Day 2: Money-Making Challenge with Mary Schiller

Hello, hello. This is Mary Schiller coming to you live from Paris, France. It is 5 PM here on Saturday, November 11th. And if you are watching this live, thank you for joining me and please feel free to give me a thumbs up or some kind of happy face or type a comment in the comment box. If you can hear and see me okay. Yesterday on the Facebook Live, I was having trouble seeing people's comments, but now I know how to do that. So if at any time you have something that you want to say or ask, please do feel free to type it into the comment box, and I'll keep one eye over there and one finger scrolling the, the comments. Yesterday I thought that they would sort of just keep updating and that didn't happen. So I was like, why isn't anybody saying anything? And then I realized that I had to manually scroll through the comments. So if you are here watching live, let me know that you are. Hey Doug, thanks for the thumbs up. I appreciate that. And I will be a little more attentive to that part of the discussion because this isn't just about me. Talking, especially today since I've got a cold and I sound sort of froggy. I'd love to have as much interaction as possible, so feel free to type a comment or question at any time. And, uh, oh, thanks. So I want to welcome you to Day 2 of our money-making challenge. Again, I'm— Hi Julie, nice to see you. Hey Kathy, good, I'm glad you're happy to be here. I'm happy to be here too. I'm Mary Schiller, author and coach at MarySchiller.com. Author of several books including the most recent, Let's Make Money, Honey, and also the creator of the program of the same name. And I am so thrilled to be here with all of you for this 5-day money-making challenge. Hey, Birdie! Hi, Sarah! Hi, Mary! I just got you in here in the nick of time. I saw your request to join about a minute before I went live. I was like, oh, I gotta get her in here. And so I wanted to take just a couple minutes at the beginning of this Facebook Live. Hi, Susanna! Yeah, Yeah, this voice of mine is kind of nasally today, but hopefully this cold is swiftly moving through and will not hang around for the whole challenge. I'd like to be back to normal by the time we finish. Hi, Sam. Good to see you. So I'd like to start with just a quick recap of what I spoke about on Day 1, which was that I kind of laid out the challenge for you, and I talked about the fact that we don't have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to make money. So the challenge itself, if you'll recall, is pretty simple. It's basically, I'd just like you to pick any number that seems like a fun number to you that may be associated with something that you would like to purchase. For example, for me, I would love to make a couple hundred dollars because there is a purse that I've had my eye on at the department store near here, and I keep thinking, ah yeah, I'd really like to get that purse. And I just haven't done it yet. And so I have a certain number of— close to a couple hundred dollars that I would like to make for that purpose. And so it doesn't have to be a huge number. It can be a big number if you want to make it, you know, $1,000, $10,000, that's fine with me. It's whatever number seems really fun and exciting to you because the whole point of this challenge— hi Nina— is to have a good time because money does not have to be this big scary thing like I used to think it was. And that's part of what I'll be talking about about today. And also, it would be really cool for the challenge if you could earn this money doing something that you really enjoy doing. So, for example, you know, I used to have this idea that the only way I could make money was to do things that I was maybe good at and skilled at and people paid me for, but I didn't really like. So I kind of saw this separation of myself into the work self that earned the money and the real self that did all these other things. Fortunately, after having some major insights into money over the last 3 years or so, I've been able to kind of merge all of those things together. So now I essentially feel like I'm getting paid to be me, which is really awesome, and it's something that I would love for everybody to experience if possible. So let's dive into the topic of today's challenge— or today's Facebook Live. So in the book that I just released, Let's Make Money, Honey, I talk about the fact that it used to look to me like money was this thing out there somewhere that I had to sort of hunt down and trap somehow. So if you have that experience, let me know in the chat box if money sort of has this almost like a persona of something that you have to go hunt down and find and figure out either how to trap it and/or attract it to you because that's kind of how people said it to me. You know, I went through all these different programs to help me figure out all my money stuff and most of them, well actually all of them were saying the same thing in some way. Yeah, Brian, okay, I don't feel so bad now. But they're all saying some variation of the same thing, that we have to manifest something in our lives that we want, you know, if it's money or, you know, a new house or whatever it is, or we have to somehow attract abundance towards us in some way. So they have lots and lots of suggestions of how to do that. One of the more common ones, it seems to me, is to say affirmations, repeat things over and over again to sort of tell ourselves or convince ourselves in some way that we can attract this abundance. And I am not trying to say that these are bad people who are telling us this. I really, really truly believe that most of them are really coming from the heart and they are trying to help people. Hi, Kathy. Is something always fundamentally wrong with