towards the things that bring us joy and things that are helpful to other people as well as to ourselves. We're human beings, so we're always going to have the full range of human feelings. That's just part of the package. There's no escaping feeling bad. There's no escaping feeling stressed. There's no escaping any of those things— feeling afraid. That's simply part of being human. However, that isn't all there is. And simultaneously, even if we are feeling those things, we can still access what is really available to us, which is this infinite well of new ideas, of creativity, of basically any answer we need, we already have. Within us, and we can connect to that and listen to that no matter what state of mind we are in. You may have seen a note from me in the group, and some of you might have gotten it by email, and that I had an incredibly stressful day yesterday where I was trying to make an appointment to get our visa renewed and realized the earliest appointment to get it renewed was 10 weeks after our visa expires. And when I say I went into a state of panic, I went into a state of panic. I mean, I had all kinds of doomsday scenarios going through my head about what was going to happen if we got into trouble, or were we going to have to move back to the States. And I mean, I literally felt sick to my stomach. And at one point my husband and I were riding on the Metro yesterday trying to sort this out. At various police stations here, and I literally thought I was gonna faint. I'm on the Metro and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna faint, I'm so freaked out. But even though I was completely freaked out on the surface, on the inside, the engine was still working. The creative engine was still working. It was saying, okay, Mary, why don't you try this? Okay, that didn't work. Why don't you try this? Okay, that didn't work either. Why don't you try this? All right, well, now your option is you have to make a phone call and you have to speak French to a government agent over the phone. And you're just going to figure out what to say. And if she doesn't understand, you're going to use whatever French you have to help her understand. And so all of this is going on underneath, helping me while I'm completely flipping out on the surface. So it was just another example to me of how all of these things that we are told that we have to do in order to have a better quote-unquote relationship with money, which I really don't understand, or we have to change our money mindset, or we have to work on our limiting beliefs. To me, it all seems like kind of baloney, honestly. It's not necessary to try to wrangle our thoughts because we can't. They are going to do whatever they do, period. There's nothing we can do about that. But that doesn't mean that they have to dictate what we are actually doing. We don't have to respond to that thinking. If I had responded to the thinking I was having yesterday, I probably just would have gone back to bed and been paralyzed all day. But I was like, no, I can listen to something else. So let's see what ideas are coming to me. So the long and short of it was we did get an appointment for 2 months after our visa expires, but we can get a short-term extension. So that will cover the time in between. So we're going to go get that next week. And the woman on the phone was very kind and she spoke a little more slowly so I could understand what she was saying. And at one point I was like, oh my gosh, isn't this a big problem for us? And she's like, oh no, no, no, just bring your copy of your electric bill and your passports and go to this office and they'll take care of it for you. It's like, thank God. So what do you think about that? I'd love to hear your impressions if you want to make a comment that you don't necessarily have to be in a particular state of mind, that you don't have to fix anything about yourself in order to take some steps towards changing your finances, or in the case of our challenge, take steps towards making the money that you would like to make for a specific reason? Does it— because for me, it's been completely freeing to realize that I can have any thoughts at all, makes no difference in terms of what I am able to actually do. So if you'd like to make a comment about that or a question, I'll just pause and see what you guys think. As I realize this is going against the grain of almost everything that is being said out there, and believe me, I've been exposed to pretty much everything that's been said on this topic because I was so freaked out about money over the years. I really thought, wow, I must have a lot of work to do on myself because, you know, this money thing just isn't happening. And the moment I started to see that I actually didn't have to do anything, that I already had the answers within me, my thoughts were telling me something else, but they weren't telling me the truth, that there was something else I could listen and respond to. That's what really started to make the difference. So any comments or questions at this point? I'll just wait a moment. And get a sip of water here. I'm a little under the weather today, so sorry, sorry about the slightly froggy voice. Let me check my notes, and oh yes, I did have another thing I wanted to say. So, I think another thing that has drawn me personally and professionally into wanting to talk more about money is because of the fact that we spend as adults a lot of our waking life in whatever pursuit of money that we are in, whether it's going to a job or it's whatever it is we are spending most of our waking hours, a lot of us anyway, in pursuit of a living. And it's become very important for me because I've interacted with so many amazing people like you over the last 3 years or so. It's become really important to me to make sure that you know, and you know, I mean this from the most heartfelt place that I have. I want you to know that you have