Live the Life You Really Want

Welcome everyone, thank you so much for joining, and thank you so much, Quest, for actually having me. It's such a pleasure to actually be here. My name is Wani Iris Manly, and today we're going to be talking about living a life that you really want. And so I want to start this discussion off— it's going to be interactive, it's not going to just be me up here just kind of like blah blah blah, so I want you to feel free to interact with me. And so I want to start this discussion off with just asking this question: I want you to take a look at your life and to just answer this: are you living the life that you really want?

Yeah.

You are? You are? Okay, tell me. Great!

Sounds like it. Well, I mean, I'm— I have a supportive husband, I have 3 wonderful kids, and there are always challenges with both of those things. But, you know, without challenge, there's— what is it? There's nothing. And I have my own practice, and I'm able to support it. I have a wonderful new assistant.

I'm—

I can't really complain. Of course I could, and if you'd like to sit down, I could list a whole 3 pages of complaints. But I think for the most part, I'm pretty satisfied and grateful for what I have.

So, wow. That's excellent because, you know, you're actually in the minority because the majority of people in the United States are not living lives they really want. Um, in actuality, most people are stressed out. They are living in overwhelm. They are addicted to, uh, new medication to make them feel happy. A lot of people are in unfulfilling jobs and they're just doing work just to pay bills. I think we have somebody that's trying to come in. Amen. Thank you. Yes, most people are very unfulfilled, and this is including like well-educated middle-class Americans, doctors, lawyers, you know, that are completely unfulfilled, that are living paycheck to paycheck. Um, if they have their own business, they're actually living client to client, and they're literally one step away from being broke. We all know about the debt situation here, how pretty much everyone is just in a ton of debt, right? And a lot of people are feeling, you know, I can't handle it all, right?

Right?

And so when you ask the question, at least when I give this talk, which is my central message, nobody ever answers and says yes. I want to say you're the very first one. And so, and it's okay, you know, because I, you know, I can say for myself that when you first set off on this journey called life, that anyone ask you, hey, go out there, tell you to go out there and live the Black people really want. Did anybody hear that? No, no, no, I didn't either, right? So it wasn't like there was no memo that was actually passed around saying, you know, so hey, this is how you move Black people really want. So I, for myself, found myself, you know, we all got the memo of this, right? You go to school, you go, you know, you're good to your parents, respectful, be respectful to your parents, go to school, get your grades, get a good job, go to college, you know, get a job at a great company, work hard, climb the ladder, and then you're gonna, you know, retire from them, and then in between all of that, you're gonna get married to the hot guy, you know, the hot girl, you know, have perfect 2.5 kids and white picket fence, right? That was the memo that I got. Did you guys get the same memo too?

Yes.

No. Right. My memo was like, work hard, don't worry about kids. Exactly, but something to the effect of that, that's the American dream that we were all we all bought and sold, right? Let me ask you this. How many of you when you first— are still with the same company that you were with when you first got out of school? Oh, wow. I just finished school like last year. Yeah, I guess. Congratulations. After like 7 years, I finally did it. Great for you.

I didn't know that. Congratulations.

Congratulations. But as you can see by a show of hands, like, that memo didn't quite really work out for a lot of people, right? A lot of people, especially in American culture, whether you're born here or not, have had multiple jobs in search of something that's going to actually give them the right compensation, the right quality of life, and actually kind of feel like you're actually doing something with yourself, right? And so for many of us, we— that quest lasts like for an entire lifetime, right? And so what I want to talk to you about today is giving you what I feel are about 8 tenets to actually creating the life you really want. To leave the script that we were all given and actually start running your brand new script and create lives that's as much more fulfilling. So why am I qualified to actually talk about this, right? Like, who the hell am I to be talking to you about this? Well, I will say that you're looking at someone who is living the life that she really wants. And I can tell you that at 6 years old, when you asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to live between Europe and the United States and have multiple homes. So I actually live in Paris and I come back to Miami for the week— not the weekends, the winter. So I split my time between Paris and Miami. And I haven't had multiple homes. And I learned I have to be more specific with the universe. Not Airbnb, no. I used one in Miami before, but I knew Wani Iris Manly. And so I am an abundance mindset coach. Can I close the door?

Yeah.