me around money? I am so over that too, and that's the main reason, honestly, why I am here with you today, is because I want you to really start to get that there is nothing wrong with you related to money or anything else. We happen to be talking about money. I'm using that as sort of the, the example But the truth of the matter is there is absolutely nothing wrong with you related to money and making money and all of that stuff. That is just not even part of this discussion. And this Facebook Live will kind of explain how I came to that realization. Doug agrees that's a common belief. It is, right? It's saying that there is something out there that we have to bring to us, that there is something that we aren't doing that we need to be doing in order for this money stuff to appear in our lives. And I spent a lot of years trying to do that, and the whole time I kept thinking to myself, well, you know, what am I doing? Am I, like, actively repelling money somehow? Like, you know, what is it that I'm doing? Because I would say to myself, "Gee, I seem like a pretty good person. I'm nice and I'm kind and I'm loyal and I tell the truth and I seem to be living my life in a good way and all of that." It's like, "What the heck? Why can't I seem to do what other people seem to do quite naturally?" Marie-Françoise, hi there. The burden of having to create abundance. Yeah, exactly. And you know, some of you may know, and I won't get into detail here, but some of you may know my background was I was a survivor of domestic violence and I had dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder for a long time. And so I had a lot of feelings already like something was wrong with me, and this just sort of added to that. It was like, wow, you know, I can't even do this right, so what the heck is going on? At a certain point in 2014, I saw through the illusion that there was something wrong with me. On a fundamental level, I had a major epiphany one day where I recognized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me at all and that all of the symptoms I've been having all those years from post-traumatic stress disorder, quote-unquote, were actually me listening to some thinking but that didn't mean that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Now, that was an amazing revelation and changed the course of my life forever. And I could talk about that from now until, you know, this time next year nonstop because it was just such a big thing for me, but I won't do that now. But what I didn't see at that time was how that related to something like money. Didn't occur to me until about a couple of years ago. So a couple of years ago, as I mentioned before, I was having some money difficulties and things to me at that time were looking kind of bleak. There wasn't any money coming in, there was a lot of money having to go out, and I was just like, I don't know how to fix this. And I really didn't know what to do. I was kind of lost for a little while there. And then I started to look at all of this from that same perspective. I was like, wait a second. Now, if I as a human being have nothing wrong with me, if I as a human being truly am limitless and, you know, am not contained even in this bodily container of mine, or in the thoughts that I have, then how does that kind of work its way around to this money topic? So I did a little exploring in that area and I want to recommend a book to you and this book is kind of heady to read but it's worth reading and it's got a very simple title. It's called Money and the author's name is Arnold Patent, P-A-T-E-N-T. I'll put a note about it. In the group. And I wouldn't necessarily say that what he's saying in this book was the thing that helped me see through an illusion, but it certainly helped me to see through it. And it was really simple. I was at a conference, this was shortly after I got fired and was really feeling very low in relation to money. And I had booked this seat at this conference and I thought, well, I've already paid for it so I might as well go. And the whole time I was at this conference, it was like a 2.5-day thing, I was feeling pretty down. And I went to bed one night there and I just said when I went to sleep, I was like, you know, when I wake up tomorrow, I really want to see something new about this whole money thing. There's got to be something that I'm missing and I just, I just want to see it. Whether it has any impact on my bank account, I don't care. I just want to see something new. And I woke up the next day, and I kid you not, this is exactly what happened. I woke up the next day and I was getting ready to go back to the conference, and I suddenly had this overwhelming sensation that I was the same as money, that money and I were the same thing. Because if I am abundance naturally, if that's my natural state as a human being, if I am limitless, I'm infinite, I've got everything I need already, then why is there any difference between me and money? There isn't any. So it was a really strange sensation and it's sort of hard to put this into words, but how it has sort of played out, and here is the big insight that I think might be helpful to you, is that I realized that money was not something out there, okay? That money was already in here and that in fact I was the source of money, just like I am the source of everything else that I experience in life. I am the source of money. Now, I don't know how that is landing for you. Feel free to type a comment in there. But in the last 2 years, since I had that kind of major insight into being the source of money, I can't even begin to tell you what has occurred in terms of my experience of money. Oh, thanks for all the emoticons. That's so cool to see that going across while I'm talking. It's almost like