permission and you have the ability to follow whatever it is that you want to do, that you can listen to your heart's calling and answer it, and that there will be a way for you to get the bills paid I can only say that when I realized this for myself, it changed everything for me. When I made the decision after I lost my job in early 2016 that I was no longer going to do things I didn't want to do, and that included how I made my living, everything started to change. Not just how I made my living or how much money I was making, but lots and lots of other things in my life. Started to improve. And I really believe that we are given these callings of the heart for a reason. We are each here to contribute something to the world, to help one another to have a better experience while we're here. And if we continue to deny what is calling to us, if we continue to see it as frivolous, or, oh, I can't do that right now because that would just cost too much, or I could never make a living doing XYZ, even though it's the thing that I dream about doing. If we keep doing that, we aren't really living our life in the way that we are meant to. And we are meant to live life joyfully. We're meant to live it with freedom. Freedom is what we are made of. And we are meant to live life mostly free of struggle. Yes, like I said, we're always gonna have struggling thinking, but life itself does not have to be such a struggle. I used to see it that way. You know, I lived most of my adult life with this sense of struggle. I was somebody who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when I was in my 20s, and it wasn't until I was in my early 50s that I kind of woke up to the truth and realized that that wasn't how I had to live my life, that I could ignore that kind of stressful thinking. I been having, and this natural, creative, and healthy self would take its place. And that's exactly what's happened. And money to me is a wonderful place to see this because it's such a tangible, creative output of, of what we're actually doing with our time, if that makes sense. The more it seems to me that we listen to what's calling to us and follow where it's going, even if we can only see the first step, because usually that's all we can see is the step that's right in front of us, it changes the whole dynamic of how we're living. It changes everything, and that includes the potential to change our finances. So is that making sense? Let me know yes or no in the comments if you can. And if it's not making sense, let me know what questions you've got and I will be happy to answer. You know, there's this old saying, of course you've probably heard it many times, do what you love and the money will follow or something like that. It reminds me of the movie with Kevin Costner, you know, if you build it, they will come. And I'm not exactly saying that. What I am saying is that if we listen to what's calling to us and we see a way that we can create value in the world, then yes, I do think the money will come. How much is anybody's guess. I can't ever know that. But if we have something that we want to do, then that's and we believe that it can contribute positively to the people around us or even just one person, to me, that's worth listening to and worth following. And in these cases, I always, always think of J.K. Rowling in particular because she seems like such an amazing person. I would love to meet her someday. You know, she had no clue where her little book was going to lead. She could never have seen that. All she knew was she had a desire to write a story about this boy and his friends, and she was determined to get that book written. And after that, you know, it really wasn't in her control, but she had this calling. She took the action and got it done and then tried to see how she could get that out into the world and eventually did, and the rest is history. Now, we never know what is going to happen, but all she knew was the first step in front of her, and that's all we can ever see. So if you're looking at this challenge and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I have no idea how I could make X amount of money in 5 days, well, look at what one step in front of you is. Like, what is an idea that has come to you that may seem a little new, sometimes those are the best ones. The, the ideas that come to us that seem a little bit weird are often the ones that yield the most amazing results. I've definitely seen that for myself. I have stopped dismissing things. I keep a running list of ideas that I have for various books and business ideas and all kinds of things, because they may seem weird to me today, but maybe tomorrow they won't. So if you're thinking about this challenge and you're going, gosh, I have no idea how I would do that, don't worry about the how just yet. Don't worry about that. Just know that the how is present within you already and listen to whatever ideas come up. See which ones seem interesting and try one of them. Try the first step of one of them and see where it leads. So what do you guys think? Are you in? Have you come up with a dollar amount or something that you would like to aim for in this challenge? Let me know in the comments. Hang on one second. Oh, I just realized you guys have been typing comments and I didn't see it. All right, let me check here. Let me go back. Okay. Let's see. Awesome. Great. You got ideas. All right. Let me look here. That's so weird. It didn't keep showing your comments. So, Saab wants me to answer this question. Where does motivation and getting off one's backside come into this? That's a great, great, great question. OK. I don't think motivation is at all necessary. I think it's highly overrated. And to me, it seems like nothing more than any other emotion. And I do lots of things even though I'm not motivated. For example, I was not particularly motivated to call this number here in France and have to try to listen