So we can actually hear. Thank you. I'm a best-selling author of the book Get Out of Survival Mode and Live the Life You Really Want. I'm an international speaker, and I'm also too a corporate lawyer as well too. I think some lawyers are in the room. And, um, but I somehow went on a different journey than what I was actually set out to do, right? And so in a sense for me, I got the same memo and I just, I went the lawyer route because my family's from Liberia, West Africa. My father was the former Minister of Finance for the country and I was trying to make him proud. You see, what most of us are doing with the lives that we're actually living is to make our parents happy. And 9 times out of 10 is to make our fathers proud, right? Why is that? It is because we get our sense of who we are, our sense of value and confidence from our fathers. And so we're all living lives to make our parents happy and to please them. And we're not living the lives that's authentically us, right? Because we're such do-gooders and do-good-natured spirits, we want to make our parents both proud. So what happens is in our 40s, or in our 30s if you're a woman, like in your 40s, we have what happens to be called a midlife crisis, where you wake up and you're like, whoa, what the hell is this? Like, this is not what I wanted to do, right? And then you have the divorce happening, the man gets the Ferrari with the empty woman, you know, the woman's getting, you know, you know, she's blowing up, whatever, you know, it's like we're trying to compensate, you know, to fulfill. We're waking up like, wait a minute, like, this is not the story that I actually— that I've been to, right? And so I'm going to talk to you about what I feel, what's— how I have found, what I've been coaching my clients on, is how to actually take back your life and live it for yourself.? And I personally have found there's like 8 tenets to it, right? Number 1 is that you have to have a clear vision of what the hell you want in the first place, right? Because if you don't have a vision, how do you know where you're going to be going, you know? And so many of us are walking through life in a sense of like, you know, just going through it. It's like you get on the train or get on the bus, and you just expect the driver to take you where you want to go, and that's just really impossible, right? And so you've got to have a clear vision of what it is that you want your life to be like. And come in. Hi. Sit down here. You can sit down. You're just in time. You got to have a clear vision. Now, how you have a clear vision is you got to start asking the question that probably you didn't hear when you were young, which is what do you really want? You know, what do you really want to become? You know, more than what you really want to do other than, which is code word for be a lawyer. I mean, who heard that? You know, be a doctor, right? Those are two professions in society here that really matters. I mean, God forbid if you said I want to be a dancer. They were like, the hell you're not, you're not going to make any money doing it, right? And so yeah, we found ourselves are all in professions because of the money, and we're completely unfulfilled, right? So you gotta start— so when the question is asked, what do I really, really want? People are very disconnected from that because they're not used to really— number one, they don't feel they can actually have what they want because they have never been really asked the question. So in order for you to figure out like what my vision is, what I want my life to be like, you have to start asking, you know, what I want my life to actually be about, like what I want to be doing on a daily basis, like how do I want it to feel? Where do I want to live? Like how do I want my— like what does I want to smell like, you know? And you have to look at, okay, what do you treasure? Like one of my values and what I treasure is my freedom. I love to travel. I know for me in this lifetime, I'm butterfly, I'm supposed to be in different places, different cultures. So I know for me, living the life that I really want is a global life, you know? At this point it happens to be Paris, and I'll tell you a story about that. But I thought I was on my way to Italy. And so you gotta have a clear vision because if you don't, you're gonna keep wandering and being a lost soul and finding yourself just kind of like existing, which is where most people are, and just kind of going through the motions and living for Fridays. I mean, I love Fridays too, but if you really think about it, people are miserable Monday through Thursday and they can only be happy from Friday to Sunday. And then when Friday to Saturday, because on Sunday, right, you start to have anxiety about Monday, right? I mean, it's like, it seems It's like, that's really, when you really think about it, peel away the conditioning, that's really the only way how to live, right? So the first thing you gotta have, I'm actually gonna write this on here. I wasn't planning on using the board, but it's there. Number 1, clear vision. Can everyone see this? Yes. I'm gonna use the blue marker. All right. Great, okay. The second step, or the second tenet to living the life that you really want, is belief. Now this is huge, because you have to understand something. Everything that you're experiencing in your life is what you believe. Everything. We're not taught that until you get a— later in life, until you start to get into a path of personal development, spirituality, which is kind of wondering like, whoa, this is not really quite working out. So maybe what I was taught was not quite the full story. So let me just get a story, let me just figure it out, let me just take on a path and see what's true. And so whatever you're believing, whatever you are—

hi!