since I have realized this— oh, I'm glad it's— and by the way, Chris and everybody, if it doesn't sink in right away, totally fine. You know, it's one of these things that has unfolded for me over time where I had this insight and I just kept looking in that direction and going, am I really the source of money? Is it possible that it's not this thing out there that I'm trying to hunt down and catch all the time? Time, but in actuality, it's something that's already present within me. And the only thing that I need to do in order to sort of see it in form is just to listen to what's calling to me to do. And that's it. And that's pretty much what has occurred. It's changed my whole experience of money from being one of fear and limitation and And, and, you know, seeing it as sort of this monstrous thing out there to realizing that it's no different from the beauty. In fact, it's part of the beauty of simply being a human being and all of the abundance and limitlessness and possibility that's already inherent within us. And I want to say that I, I do recognize how different this sounds from most of what else is out there, as I was saying a moment ago. But I can tell you that what I see as truth is this, that there is nothing we have to attract. There's nothing we have to manifest. There's nothing we have to think hard about in order to make it happen. It just doesn't work like that because we are that source, we are that power. There is no power out there in money or anything else. It is all within, within us. So I'm going to just pause there for a second and just kind of let that settle with you and see what other comments you might have. I'll make sure to scroll this time. I'm gonna get a sip of water here. So another way we can look at this is to say that what we can create in terms of money is a a beautiful expression of this energy that is us. So again, I don't see money as something that is out there. It's simply a means by which I can express myself as a human being, a way that I can express my appreciation for you as a human being if I decide to purchase something from you. So there's almost like Like, I know, it is a feeling of freedom. Absolutely, Mary. It is. It's the first time you're hearing this, Kathy. Yeah, I know this can sound really weird. So you may have to listen to this a few times and just kind of take it, take it in and see what happens for you. Hey, Marie-Françoise, a similar experience unfortunately didn't stick, but I raised an amount of money on GoFundMe to take a film workshop. "Done online fundraising before, but this is the first time I did it that I exceeded my ask amount." You could see and feel that you are money. When you say it didn't stick, that's an interesting way of putting it because there isn't anything that needs to stick here because you can't change this truth. You know, it can look different. It can look— depending on what thoughts we happen to be paying attention to, it can look like it isn't this way. But that would be like saying that if I drop this packet of tissues, it's not going to hit the table. It's absolutely always going to hit the table. And that's what I find so freeing, to use, to use Mary's term, is that even if it doesn't look this way to me, it still is this way, that there isn't any way to, for it to be any other way. And I know that's a very bold statement that I'm making, but I'm happily making it because truth is truth and it doesn't change even if a different movie is playing in front of my face because of what thoughts I happen to be listening to. That doesn't change the truth. Chris, when I thought of the idea I wanted to do to make money, I felt so alive. I was the opposite of burnout. Yeah, this is what I've always wanted to do. It wasn't actually about the money. That's a really It's a really interesting experience, isn't it? It's like the money piece kind of just gets put off to the side and it's more like we can access this creative force that we are. And the money thing is kind of like, oh yeah, that's cool. But it's not like the main focus anymore. So thank you for saying that. Let's see here. I said it's just a symbol in fact, and without the thing it symbolizes, like doing something great that someone else likes, it just doesn't and can't exist. At least that's what I'm understanding. So yeah, it looks to me like money is an idea, if you will, that the way we have looked at money as human beings and as a culture is we have created a very complex set of ideas about it. But if you strip all of that away, if you just ignore all of that, it kind of reminds me of what Kris just said. We're simply acting from inspiration. And money is part of that sometimes and part sometimes not. It comes in, we breathe it in, we exhale it out. It's simply part of this whole human being system. It's not this thing that's out there that we have to go chase after. It simply is. It exists as part of this natural abundance that human beings are, not just have, but we are. So Marie-Françoise, also let me know if that didn't help you. So I feel like we can, just going back to your point, Marie-Françoise, we can get ourselves into a bit of a thought trap sometimes where we believe that if we aren't thinking a certain way about something, that that means it isn't actually happening. You know, but what I've seen, as I said a moment ago, is that my thoughts don't make one whit of difference. I was referring to this yesterday. Whatever thoughts happen to come into my mind have no impact on what is true. They simply are fluttering ideas that go on, but they don't have any impact on what is factual. You know, I'm a big water person. I love the ocean. And so I'll always, I always go back to my water metaphors. And I always think of the fact that, you know, that would be like saying