in French to a very fast phone tree. I had to listen to it 3 times in order to guess at which one I was supposed to hit, which button I was supposed to hit. And I was not particularly motivated to try and stumble through a conversation about visas and things in French, but I did it anyway. So I think if we're waiting for a specific feeling before we take an action, we will just wait forever. So don't wait around for motivation to show up. You don't need it. You don't need to be— that sounds pretty major what I just said. Let me repeat that. You don't need motivation to do something in life. You just don't. It's a superfluous idea. It doesn't matter whether you feel motivated or you feel something else. It doesn't have any bearing on what your capabilities are. So I don't know if that helped, but let me know, Sam. Oh, Kathy, yes, I'll review the challenge. The challenge is pretty simple. I would love for you to pick a number, amount of money that you'd like to make over the next 5 days for a specific purpose and try to have fun with it. It's more like a what-if sort of game. Like, what if I could make $500 in the next 5 days in order to make a big credit card payment? Or what if I could make $200 over the next 5 days to go buy that purse that I've been wanting to buy at the department store? You can see where my mind is on that last one. You know, make it something that is really fun and not heavy. We're not into heavy around here. That doesn't come into this money conversation at all. There's no analysis going on. There's no like What's the, you know, diving into our past with money or anything like that. We're not about that. We're all about creative, creative ideas and having a good time because to me, that's what life is for and money can be for that purpose too. Let's see. Let me go back up here. Make sure I didn't— I'm sorry, I didn't see your comments. That's terrible. Facebook was not Cooperating. All right, so thank you for all of those comments. I'll come back and read them afterwards as well. Let's see, Dale, could you say something about underselling yourself? Hi, Mimi, I feel I tend to do this and thus cut my potential. Yeah, okay. I think we all honestly have a tendency to undersell ourselves. I write about this in the other book I have, another book I have about money called How to Price Like a Girl where I talk about our sense of worth, our sense of self-worth. And really, it's very hard for us to see this because if we are doing something that comes easily to us, it doesn't seem like it's worth very much, if you know what I mean. But the person on the receiving end of the service or whatever it is thinks it's worth a lot. So my best advice in terms of like pricing something is just kind of starting at any number. And just seeing what happens. I mean, you can always go up. I don't really want to give pricing advice, but I don't want you to go downwards. I would rather you started at a number and went up from there. If you feel like you need to make something more worthwhile for someone, instead of lowering the price, add more value to the thing instead of lowering the price to come down to somebody's or whatever somebody thinks. Here's the other piece of this that I learned a long time ago after I became a coach and was actually asking people to pay me. If they found value in what I was offering, it really wasn't up to me to figure out how they were going to pay for it, if that makes sense. They have the creative ability to find a way to pay for it. Just like I mentioned with that story of paying off this €5,000, €6,000 bill in a few days, they didn't care how I paid that off. That wasn't their problem. I owed them the money, they told me that I owed them money, and that was that. And I think that we have to see other people from this light too, that they have the creative capacity to find the money if it's worth it to them. So the pricing thing I think gets fraught with a lot of thinking too, and it doesn't necessarily have to. So let me know, Dale, if that didn't answer your question. Marie-France, if you're not motivated, then how do you ignore the resistance that tells you you can't do it? Or to stop? I guess what I would say is that your, whatever thoughts that we have are not, I mean, this is gonna sound pretty radical to some of you who aren't totally familiar with me, I don't really see much truth in any of my thinking. I just don't listen to it a lot of the time. You know, I'm more often than not, I'm kind of laughing at what it's saying. And I've come up with a new phrase that my thoughts don't know who they're talking to. You know, they're trying to tell me this stuff isn't possible or I should stop or whatever. And it's like, I don't really need to listen to that. I'm just going to keep going. And, and so I don't know if that answers your question, Marie-Françoise, but I really just feel like our thoughts are there for one purpose, and that's to give us an experience of being here and being human. Beyond that, we have a lot more that we can act from. We can act from this place of what I call innate creativity. We can act from these callings of the heart. And kind of just ignore the rest and just see what happens. So let me know if that wasn't helpful. Let's see here. Let me go back up. Oh, I got some numbers here. Chris Zarza. All right. Good. Chris, thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Sarah. Motivation just seems to me to be another example of a passing thought that really doesn't have much consequence. You know, people do lots of things even though they're not motivated to do them, if that makes sense. I mean, I could come up with a million examples of that just for myself. And, you know, I think it just comes because the world tells us we need to have certain feelings. We have to have confidence and we have to be motivated and we have to be, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And as far as I can tell, I