I told you you were going to come here. Okay, okay, okay. I'm using this board over here now, so. You have to believe first that it's actually possible, because without belief, nothing's going to happen, right? Henry Ford, the inventor of the first car, the Model T, said it best. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. I'm going to tell you a story about belief. So about 2010, I was living here in Miami, and I went to Thailand with my then massage therapist, and his wife, they had a practice in Hua Hin, and they would take their clients, whomever wants to go and get, for the whole summer, they would go for 4 weeks, and they would take their clients who wanted to go and get certified in Thai massage. I went for a vacation, I joined them in the second week of the trip. It was myself, Angel and his wife, and then 3 other girls. Angel and Monica were the owners of the salon, or the spa. And so, we got there, we were staying, we went to Chiang Mai, flew into Bangkok, then we went to Chiang Mai, we were staying Beautiful Bodhi Tree Hotel, super zen, super Buddha. The quality of the care was just like tremendous. Like for example, the housemaid actually threw away my contact lens on a Sunday. They called in a plumber, they took the whole thing apart, couldn't find my contacts. They called the local optometrist who was on holiday and says, get back to work, you have to check on Taurus, give her eye exam. They picked me up, they were like, take me shopping, whatever you want. I just want fresh coconut water, and I had like 2 of those. They took me, gave me an eye exam, and the guy gave me a contact lens for a whole year. Wow, that's love. That starts at first grade. Then we go to— we start, then we move over to the islands, and the first island we went to was, I believe, was Koh Samui. We were in the Four Seasons, again, 5-star everything, right? I'm with 5 people. The next port we go to is a place called Koh Phangan. And it's like we go to this like alternative retreat center that was built by the richest man in Scotland. And basically when you enter Koh Phangan, you can only access it by small fishing boats, right? And it was like this big retreat center for like Reiki and like different alternative medicine, yoga type stuff, like that kind of energy, but built like in the jungles in like different bungalows, right? When we got there, I was like, what the hell is this? I was not Listen, I don't like the slummit when it comes to traveling. I don't like to do Airbnb, because to me traveling is a treat. I want a 5-star, right? So I was outnumbered. The whole group wanted to stay like this most expensive part of the whole place, and I was like, this is crap, you know? And but I was outnumbered, I was like, you know, I'm gonna take one for the team, right? So I'm there and I'm miserable. I— one thing about me is like I wear my freaking heart on my sleeve. I'm a terrible liar. And I just, wherever I feel, you know it, right? I mean, we were sleeping like, our living room had a big freaking oak tree in the middle of it, there were bats flying around, we were sleeping in mosquito nets, I would not put my body, like a part of my skin touched anything, right? But they were supposed to be really adventurous, Wani Iris Manly, and I was like, what the hell am I doing here, right? Because I believe that life is a constant dialogue, there's a lesson in everything, right? So I was asking the question, how the hell did I go from the Four Seasons to this crowd, right? And I was miserable, everybody was just loving it, and I was just like in hell, right? And I remember,— because I'm on a spiritual journey and I know how the truth works, I was like, okay, I created this, number one, there's a reason for it. So I kept asking questions like, what am I doing here, right? And at this point there was— have you guys ever heard of Sun Yogi from India? This is a guy, he apparently died. This is a yogi from India who discovered that we don't need to eat and he could actually get we could get our nutrients by looking at the sun a particular way. He discovered Kriya Yoga. And the only reason why I knew about him was because my spiritual group, my teacher was in Kiva Sgane, and everybody was at that point doing Kriya Yoga, and so that's why I knew about this yogi. I wasn't into it, I liked Bikram Yoga. This guy ended up being at the place that I hated, this place we were staying at. And I was like, "Okay, maybe I'm supposed to learn from him," right? So he was teaching classes on how to He didn't eat. He was just looking at the sun, right? He didn't drink. It was this big. So I took his class one morning. I got up at 6 o'clock, and he taught, you know, how to, like, you know, look at the sun, you know, and get your nutrients. And I didn't really connect with it at all. I did learn 5 things. Like, he would say, when you wake up every single day, you should be asking 5 questions. 1, who am I? 2, what do I want? 3, why do I want it? 4, with where I am right now, is it taking me to where I'm going? And the people that I'm around with, are they helping me get to where I need to go? He says every day we should be asking ourselves those 5 questions. So then— come in! Um, so then I took those 5 questions up and I was like, this is still not it. I was just still miserable as hell in that place, right? So we were there for 3 days, and so everybody— that's Monica, Angela, the girls— everyone's all loving. Like, one day I was like meditating on the beach, right? I was just sitting there because all I was gonna come to meditate, and it was like a bright, bright sunny day. And I was sitting there, remember, like, to enter the island or this little— this place, you had to come by a fisherman's boat. So I'm sitting there and there's this like fisherman's boat approaching me, and there's 3 people on it, and the front was just like maybe like a 6-foot 6 or 7-year-old girl, gorgeous girl, like beautiful long, she was mulatto, like blonde, goldy curly locks, right? And it was her father was in the back of her, he was a Jamaican Rastafarian, had long dreadlocks, and the mother was white from Canada, and that was her family. And as this girl was approaching me, she just looked like a thousand suns radiating through her and out her, and I said, "That's why I'm here." And I go, what's the— like I just said, and I knew right then and there why I was here in this crappy island, hating life. It was to get a message, right? And as they're coming, it was a family I discovered that were from Toronto. And right away when I made the connection, I said, you know what, universe, this girl and her group has a message for me. And I got it. And the message that I got was, hi, come in, was that you know exactly the kind of life you want to live. And that is to be living globally in different countries and living in different parts of the world and having a family and being married, having children to live that life. But for somehow the collective conditioning in our society is we can't have all that. You got to be married, you have to keep your stock, you got to be in one place, you can't move around. But you're needing— you've always felt, you've always believed that, but you always are constantly being told otherwise. And this is a physical