the waves on the ocean actually are the ocean. And that's simply not true. The waves vary depending on, you know, the weather and things like that, but they don't have an effect on what's underneath that. They simply are waves on the top that might give us a different experience of either being relaxed because it's very peaceful or a bit bumpy because, you know, the waves have changed a little bit and things look kind of bumpy to us. But that doesn't change the fact that the ocean itself is rich and abundant and full of life and has everything that we need. It doesn't have any impact on that. So, so it's, it's helpful to realize that we can look past the waves because the waves are there to give us this glorious experience of being human and having all these ups and downs and stuff. But they aren't us, and they aren't— they have no reflection on our capabilities. Marie says, yes, it helped even if it doesn't look like it, like my bank balance is zero, very low. It's still true that— yeah, exactly. You are the source of everything, not just money. You're the source of everything. Everything is already available to you. And so I realized that because, like I was saying a moment ago, we have such a complex set of societal beliefs around money, it can look very much like it's something out there. That we have to go and get, or if we don't have enough, that's enough, quote unquote, that it's somehow a reflection of what we are as humans. And what I'm trying to say is that all of that, strip all of that away, and all you have is thoughts that aren't reflecting truth. Truth is way, way, way bigger than any thoughts we could possibly have as human beings. You know, I walked around for 30 years of my life with a running dialogue in my head that said I was essentially worthless, that I would never have a good life, that because of what somebody had chosen to do to me earlier in my life, that my life was ruined and it had been stolen from me, and that I really wasn't a very— you know, there wasn't much reason to hang around me because you know, why would you? Because I was worthless. I couldn't bring anything of value into society. And I felt like my potential had been taken from me and all these things. Well, as soon as I realized that those were thoughts that had no basis in truth and that the truth was that I had— nothing had occurred to me. Nothing had happened to me. There wasn't one chip off of me, no matter what someone had chosen to do to me physically or tried to do to me mentally, it made no difference. I was still as abundant as I ever was. Nothing had done anything to that. And so the same is true in relation to money and anything else. Money is simply a thought that we have that looks very real. but that doesn't mean that whatever thought we have about it is actually real. It's not a reflection of the truth. So again, I know this is getting kind of heady, but for me, this realization that money and I were essentially the same, that I was the source of that power, that money didn't have power, that I was the power, it was like, whoa, this is majorly freeing because now I can go do what I want to do and know that, you know, I I have all the creative capabilities I need to make any amount of money that I want to. You know, there's no guarantees in life. I have no idea if I'm going to make $10 this year or $1 million this year. I can't predict the future. And the fact is, none of it matters because whether I have $1 or $1 million has no effect on my worth or my value or my sense of abundance or anything because that's a given. You know, just like gravity, that is a given principle. So that whole thing has been very, very freeing. Let me just look at your thing. Okay, so I'm the source of money, but I don't control it because if I could control it, I'd have millions, LOL. I've had many of those same exact thoughts that my life was stolen from me. Yeah, so basically to address that, it's kind of like, If we see ourselves as pretty much the source of everything, then yeah, it does mean we are the source of everything. But, you know, how do I say this? If I imagine myself in this thing called life with a capital L, it doesn't look so much like it's my life with a little L. It looks like I'm in this thing called life and it has me and I'm moving with it. And in the end, I don't have much control over anything. Sometimes I wonder if I have any control over anything. The only thing that I know is that in this life with a capital L, we have been given this incredible gift of being inspired to act. And sometimes that produces cash and sometimes it doesn't. And the connection between the amount of cash or the not amount of cash has no bearing on who we are as humans. And being able to separate those two things, if that makes sense, has been very, very freeing. For me. So let me know if that's like completely sounding like gibberish. Brian says, it's so fresh, it rings true. I think it will take some time to sink in, the fear around money to ease. Yes, even the fear that pops up when I think about the challenge. So I'm really glad you said that, Brian, because, you know, fear is, is an interesting emotion because like we were saying yesterday, there are certain things certain feelings we have that almost feel like magnets, right? Like they're, they're pulling at us and they're, they're almost begging for us to pay attention to them because they seem so insistent and so real. And fear is one of those as well, where it can seem like it's telling us important information that we need to pay attention to. And I can only tell you from my own experience because that's all I've got. Is that when I first started to see all of this for myself about 3 and a half years ago, I did a whole bunch of experiments. And I've done this with money too, so