think that that's all baloney. I think we have everything we need without worrying about whatever thought happens to be going through our head at any given moment on top of that. That seems irrelevant to me. Oh, I like yours, Marie-Françoise. If you can make $3,000 in order to move and pay your first and last month's rent, love it. That's great. Oh, thank you, Kathy. You want $297 so you can take my course without dipping into your budget. Great. Love it. Oh, I'm glad that was helpful. Coldale, thank you. Hey Joanne, I do a closed door and my mind just swung open. I love that. Debbie, opportunity to make really big money, but the idea I had to make that money was something I had no experience doing. I just kept doing the next thing that came to me despite freaking out the entire time I was pursuing it. It ended up being incredibly successful. So I agree, you don't have to achieve calm before jumping in, just do it. Thank you for that story, Debbie. That's awesome. Reminds me a little bit of my thing yesterday with the French and all of that, it was like, I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but I just got to do the next thing that seems obvious to do. Kathy, how do you differentiate between your insight, creative inspiration to take action, and thoughts as in thinking not to take too seriously? So that's a really good question. And the other way that people sometimes ask it is, how do I know when I'm listening to wisdom versus when I'm listening to kooky thinking. And all I can say to that is that, um, I think if I say this, you'll be able to relate. And if you can't, tell me. But there is a sensation— everybody's might be a little bit different— that feels like a decision has already been made. It's like, of course I'm going to do this thing. There's no— there's not even a question about it. And that to me is this larger voice, if you will, that is going on within us all the time that is gently prodding us in certain directions. So can you relate to what I'm talking about where it just doesn't even seem like something you have to pore over or think about too much, that you can simply act? And I've had an example of this I can tell you really briefly where years and years ago, I was living in Los Angeles and a bunch of stuff was happening. This was a long time ago. It was during the Rodney King riots and everything. And I woke up one day and I just said, I have to move and I know where I'm gonna move and that's where I'm gonna go. I didn't know anyone in that place. I had no job. I had no nothing. I didn't care. It was like, this is what I need to do, and I'm just going to do it. And I just took the steps it took to get there. I had a few things happen in between, but I still just kept going. And it turned out to be an amazing experience for me, making that move. But it didn't feel heavy. It didn't feel like I was even having to weigh any pros and cons. It was simply the thing that I was going to do. So that's, to me, how you can kind of tell the difference, if that makes sense. So let me know, Kathy, if that wasn't helpful. Let's see, I'm trying to read your whole comment here, Marie-Françoise. Let's see, big creative writing project to do an outline for, experiencing lots of thoughts about your inability to do it, don't feel up to it. Yeah, so I think that, yeah, it does make sense to me, Marie-Françoise, and I can give you a, Okay, I'll come back to you, Kathy. I can give you an example of this in that my daughter is in a similar situation as you. She's also a student and she's trying to write her dissertation. And she had a ton of thinking she was listening to related to this paper. And the one thing that I've always been sure of about her is her intellectual capabilities are amazing. And so I wasn't worried about her in the least, but she was looking at a lot of thoughts like that, like, I'm not motivated to do it. This is so big and overwhelming. I don't know what to do. We had— she basically asked me to be her coach. So we meet once a week, and on the first meeting, she just seemed to calm down about it when she realized that she could have all that kind of thinking going on, but it didn't really matter because what, what she already possessed was the ability to get this paper written. And she already even had a sense of what the outline should look like. It was just a matter of, oh, I can actually feel kind of stressed out and weird and unmotivated and still write this outline. Like, there's no connection between those two things. I think that's where a lot of us get confused, is we think that we have to have a certain set of thoughts or feelings before we can do a certain action. And what I'm trying to explain here is that that's just not the case. So we don't even have to be confident that we can make this amount of money in these few days. We don't have to feel anything in particular. We have what we need to have our best chance at hitting this fun goal that we're setting. So let's just see what ideas pop up, even if we're feeling stressed or unmotivated or scared or whatever. Let's just see. What ideas come up. That's another one of my phrases these days. Let's just see. Let's just see what happens. You know, let's just listen and see what comes up. And, you know, if you feel like you're getting sort of stuck, you can just say, I don't really know what to do next, so I'd really like some new ideas, please. And I'll listen to whatever comes up. I won't reject you. And it's amazing what can occur when we do something as simple as that. So, all right, Kathy, let me come back. Not yet with your creativity, personal and business work, or at least you're not recognizing it. I think your thinking is still in control in that area. Something to aim for. Oh, I'm glad this is helpful. One thing I can say about that, Kathy, is that our thoughts don't control anything. This is another thing that I have seen very, in very personal ways as I've looked