manifestation of it right here. And I love that island, and it was such confirmation in believing in what I knew was right for me that I just— nobody can tamper with that. The same thing, I don't believe that after 35 a woman has trouble having kids. If you believe it, you're going to experience it. I just— I believe what I— I believe beliefs that serve. So I'm saying to you that in order for you to have the life that you really want, you have to start cultivating beliefs that serves you. Not work against you? And you have to stop listening to the chatter of the naysayers, the negative Nancys that "no you can't" blah blah blah— and hold steadfast to your belief because I could tell you right now at a point in my life where I am open to get married, I am open to having children, guess who I'm meeting? Men that are all about it. They're interested in having a dynamic life, they want to live here, da-da-da, and we're just in that same frequency. So it's possible. Not only is it possible, there's evidence of it. The third component to— let's say here— so we have belief is intention. You have to be intentional about your life. I can tell you for me right now that no one ever taught me how to set an intention. I had never heard that before until 2009 when I found a brilliant teacher from England who was raised to be England's next prime minister. He went to school with the royals and he's in Hebeskane, a spiritual teacher giving up all of his money and helping people become enlightened with similar information I'm sharing with you here. And he taught me how to set an intention to create the life that I really want, and I can tell you single-handedly This is the most important thing I've ever learned. It's been more valuable than my law degree, than my college education, everything, because when I began to do it, my life began to become something magical, more than what I ever thought it would ever be like. And so I'm going to tell you how he said this, how he taught me to set intention. It's very, very simple, right? And— but before that, it's like you have to be intentional about what you're doing. Intentional— creating intentional happiness. Creating intention, because a lot of us— and I used to be one of those people— are just hoping. We're all on hope. We have a hope strategy, right? We're just hoping things are going to fall into place. I'm a millionaire, I just hope I'm a millionaire. Like, I want to get married, I'm just going to hope. But yeah, it's like we all just kind of— because we feel we're good, we're good enough and pretty enough and this enough, it's like it's all just going to fall like that. And it's like, no, we have to be intentional about it and take the the action steps to get us what we want. And so what he taught me was that the way you set an intention is, what do you want to have? For example, one of my big dreams was to be a speaker, right? So I would say, I set an intention to be a speaker, to be sharing powerful messages, to be traveling around the world, sharing my message of living life that you really want, get out of survival mode, of audience of all sides. I would close my eyes and I would just visualize myself doing that, right? The next step is you repeat a word of creation that you connect with. Now, he said, taught me to use the word God, but I also know that, and I connect with the word God, and I also know that God is the most, what's the word I'm looking for, it's the most fiery word in the dictionary because everybody has a different connotation to it, right? And in fact, I'm told when you're speaking, don't talk about, don't mention the G word. Because people, you know, people from different parts of the world, but for me, I connect with it, and so for me, I tend to use the word God. You just want to repeat a name of creation where you connect. You can use the word love. You can use the word yes, yes, yes, and you just repeat it as you're visualizing your intention and you're connecting with it. You repeat it 11 times, and you just, as you're saying, you're not, you're seeing it as already done. You're seeing yourself in a picture right now, and you just release and you let it go. But you don't just put your feet up and wait, which is what a lot of people did. You read the book The Secret, you saw the movie, that's exactly what a lot of people did, right? You sent your affirmation and then you just, you know, everyone's waiting. Exactly, right? But then you gotta take action, you know? And so when you start taking— you may not know the whole picture, you may not know every single step, but every single at least one thing you could be doing. So for me, it's a call, "Hey Natalie, can I come up and do a talk, a book talk for class?" "Oh my God, yes, I would love for you to do that." You know, you come in, you do a talk, and you know someone's in the audience, "Oh my God, you know what, I've got a girls' group, would you come and speak?" And so it's like, that's little by little, that's what I started doing. And here it is, I've got a packed schedule of speaking engagements, right? And so it's like you just start taking steps, but you have your intention and you just, you move forward with it. But I will tell you one thing about an intention is this: you can set the intention for the material things to manifest, but if you are not aligned with the energy of it, it's not coming. For example, everybody wants to make money, right? Everybody wants to be rich. Who doesn't, right? But here's the thing, if you're thinking about wanting to make money, wanting to be rich but your constant chatter and talk is, I'm broke, I can't afford it, life sucks, you know, like my paycheck's not enough. Guess what? You're— it's, it's a mismatch, you know, because you gotta understand, in this universe, we're a frequency-based universe. Everything is energy, and for you to have something, you have to align with it. So if there's something in your life where you're not aligned with, what you don't have in your life, it just means you're not in alignment with it. You're not on the same frequency. Frequency. Think about a radio station, right? You go— I know I listen to radio— if you go listen to— you want country music, you turn on country music, right? You don't expect to hear salsa if you want to hear country. So it's like the same, it's all about a frequency, right? So the thing about intention is you also want to be setting intentions on an energetic level. For me, I can tell you that the mother of all intentions to set to align with everything that you want is to be the energy of love. Of love to all people, to love to yourself, because love is the vibe— is underlying everything. And when you're operating in a space of love towards yourself, towards other people, you're in the flow of life, and things just magically work out. Which brings me to number 4: self-love. Now I'm going to ask you guys another question. How many people in this room ever heard, was told to love yourself and somebody showed you how to do it? Really? You're the first one. You know, it's when you believe in God and when you read the Bible, in the Bible there says that you love God as you love other people. And if you don't learn to love yourself, how you I can love another people. That's the reality.