I'll talk about that in a second. But I did a bunch of experiments, Brian, where I would, I would feel like I'd have what I would call a PTSD attack, you know, where I'd feel incredibly anxious and scared. And I would just sit there with it and go, what happens if I just don't do anything? Like, what if I just don't care that I feel scared? I'm not worried about it. I know it's not revealing anything about me as a human or whether I'm, you know, healthy or unhealthy or anything. It's just what it is. So what happens if I just sit and not worry about it? And what happened consistently was the emotion would pass because as soon as a new thought comes in, a new feeling comes in. And I started to realize that I could feel anything at all, including paralyzing fear. And it was absolutely fine. It was kind of like I started to be able to experience the whole range of human emotions without any worry about any of them, because I knew that they were simply thoughts that were coming into my mind and they carried with them a certain charge. And that's all that they were. And I started to actually appreciate— this is important too, I should mention this, and I think this might be referenced in that book I mentioned, Money by Arnold Patton. I'm kind of forgetting, it's been a while since I read it, but I think he talks about this where I started to appreciate the immense power that I possessed in order to create a feeling of fear or limitation. It was like, wow, this thing that I am, this human being that I am, is really powerful because I am this abundant being with no limitations around me at all. And yet I can make it look like the world is ending to me. I can create a scenario that looks so real to me that it looks like my life is going to end if I don't fix this thing. That's kind of what happened to me the other day with this whole story I was talking to you about in the group about the visa expiration and all of that. You know, I suddenly was creating this doomsday scenario for myself that looks so real. And yet in the midst of it, I have the presence of mind at some point in there to say, wow, this is really amazing that we are so powerful that we can create this illusion of limitation. And you can appreciate that instead of being paralyzed by it. It can be more of a, like a wow factor. And so I use, I remember that in relation to money too where I can look at a certain sum of money and think, "Oh, my life would be really great if I had X number of dollars in the bank." And I can kind of step back from that and go, "That's really interesting how I can create this scenario that looks so real to me that says, you know, my life would be better if I had X amount of money in the bank, or, you know, I'd feel more secure. And it's just completely made up. And there's some kind of a, instead of like before when I was scared of my thinking, now I'm more in awe of it. Now it's more like, wow, isn't that amazing, this thing that we can do? So, you know, I don't know if that helps at all, Brian, but, you know, I've kind of stepped back further and further and started to see human beings as these amazingly creative creatures who can make anything look real to them. So thanks, Brian. Marie-Françoise says, sometimes, all the time, I have a problem distinguishing my thoughts and feelings from reality. It feels and looks real to me. Well, that's the whole point, Marie-Françoise. You hit the nail on the head. It does look real. You know, I think what we can start to do though is realize that, yeah, we're having this experience that looks very real to us, and money is one of those things that's got so much thinking about it that it looks very real. But in, in the midst of all of that, if we can even have the tiniest glimpse of the fact that That's the waves on the ocean. And we are actually the ocean itself. You know, that's, that's the only piece that to me really matters is just having, even if it, it doesn't, we don't have to like try to believe that or accept it or anything, but just kind of, you know, maybe looking back in our own experience and remembering times where we were able to feel that even in the midst of chaos. That can be very, very helpful. Hi Julie. I'm feeling there's a contradiction for me between following the things I really want to do that are unlikely to create quick cash and making a fast buck in ways I know I can but don't really want to do. Interesting, Julie. It's really an option, isn't it? It's like sometimes making quick cash can be fun no matter what you're doing to get it. Just the sheer act of being able to create that. That. It's sort of exciting. And I have done that in the past. I know, for instance, when was that? I think it was about a year ago. I was looking for some quick cash and I knew that if I put a specific offering out there that I would get people to respond to it. It wasn't necessarily something that I was completely passionate about, but I needed some money right then and I enjoyed the work you know, well enough that I knew I wasn't going to have a horrible time doing it or anything. And it actually turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would. I had sort of this preconception about, oh, I'm probably not going to like this very much. And I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. So there can be some joy in either of those scenarios, if that makes sense, Julie. If not, let me know. Mary, fear is actually on our side, a friend letting us know we're in our heads again. That's an interesting way of looking at it. Yeah, Mary. And, you know, I feel like we place so many judgments on our feelings as if some of them are better than others. And I think what you're pointing to there is that there's no judgment necessary at all about anything that we experience. You know, I