at this over the last 3 and a half years is that our thoughts cannot control anything because they are not us. And they are, as you know, they weigh less than this tissue. I mean, they're just, they're not a real thing. They look real. They give us an experience, but they aren't dictating anything. We can listen past them in a way. We can listen through them. However, this kind of works in your— the way that you experience life. There is something much bigger that we can be listening for. I sometimes liken our thinking to the crust of the earth. You know, it's the thing that creates sort of the surface experience of life. But there's all this other life and energy and richness that's going on all the time that we have access to. So, you know, let's explore that instead of worrying too much about what we're feeling and thinking from any, at any given moment. So maybe that lends a little bit of help to you. Oh, Dale's £10,000. I love that. I mean, £100,000 is fine too. If you can make £100,000 in 5 days doing something, you know, whatever, then you can teach the class because that would be amazing. Ah, all right, good. I'm glad that was helpful, Marie-France. Let me just do a quick run back up these comments and make sure I didn't miss anybody. If I did, I apologize because Facebook was not doing its job correctly. Let me go back. I saw Andrew made a comment and Brian made a comment. All right. Awesome. Okay, I think I saw everybody's comments. So if I, if I wrap this up, is that all right? I will just ask you one last time if there's any other questions about what the aim of the challenge is. I'll just summarize it really quickly. It's basically pick a number that kind of correlates to maybe something that you would like to purchase or pay off or do something special with, and allow yourself sort of the free-flowing ideas of how that might happen. You might have an idea right away for something you can do, which is cool, but we can also kind of be open to whatever else shows up. You know, I don't know how many times I've had a specific idea in mind of something that I wanted to do to make some money, and then all of a sudden I'll get like an email from somebody saying, hey, would you like to partner on blah blah blah? Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, well, I wasn't expecting that, but sure. You know, that kind of thing. So we can be open to what comes along as well as the ideas that we might hear inside ourselves. Hi, Mimi. Yeah, I'm planning to— thank you for asking that. I'm planning to meet at the same time here in the Facebook group every day to try and accommodate as many schedules and not get involved in the dinner hour. The only day I might have to do something different is Sunday, but I'm I'm keeping it at 5 for now, and if I have to change that because something is on my calendar, then I might have to move this a little bit earlier, like just maybe 15 minutes earlier, then I will do that. But I'll let you guys know. I also will send out these recordings and a summary of what we talked about in an email every day. So if you don't happen to be in the Facebook group, just check your email and you'll see what's going on via email because I don't want anyone to be left out because some of the folks aren't on Facebook or don't want to be in the Facebook group. So what other questions do you have for me? Anything? Let me check my notes and make sure I didn't leave out anything really important. I think that was about it for this one. Brian, is it better to start smaller with the challenge money amount so as not to stress about it or fear failing? Great question. I don't think it really matters because what, you know, yeah, I don't think it really matters because even if you pick a big number and you don't hit it, well, that's okay. It doesn't look like failure. It just means you didn't hit that number. You know, I think, I actually think that's a great question, Brian, because I think a lot of us do have the sense that if we don't reach a certain target that we have failed. And I don't really— again, I feel like I'm saying stuff that is so much the opposite of what most people are saying, but I don't really see failure as a thing. I don't think failure is real. It simply means that we had a certain expectation, which is made up, and we didn't hit that made-up expectation. And that doesn't seem real to me. So yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. I would just pick whatever number sounds fun to you. And don't worry if it seems big or small or in between, just whatever you want. We're having a good time and playing, so it's all good. So let me know if that wasn't a good answer for you, Brian. All right, you're very welcome. Okay, I think I will close for now. And if any other Questions come up as you watch the replay, of course, feel free to post them here and I will be available to you every day all through the weekend as well as into next week, of course, all through the challenge. So please post comments or questions anytime in the group. The only thing I would ask you to refrain from doing is putting your offer in the group for the thing that you're trying to do to make money. That, I don't really want this to become that kind of a group. But please feel free to update us and let us know what you're up to and what ideas you have. It would be fun to share in that with you. Alright, anything else? Are we good? A thumbs up? We're good to go? Looks like. Okay. Alright, you guys. I will talk to you again tomorrow at the same time. For now, just have fun with this. And allow your creativity that is absolutely infinite to flow through you. Don't reject any ideas out of hand. You know, just hear what comes through and see what seems like fun. All right. Awesome, you guys. All right. I'll talk to you again soon. Have a wonderful day or evening wherever you are in the world. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye now.