I want to piggyback on that because I was at Mass one day, because I'm Catholic, and I was listening to the homily, I mean I was listening to the Gospel and the homily, and it was the love your neighbor as yourself. And there was a kid in front of me taking notes for his CCD class. And what I saw him write was, "Love your neighbor, love yourself." And I never actually thought of it that way, but I was like, right, how can you love your neighbor as yourself if you don't love yourself first?

Right?

So that was where I saw from a 7-year-old writing down, you know, what he heard, and that's exactly what I'm not hearing in this passage. Yeah.

You know, for me, I grew up Christian too, not Catholic. My mother— my father was Catholic, and my mother was Baptist, but I never— no one ever sat me down and said, even though I grew up reading the Bible, no one ever said and said, this is how I'm going to teach you how to love yourself. And so, so many of us, we may hear it, we may read it, but are we walking around really loving ourselves, right? I can tell you the first time someone told me to my face, I love myself, I was like, what do you mean? Of course I love myself, you know, I know I'm pretty. And she was like, that's attention, that's not— I mean, she was like, you know, she was like, I call her my second mother, but she was so on me, like, you know, she was just I love her for that, but she's actually really— but I didn't know, I didn't love myself, right? So that's a lot of people, because we're taught to look for love outside of ourselves. We're taught to look for love through other people, right? And it's like, but no one's like, this is how you actually love yourself. And so we're all walking around feeling unfulfilled, feeling not loved, and then we're looking for other people to love us, and we go and get into a marriage, and then we feel complete because someone else feels feel we're worthy, they're going to marry us, but then guess what? We put all of our attention and hoping of love in another person, and one morning they wake up and they're like, I want a divorce. You're like, but wait a minute. Your whole life is destroyed. And it's like, what we don't see is we're looking to get from someone else what we have not yet given ourselves. And it doesn't work. And so for me, I had to learn. I first heard the term, or the teaching, or being shown, loved myself in 2009, and that's when I started my journey. And so for me, and I, you know, a lot of the problems that we have in our lives is because we're not loving ourselves. If we really loved ourselves, we'd feel deserving, we'd feel worthy of having what we want, we wouldn't be pleasing, you know, jumping through hoops, you know, to please everybody else other than ourselves, right? And so for me, you know, it's a lifelong journey. One of my favorite writers and muses is Oscar Wilde, and he says where he wrote that, you know, to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. And it really is. And I can tell you that when I began to love myself, my relationships got better, I started making more money, I started to be much more happier because I wasn't walking around with the freaking funk inside of me. I'm like, you know what I'm saying? Like, because it's— people feel it, you know? You walk with a chip on your shoulder because you're just angry at life, you know? I mean, it's not because it's not even love there. And you're just like, you know, it's It's not a great place to be, so I tell people, you just start very simple. You put your hand on your heart, you just say, "I love you," and you start telling yourself, "I love you, I love you, I love you," because you do it to the point to where let those words be the most familiar words that your mind hears. Because here's the thing, statistics say that we think about 60,000 thoughts per day, and they're all negative. All day long we're hearing, "You're crap, you can't do it, you're fat, da da da da, you're a piece of crap." I'm proud of that. It's like, but to hear positive things like you're beautiful, you're loved, you're enough, you're more than enough, like, you know, you're worthy. We have to tell ourselves those things, right? And so to go on a journey of life as I've done it, not loving yourself puts you in this. It puts you in struggle. It puts you in this working hard hustle mode all the time, feeling unworthy and just doing all of this work and not getting any reward. Why? You feel like you have to overcompensate by doing and doing and doing and doing for the lack of love that you feel inside of you. So I want to say that the most important relationship you will ever have, even if you have children, is the relationship you have with yourself. And so you must tend and nurture that relationship because if you don't, it's really going to be hard. And I just, I speak from experience. I, you're looking for someone right now who loves yourself, but I can tell you, I've been gaining a lot of weight in Miami. I've put on 20 pounds, believe it or not, coming from from France, and it's been a new journey to love this quote-unquote bigger self, bigger part of me, right? But it's like, you have to learn that, you know, I always, when I teach, I say, you know, we're all unique, like we're all like snowflakes, like there's what, 8.2 billion people on the planet, not a single person is you. Could ever be who looks like you, talks like you, articulates like you, thinks like you, like, and you all, we all have different gifts and talents that's unique to ourselves, so then The absurdity of not loving ourselves to me is just like, it's just so logical, right? But if we get into the thing about comparison game, right? We're always, we're comparing us with the next person who has what, who looks like this, and it just, it's a losing battle because you can never be your neighbor and she can never be you, and it's just like, but yet we go throughout life wanting to keep up with the Joneses, the Kardashians, and whomever else on Instagram. And we're feeling like crap because so-and-so has a bigger house, or we don't look like this, and it's like, it's really self-abuse. And so I want to say that life is so precious to be going on every single day and not really seeing yourself for the beautiful person that you are, because if you don't, it's just really hard. I mean, like, I just, I, and I say that because it's like, to walk around not feeling like you're enough, like feeling like— and you may not be walking around that saying it to other people, but your energy speaks that. The fact that you're taking a low-paying job is a reflection of that. The fact that you feel like you can't even take a holiday and tend to yourself, you know, and to give yourself the self-nurturing, is a testament to feeling like you're not deserving of your own love. So I just want to say love yourself again. Christ said, "I love you every single day." Look in the mirror. Gorgeous. You know, I'm serious. I mean, it feels very awkward, you know. And it's only— why is it awkward? Because we don't tell ourselves we love. We expect other people. So what if you're single? You're not— you know, there's not a man next to you, right? So you're not ever going to hear I love you because a man is not next to you saying I love you. I mean, how crazy is that? Even if you're married, sometimes you have to listen, right? So it's like, let's just Let's just make— can we just make a pact in here, please? Can we just make a pact to like take all of the responsibility that we've been putting on other people to love us and give it to ourselves? Say, you know what, my feelings are my business. Like, my love for myself is my business. If a man or someone else comes along and loves me, great. But it's like, you know what, I have to love this thing first, you know? Pinky swear, can y'all do it? Number 5, mindset. This is my favorite thing to talk about. It's what I teach. Mindset, mindset, mindset, which is the thoughts we're thinking, the beliefs that we're having, the chatter we're listening to. You gotta tend to this thing up here, right? And this thing extends to out there. It's in the media, it's in the newspaper, it's in everything. Your mind is not just between your two ears, right? It's everything you are feeding yourself into. And so because we have a collective consciousness where everyone's talking about what we don't have, can't do, can't get, it's all focused on lack, limitation, scarcity, or fear. Don't believe me? Go look at the news. That's why, no questions. Exactly, right? And so you got to understand that this thing right here, you got to keep it fertile. You got to— it's like a, like a flower, you got to fertilize it with good stuff, right? But what we don't— we don't tend to it. So we just kind of wake up and we