can have a day like I had the other day where I was completely flipping out. And at the same time, I was kind of like, wow, I'm really flipping out. That's sort of interesting that I've created this whole scenario. I didn't feel necessarily like I was, you know, I shouldn't have felt that way. The only thing I did feel bad about was I think I created not so great an experience for my husband who was having to listen to me all day. And I did apologize later for that. But I think if we can just remove all of this judgment about, you know, what we're seeing or what we're feeling or what we're thinking, Just ignore all of that stuff. Don't place a judgment on whether it's good or bad. Oh, great, Marie from us. Thank you. And just recognize the fact that that's simply what it means to be human. We're going to have these stories that we tell ourselves. We just are. That's just the way it is. It's way past my pay grade to understand why. I don't ask why. I don't care to know why. I will never understand that. What I do know for a fact, and I know that everybody listening to this knows this too, whether you thought about it consciously or not, is that those stories are not who we are. And that, that includes any story we have about money. We don't have to try to rewrite the story with another story. That's another thing I talk about in the book. It's like, why would I want to try to rewrite thoughts with new thoughts? I'd rather just access myself because I, just like you, am the source of everything, and that includes money. Let's see, Marva says, I have to listen to this talk again. You judge and compare yourself a lot. Okay, anybody else judge and compare yourself a lot? I'm raising my hand because I do that too. It's just that I don't care anymore that I do. I think that's the difference. It's like It's not as if I don't feel that there are things about myself that I can improve, okay? But I don't really care that I do those things. I don't have any feelings of, oh, I need to work on my self-worth, or I need to stop feeling so negative about whatever. I just don't care. If I have a bad day like I did the other day, if I have a day where I'm looking at other people in business and going, why are they more successful than I am? What's wrong with me? I just don't care. It's like, yeah, that's a temporary movie I'm watching, not real. I can go back into this infinite well of creative ideas because we're these idea machines, and I can just go back there and have fun. And I don't need to pay attention to any of that kind of judgment stuff. Because it's just, it's just not true. And I don't care that I have it anymore. I'm so radical. I don't care. I know this is one of the things that I say often that people kind of call me out on and wonder what the heck I'm saying. So I'll kind of repeat it. If I have a feeling about money that's like fearful, like we were talking about before, I just don't care. It doesn't matter to me. My feelings no longer have any importance to me. They are more like these beautiful jewels that appear in my life no matter what they look like, whether they're freaking out like I was a couple days ago or they're, you know, calm and reassuring another day. They are all just this beautiful bouquet that is always available to me and is always creating a new sensation of being human. Without them, I wouldn't know I was here talking to you. But that doesn't mean that I have to care about what they are. If I have a few bad days, I have a few bad days. I don't have to worry about having those bad days. I don't have to worry about having judgmental thinking about my money situation. It makes no difference. And people often wonder, well, how can you not care about what you feel? And the only thing I can say is that I know that there's so much more to us than what those surface feelings are. Like, for example, if you imagine that you're an astronaut and you're out in space and you're looking at the Earth, okay, suddenly the little ripples of weather and things like that seem really inconsequential when you see what's actually there. And that's really what I'm trying to convey in, in this talk, is that we can continue to pay attention to those little ripples of weather and things, or we can realize that we are just like that planet Earth, that we already have everything we could ever need, that we are the source of all of it, and that, that whatever, you know, blips we have in our thinking or whatever make no difference in terms of the wealth that already exists. So I don't know if that helps a little bit. Marie-Françoise and everyone, but that's often a helpful image for me to conjure up in this discussion. Brian says, this is revolutionary. Well, thanks, Brian. You know, it's interesting because it feels that way to me because, you know, I think I quote in my book Oscar Wilde who says everything popular is wrong. And I love that quote because I think we can get caught up. Yeah, exactly, Bertie. Your thought, you have your thoughts, but your thoughts don't have you. They couldn't, they couldn't possibly have you because we're, you know, huge. We're infinite. Our thoughts can't contain what we are. And I feel like, you know, culture goes through these changes and certain things become accepted. As part of the normal conversation, like we started with in this talk. Well, we have to attract abundance or we have to manifest things or if we're not having money in our life, then we're pushing it away and all that. And that starts to look very real. And what I'm suggesting, as you say, Brian, is revolutionary because it has nothing to do with any of that. It's saying none of that is necessary because we already have everything. It's already right here. We don't actually have to do anything to attract it. What we need to do, if you will, is listen to ourselves and see how that creates itself into form in the outside world. Hey, Laurie, I know that we're all, we all are connected to this infinite well of creativity, but do you think some people are better at some things than others? For instance, I know I could be expanding my art classes. I'm having a hard time coming ideas. Same, some people who come up with ideas really easily, they might have a hard time doing other things. So that's interesting. I do feel like as much as we are universal as humans, I do believe that we've each been given some interesting traits. Having said that though, I'm gonna make another radical turn here. And Lori, you may have heard me talk about this before and suggest to you that creativity is not limited in any way either, that it is not limited to certain buckets. For instance, when I was talking with one of my coaches, she said to me, you know, who do you think you are to have a successful business so quickly? We were kind of joking because I said, you know, I'd never seen myself that way. I never knew that I was creative. Creative in the area of business. It just never occurred to me. And suddenly here I was very quickly earning a pretty good living doing something brand new, and I didn't know that I could do that. And she's like, that's because creativity is not limited to anything. It's our nature. It's our natural state as human beings. So we can access that and use it in any way that we want. And so, you know, there may be things that we have never tried because we have this idea that we can't do them. But that may not be true at all. So I think we can use that creativity in any way we wish, and we can apply it to anything we wish because there is no limitation around it. So let me know if that helps, Laurie. Doug, you have no attachment or aversion to your thoughts and feelings. Thoughts are neutral. Easier said than done. Thoughts are neutral. Yeah, they are neutral. And easier said than done. I think that what you're saying there is that— and maybe I need to be clear about this. It's not that I don't feel things. In fact, I think I feel things more now than I ever have because I have no attachment to whether or not they're good or bad or anything. So when I feel freaked out, I really feel freaked out. When I feel scared, I really feel scared. It just doesn't bother me that I feel scared anymore. I know that it doesn't preclude me from doing something that I wanna do or creating something. I have created some of what I feel is my best work in a terrible state of mind, absolutely awful. In fact, I can think back to, I like these emoticons. I can think back to one weekend I had where I had a deadline something was due on Monday. And when I say I was feeling awful, I mean, I was in the worst state of mind. I was angry, I was just awful, terrible, terrible. And I had this deadline and I had to get this thing done. And I did the thing and it turned out to be some of the best writing that I had ever done in a long, long time. And that was a big wake-up call to me. It was like, okay, so now I get this. This is what we were talking about on the first Facebook Live. That I can be kind of neutral about any experience and know that that creativity and that source and all of that is still ready and willing to help me to do whatever I need to do. And so it's not that I, you know, try to avoid feelings or whatever. I just know that they have no consequence is what I guess I'm trying to say. So I'm not sure if that helps. Susanna, sometimes we think we're not good at something because we haven't really tried it. Yeah, isn't that funny? Like, I wonder how many things I could actually be good at. I just haven't tried them because I have some idea in my mind that I would be bad at them. You know, that would be an interesting exercise to write down all of those things and see what they are. Maybe try some of them next year. Marie-France says, thank you. You're talking about the opposite of law of attraction or positive thinking. I've always struggled with those concepts. I know intellectually I'm bigger than my thoughts, but if my thoughts are creating my experience and I want a better experience, then my thoughts seem extremely important. Okay. So, oh, great, Doug. Thank you. So I think what I'm trying to say there, Marie-Françoise, is that there's something else that is responsible for our experience of life that isn't all our thinking. And I think that this is something that people are very confused about. And I would like to clear that up, which is we experience more than our thoughts. You know, everyone here has had an experience like I was describing the other day where you can have one experience going on emotionally, but you can also have a separate one that almost seems larger than that, that seems more forceful and more grounded than that. And so I, in all of the work that I do, I try to help people point themselves more in that direction so that they are accessing what I feel is our real experience of being human that has nothing to do with our thinking and feeling. You know, like I said yesterday, you know, the earth has a crust. If you look at the thoughts and feelings as the crust, but there's all this other wealth underneath that and all this richness underneath that. The sort of surface experience of being human starts to feel less powerful and the real experience starts to come to the surface more. Let's see. Lori, yeah, okay. Nina, I was really good at ignoring my feelings as a kid. Growing up, I started listening to thoughts and input that said I was too cold, out of touch with my feelings, and spent years trying to get in touch with my feelings. Right. Yeah, they're just— it's kind of like— that's a lot of what I was talking about a moment ago, Nina, which