fall into this, like, living on autopilot and not really taking time to tend to our mental capacity, because that's the thing that's creating your life. It's what you're thinking, what eating it, right? So you got to cultivate a daily mindset practice, number one, that not only gets you feeling good, because a lot of the stuff we have out there about meditate— about mindset and meditation is all about to make you feel good, right? It's to put a Band-Aid on the crap that's really underneath all that. And we all know it's like you can only— you can only treat the symptoms for so long. You got to get to the root cause. And so what you want to do is, yes, you want to be connected when you get into it, when you're meditating, things like which I highly recommend to really get into right frame of mind, of cultivating the right mindset. You gotta like— it has to be on two fronts. Number one, it's about like getting the life that you really want. You gotta have a mindset that is cultivated to number one, get you the— get your results, right? Because I can tell you that in the personal development industry and spirituality and all the change, there are so many people doing all kinds of crap. To get what they want, right? They're doing yoga, they're fasting, they're doing juicing, they're doing affirmations, and everyone is struggling like hell in this industry. I'm telling you, it's like part of it too is like, yeah, you know, the whole part of us to bring up all of your fear and to clear up all the crap that on a normal basis we tend to push away by, you know, camouflaging, by drinking, by, you know, watching too much TV and bingeing, right? But on the other hand, it's like we got to understand that we create our own realities. Like, we are responsible for what's happening in our life, and we do have some say-so too, right? Maybe the timing may not always be up to us, but in terms of what we want our general lives to be, we are actually creating whatever we want. And so I also— you have to look at number one, you have to number one visualize. Visualization of what you want is super important because what you, you have to— everything you're looking at was someone's imagination. It just kind of thin air, like someone sat and thought about it. And so you have to think about, as an architect for your life, you got to start visualizing what it is you want to be or what is it you want to do, and to see yourself in that moment of right now having it, even if you don't, right? Because what happens is like this thing called our minds, we have two of them. We have the subconscious and the conscious mine. And the subconscious wants a tape record. It has no idea what's real and what's not. So you sit in there and are in this energy and feeling and like, you know, of what you really want to be. If you were back then as a speaker, it is— it can't tell the difference, right? And so you also want to include on a daily basis like visualizing what is it you want and thinking about what is it you want to create and putting yourself in there. Number 2 is you also want to look at what your blocks are to it, right? Because at the end of the day, everything you want exists. If you think about it, everything you want, whether it's money, a husband, a relationship, a house, somebody already has it. So there's nothing that we're actually having to create, right? I mean, come on, if you think about it. So by definition, it's really all in our faces, right? But there's some reason why it's— okay, let's just take money for instance. Okay, the money's out there, but it's not in my personal bank account. There's something within you that's resisting it. And I'm not just talking about having a positive mindset. I'm talking about having a mindset that is positive, number one, but number two, that's also having the belief structure that you have to get you what you want. Because I'll tell you something about me. You're looking at the most delusional person on the planet. I am super delusional. Like, I'm telling you, like, I am a Pisces and I'm very Piscean. Adventurous, spontaneous. Like, the world can be catching on fire and I will find something positive about it. And I will always tell you, look on the bright side, even if I'm going through hell, right? But when I realized, when I was like looking up to clear my money stuff and to heal my relationship with money and begin to, you know, to have more money to accommodate my lifestyle, to be living where I want, I just started looking into my mindset and I discovered all of my beliefs about money were negative. On a subconscious level. I'm super positive, but what I was really believing on a conscious level was super negative, and that's the case for everyone. It's like you're saying you want money, but you're thinking money— we've all heard money is from the Walid. We're all saying rich people are bad. We've all heard the saying, you know, for a rich man to get through heaven, it's easier for a camel to go through. Yeah, you know, that's in the sense— that's what I'm talking about, those beliefs that we that we heard, like my mom would always say, "Who do you think you are, Rockefeller?" You know, like all of these things that we heard, like we grow up believing, and it cements into our consciousness, and we end up like manifesting these like crazy, like what the hell's going on, right? And so you gotta tend to like know what your beliefs are, and to start having beliefs that actually serves you. Number 6, I'm gonna go over here. Is being present. I probably should have been— this is the first thing. Guys, we are so living on autopilot. We are so attached to the iPhones, the Instagram, the Facebook, and it's killing our lives. I mean, it literally is like— so I'm going to teach you, you got to be more present. Most people, all of us,— unless you're very mindful— we either are living in the future, so we're super anxious, nervous, have like a lot of anxiety, or we're living in the past. We're regretting, we're having doubt, we're beating ourselves up, and like, "Shoulda, coulda, woulda, oh my God, I hope I didn't, da da da." But we're not in the present moment, and the power of our creating is in the present moment. So I'm going to show you a very— a 5-minute meditation you can do anytime of day to really get super present. Because when you're super present, that's when you start to have the ideas that flows to you to actually do what you want to do. It's really simple. It's called the 5 Senses Present Tense Meditation. So what we're going to do is, first of all, just listen to my voice and do what I tell you to do. I promise I won't tell you to do anything harmful. The first thing I want you to do is I want you to isolate your other senses and just look at— pay attention to what you see. Like, look in the room. Just look around. Just, like, engage the, you know, your eyes. Engage your sense of sight. Look at the walls. You know, look at the colors. Just engage your sense of sight right now. You've been in here before. Is there something you haven't noticed before? Like how the And just flow, but just engage your sense of sight. And now what I want you to do is I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to engage the sense of sound. Listen for all of the sounds in the room. Listen for all the sounds coming outside of the room. Listen for the sounds coming in one ear, in your left ear. And now listen for the sound that's coming through your right ear. I want you to listen for any sounds coming from the left side of the room, the back of the room, Just listen to any sound you may hear. And now I want you to engage the sense of smell. What kind of smell do you smell in your room? Smell of perfume, any sense of food, but just notice what kind of smells you smell right now. And now I want you to engage the sense of touch, and I just want you to just kind of, you know, notice how the chair feels on your body, Notice how it feels like the clothes you're wearing, your jeans too tight. Notice you can kind of just start to rub your skin and just kind of feel, you know, your skin and just kind of, you know, touch like your shoulders, your arms, but just engage the sense of touch. Notice how the chair you're sitting on is supporting your butt. Notice how the chair is supporting your back, perhaps. But just engage the sense of touch. And now I want you to engage the sense of taste. Notice what kind of taste you have in your mouth. You may want to take a swallow if you want. Just engage the sense of taste. You may want to take like your tongue and like rub it around like in the front of your mouth, in the front teeth. But just engage the sense of taste in your mouth. Now open your eyes. How do you feel? Calmer. Yeah. Were you thinking about anything else? Actually, no. No?