is that the The cultural conversation is telling us that we have to invest a lot of time and energy and everything into our feelings. You know, there's whole books written about certain feelings that we're supposed to do something about and deal with. And that looks so completely pointless to me. That's like, why would I ever want to spend time trying to pin down my thinking? I can't do that anyway. So why would I ever want to even try to do that. And believe me, I spent years trying in traditional psychotherapy and all kinds of things. And it became so obvious to me a few years ago how pointless all of that was. It's like, yeah, so I have certain thoughts and they have certain feelings, not a big deal. And I have a lot more that I can access other than that. So I'm going to go do that. And that's one thing I mentioned in the book too. It's like we can we can spend all this time trying to attract things or manifest things and play with our thinking and try to get in the right mindset, but we're the source of money. So why do we have to even worry about what those thoughts are doing? They're just going to do what they do. We can't control them. So let's just kind of get on with the, with this thing called life with a capital L. This isn't really about money, is it? Well, yes and no. It is and it isn't. As somebody wrote on a testimonial for the program, they said, you know, if you're looking for a program that's about making money, it's— don't take this program. If you want a program that's going to help you see something about life, take this program. And really what I'm doing here is using money, which is such a big topic for a lot of people, as sort of the catalyst for these insights. And I have seen a definite shift in my own life around money, how I make it, how much I make, how easily it shows up now. Otherwise, I wouldn't be confident in teaching this. So, it can have an effect in that way as well. But you're right in that we are talking about something that's much bigger than that. And can have a ripple effect across every area of our life that we want to change. I just find it fun to talk about money because it's such a charged and creative topic that people really love discussing and looking at, including me. So I hope that's helpful. So I think I will close this out unless anyone has any more thoughts and comments. And I'd love to hear about where you are in the challenge, if you've got a dollar amount that you'd love to try to make by the end of the challenge for a specific purpose. So if you'd like to post that in the group, that would be wonderful to hear. I'd love to hear about that, and we can sort of cheer each other on. In the program, we call ourselves Team Money Honey because we're all in this together, and we're all having fun exploring money as this beautiful creative expression of who we actually are and looking at it from this vantage point of truth that, you know, that it's not something out there, that it is something within us already and we don't have to go about attracting it or trying to, you know, trap it or catch it or hunt it down like I used to do or, you know, sometimes it used to look like this big monster that I had to slay or something. And now it looks more, much more joyful and fun because I see that it's me and it's you and you are filled with, you know, limitless joy and, and limitless abundance and limitless love and appreciation and money is simply another expression of that. Doug, I feel freer and liberated from my thoughts and limits. Great. There aren't any limits. Isn't that amazing to think about? You know, somebody, another coach I worked with a little bit, you know, basically says if we have any thought of limitation, we know right away it's false. It has to be false because there is no limit to you and me. You know, that would be like saying that there is a limit to space or there's a limit to anything like that. I mean, there's no way that that can be true. And I find that sort of a helpful thing to remember. If I have any sense at all that I have a limit on me, I know for a fact I can very easily dismiss that. It's just not, not so. So let me know, has this been helpful to you? Do you feel like it's prompted some new ideas about money? And yeah, me too, Birdie. And again, it may take a while for this to sort of sink in. So don't worry about it. If you're listening to this going, what is she saying? It sounds like gobbledygook. Totally get it. Listen a few times. Post your thoughts and comments. You feel more hopeful. Oh, great. Thanks, Seb. I appreciate that. Like the thumbs up, Chris. Brian, thank you. Hi, Dale. No one bought. I'm okay. Wondering about the next step. You know, Dale, there have been so many things I've put out there that nobody's bought. And I was like, well, Well, okay, either I wasn't listening to them and didn't provide them with something they really wanted, or maybe I wasn't positioning it in a way that they understood how it would help them, or maybe it just wasn't a good idea. But I got a million more of those, so I'll just try another one. And again, I don't judge myself for that. It's like, oh well. Hey, great, Kathy. I'm glad I'm speaking your language, Sarah. That's good, because sometimes I wonder. All right, you guys. Thank you so much for being here. And again, feel free to post anytime in the group. I am in there and ready to help facilitate anything that I can during this challenge. And if you watch this again and more thoughts come up, please feel free to post them. It's been a joy interacting with all of you. And thank you so very much for being here. Hopefully tomorrow on Facebook Live, same time, I will have a bit more of a voice. We'll have to see. All right. Thanks, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye for now.