Nothing at all.

It's pretty impressive. It's profound, right? You feel the energy, it's just profoundly different. That's the point of power. That's the point of creation. As you can see, you can do this any time during the day, any time you feel agitated, which is to just do a 5 senses check-in with yourself. Notice you weren't in the future planning. We're in the room, everyone was in the room. And everybody was in the room. You weren't, you know, thinking about yesterday and what you did wrong. You were super physically, mentally, everything was here. That's how you take yourself off autopilot. I got the chicken. I'm falling asleep. So, okay, number 7. This is my favorite one, is getting out of your comfort zone.

This is a big one.

So, you guys have all heard this before, "Everything you want is outside of your comfort zone." Who's heard that before?

Right?

It's like one of the most famous memes on social media. Here, right? It's true. Not the real VIP, it's outside. It's outside your comfort zone. And so I want to share with you how— because here's the thing, everyone likes to be comfortable. Our— this thing up here, from here to here, is not your friend. It's not designed to give you what you want. It's designed to keep you safe, right? It's designed to keep you in a box and to keep you safe and anything that it views as different from when you step out, it feels like it's terror, right? And so we just stay in our comfort zones, living these non-existing— we're just existing, right? And so I want to tell you how you get out of that. And it's little by little, every single day, doing something outside of that and stretching myself, right? I'm a little bit crazy. I'm going to show you an example of my life where I got out of my comfort zone and I ended up living in Paris. So anyone who knows me really knows that I was on a trajectory to live in Italy. I was fond of Italian culture, studied there, loved their men. I mean, it's just like me, anything Italian, I'm all for it, right? Love this woman. Exactly. You know, I studied there. When I graduated law school, I literally was like looking for jobs in Italy for Italian enforcement. I discovered Italians made no money when they got out of law school. They all had to live with their parents. And I was like, that's not happening. I had $100,000 student loan debt and I was like, I was not living with my mother. We still don't get along. So I didn't go to Italy. I ended up coming to Miami, getting a job in the law firm here. And I was here in 2004, 2003 I was in New York, and I got a job in 2004. I was before Brickell. And I was here, worked for 2.5 years, and then I went off on my own. I got laid off, and I started my own firm. Didn't know crap about business, only knew how to be a lawyer. And so I was on that journey, struggling. So in 2010, I was in a relationship, first time fell in love, heart was broken, and spiritual path showed up in my life. Long story short, or you can get to the heart of it, 2000, New Year's Eve came, 2010. I woke up one morning, my life was hell. This was, it was the beginning of the crisis here in Miami with the market and everything. And I began to, I stayed home that day. I didn't go out and party in Coconut Grove with my friends. And I began to look at my life and do like an analyzation. Like literally sat at home and like really like looked at my stuff, right? 3 days later what ended up happening was I started getting this phenomenon of all of my space in my immediate vicinity with all these signs pointing me to Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris, France, France, blah blah blah. In the beginning it was 7 signs, and because I'm a writer I was noticing it, right, because it was so overt, you know. And my birthday's in February, so I went to Paris, like, okay God, like I noticed, like okay, you want me to go to Paris, what's the message, right? So I went to Paris, I was there for 4 days, I had been to Paris before, for when I was in law school for a date. I wasn't crazy about France like the typical American is, because I was all like, "Goo goo ga ga about Italy," right? And so I got there and I was like, "What's the message?" And so I was in Paris, I got nothing whatsoever, and then I went to Riviera for the first time, and I was visiting friends I had met in Miami, um, a dating site, that's why they invited me to stay with them, and they were in Riviera. So I stayed with them and I was in the Riviera 40s, and I went to every single city in the Riviera except Saint-Tropez. When I was in Monaco, I had this very bizarre experience where everything and everyone looked familiar, like I had lived there before, and I was like, whoa, this is scary. And at one point I was walking around and I turned a corner and I came across two fishes, which is my astrological sign, I'm a Pisces, and it was— I heard, your life is in transition from a lawyer to a writer. It was the first time I heard something. I was like, "Oh, whoa, this has to be it." And I was like, "Damn, that's all? Really?" Because I had started writing, I had started writing and I was getting, you know, public, you know, in the, in the, in the public, uh, personal development arena, I was getting some hits. But I was like, "God, I just felt like it was just short," right? So I was like, "Give it to me, Amber, thank you so much for that." And I thought the signs would be over. They didn't. They actually increased from 7 to 10 to 12. In the 30s, like the entire year I was bombarded. It was like France, France. I would be in the hood, I mean like where no one speaks any English, right? Because all my friends were Cuban and like literally we go to a restaurant, waiter from Cuba would speak to my friend perfect Spanish and then look at me and speak perfect beautiful French, not Creole. I mean it was like that hard like that, right? I mean it was just like, it was insane. And so like every single day it was I was kind of like that, and I was like, my God, like when I was working on Brickell, and I remember I was in the Morgan Building, one of these days where it's such a gorgeous day in Miami, like you don't want to be in the office, and I remember seeing a bunch of yellow butterflies, and my heart just spoke and said, move, move to Paris. And I was like, I think I was 27, I was like, you know what, why not? I was over Miami, you know, I've been here, done that, I just was a student in Miami, and I was like, you know, I'm ready for a change, and I was like, you know what, all right. Had a loft, I sold it, I sold my car, I gave away all of my things to different charities, and I reduced my entire loft apartment to 3 suitcases, and one suitcase was all my spiritual books, and I went to Paris. I didn't know a single person, I didn't know one word of French because I studied Spanish in school, um, I didn't go with a whole lot of money, I went with $1,500 originally. I went in the middle of winter, which It was freaking death cold and I hate winter. I didn't have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, or a plan D. I don't speak the language, right? But to tell the story, when I went there, I didn't go to Paris. Paris called me to it, right? Talk about comfort zone. So I went to Paris. When I got there, I was just a lawyer. I went there for 2 months initially and then I came back to Miami for 3 because I had a couple of cases in court. Now I like winter music often. Paris, like Miami Music Week, that's my week. And I always come back for that. And so I wasn't missing that. So I came out here for 3 months. When I got back to Paris, I had this— I was vomiting books. I'd never written a book in my life before. I wrote my first book in 30 days. And then I spent 2 years editing the book. And then I had writer's block. And then I had to— I was traveling. I was in Tunisia trying to— get inspired. I was in the Riviera, like nothing was coming. I finally like wrote something. I wrote something. I went to Nice. Came up with something. I came up with a book proposal, right? Because I was trying to get a book deal. And I hired this editor from New York who helps first-time writers get a book deal. She's like, Wani, it's crap. I was like, what? I was like, darla, it took me two— I mean it took me one, almost 9 months to write this book proposal. "Was you talking this crap?" Just like, do it over. And I was like, I don't have the energy, the bandwidth. I was like, angels, you people sent me here, give me a book to write. And so this book came to me. And I wrote this book fairly quickly too. I self-published this book and it became a bestseller within an hour on Amazon. From there, my story got picked up in this magazine. This is the most popular magazine, it's called Expatriates magazine, it's the most popular read magazine in France, it's distributed to all of the embassies, all of the schools, everywhere. Everyone French and not French reads this magazine, and my story was picked up in the November, December 2015 issue of how I came to Paris because I followed signs. And I became an instant celebrity in France. I am— this is the second time I was actually published. I've been published in magazines 4 times. This is a little copy that I have with me here, but I'm now writing my third book, my Paris memoir, and I have a national publisher who wants that book. I'm doing it without a book agent. I became a speaker in Paris. I actually eventually learned how to speak French, and I did it because I came out of my comfort zone. And I went— so this is how I went to Paris. You know? And so I tell you that, and the reason I'm here before you right now is because I went to Paris. I got out of my comfort zone and just took a chance. So what I'm saying to you is like, when you get out of your comfort zone, pardon my French, but magical shit happens to you. I mean, like, I'm just going to be for real. You know what I mean? Like, I, you know, this whole thing would not be scripted if I would have stayed and not followed my heart, you know, just not followed the calling. What you're wanting, what we're looking for, it's not where we are right now. It's not where you're comfortable, and it requires you to grow, and it requires you to stretch. I mean, did I catch hell? Absolutely. I mean, I was in Paris for 3 years in deaf, dumb, and mute situation like me. I just, I couldn't articulate. I remember I didn't even know how to, I couldn't read to turn on the wash my clothes. I was in tears. I swear to God. There's another expat, her name is Lisa Anselmo. She has a book called My Farceful Life in Paris, and she writes about how her first time, this is a journalist for freaking People Magazine. She was talking about how she was actually, her first time she tried to wash her clothes too, she actually typed the instructions on her computer to Google Translate it to be able to interpret it. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, right? So it's like, so I went there and it's like, I mean, And my story got picked up in this magazine. Next thing I know, I was being called. People were calling or emailing, like, "Hey, please come speak at this event. Please come speak." I'm wondering, like, and then I was on Paris radio, I was on TV, and it was like all of a sudden I became a speaker, a coach, and coaching fell into my lap, as far as I'm concerned. And I was like, but I was living my dream. I've always wanted to be on stage and speaking before people, right? And so that's what happens when you get out of your comfort zone. Right? So I'm poster child, put a frame around me. Like, this is what happens when you just kind of like let go. Was it easy? Absolutely not. I struggled. I'm not gonna lie to you. I was just, you know, drinking champagne and, you know, having the guests and the whole time it was like I had to learn how to walk, how to crawl, how to speak. But was it worth it? Absolutely. You know, so great things happen. The last thing I want to leave you with is Inspiration. I don't know how it's even possible to live the life that you really want without being inspired in some way. What does inspiration actually mean, or to be inspired? It means in spirit. It means to be in tuned with yourself, with your own heart, like what you're guided to do. You know, we're so conditioned to live in fear. We're so conditioned to live in lack and limitation and scarcity and to believe that it's not possible, right? Everyone's going, "I can't afford to follow my dreams." I said, "You can't afford not to." You know? And so, you gotta be inspired. So for me, you gotta figure out like, what's your big why? You know, for a lot of women, it's their kids. I don't have kids yet, but for me, my big why is to be inspired. I choose to live a life of inspiration and to inspire others. And I lost that along the way in the last few years, but I found it back again. And I can tell you that no matter what you're going on in your life, the thing that will get you through it the most is being connected with yourself. And to me, that's inspiration. It's being connected to the truth. Of who you are. And so, somebody asked on social media, "Wani, how do you stay inspired?" And I said, "You know what? Number one, I follow my curiosity. I suspend doubt, I suspend disbelief, I suspend the naysayers, no matter what struggles I may be going through." And I still have my struggles. I just hold on to what feeds my soul, and I follow that. Especially here in this society in America where it's all about work, work, work, work, work, work, work— I mean world was always working right? We don't have time to even like stop and have lunch or something. You gotta take time to connect with yourself, that's how you really when you're connected with yourself, you tend to be more inspired. The second thing I would say I offer is to follow what you appreciate in life, you know? You should be grateful. Gratitude is good to have, but sometimes it's hard to be grateful, right? I get it, you know? For me, I just have a deep appreciation for life, for people, for things, and so I follow those things that I appreciate about life. Like, I appreciate beauty. I appreciate— like, I love Miami Beach. The beach itself, I go to it every Sunday. That's my church. My mom is always, to this day, "Do you want to go to church?" "Yeah, I'm going to the beach." That's my church, you know, like that place is my temple. Because it fills my soul, I feel amazing when I come from the beach, and it just does so many things. You gotta do more of the things that you love, and less of the things that you think you should be doing. And so I wanna leave with you my favorite absolute quote by one of my favorite writers. And for me, this quote encapsulates what it really means to live the life that you really want, This is how actually I'm going about it, and feel free to join me on my quest. It is by Hunter S. Thompson, and it says, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, glass of champagne, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'I'm alive!'" Woo! What a ride! I really loved it. Thank you. So any questions, please come out. I'm open for Q&A. I have some of my books on sale to sign for you if you want to talk about directing one-on-one. And please, by all means, let's have some wine. Yes! Book? Sure, sure. Those are my books. Yeah, yeah. No, this is one of the same book. I just have like 16 or 17 copies.

Yeah.

Ah, okay. Yeah, okay. So I have— so I wrote 2 books. This is the only one that's published. The other book that I have is called There Is Spiritual Reality, There Is Truth. That's the book that's finished, and I need to rewrite the book proposal. And so, what I'm actually— and that book is about the spiritual journey. It's about what really happens to you when you get on the path of personal development that nobody tells you. The things that you actually face, you know, that— because everyone thinks it's all about, "I'm drinking green juice, I'm wearing the healing pants, I'm going to yoga, I'm so healthy, look at me!" It's not. Like, your life's gonna fall to pieces. That's the real deal. Because you're facing your fears, you know, you're facing the things that a lot of people are running away from. So that book is ready, but right now the book that I'm actually writing is my Paris memoirs. Everything that's happened since I left Miami and I moved to Paris to follow science. And it literally starts off with like that New Year's Eve when I woke up on that— was like, oh my God, like, this is hell. And then with a cross-party, and I actually just— and like, yeah, everything's happened since then. And I've been in Paris for 6 years now. You did or you didn't do it? I did. I sit at home and analyze my life, and for 3 days I said